Inspector Lohmann

Our Apotheosis

2010-06-24T16:14:00.001-04:00

...or, Why Our Species Deserves to Die, 'cause it's only downhill from here.

Crude Poetic Justice

2010-06-24T11:01:00.002-04:00

Forum discussion over here from coberst:

Crude Poetic Justice?

Wikipedia informs me that “poetic justice” is a notion that fictional literature takes on as a cultural demand whereby literary outcomes must support moral standards by justifying in the end the virtuous behavior of the good guy and punishing the bad behavior of the bad guy. Furthermore logic is also maintained.

How can our (American) present troubles be considered as poetic justice?

Let us just examine the great human manufactured catastrophes visited upon us in the last few years; the Great Crude Oil Smear, the deadliest mine disaster in three decades, the greatest financial catastrophe since the Great Depression, and the looming global climate change induced by human activity.

The common element in all of these catastrophes is our three decade guiding premise that Government is the problem while Free Market forces are the solution.

Poetic Justice results because the American people are punished, with a great crude oil smear, by the logic of their commitment to the free market and their dark suspicion of government regulation.

Perhaps God is a practical joker!

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In a democracy such as we have in the United States the people are sovereign and thus responsible for the situation that exists. The lack of intellectual sophistication of the citizens is the fault of those citizens.

The basic problem began when the people allowed them self to be convinced that government was the problem and that the free market was the solution. These problems developed because the American citizen left Corporate America free and unregulated.

The American people are too naive to comprehend the problem and too frightened of reality to accept their responsibility.

An oligarchy controls public policy in America. The oligarchy consists of those who manage the great wealth of American institutions. This oligarchy designs our educational system to graduate good producers and consumers and does not desire independent thinkers.

CA (Corporate America) has developed a well-honed expertise in motivating the population to behave in a desired manner. Citizens as consumers are ample manifestation of that expertise. CA has accomplished this ability by careful study and implementation of the knowledge of the ways of human behavior. I suspect this same structure applies to most Western democracies.

A democratic form of government is one wherein the citizens have some voice in some policy decisions. The greater the voice of the citizens the better the democracy. The greater the intellectual sophistication of those citizens the better the democracy.

In America we have policy makers, decision makers, and citizens. The decision makers are our elected representatives and are, thus, under some control by the voting citizen. The policy makers are the leaders of CA; less than ten thousand individuals, according to those who study such matters. Policy makers exercise significant control of decision makers by controlling the financing of elections.

Policy makers customize and maintain the dominant ideology in order to control the political behavior of the citizens. This dominant ideology exercises the political control of the citizens in the same fashion as the consuming citizen is controlled by the same dominant ideology.

An enlightened citizen is the only means to gain more voice in more policy decisions. An enlightened citizen is much more than an informed citizen. Critical thinking is the only practical means to develop a more enlightened citizen. If, however, we wait until our CT trained grade-schoolers become adults I suspect all will be lost. This is why I think a massive effort must be made to convince today’s adults that they must train themselves in CT.

Good luck with that!

A Political Syllogism

2010-01-29T13:17:00.000-05:00

A person can run for congress.

A corporation is a person.

A corporation can run for congress.

A Train Wreck in Slow Motion

2010-01-21T11:19:00.019-05:00

Harvey Wasserman: Weimar Democrats

Because the modern global corporation has human rights (as defined by the 14th Amendment) but no human responsibilities, it is history's most powerful institution. It is above the law, shielded from debt, not accountable for damage to the public, to the people who work for them, or to the planet.

The Democratic Party is itself a corporation. Its principle business is to retain political office and to DEFER public attacks on the corporations that provide much of its cash flow.
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Some liberals point confidently to disarray among the Republicans as a saving grace. This desperate delusion requires we forget Germany’s Weimar regime, which made the same fatal mistake in the lead-up to World War II. Never underestimate the "outsiders" in a nation where millions are desperate.

Having scales removed from one's eyes must be a painful operation. I feel sorry for all those poor deluded fools who so desperately needed to believe in the candidate of Hope and Change that they ignored his actual words, and adjusted their blinders to marvel in self-congratulations at the immense cultural symbology of a skin's pigment attaining such stature, while studiously ignoring the tungsten umbilical cord connecting him to Wall Street's teat. Magicians call this misdirection.

There's a reason people open their hearts & wallets (but not their minds, no, never their minds) to the Elmer Gantry's of the world: their want is so deep, their need so intense, that they willingly cloud their own minds and shout their hosannahs to the salesman with the best pitch to deliver them to the promised land. The public made it too easy for them the last presidential election: the perception managers played the public like a virtuoso practicing his scales. As E O Wilson so perfectly says, "in the midst of absurdity the trumpet is certain". Or, You can't go broke selling the customer what he wants.

I appreciate Mr. Wasserman's articulateness in describing the structural problem faced by humanity — when you get right down to it, it's nothing more than an insane socially constructed reality (a religion, really, if we want to be technical about it) that has created these amoral corporate Gods without knowing how to rein them in. We have, as a species, created these imaginary institutions that we permit to rule the world to our peril. That's quite an achievement, when you think about it, and speaks very ill of our species.

I also appreciate Mr. Wasserman's astute (if easy) comparison of modern democrats with Weimar Germany. It's almost as if empires can't help but follow the same historical algorithm. A couple more chapters further into this depressing and tragic farce will be most unpleasant as the electorate, in their fury, confusion and stupidity, elect back into office the very troglodytes that brought them to this brink in the first place, giving them the opportunity to finally give the country just that tiny nudge to send it hurtling into the abyss once and for all. America's suicidal decline cannot be stopped at this point; but America won't go down alone — it'll bring lots of other countries down with it.

I'm so glad I left a few years ago. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion: though undoubtedly horrific for everyone, I'd rather watch it than be on it.

Contemporary Economics in a Nutshell: Felonious Instincts Rewarded by Reverse Robin-Hoodism

2009-07-24T16:15:00.006-04:00

Jeffrey St. Clair, AIG and the System: The Masters of Perfidy :

In a sense, it’s only fitting that the government ended up as the ultimate guarantor for those furious seasons of Wall Street greed. After all, by consciously dismantling the regulatory framework that tended to constrain the felonious instincts that come naturally to the Wall Street player (such as the Glass-Steagall Act), the government played a decisive role in fostering the rampant financial criminality and looting that reached its apogee in 2008, crashing the global economy, draining retirement funds and pension accounts and casting millions from their homes and millions more into the perdition of long-term unemployment. All of this coming down in an era of extreme government austerity, typified by over-burdened and underfunded social welfare programs. As with the defunct regulations to restrain corporate crimes, so too had the economic safety net been sheared away--its tethers sliced by Reagan, the Bushes and Clinton—long before the economy cratered. Now there is nothing to cushion the blow on the long fall to the bottom.

The architects of this economic deregulation achieved a truly fearful bi-partisan symmetry that persists to this day. Even now, amid the rubble of Wall Street’s collapse, the neo-liberals and neo-conservatives remain as uniform as conjoined twins in their devotion to a broadly deregulated market. Any talk of bringing back forceful correctives such as a new and improved Glass-Steagall Act was immediately squelched by Obama, flanked by John McCain and Mitch McConnell, as well. If the crash of AIG—the largest in history—was in the sclerotic parlance of the times a “teachable moment” it is apparent that while much was ventured, nothing was learned.

The problem is that the government bailout, which some accounts now estimate will eventually top $24-cap T-for Trillion—flowed almost entirely in the wrong direction. Instead of helping to mend the lives of Wall Street’s victims—the unemployed, the uninsured, the destitute and homeless—Bush and Obama rewarded the perpetrators. They even gave them bonuses.

...consciously dismantling the regulatory framework that tended to constrain the felonious instincts that come naturally to the Wall Street player...
that is so well said!

An Anthem for our Zeitgeist

2009-07-23T11:34:00.004-04:00

Mary Margaret O'Hara
"Don't Be Afraid" (from Happy End, a 1929 musical by Kurt Weill)
MM's contribution to the 1995 tribute to Kurt Weill "September Songs"

Orwellian Parsing Fun

2009-07-02T14:00:00.007-04:00

I was inspired when I read the following passage , a brilliant example of how to parse obfuscatory official language:

In a recent interview with the BBC on June 19, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy icon and ultimate insider, exposed Washington’s deep involvement in the Iranian affair.

Dr. Kissinger said, “If it turns out that it is not possible for a government to emerge in Iran that can deal with itself as a nation rather than as a cause, then we have a different situation.” Translation: if our preferred candidate did not emerge a winner after using all our soft power… He continued, “Then we may conclude that we must work for regime change in Iran from the outside,” Translation: then the U.S. (or perhaps Israel) may have to resort to hard power, meaning military strikes.

He then added, “But if I understand the president correctly, he does not want to do this as a visible intervention in the current crisis.” Translation: Whatever President Barack Obama is doing in Iran, he wants to make sure that Washington’s hand is invisible.

I just now came across an article entitled U.S. begins major Afghan offensive.

(First, a parenthetical note. If anybody is surprised that Obama is ramping up the war in Afghanistan then they deliberately ignored Obama's repeated proclamations that this was his intention. Agent of change and hope... Perception Managers earned their pay on that one — but then again it's easy to package a product when people are desperate to buy it. Speaking of Perception Managers, they're working overtime on perhaps the greatest coordinated psyop offensive since WMD in Iraq, getting the public to buy the whole Iran election fraud thing. It's unfortunate (no — it's a fatal flaw) for our species that these Compliance & Perception Professionals succeed in their job so easily.)

If it wasn't so deeply troubling, the following caption, below a picture of a youngster in Murkan army drag, would have been amusing:

Marines surge into Afghanistan
Thousands of U.S. Marines and hundreds of Afghan troops moved into Taliban-infested villages of southern Afghanistan Thursday in the first major operation under President Barack Obama's strategy to stabilize the country. (July 1, 2009)

There's one thing in this caption that stands out like a sucking-chest wound. Can you spot it? Hint: it's the very same metaphor used by the Nazis when describing Jews. Yes, it's the word infested. And what do you do if vermin infest an area? You fumigate it, you eradicate it, you sterilize it. Obviously there's a need to clean out these villages of vermin — they're infested. So they're sending in professional exterminators to wipe them out. And, of course, since they're professionals, they'll make sure no innocents are harmed — after all, the troops are there for their sake, they're on an altruistic mission to stabilize the country. Sending thousands of troops into villages on a killing spree to wipe out locals who have been transmogrified into non-human vermin is not causing chaos, destruction, de-stabilization, no, what it is doing is stabilizing the country. I mean, sometimes you have to destroy a village to save it, right?

This is textbook Orwellian doublespeak psyop propaganda to de-humanize the enemy and make your team of killers look like the good guys, a clever and subtle use of language to mask and justify people killing other people.

(Speaking of Perception Management, did you know that after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban eliminated drug production? Can't have that -- eats into Wall Street's addiction to profits from the drug trade. When USA/NATO replaced the Taliban with their own puppets drug production flourished to even higher levels. So when you read about the good guys going in to clamp down on the drug trade I suggest you plug in your Orwellian doublespeak filters and turn the volume up, 'cause what's going on is not just about war profits or protecting the oil pipelines, it's also about protecting the drug pipelines.)

Addenda:

From Wikipedia on dehumanization:
The empirically-supported propaganda model of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky shows how corporate media are able to carry out large-scale, successful dehumanization campaigns when that promotes the goals (profit-making) that the corporations are legally obliged to maximise. State media, in either democracies or dictatorships, are also capable of carrying out dehumanization campaigns, to the extent with which the population is unable to counteract the dehumanizing memes.
An insight from G. I. Gurdjieff:
Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of evil for the sake of evil. Everybody acts in the interests of good, as he understands it. But everybody understands it in a different way. Consequently men drown, slay, and kill one another in the interests of good.

Has It Begun?!

2009-04-27T10:49:00.002-04:00

Flu fears prompt EU travel warning
India issues travel advisory for Canada

Media reports from Malaysia say that country’s Health Ministry is advising Malaysians against travelling to Canada, Mexico and selected U.S. states where there are swine flu cases.
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Russia, Hong Kong and Taiwan said they would quarantine visitors showing symptoms of the virus amid a surging global concern about a possible pandemic.

In Washington, President Barack Obama said today that the threat of spreading swine flu infections is a cause for concern but “not a cause for alarm” as the United States undertook close border monitoring to contain it.

World stock markets fell as investors worried that the deadly outbreak could go global and derail any global economic recovery [sic]. Airlines took the brunt of the selling.

The virus was suspected in up to 103 deaths in Mexico, the epicentre of the outbreak with more than 1,600 cases suspected, while 20 cases were confirmed in the United States and six in Canada.

In Luxembourg, EU Health Commissioner Andorra Vassiliou urged Europeans to postpone non-essential travel to the United States and Mexico “unless it is very urgent for them.”
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“These are early days. It’s quite clear that there is a potential for this virus to become a pandemic and threaten globally,” World Health Organization spokesman Peter Cordingley told AP Television News.
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Russia, Hong Kong and Taiwan said visitors returning from flu-affected areas with fevers would be quarantined.

China said anyone experiencing flu-like symptoms within two weeks of arrival had to report to authorities.

Some officials cautioned that the checks might not be enough.
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At Madrid’s Barajas International Airport, passengers arriving from Mexico today were asked to fill out forms saying where they had been in Mexico and whether they had felt any cold symptoms, and were told to leave a contact address and phone number.

Are we being buttered up? Just wondering...

Whatever else will be the result of it, one thing is obvious — they've latched onto the notion of some impending "pandemic" as an excuse to prepare for civil coordination on a major scale. Their overzealous dedication to gearing up for some fantastical apocalyptic virus is beyond fishy — it's the smoke from a gun that hasn't been fired yet.
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"grants the HHS secretary extraordinary powers to declare a health emergency simply based on a POTENTIAL threat. This means that a hypothetical threat analysis from intelligence agencies that failed to warn of Sept 11th could be used as a reason to suspend civil liberties and start mandatory smallpox vaccinations"
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No matter how cowed the media and how gullible the citizenry it was only a matter of time before the tide would turn against them; but that doesn't matter to them one iota: it just necessitates implementing new strategies from gameplans, which, like BioShield and the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, they have been developing in great detail for a long time.

Yep, just wondering...

The danger signs are spread all around us yet scarcely register in the standard economic models. Nature is the greatest obstacle of all to the future of the free-market system and cannot be treated as an adversary. The message must be protect or perish.

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The question for us is not whether but how to achieve the goal of drastic population reduction.

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The twenty-first century must choose between discipline and control or tumult and chaos. The only way to ensure the greatest welfare while still preserving capitalism is to make that number smaller.

History 101: Cause and Effect

2009-03-12T13:38:00.004-04:00

The federal government’s ability to bail out the nation’s most corrupt capitalists appears inexhaustible, yet only crumbs have been made available for those who have produced all their profits. Wall Street insiders are still feeding at a bottomless trough funded by the millions of workers now facing mass layoffs, losing health insurance and confronting home values that are lower than their mortgages. But it is only a matter of time before the dam begins to break.
—Sharon Smith, Bottom Feeders at the Trough: Bailing Out America's Most Corrupt Capitalists

All of the above indicates that the much-feared financial meltdown is no longer a distant and remote possibility because in fact it is already taking place. However, this chaos might trigger some very serious and preoccupying consequences. In order to have a clear understanding of these implications, it is vital to take into account some reports that were not given the proper amount of attention they deserved when they were first published.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky observed that the US Army 3rd Infantry's 1st Brigade Combat Team returned from Iraq some months ago. That information is extremely disturbing because such military unit "may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control", according to official sources. Now, what scenario could possibly require the operational deployment of said units on American soil? Professor Chossudovsky puts forward an intriguing hypothesis that must be borne in mind. He argues that "Civil unrest resulting from from the financial meltdown is a distinct possibility, given the broad impacts of financial collapse on lifelong savings, pension funds, homeownership, etc".

Shortly afterwards, the Centre for Research on Globalization website posted an article written by Wayne Madsen. Mr. Madsen claims that a highly confidential official report has been circulating among senior members of the US Congress and their top advisors. The report has been allegedly nicknamed as the "C & R document". The author stipulates that those letters stand for none other than "conflict" and "revolution" because those scenarios are supposedly regarded by America's policymakers as plausible consequences triggered by a financial meltdown. According to Mr. Madsen, the content of the document reveals that severe financial chaos could spark a major war if Washington refuses to honor its foreign debt and/or massive riots in US cities if the American population does not accept a considerable tax increase.

For decades, overall political stability in the US was taken for granted. However, as it has been pointed out, even senior American statesmen are taking into consideration that financial volatility could fuel a wave of discontent which could easily reach troubling proportions. It seems that America itself is not immune from "regime-threatening instability" as the Pentagon and the American intelligence community terms it. It is likely that American government officials have not dismissed the worst-case scenario. Indeed it looks like they have been preparing accordingly.
—José Miguel Alonso Trabanco, Civil Unrest in America?

Apparently it's Part of America's Cultural Identity

2009-01-23T17:27:00.004-05:00

DENDERMONDE, Belgium – A man went on a rampage at a Belgian daycare centre today, stabbing two young children and a female worker to death and slashing and severely injuring 12 other people, 10 of them children.

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"(It's) something you hear about from America, not here," said bake shop owner Bie Hoornaert.

3 dead, 10 hurt in daycare knife attack

A Reminder of the The Sublime Heights Humanity Can Reach

2009-01-17T17:40:00.006-05:00

Even though the world is being engineered towards the abyss to further enrich, empower and entrench the elite, every so often it's good to remind ourselves of the beauty and joy our species can attain. Humanity is not incorrigibly malign, and no matter how awful things are, we can still hold within our breast an awareness of decency and beauty.

I just had to share a glimpse of the heights we are capable of reaching.

Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
—Wendell Berry

Vorocracy: Final: History's Most Lethal Parasites

2009-01-04T03:19:00.007-05:00

Introduction

To commemorate the new epoch that officially began October 3, 2008 with the 700 billion dollar (700 billion!) ~~theft~~ gift of the public's hard-earned money to the handful of banksters who have precipitated the coming worldwide depression — one that will make the Weimar years look like a gravy train, and will inevitably lead to social collapse and world war — I thought I would revisit my theory of vorocracy. Rather than fill in the chapters I outlined more than two years ago — chapters dealing with anti-communism, the use of fascism's technocratic toolset, capitalism as theology, neoliberalism and deregulation, our current historical crux between two competing worldviews, etc. — I'll just jump straight to my notes for the final chapter and put together a quick, fairly unpolished summary of the nature of vorocrats and their rule.

How Big is 700 Billion?
$1 = 1 meter
dollars	magnitude	distance
$1	1.0 * 10⁰	height of 4 year old boy
$100	1.0 * 10²	height of Statue of Liberty
$88,000	8.8 * 10⁴	height of Mt. Everest
$12,000,000	1.2 * 10⁷	diameter of the earth
$1,400,000,000	1.4 * 10⁹	diameter of the sun
$10,000,000,000	1.0 * 10¹⁰	one light minute (distance light travels in one minute)
$700,000,000,000	7.0 * 10¹¹	the diameter of the asteroid belt
$1,000,000,000,000	1.0 * 10¹²	one light hour (distance light travels in one hour)

Definition of Vorocracy

The definition of vorocracy first introduced in chapter 3:

vorocracy [voro < devoro, latin: to devour < voro, latin: to eat greedily, swallow up, consume, gorge oneself; -cracy < suffix: type of government; rule by]
The political philosophy of insatiable appetite
Society structured around the need to pathologically consume until it self-destructs
A society at the service of those with such a drive
Government of the greedy, by the greedy, and for the greedy

A vorocracy exists for no reason other than for the ruling class to amass wealth by whatever means it can. A vorocracy develops belief systems to justify the means and ends of satisfying an insatiable greed. In a vorocracy, greed determines the ideology that justifies it's pathological goal of eternal and infinite acquisition. For a vorocrat there is no worldview other than "more".

Vorocracy is the governance of an open mouth that intends to consume until it self-destructs. Vorocracy is the political pathology of insatiable appetite

How Vorocracy is Distinct from Plutocracy and Kleptocracy

A distinction must be drawn between plutocracy, kleptocracy and vorocracy.

Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, and implies nothing more than that. It could be argued that most societies with any form of institutionalized government have a propensity towards plutocracy in addition to whatever other institutionalized structure it has, since power and wealth are generally coincident for obvious reasons (ie: wealth can purchase power; power can amass wealth: they tend to work hand in glove). But the connotation of plutocracy is neutral: it can be malign, or it can be benificent if the plutocrats use their wealth for the common good. A malign plutocracy is most likely a kleptocracy, or rule by a criminal class that seeks to increase their prestige and wealth at the expense of the governed.

A vorocracy, on the other hand, is not criminal in the sense of a kleptocracy, but is a political pathology. The distinction is homologously comparable to a murder committed by the sane versus the insane: a murder committed by the sane assumes that the criminal understands and shares the same moral universe of the society at large, and thus the criminal is cognizant that his act, when committed, goes against the accepted moral outlook of his society yet can be justified within his own code of ethics. A crime committed by the insane (however a society wishes to define the insane) assumes that the criminal was driven to the act by factors not in his control, regardless of his cognizance of any moral codes — there is no ethical justification for the act since such a consideration is irrelevant to its commission. Thus, for instance, a murder committed between rival gangmembers, or during the commission of a burglary, is qualitatively different from a murder committed by, say, a serial child killer: the former murder could have been prevented by an intercession of the actor's conscience; the latter murder is precluded from having any such intercession. The result, a murder, is the same, though for one it is a question of intent, for the other a question of pathology.

To apply this to the political theory under discussion, a kleptocrat is aware that his power is used for personal gain (Boss Tweed, or organized crime, comes readily to mind as examples) and operates within a society's moral universe by being aware where the conscious commission of his action might occur on the moral spectrum. A vorocrat is driven by a pathological need that cannot be controlled, nor is even necessarily understood for what it is: it is a drive that operates outside a society's moral universe. The contextual worldview in which each governance operates is different. The result may be the same — theft from the subjects and other victims into the coffers of the rulers — but the difference lies between the intent of the kleptocrat versus the pathology of the vorocrat. Kleptocrats may be greedy, but they still operate within the moral universe shared by society. Vorocrats do not. (Eg: rule by, say, a mafia don is a kleptocracy; rule by pathologically greedy CEOs and banksters is a vorocracy.) Thus all vorocracies function as kleptocracies, but kleptocracies are not necessarily vorocracies.

And, just as serial killers are a more serious threat to a society than other killers, so a vorocracy will be that much more dangerous and severe to a society than a kleptocracy: one cannot reason with a pathology, one cannot make appeals to a pathology's conscience. A pathology is an illness, not a stance, not an ideology. Vorocracy is a pathological illness of governance.

Capitalism's Prime Mover Unfurls a Big Red Flag and Hoists it Aloft

Adam Smith, that Prime Mover of Capitalism, knew what he was talking about. After all, if you're going to create a religion based on greed (for, ultimately, economics is nothing more than a religion), you probably have a keen and subtle awareness of the psychology of greed. Here, in the conclusion of Book One Chapter 11 of Adam Smith's sacred text The Wealth of Nations he reveals the extent to which he understood that an economic system based upon greed must seek ways to prevent the greedy (ie: business) from assuming the reins of political power [em. mine]:

The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operations of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The interest of this third order [ie, "those who live by profit"], therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two [ie, landowners, and "those who live by wages"]. Merchants and master manufacturers are, in this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the public consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen. As their thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business, than about that of the society, their judgment, even when given with the greatest candour (which it has not been upon every occasion) is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects than with regard to the latter. Their superiority over the country gentleman is not so much in their knowledge of the public interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

Thus the Prime Mover of Capitalism Himself said in his Bible that political power should never be exercised by businessmen because all they care about is their own gain, and will gladly "deceive" and "oppress" the public for it. Since he had such profound insight into the nature of such men, even to the point of understanding that the greatest profits are reaped when a country is going to ruin!, did he have a strategy to prevent such men from assuming the organs of government? No, none that I've found. Because there aren't any. Such men would inevitably find ways to assume the reins of political power. Adam Smith's economic religious theories basically gave such men the keys to Pandora's Box without providing any way to close it again. That's because greed is an unstoppable force, and there is nothing to stop an unstoppable force from eventually assuming the absolute power they need to "deceive" and "oppress" to further their gain.

Obviously Smith clearly understood what those devoted to wealth would do with political power. That's why he so clearly and strongly cautioned against putting "those who live by profit" — ie, modern-day neoliberal corporatists (aka businessmen) — in such positions. That's because Smith, like Ralph Nader, like Paul Hawkens with his philosophy of Natural Capitalism, all understand that the motor behind capitalism is the drive for profit, and they all understand that for capitalism to work for society rather than against it it must remain small (capitalism with a "c") and be held in check.

But capitalism cannot remain small. It must always expand. That's the inherent contradiction that must inevitably explode in greed's favor. You cannot foment an addiction and expect that it will never develop into a pathology. And we are seeing the result of that right now. Capitalism without any regulatory oversight — the neoliberal vision that has been American policy since Reagan — is a catastrophe waiting to happen: it is letting drug addicts into the pharmacy while the druggist goes out for lunch, expecting that the addicts won't help themselves to all those Category I & II drugs. And now the catastrophe is happening, but it's only just the beginning, a mere trickle before the tsunami that is quickly coming.

Vorocracy as the Transhistorical Engine of Deteriorating Rule

Friedrich Engels, co-author with Marx of The Communist Manifesto, in his anthropological study of the origins of the family, private property, and the state, discusses the ways in which greed ultimately leads to vorocratic dynasties.

Their neighbors' wealth excites the greed of peoples who already see in the acquisition of wealth one of the main aims of life. They are barbarians: they think it more easy and in fact more honorable to get riches by pillage than by work. War, formerly waged only in revenge for injuries or to extend territory that had grown too small, is now waged simply for plunder and becomes a regular industry... The wars of plunder increase the power of the supreme military leader and the subordinate commanders; the customary election of their successors from the same families is gradually transformed, especially after the introduction of father-right, into a right of hereditary succession, first tolerated, then claimed, finally usurped; the foundation of the hereditary monarchy and the hereditary nobility is laid. Thus the organs of the gentile constitution gradually tear themselves loose from their roots in the people, in gens, phratry, tribe, and the whole gentile constitution changes into its opposite: from an organization of tribes for the free ordering of their own affairs it becomes an organization for the plundering and oppression of their neighbors; and correspondingly its organs change from instruments of the will of the people into independent organs for the domination and oppression of the people. That, however, would never have been possible if the greed for riches had not split the members of the gens into rich and poor, if "the property differences within one and the same gens had not transformed its unity of interest into antagonism between its members" (Marx)...

The details of time, culture and political system of a given period may differ, but structurally this is a very sound analysis. Reading this, while keeping in mind the ascension of a few American "dynastic" families (Bush, Kennedy, Roosevelt,...), puts things in a structural perspective. (Note: rather than a supreme military leader, since we live in a putative democracy, we have an executive branch entrusted with the function of supreme military leader; rather than a hereditary passing of the executive office we have the charade of a democratic election to provide cover for the chosen ones. But should something go wrong with the script the Supreme Court will gladly intercede on behalf of the chosen successor.)

Engels asserts greed was the driving force of civilization, splitting society between an oppressor and an oppressed as the former gains wealth at the expense of the latter. It doesn't matter, then, what political incarnation is assumed — monarchism, feudalism, fascism, democracy — they can all serve as the ideological and political carrier waves for vorocrats who ultimately assume political power.

The Benighted States of Mammon

Democracy, combined with the theology of Capitalism, are the modern-day carrier waves of vorocracy. In earlier times emperors and potentates enjoined their henchmen to simply extort and steal from their subjects. Now, however, given that people actually take their rights of democracy seriously, the people must be hoodwinked with ever more transparent lies — ..., "Remember the Maine!"; the Gulf of Tonkin; the Military Humanism of Kosovo; Saddam's WMDs; the War on Terror.. — to guarantee the public's support in military efforts to amass wealth.

In fact now, with the advent of neoliberal globalization, vorocrats don't need to piggy-back on the politically powerful to amass their shekels, they don't need to be the stagehands working behind the scenes. It can be argued that there is no state now; that the state is run as a corporation, the executive branch now a boardroom executive fulfilling his role for his Board of Directors. They have come front and center onto the stage and assumed their place in the spotlight to reveal America as the Mammon-state it is, run as a multi-national corporation by a cabal of conflict-of-interest, insider-trading boardroom executives who openly embezzle from the public with complete impunity. It is the Benighted States of Mammon, history's first true out-of-the-closet vorocracy.

Once the Power Elite and their servants in political office are seen as vorocrats then things that seem ludicrous or insane to us in the "reality based community" start to make sense.

They are monomaniacally motivated by an insatiable greed for wealth and power, using tools of social control like stern and greedy employers to keep the workers cowed and obedient. They incite enmity and cause destruction as ways to create wealth for themselves.

They are proof that conflicts of interest can be cosmically profitable: for instance, in waging a war, they own the companies that serve as the means of both destruction and construction; they own the companies that provide security services; they own the companies that perform resource extraction; they own the investment firms that invest in all these various companies. What does it matter if they run the army into the ground? So what if they are caught in scandal after scandal, lie after lie? So what if they squander the reputation of their country? Their coffers get fatter, that's all that matters.

They commit insider trading on levels difficult to comprehend because the crime is so brazenly criminal. They use the cover of "national security" to preclude investigation. Currently they are rewarding their cronies responsible for the coming economic apocalypse with unimaginable sums of public monies, knowing that nothing will happen to them. They commit their monumental crimes right out in the open because no one dare believe the evidence before their own eyes. Thus their absolute contempt for the public is appropriate, since they know the public will idly watch without any hint of either comprehension or intercession.

A vorocratic government is nothing more than a funnel to transfer wealth from any source — their constituents, other countries, nature itself — to themselves. They command its intelligence agencies, security forces and military services to do their bidding. This is what they mean when they say they create their own reality, for indeed they are modern-day alchemists who have mastered the dark arts of politics to turn misery and despoiliation into money. War, genocide and natural catastrophes are enormously profitable.

BushCo has deliberately squandered America's military might; destroyed what little good reputation America had outside its own borders; made the world a far more dangerous place; killed countless tens and hundreds of thousands of people; ravaged natural and pristine lands; ransacked the economy; strengthened the police-state at home... All because doing so is cosmically profitable. Period.

But this is more than outright class warfare. These are the activities of people without conscience or humanity, driven by a pathological hunger for more and ever more, people for whom too much is never enough.

Vorocrats.

Conclusion: Humanity's Most Lethal Parasites

A vorocrat's entire worldview is dedicated to acquisition. Their entire perception channels everything through filters that interpret, evaluate, and analyze all it considers as means toward the end of acquiring ever more riches, ever more power. All of life, all of reality is like a grand boardgame to them, reducible to strategizing the moves of chits, the manipulation of numbers, determining lines-of-sight and watching dice rolls. They are playing Monopoly for real, pushing people out of the game when they can no longer pay, and stealing from the bank when no one's looking. Their minds are consumed with strategizing ways to win the bounty at all costs. And winning means getting more, and more, and more — sacrificing more blood, more tissue to amass more money and power.

A vorocrat's vision of a better world is nothing grander than watching their portfolios grow fatter, their wrist watches get thinner, and their homes grow more ostentatious. Vorocrats are only too happy to use True Believers and Useful Idiots to serve their own ends. They are history's ultimate parasites, attaching themselves to any host that can help them extract the symbolic lifeforce they hunger for. They are also history's most lethal parasites, since they have found the alchemical formula that converts flesh and blood into gold and lucre. Their drive is monomaniacal: they do not even care if they die with their host, so long as their funnel-like sucking mouth continues to extract the wealth they crave from the blood and tissue they'll consume to their dying breath. (This, ultimately, is what Virilio means when he discusses fascism as a suicidal State, because such a hunger can only end in great death and destruction.) They are pathologically insatiable: even were they able to obtain everything, as some aver is their aim (Michael Parenti: "There's only one thing this class has ever wanted in the whole of history and that's everything"), their thirst would still not be slaked. Greed knows no end. Greed can never be satisfied. Greed only gets hungrier the more it consumes.

Ultimately the vorocrats are playing an existential game wherein they think they can cheat death, their winnings attaining a kind of immortal transcendence because they are somehow infused with the numinous essence of their largesse. And when they die they will die with limpid consciences, incapable of reflecting with their "beautiful minds" on all the immeasurable misery their existence has brought to the world. And why should they? What matter that history will condemn them? They will die as winners, estimating the area on the gameboard they've conquered, and rounding the magical numbers of their monopoly money to the nearest power of ten to assess the value of their life on earth.

Does the enormous cost to humanity resulting from their miserable existence matter one fart to them?

The Web of Power Hidden Behind the Invisible Matrix of Consensus Reality

2008-12-31T09:58:00.023-05:00

Synergy: The Web of Power

The processes of corporate power do not work in isolation. The economic and legal mechanisms that allow the privatization of the commonwealth, externalization of costs, predatory economic practices, political influence-buying, manipulation of regulation and deregulation, control of the media, propaganda and advertising in schools, and the use of police and military forces to protect the property of the wealthy — all of these work syngergistically to weave a complex web of power.

The Anatomy of Corporate Power

Activists seek to locate the “mechanisms” of power, but power is not a machine. Power, the ability to make decisions and control resources, is found in the dynamics of the relationship between people. Depending on how power flows and who wields it, political and economic decisions are made and resources flow between individuals, groups, and corporations. When society’s economic, political, and social structures become institutionalised, power tends to flow from people into institutions, but not back again. Power becomes centralised.

The flow of power to corporations is promoted by legal mechanisms such as corporate personhood, limits to liability, pollution permitting, and political campaign financing, and by institutional structures such as regulatory agencies, export credit agencies, and police forces and armies.

Together, these mechanisms and structures maintain networks of tightly-held power. Network analysis has shown that ninety percent of the 800 largest U.S. corporations are interlocked in a continuous network, with any one corporation within four steps of any other corporation in the network.

Analysis of think tanks and policy groups in the early 1990s showed that the Business Roundtable was interlocked most extensively, followed by the Business Council, the Conference Board, the Committee for Economic Development, Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Hoover Institution, Chamber of Commerce, and Heritage Foundation. Some of these institutions are being displaced by new ones. Interlocks are not the only source of power, and in any case, the precise measurement of power is impossible. But the enormous influence of these and other global alliances of corporate power is undeniable.

Corporations and corporate foundations fund think tanks which formulate policies which will be favorable to business. Corporate attorneys draft legislation which will make those policies the law of the land. Corporate political action committees pay for the election campaigns of the politicians who ensure that such legislation becomes law, and lobbyists make sure the politicians stay bought. Corporate executives are appointed to lead the regulatory agencies which enforce (or dismantle) the laws that aren’t favorable to business. National and multilateral trade and development agencies design and subsidize an international trading system dominated by the largest corporations. Governments and banks use public monies to subsidize and insure corporate investment.

The elite consensus rises above the competitive advantage of particular corporations, and is larger than any industry. What unites corporations and industry associations and the wealthy and powerful is a consensus to build and maintain power itself. Corporate power is dependent on legal, economic, and political mechanisms, structures, and processes which follow a few basic rules:

Privatize profits. Get as many subsidies as possible from labor, the public, and the environment. Get below-cost raw materials from the public domain. Let communities and governments pay for infrastructure. Lobby for tax breaks and tax credits. Privatize public resources and governmental services. The less visible the subsidies are, the better, but also support them with a constant repetition of the virtues of private enterprise, the rights of private property, and the equation of profits with happiness.

Externalize costs. Underpay your employees, even if it means hiring children overseas to work twelve hours a day. Don’t recycle your waste; don’t clean it up if it’s toxic; if you are caught, sue your insurance companies to make them pay. Minimize legal liability in general by claiming constitutional rights intended for natural persons.

Control information. Acquire every outlet of the broadcast media, and merge their programs. Acquire independent publishers and bookstores, and standardize what they publish and sell. Write text books from a corporate point of view, and distribute them throughout the public school system. Pay the salaries of teachers and professors and social activists until they are no longer aware that they are censoring themselves for a living. Restrain free speech as much as possible. Forbid it on private property such as shopping malls. Forbid your employees to organize or to use the workplace as a venue for civic life. Make information about corporate operations and government decision making difficult to obtain. Worship expertise and confuse data with knowledge.

Centralize political authority. Pay off injured employees and citizens to stay out of court, and make them agree to remain silent about the injury. If legal liability cannot be escaped, have it adjudicated in as high a court as possible. Do not appear in local or state courts if the case can be heard in federal court. Do not go to jury trial. If possible, preempt troublesome laws through the World Trade Organization, so that even national courts have less jurisdiction. Replace government and civic institutions with private corporations.

Centralize economic authority. Acquire or destroy small businesses, cooperatives, and other alternatives. Make the surviving corporations as large as possible, not for economies of scale (which were optimized many decades ago), but for the sake of centralizing authority and eliminating competition. Have a handful of corporations dominate every industry, and have them control the allocation of resources and the means and the ends of production. Control prices. Remove profits from the community, and deposit them in offshore banks to escape taxes and potential liability.

Remove all barriers to trade, regardless of whether they protect desirable industries, health and safety, human rights, or the environment. Expand management prerogative beyond the workplace, into the community, into the policymaking institutions, and across all jurisdictions. Make private property and the pursuit of profit the basis of all law and all social and economic policy. Create an economy where people have to pay currency for food, clothing, shelter, and culture. Commercialize the schools. Patent species. Make life pay.

Corporate power depends upon the successful maintenance of these principles. The cultural, legal, economic, and political mechanisms used to weave the web of power are complex, interdependent, and for most of us, largely hidden behind an invisible matrix of consensus reality. But the truth of the matter is that without subsidies, limited liability, and an inordinate influence over social and political agendas and information, corporations would soon become in reality what their apologists claim they are: merely groups of people. The sooner the better.

pages 44 & 5-7 of George Draffan's The Elite Consensus: When Corporations Wield the Constitution, the most succinct bird's eye view of the complex lattice of corporate power I've yet read. The second half of the book is an excellent resource that provides a clear-eyed summary of various powerful organizations serving elite interests (eg: Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, Heritage Foundation, the United Nations, Council on Foreign Relations, etc.). Highly recommended.

I appreciate Mr. Draffan's reminder that behind corporate power is "the dynamics of the relationship between people". It is a vitally important reminder. It is, ultimately, all about people. The institutions that we accept as a given reality are nothing more than a society's (unconsciously) agreed upon fabrications that serve the vested interests of those who know how to wield them for their own ends. Here is an excellent insight from Mr. Draffan: "When society’s economic, political, and social structures become institutionalised, power tends to flow from people into institutions, but not back again. Power becomes centralised."

A thought: We serve institutions that exist only as consensual realities. The very real lives we lead are based upon shared illusions. It's all too easy to forget that the institutions we reify are ultimately nothing more than phantasms we agree are real. It's our consensus reality that, literally, personifies these institutions and vests them as entities with seeming palpable facticity, entities (rather than people) that appear to affect our environment, entities that can be experienced as distinct and powerful personalities in our midst treating us as their pawns, entities that seem to control the course of events like gods, gods with names like General Electric and Chase Manhattan and Raytheon instead of Zeus and Hera and Athena. The Law (another reification, BTW) magically conjures corporations as persons with all the constitutional protections of actual, corporeal, flesh-and-blood mortals. But there's one crucial difference, one that transmutes these legally invoked fictitious entities from personhood to deity: once articles of incorporation are granted these fictitious persons are born as immortals, thus, by definition, making them gods. But not just any kind of gods, gods of greed summoned to increase the wealth of those who invoked them, insatiable gods that happen to seek to rule the world by economically enslaving us mortals. These gods demand sacrifices: of our time, our resources, our lives lived under their yoke. Our consensual reality has created economic deities that materially oppress us.

But gods only exist if people believe in them. Gods die when people stop believing in them. And, perhaps, somehow, therein lies the key to freedom...?

Pull the wool over your own eyes.
—J. R. "Bob" Dobbs

I especially appreciate the quote Mr. Draffan sneaks in in the final blank pages of the book:

Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
—Wendell Berry

Compliance Professionals and Modern Strategies of Rule

2008-11-14T23:50:00.002-05:00

Living in a society in which nearly every moment of human attention is exposed to the game plans of spin doctors, image managers, pitchmen, communications consultants, public information officers, and public relations specialists, the boundaries of my inquiry appeared seamless, and the shape that my analysis should take, illusive. Surveying the American cultural habitat, I observed that nearly every arena of public communication — the windows through which we come to know our world — was touched by the deliberate activities of “compliance professionals.”

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Bernays’s [Edward Bernays, the father of PR] take on public relations was remarkable in that it tended to ignore the particular processes or details of the periods that had given rise to it. Throughout the interview, he described public relations as a response to a transhistoric concern: the requirement, for those people in power, to shape the attitudes of the general population.

For Bernays, public relations reflected the refinement of techniques developed to serve ancient purposes. He appeared to have thought little about his life or his field as bearing the imprint of a specific historical era. As I prepared to depart from him, I felt a bit disappointed in this regard.

Then, as we began discussing the means by which I would get from his house back to the airport, a curious conversation unfolded. Amid a general complaint about the cost of taxicabs, and after counseling me to save my money and hop a trolley, Bernays indicated that he had never learned how to drive an automobile. I expressed surprise. He explained that he had simply never had to learn to drive; among his family’s train of up to thirteen servants, there was always a chauffeur. Bernays then proceeded to tell me a story of one chauffeur in particular, a man he called “Dumb Jack.”

Each day, he related to me, Dumb Jack would awaken at five o’clock in the morning and prepare to drive Bernays and his wife (and partner in public relations), Doris Fleishman, to the office. The trusty chauffeur would then return to the family home to carry their two daughters to school. From there, he would return to the office to chauffeur Bernays and his wife to business meetings throughout the day, taking time out to retrieve the daughters from their school. At the end of the day, according to Bernays, a subdued Dumb Jack would step into the kitchen and, as the cook prepared the evening meal, would sit at the kitchen table, lay his head in his hands, and take a nap. He would go to bed a nine, only to begin his routine again the next morning at five. Comparing this situation favorably to the cost of one cab ride to the airport today, Bernays ended his story by saying that for all this work, Dumb Jack received a salary of twenty-five dollars per week and got half a Thursday off every two weeks.

“Not a bad deal,” Bernays confided, characterizing the benefits that his family had derived from Dumb Jack’s years of compliant service. Then, with a lilt of nostalgia in his voice, he concluded his story: “But that’s before people got a social conscience.”

At that moment, in that nostalgic reverie over a bygone era, my quest for historical explanation — or at least a piece of it — was satisfied. In an incidental reference to “social conscience,” Bernays had illuminated a historic shift in the social history of property, shedding inadvertent light on the conditions that gave birth to the practice of public relations. As the twentieth century progressed, people were no longer willing to accommodate themselves to outmoded standards of deference that history, for millennia, had demanded of them.

Bernays was the child of a bourgeois world that was, in many ways, still captivated by aristocratic styles of wealth, in which relations among the classes were marked, to a large extent, by deep-seated patterns of allegiance — of obedience and obligation — between masters and servants. Like Mr. Stevens (the Anthony Hopkins character) in Remains of the Day, Dumb Jack was also a child of these circumstances.

The “social conscience” to which Bernays had referred arrived at that moment when aristocratic paradigms of deference could no longer hold up in the face of modern, democratic, public ideals that were boiling up among the “lower strata” of society. At that juncture, strategies of social rule began to change, and the life and career of Bernays, I should add, serves as a testament to that change.

The explosive ideals of democracy challenged ancient customs that had long upheld social inequality. A public claiming the birthright of democratic citizenship and social justice increasingly called upon institutions and people of power to justify themselves and their privileges. In the crucible of these changes, aristocracy began to give way to technocracy as a strategy of rule. Bernays came to maturity in a society in which the exigencies of power were — by necessity — increasingly exercised from behind the pretext of the “common good.” Bernays, the child of aristocratic pretense who fashioned himself into a technician of mass persuasion, was the product of a “social conscience” that had grasped the fact that a once submissive Dumb Jack, in the contemporary world, would no longer be willing to place his tired head quietly in his folded hands at the end of the day, only to awaken and serve again the next morning. Born into privilege, developing into a technocrat, Bernays illustrates the onus that the twentieth century has placed on social and economic elites; they have had to justify themselves continually to a public whose hearts and minds now bear the ideals of democracy.

As I pursued my research following my encounter with Bernays and repeatedly ran into the fear of an empowered public that ignited the thinking of early practitioners of public relations, the story of Dumb Jack — the man who was no more — came to mind again and again, reminding me of the human flesh that encircles the bones of broad institutional developments.

Stuart Ewen. PR! - A Social History of Spin, pp 19-20; 11-13

Der Stürmer in Murka

2008-10-11T08:26:00.019-04:00

I frequently get emails forwarded to me from my ~~fascist~~ patriotic Murkan in-laws (this one from my father-in-law, but it could just as well have been brother- or mother-in-law), who all seem to be on the hotlist for the latest thought-seed releases from the SID (Scared Ignorant Dumbfuck) Department of the Ministry of Propaganda. But I just had to share this one so that those who aren't aware of it can have some sense of what the other side of the so-called cultural divide really thinks — or at least is meant to think.

It would be too easy to comment on this, but I don't see the point — either you get it, or you really get it. I'll just suggest that you keep in mind that it's Muffy who's the intolerant hate-filled puppet, not mom and dad.

While all of us have been mired in this financial mess, we've forgotten it's back to school time — with many offspring leaving home for college.

Now, I don't have kids. But that shouldn't stop me from giving advice. If anything, being childless allows me the time to contemplate how to raise them.

And so, I've crafted this "Letter to the College Freshman, From Mom and Dad:"

Dear Muffy,

We wish you luck. We're so proud of you, and know you'll do great.

But if you come home claiming meat is murder, while sporting a nose ring and some Asian tattoo stamped on the crack of your ass — you can't come in. If you want to make a statement by mutilating the body God gave you — then go the whole nine: Cut off your face and join a carnival. At least that's a career move with strong profit potential.

If, while away, you've decided that America is at fault for everything, then you will sleep in the backyard and crap in a hole you dug yourself. After all, your professors admire Third World countries, so why not live like you're in one?

We do hope college "opens" your mind, but if you announce that terrorism is just the powerless speaking to the powerful, then we will beat the crap out of you. But we won't behead you. We'll leave that to the powerless.

If you also tell us that capitalism is corrupt and socialism is supreme, then hand over your cell phone and your credit cards. Practice what you preach and reject these trappings of an evil market system. We also want your bong. What can we say? We've earned it.

Also, if you must lecture your father on evil corporations, remember that he toiled at one for years so he could afford your tuition, while paying thousands into useless government programs that your teachers embrace. If, after that, you're still moaning, you will do it naked. Because we will take the clothes off your back and kick you out on your ass. See how life works when everything we worked so hard for disappears?

Finally, if you really think you're an individual — that is, a person who leads instead of follows — then you should easily resist the indoctrination of your delusional professors, misguided dormies and anyone with purple hair.

But if you come home and suddenly you're "edgy" and "angry" — claiming that the BS you picked up on campus is better than the common sense we taught you — then you'll need to find new parents.

Don't worry, we'll still love you. We just can't stand you.

"Nothing is more anarchic than power"

2008-10-10T06:34:00.003-04:00

Nothing is more anarchic than power. Power can essentially do what it wants, and what it wants is completely arbitrary or dictated by its economic needs that elude common logic.
—Pier Paolo Pasolini

We Fascists are the only true anarchists, naturally, once we're masters of the state. In fact, the one true anarchy is that of power.
—The Duke (in Pasolini's masterpiece Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom)

We seem to be moving from one crisis to another, like the war and the terrorism crisis, to the food and energy crisis, and last is the financial crisis. What crisis is brewing next that will keep the population engulfed in fear and confusion? We have to ask ourselves, why was this financial crisis created? Who caused it? And who will benefit from it?
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The Bush administration has single-handedly increased our national debt by over five trillion dollars, more than all past administrations combined together. Bush has apparently achieved his objective by accruing more debt than any other president in the history of this nation.

Was it done on purpose? Creating pseudo-military and low intensity conflicts lead to tremendous borrowing and justified printing of money in the name of national security, which would hyperinflate the currency and eventually destroy it.

Was the extensive borrowing with the lavish and uncontrolled spending designed specifically to weaken the dollar and the US to the point of collapse, which will lead to the justification of change in currency?

Fear mongering and morbid forecasts are circulating everywhere predicting doom, knowing well that the stock market operate on sentiment, rumors, and manipulation not on objective measurable means.

In reality Armageddon has always been contrived by the elite and seems to affect only the middle class.
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Meanwhile, the Luciferian network embodied in the NeoCons, the international bankers, and the global corporate CEOs/politicians will solidify further their power and their wealth, and will create more means to control the populace.

It's Really Really Coming

2008-10-09T18:27:00.008-04:00

FEMA sources confirm coming martial law

WMR has learned from knowledgeable Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan that would see martial law declared in the United States with various scenarios anticipated as triggers. The triggers include a continuing economic collapse with massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions, and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.

Thousands of Troops Are Deployed on U.S. Streets Ready to Carry Out "Crowd Control"

Members of Congress were told they could face martial law if they didn't pass the bailout bill. This will not be the last time.

Background: the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three to four thousand soldiers, has been deployed in the United States as of October 1. Their stated mission is the form of crowd control they practiced in Iraq, subduing "unruly individuals," and the management of a national emergency. I am in Seattle and heard from the brother of one of the soldiers that they are engaged in exercises now. Amy Goodman reported that an Army spokesperson confirmed that they will have access to lethal and non lethal crowd control technologies and tanks.

Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland. US Combat Troops in Iraq repatriated to "help with civil unrest"

The Army Times reports that the 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade Combat Team is returning from Iraq to defend the Homeland, as "an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks." The BCT unit has been attached to US Army North, the Army's component of US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). (See Gina Cavallaro, Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1, Army Times, September 8, 2008).
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The BCT is an army combat unit designed to confront an enemy within a war theater.

With US forces overstretched in Iraq, why would the Pentagon decide to undertake this redeployment within the USA, barely one month before the presidential elections?

The new mission of the 1st Brigade on US soil is to participate in "defense" efforts as well as provide "support to civilian authorities".

What is significant in this redeployment of a US infantry unit is the presumption that North America could, in the case of a national emergency, constitute a "war theater" thereby justifying the deployment of combat units.

The new skills to be imparted consist in training 1st BCT in repressing civil unrest, a task normally assumed by civilian law enforcement.

What we are dealing with is a militarization of civilian police activities in derogation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

The prevailing FEMA emergency procedures envisage the enactment of martial law in the case of a terrorist attack.

Here's what I think is going to happen...

Update 10/10/08: Interesting slip there, John McCain. Wonder if he knows something the rest of the population doesn't... I especially like the McCain-Jugend rally at the end.

Update 10/10/08: Congressman Brad Sherman on the floor of the US House of Representatives

Crime Pays: History's Biggest White Collar Crime Rewarded with History's Biggest Payout

2008-10-03T16:21:00.005-04:00

Congress passes bailout, Bush signs into law

(Excerpt from Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom)

But this will not recapitalize the banks balance sheets or mop up the ocean of red ink which is flooding the financial system. No, Paulson intends to hand out lavish treats to his banker buddies, while interest rates soar, pension funds collapse, the housing market crashes, and the dollar does a last, looping swan-dive into a pool of molten lava. Thanks, Hank.

This is a terrible bill, and it confers absolute authority on one of the central players in the scandal, Henry Paulson, who was the Chairman of Goldman Sachs at the time this MBS garbage was being peddled around the planet to credulous investors. Now Paulson will be in a position to buy up any "troubled asset" he that he believes could pose a threat to "financial market stability". It is clear that Paulson will use his unchecked powers to wipe the slate clean and remove any possibility that foreign investors will take legal action against the perpetrators; the giant Wall Street investment banks.

These are the bankers who already have placed all the risk onto their clients and, by lobbying to rewrite the bankruptcy laws, onto debtors. As matters now stand, the $700 billion is to be used to finance this year’s annual bonuses, this year’s million-dollar salaries and sales commission, and to contribute yet more to the retirement funds for the golden parachutes that financial managers have siphoned off to provide a safety net for themselves. So we are back to the basic motto these days: “You only have to make a fortune once in a lifetime.” Now is the time to make these fortunes as big as they’re going to get. Because it’s all down hill from here.

A Foretoken?

2008-09-23T18:10:00.002-04:00

CEO murdered by mob of sacked Indian workers

Corporate India is in shock after a mob of sacked workers bludgeoned to death the chief executive who had dismissed them from a factory in a suburb of Delhi.

Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, the head of the Indian operations of Graziano Transmissioni, an Italian-headquartered manufacturer of car parts, died of severe head wounds on Monday afternoon after being attacked by scores of laid-off employees, police said.

The incident, in Greater Noida, just outside the Indian capital, followed a long-running dispute between the factory's management and workers who had demanded better pay and permanent contracts.

A Foretoken? One can hope...

But I don't...

buzzadler

the truth is, the elites don't have to hide anything. they know full well the impotence of the average american. spoonfed on TV, Fast Food, Prescription Drugs, Toxic Tap Water, Government Schools, etc, the average American has absolutely no clue whats going on. The tools to fight this are at our fingertips, and almost nobody is doing anything about it.... Obama's popularity is no better testament to rampant ignorance of the general population.

The Contemporary Inquisitiion

2008-09-11T14:39:00.005-04:00

I had begun an article in which I equate modern American policy — both domestic and foreign — with the Spanish Inquisition. I was drawing parallels between Scalia and Torquemada; the importance of fear as a tool of social control; the lawful cover used to justify the horrific, gratuitous, sadean torture of innocents; the spectacular and shameless display of hypocrisy as power's gauge of its own (illegitimate) authority; the necessary creation of the enemy as the Other to justify wholesale slaughter — which serves as nothing more than a strategic facade to mask a naked grab for resources; the modern economic re-definition of heresy, and of the heretic as one who doesn't believe in neo-liberal gangster capitalism (a topic for much further discussion, since economics is truly a modern religion); etc.

Michel Chossudovsky has done it for me, and with more clarity, encyclopedic knowledge and insight than I'm sure I would have brought to it.

Please read it — you will not find a better summation of our contemporary historical epoch.

[Here, for those who need it, is an exemplary refresher of American hypocrisy.]

Modern Transubstantiation

2008-09-04T18:32:00.004-04:00

'The media has another essential function. It is the creator of images for consumption. It creates celebrities and personalities for people to look up to and vicariously live through. It creates role images for people to imitate in order to invent their “identity”. It creates images of events separated from and placed above life. It is through these images, ingested uncritically, that people are to view and interpret the world, formulating their opinions out of this virtual unreality…

In choosing to seek to get one’s ideas across through the media, one is choosing to feed these ideas to this masticating monster, to offer one’s self to this life-draining ghoul. For anarchists this makes no sense. It is impossible for the media to portray anarchism as a living praxis or anarchists as complex multi-dimensional individuals. It is therefore not possible to express anarchist ideas in a worthwhile way through this forum. The ideas will be chewed up and shat out as one opinion among many, one more turd about whose odor the public can argue. The living individuals get chewed up and shat out as images-of freaks, of intellectual brooders, of street rioters-but essentially as images not living, acting beings. The media is part of the power structure, and, as such, is our enemy. We can’t play their game and win.'

via Minneapolis IndyMedia

Those Who Are Jiggling the Toilet Handle

2008-07-07T18:29:00.005-04:00

...an all out war feeds the profit driven agenda of global banking, including the institutional speculators in the energy market, the powerful Anglo-American oil giants and America's weapons producers, the big five defense contractors plus British Aerospace Systems Corporation, which play a major role in the formulation of US foreign policy and the Pentagon's military agenda, not to mention the gamut of mercenary companies and military contractors.

A small number of global corporations and financial institutions feed on war and destruction to the detriment of important sectors of economic activity, Broadly speaking, the bulk of the civilian economy is threatened.

What we are dealing with are conflicts and rivalries within the upper echelons of the global capitalist system, largely opposing those corporate players which have a direct interest in the war to the broader capitalist economy which ultimately depends on the continued development of civilian consumer and investment demand.

These vested interests in a profit driven war also feed on economic recession and financial dislocation. The process of economic collapse which results, for instance, from the speculative hikes in oil and food prices, triggers bankruptcies on a large scale, which ultimately enable a handful of global corporations and financial institutions to "pick up the pieces" and consolidate their global control over the real economy as well as over the international monetary system.

Financial manipulation is intimately related to military decision-making. Major banks and financial institutions have links to the military and intelligence apparatus. Advanced knowledge or inside information by these institutional speculators regarding specific "false flag" terrorist attacks, [here and here for stellar examples from 9/11] or military operations in the Middle East is the source of tremendous speculative gains.

Both the war agenda and the proposed economic sanctions regime trigger, quite deliberately, a global atmosphere of insecurity and economic chaos.

In turn, the institutional speculators in London, Chicago and New York not only feed on economic chaos and uncertainty, their manipulative actions in the energy and commodity markets contribute to spearheading large sectors of the civilian economy into bankruptcy.

The economic and financial dislocations resulting from the hikes in the prices of crude oil and food staples are the source of financial gains by a handful of global actors. Speculators are not concerned with the far-reaching consequences of a broader Middle East war, which could evolve into a World War Three scenario.

Iran: War or Privatization: All Out War or "Economic Conquest"? by Michel Chossudovsky

Impeachment: The Deafening Silence Part 2: Going Deeper

2008-06-16T00:32:00.008-04:00

The Content of Silence: Managers and Their Networks

In the 1993 August/September edition, the prestigious Dutch magazine Exposure outlined disturbing details about how the Tavistock Institute for Behavioural Analysis, premier behavioural research center in the world, planned to control the boards of the three major and most prestigious television networks in the United States: NBC, CBS and ABC. All three television networks came as spin-offs from the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). These organizations and institutions that theoretically are in "competition" with each other — this is part of the "independence" that ensures Americans enjoy unbiased news — are in fact closely interfaced and interlocked with countless companies and banks, making it an almost impossible task to untangle them.

According to then-U.S. Representative Bernie Sanders, NBC's owner General Electric is "one of the largest corporations in the world — and one with a long history of anti-union activity. GE, a major contributor to the Republican Party, has substantial financial interests in weapons manufacturing, finance, nuclear power and many other industries. Former CEO Jack Welch was one of the leaders in shutting down American plants and moving them to low-wage countries like China and Mexico."

NBC is a subsidiary of RCA, a media conglomerate. On RCA's board sits Thornton Bradshaw, president of Atlantic Richfield Oil, and member of the World Wildlife Fund, the Club of Rome, the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, and the Council of Foreign Relations. Bradshaw is also chairman of NBC.

RCA's most legendary role, however, was the service it provided to British Intelligence during World War II. Of particular note: RCA's President David Sarnoff moved to London at the same time Sir William Stephenson (of Intrepid fame) moved into the RCA building in New York. During the war, Sarnoff was Eisenhower's top communications expert, overseeing the construction of a radio transmitter that was powerful enough to reach all of the allied forces in Europe. He campaigned for, and received, the honorary title of Brigadier General, and thereafter preferred to be known as "General Sarnoff." Today, the RCA directorate is made up of British-American establishment figures that belong to the other organizations such as the CFR, NATO, the Club of Rome, the Trilateral Commission, Bilderbergers, Round Table, etc.

Among the NBC directors named in the Exposure article were John Brademas (CFR, TC, Bilderberg), a director of the Rockefeller Foundation; Peter G. Peterson (CFR), a former head of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. (Rothschild), and a former U.S. Secretary of Commerce; Robert Cizik, chairman of RCA and of First City Bancorp, which was identified in Congressional testimony as a Rothschild bank; Thomas O. Paine, president of Northrup Co. (the big defense contractor) and director of the Institute of Strategic Studies in London; Donald Smiley, a director of two Morgan Companies, Metropolitan Life and U.S. Steel; and the above-mentioned Thornton Bradshaw, chairman of RCA, director of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Atlantic Richfield, and the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies (both of the latter headed by a Bilderberger, Robert O. Anderson). Clearly the NBC board is considerably influenced by the Rockefeller-Rothschild-Morgan troika, leading exponents of the New World Order initiative.

ABC is owned by the Disney Corporation, "which produces toys and products in developing countries where they provide their workers with atrocious wages and working conditions." It has 153 TV stations. Chase Manhattan Bank control 6.7% of ABC's stock — enough to give it a controlling interest. Chase, through its trust department, controls 14% of CBS and 4.5% of RCA. Instead of three competing television networks called NBC, CBS, and ABC, what we really have is the Rockefeller Broadcasting Company, the Rockefeller Broadcasting System, and the Rockefeller Broadcasting Consortium.

On the ABC board of directors is Ray Adam, director of J.P. Morgan, Metropolitan Life (Morgan), and Morgan Guaranty Trust; Frank Cary, chairman of IBM, and director of J.P. Morgan and the Morgan Guaranty Trust; Donald C. Cook (CFR, Bilderberg), general partner of Lazard Freres banking house, whose executives frequently attend Bilderberg meetings; John T. Connor (CFR) of the Kuhn, Loeb (Rothschild) law firm, Gravath, Swaine and Moore, former Secretary of the Nazy, U.S. Secretary of Commerce, director of the Chase Manhattan Bank (Rockefeller / Rothschild), General Motors, and chairman of the J. Henry Schroder Bank; Thomas M. Macioce, director of Manufacturers Hanover Trust (Rothschild); George Jenkins, chairman of Metropolitan Life (Morgan) and Citibank (Rothschild connections); Martin J. Schwab, director of Manufacturers Hanover (Rothschild); Alan Greenspan (CFR, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg), chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, director of J.P. Morgan, Morgan Guaranty Trust, Hoover Institute, Time magazine, and General Foods; Ulric Haynes, Jr., director of the Ford Foundation and Marine Midland Bank.

Isn't it strange how the same Rockefeller-Rothschild-Morgan characters on the board of the ABC network, which, we are told, is independent of NBC, appear to represent the competition? ABC was taken over by Cities Communication, whose most prominent director is Robert Roosa (CFR, Bilderberg), senior partner of Brown Brothers Harriman, which has close ties with the Bank of England. Roosa and David Rockefeller are credited with selecting Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve Board.

CBS is owned by Viacom, which has over 200 TV and 255 radio affiliates nationwide. This huge media conglomerate owns, among other companies, MTV, Showtime, Nickelodeon, VH1, TNN, CMT, 39 broadcast television stations, 184 radio stations, Paramount Pictures and Blockbuster Inc. As an American intelligence officer, CBS founder William Paley was trained in mass brainwashing techniques during World War II at the Tavistock Institute in England.

The financial expansion of CBS was supervised for a long time by Brown Brothers Harriman and its senior partner, Prescott Bush (father and grandfather to Presidents), who was a CBS director. The CBS board included Chairman Paley, for whom Prescott Bush personally organized the money to buy the company; Harold Brown (CFR), executive director of the Trilateral Commission, and former Secretary of the Air Force and of Defense of the U.S.; Roswell Gilpatric (CFR, Bilderberg), from the Kuhn, Loeb (Rothschild) law firm, Cravath, Swaine, and Moore, and former director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Henry B. Schnacht, director of the Chase Manhattan Bank (Rockefeller/Rothschild), the Council of Foreign Relations, Brookings Institution, and Committee for Economic Development; Michel C. Bergerac, chairman of Revlon, and diretor of Manufacturer's Hanover Bank (Rothschild); James D. Wolfensohn (CFR, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg), former head of J. Henry Schroder Bank, who has close links with the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, and who in 1995 was successfully nominated to head the World Bank by Bill Clinton; Franklin A. Thomas (CFR), head of the Rockefeller-controlled Ford Foundation; Newton D. Minow (CFR), director of the Rand Corporation and, among many others, the Ditchley Foundation, which is closely linked with the Tavistock Institute of London and the Bilderberg Group. The former president of CBS was Dr. Frank Stanton (CFR), who is also a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Institution. So, are the Rothschild and the Rockefeller families, who are leading groups in the tightly controlled field of communications, answering directly to the Bilderbergers?

FOX News Channel, part of the FOX network, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who owns a significant portion of the world's media. His network has close ties to the Republican Party and among his "fair and balanced" commentators is Newt Gingrich, former GOP Republican House speaker. Murdoch, needless to say, is a luminary in the secret Bilderberg Group. He has most recently added the Wall Street Journal to his empire.

All these network are closely interlocked with Bilderberg, the Council of Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. How, then, can it possibly be claimed that the majority of Americans get their news from independent sources?

Daniel Estulin. The True Story of The Bilderberg Group

The Means of Silence: The Newsroom

Terkel: Most editors discourage reporting which the owner of their news organization might dislike. How does the individual reporter get the message?

Bagdikian: What the journalist is told, when there's something that doesn't fit in, is, "Nobody's interested in that." And that's, you know, it's an acceptable reason -- if it's true.

Dedman: It happens less often that the stories are actually written and then they're spiked. It's really more subtle than that. You have an idea, and then the editor says, "No, I don't think we'd be much interested in that." And that's all it takes.

Sydney Schanberg [former correspondent, city editor and columnist, New York Times]: It happens sort of by osmosis. There are no notes posted on the bulletin board, and senior editors usually do not tell desk editors, like the city editor, "We don't want you to cover this. We want you to cover that instead."

Rawls: "Gee, I don't know. How long do you think that would take?" "Gee, I don't know. Would you have to do any traveling? "Gee, I don't know. Do you what else have you got on your plate right now?" So all of those are negative expressions to the reporter, that's basically telling him, "There's not a lot of enthusiasm for this."

Cohen: Everybody plays the game. And if you're at NBC or CBS or ABC, I don't care where, you're going to play whatever game exists in that news organization. And if you know that they don't want certain kinds of stories at the top, then you're not going to do those stories.

Terkel: Frances Cerra, an award-winning investigative reporter, ignored the cues she was getting from her editors at the New York Times to play the game.

Frances Cerra: They wanted me, supposedly, to do the same kind of consumer reporting which I had specialized in at Newsday, which was investigative reporting.

John L. Hess [former editor, New York Times]: So when you take a young reporter who's hired full of beans, like Frances Cerra, and she wants to do a good, hard-hitting investigative reporting job, she found herself up against the editors. They were very unhappy with her.

Studs Terkel, Fear in the Newsroom

The Theory of Silence: Convenience

Every newspaper when it reaches the reader is the result of a whole series of selections as to what items shall be printed, in what position they shall be printed, how much space each shall occupy, what emphasis each shall have. There are no objective standards here. There are no conventions. Take two newspapers published in the same city on the same morning. The headline of one reads: "Britain pledges aid to Berlin against French aggression; France openly backs Poles." The headline of the second is "Mrs. Stillman's Other Love." Which you prefer is a matter of taste, but not entirely a matter of the editor's taste. It is a matter of his judgment as to what will absorb the half hour's attention a certain set of readers will give to his newspaper. Now the problem of securing attention is by no means equivalent to displaying the news in the perspective laid down by religious teaching or by some form of ethical culture. It is a problem of provoking feeling in the reader, of inducing him to feel a sense of personal identification with the stories he is reading. News which does not offer this opportunity to introduce oneself into the struggle which it depicts cannot appeal to a wide audience. The audience must participate in the news, much as it participates in the drama, by personal identification. Just as everyone holds his breath when the heroine is in danger, as he helps Babe Ruth swing his bat, so in subtler form the reader enters into the news. In order that he shall he must find a familiar foothold in the story, and this is supplied to him by the use of stereotypes. They tell him that if an association of plumbers is called a "combine" it is appropriate to develop his hostility; if it is called a "group of leading business men" the cue is for a favorable reaction.

It is in a combination of these elements that the power to create opinion resides. Editorials reinforce. Sometimes in a situation that on the news pages is too confusing to permit of identification, they give the reader a clue by means of which he engages himself. A clue he must have if, as most of us must, he is to seize the news in a hurry. A suggestion of some sort he demands, which tells him, so to speak, where he, a man conceiving himself to be such and such a person, shall integrate his feelings with the news he reads.

"It has been said" writes Walter Bagehot, "that if you can only get a middleclass Englishman to think whether there are 'snails in Sirius,' he will soon have an opinion on it. It will be difficult to make him think, but if he does think, he cannot rest in a negative, he will come to some decision. And on any ordinary topic, of course, it is so. A grocer has a full creed as to foreign policy, a young lady a complete theory of the sacraments, as to which neither has any doubt whatsoever."

Yet that some grocer will have many doubts about his groceries, and that young lady, marvelously certain about the sacraments, may have all kinds of doubts as to whether to marry the grocer, and if not whether it is proper to accept his attentions. The ability to rest in the negative implies either a lack of interest in the result, or a vivid sense of competing alternatives. In the case of foreign policy or the sacraments, the interest in the results is intense, while means for checking the opinion are poor. This is the plight of the reader of the general news. If he is to read it at all he must be interested, that is to say, he must enter into the situation and care about the outcome. But if he does that he cannot rest in a negative, and unless independent means of checking the lead given him by his newspaper exists, the very fact that he is interested may make it difficult to arrive at that balance of opinions which may most nearly approximate the truth. The more passionately involved he becomes, the more he will tend to resent not only a different view, but a disturbing bit of news. That is why many a newspaper find that, having honestly evoked the partisanship of its readers, it can not easily, supposing the editor believes the facts warrant it, change position. If a change is necessary, the transition has to be managed with the utmost skill and delicacy. Usually a newspaper will not attempt so hazardous a performance. It is easier and safer to have the news of that subject taper off and disappear, thus putting out the fire by starving it.

Walter Lippmann. Public Opinion

The Wish of Silence: Silence is Gold(en)

One common denominator of these and similar uses of silence is that they refer metaphorically to something which is either absent or ought to be absent.

Karlfried Knapp. Metaphorical and Interactional Uses of Silence

The Vehicle of Silence: The Medium is The Masses

The Political Sphere also only survives by a credibility hypothesis, namely that the masses are permeable to action and to discourse, that they hold an opinion, that they are present behind the surveys and statistics. It is at this price alone that the political class can still believe that it speaks and that it is politically heard, even though the political has long been the agent of nothing but spectacle on the screen of private life. Digested as a form of entertainment, half-sports, half-games (see the winning in American elections, or election evenings on radio or TV); it is like those old comedies of manners, at once both fascinating and ludicrous. For some time now, the electoral game has been akin to TV game shows in the consciousness of the people. The latter, who have always served as alibi and as supernumerary on the political stage, avenge themselves by treating as a theatrical performance the political scene and its actors. The people have become a public. The football match or film or cartoon serve as models for their perception of the political sphere. The people even enjoy day to day, like a home movie, the fluctuations of their own opinions in the daily opinion polls. Nothing in all this engages any responsibility. At no time are the masses politically or historically engaged in a conscious manner. They have only ever done so out of perversity, in complete irresponsibility. Nor is this a flight from politics, but rather the effect of an implacable antagonism between the class (caste?) which bears the social, the political, culture—master of time and history, and the formless, residual, senseless mass. The former continually seeks to perfect the reign of meaning, to invest, to saturate the field of the social, the other continually distorts every effect of meaning, neutralizes or diminishes them.

· · ·

Are the mass media on the side of power in the manipulation of the masses, or are they on the side of the masses in the liquidation of meaning, in the violence done to meaning and in the fascination that results? Is it the media which induce fascination in the masses, or is it the masses which divert the media into spectacle? Mogadishu Stammheim: the media are made the vehicle of the moral condemnation of terrorism and of the exploitation of fear for political ends, but, simultaneously, in the most total ambiguity, they propagate the brutal fascination of the terrorist act. They are themselves terrorists, to the extent to which they work through fascination. The media carry meaning and non-sense; they manipulate in every sense simultaneously. The process cannot be controlled, for the media convey the simulation internal to the system and the simulation destructive of the system according to a logic that is absolutely Moebian and circular—and this is exactly what it is like. There is no alternative to it, no logical resolution. Only a logical exacerbation and a catastrophic resolution.

Jean Baudrillard. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities

The Paradigm of Silence: Official Truths

I have many friends among the mainstreamers, and I have sympathy for them. Their hands are tied. Their organizations are just too powerful. In decades past, musings about the Kennedy assassination never threatened the apple cart. The same cannot be said for such considerations by an agenda-setting corporation today.

Wondering about what really happened to TWA 800 on, say, ABC would have serious consequences. It would represent a powerful accusation that people could not ignore — as they have, say, The Press-Enterprise. The reporter could harbor little hope that he would win. He would know that the government would denounce him, with rage (as it has done to the skeptics, even prosecuting writer Jim Sanders and his wife). He would know that he might be professionally isolated, that other reporters might well describe him as a lunatic. And even if he stuck to his guns, he could have little hope that he would be shown to be right. And meantime, to the extent that anyone did take him seriously, he could well be seen as affecting global markets and come under huge pressure for doing so. The right-wing nuts who always said that one-world government would affect our sovereignty have a point: global media companies have to be as concerned with what sells in Singapore as well as in Seattle, which is hardly good news for the old free market of ideas.

That free market is alive and well, but it's marginalized. You have a wild and free debate of these issues in the fringe press, and on the internet, and no debate at all in the mainstream media.

This is hardly a new phenomenon, of course. The powerful have always published official truths. In Cuba they turned the cameras aside when Fidel fainted during a speech. In the kingdom of Tonga, where I've been to write a book, they do not allow public criticism of the king and members of the royal family. The old Soviet Union did not exactly embrace debate about communism. The American variant seems to be that in the headquarters of global capital, corporate media outlets cannot entertain serious questions about the legitimacy of the powers-that-be, even when spokesmen are shown to lie.

Philip Weiss, When Black Becomes White, from Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press

The Context of Silence: The Quest of the Wizard Behind the Curtain

It is of the nobility of man's soul that he is insatiable. For he hath a Benefactor so prone to give, that He delighteth in us for asking. Do not your inclinations tell you that the World is yours? Do you not covet all? Do you not long to have it; to enjoy it; to overcome it? To what end do men gather riches, but to multiply more? Do they not like Pyrrhus, the King of Epire, add house to house and lands to lands; that they may get it all? It is storied of that prince, that having conceived a purpose to invade Italy, he sent for Cineas, a philosopher and the King's friend: to whom he communicated his design, and desired his counsel. Cineas asked him to what purpose he invaded Italy? He. said, to conquer it. And what will you do when you, have conquered it? Go into France, said the King, and conquer that. And,what will you do when you have conquered France? Conquer Germany. And what then? said the philosopher. Conquer Spain. I perceive, said Cineas, you mean to conquer all the World. What will you do when you have conquered all? Why then said the King we will return, and enjoy ourselves at quiet in our own land. So you may now, said the philosopher, without all this ado. Yet could he not divert him till he was ruined by the Romans. Thus men get one hundred pound a year that they may get another; .and having two covet eight, and there is no end of all their labour; because the desire of their Soul is insatiable. Like Alexander the Great they must have all: and when they have got it all, be quiet. And may they not do all this before they begin? Nay it would be well, if they could be quiet. But if after all, they shall be like the stars, that are seated on high, but have no rest, what gain they more, but labour for their trouble? It was wittily feigned that that young man sat down and cried for more worlds to conquer. So insatiable is man, that millions will not please him. They are no more than so many tennis-balls, in comparison of the Greatness and Highness of his Soul.

Thomas Traherne. Meditations: First Century

America: A Eulogy

2008-06-13T13:37:00.002-04:00

bakunin June 12th, 2008 9:36 pm:

The utterly corrupt and cynical monied oligarchy that actually runs this country also of course controls the mass media. The last thing they want to do is to ignite a mass movement such as happened around civil rights and against the Vietnam war in the 60’s and 70’s. The oligarchy fears and loathes us–the toiling middle classes and poor of the United States. They learned the hard lessons of the 60’s and 70’s, and they now know how to keep the disempowered disempowered. They learned how to cut off a budding mass movement before it can get off the ground. So they feel secure and free to go about their theft of the rest of us. “Keep them in debt and scared.” That is their slogan. Bush and Cheney are their front men of the moment. Behind Bush and Cheney is the oligarchy–several thousand extremely evil, scheming, corrupt, and disgusting individuals drunk on power and money. The own multiple homes, belong to exclusive clubs, sit on corporate boards. They think and act like demigods, but they have clay feet, and the republic they are tearing down will bring them down as it crumbles.

America -- Rest In Pieces

Impeachment: The Decorum of Deafening Silence

2008-06-11T11:17:00.009-04:00

The Event

News from Ireland

World News

US congressman moves to impeach Bush

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

By Gary Fennelly

Former Democratic presidential contender, Dennis Kucinich, has called for the impeachment of George W Bush claiming that the president set out to deceive the nation, and violated his oath of office with the Iraq war.

The Ohio representative yesterday introduced 35 articles of impeachment against Bush on the floor of the US House of Representatives.

The Evidence

ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

The Defeaning Silence

Ghawar June 10th, 2008 6:07 pm

Great news...from Ireland.

News Hounds

So, what if they impeached the president and nobody reported it? As of 3AM EDT the goddam liberal media is largely silent on Dennis Kucinich's introduction of Articles of Impeachment on the floor of the House last night.

witness June 11th, 2008 6:37 am

This media blackban on reporting the matter is a new lowpoint.

The senate report has literally criminal dirt on Bush. The public are behind impeachment big time. McClellan is going to testify. Conyers is mobilising the house sargeant of arms on nose-thumbing subpeona evaders.

Kucinich just laid down a royal flush down on a table piled with chips.

BUT IT IS N-O-T NEWSWORTHY.

YOU REALLY COULD NOT MAKE THIS UP.

Why The Silence is Decorous

9/11, Deep State Violence and the Hope of Internet Politics

The continuity of past deep events is part of the problem facing those who wish to understand and correct what underlies them. For the mainstream U.S. media (as we now clearly see them) have become so implicated in past protective lies about Korea, Tonkin Gulf, and the JFK assassination that they, as well as the government, have now a demonstrated interest in preventing the truth about any of these events from coming out.

This means that the current threat to constitutional rights does not derive from the deep state alone. As I have written elsewhere, the problem is a global dominance mindset that prevails not only inside the Washington Beltway but also in the mainstream media and even in the universities, one which has come to accept recent inroads on constitutional liberties, and stigmatizes, or at least responds with silence to, those who are alarmed by them. Just as acceptance of bureaucratic groupthink is a necessary condition for advancement within the state, so acceptance of this mindset's notions of decorum has increasingly become a condition for participation in mainstream public life.

Update <3 hours later

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to send articles of impeachment against President Bush to the Judiciary Committee for review.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
The Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), already has before it articles of impeachment aimed at Vice President Dick Cheney. Since receiving that impeachment measure in November, the committee has done nothing.

Democratic leaders in the House seem determined to block the latest impeachment measure as well, and it remains all-but-impossible that the House would proceed with impeachment hearings before Bush leaves office.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is sticking by her earlier pledge to make sure impeaching Bush and Cheney is an option that remains strictly “off the table.”

Samson June 11th, 2008 3:12 pm

Note how the Dem leadership is the force that is actively blocking any impeachment now. There is certainly a case that is worthy of at least the first step of investigative hearings. Its the Dem leadership that has publically promised back in 06 that there would absolutely no impeachment (regardless of evidence). Thus its the Dem leadership that’s been actively protecting Bush and Cheney for the last year and a half and making sure they finish out their terms.

And where is mention of any of this in the MSM?

Oh, but of course — that would be indecorous, wouldn't it?

Update: Next Day

Gore Vidal chimes in:

As I listened to Rep. Kucinich invoke the great engine of impeachment — he listed some 35 crimes by these two faithless officials — we heard, like great bells tolling, the voice of the Constitution itself speak out ringingly against those who had tried to destroy it.

Although this is the most important motion made in Congress in the 21st century, it was also the most significant plea for a restoration of the republic, which had been swept to one side by the mad antics of a president bent on great crime. And as I listened with awe to Kucinich, I realized that no newspaper in the U.S., no broadcast or cable network, would pay much notice to the fact that a highly respected member of Congress was asking for the president and vice president to be tried for crimes which were carefully listed by Kucinich in his articles requesting impeachment.

But then I have known for a long time that the media of the U.S. and too many of its elected officials give not a flying fuck for the welfare of this republic, and so I turned, as I often do, to the foreign press for a clear report of what has been going on in Congress.

And later, in the comments, this from davfin June 13th, 2008 2:16 am, who inquires incredulously:

I have always appreciated Vidal’s honesty and directness. This bit of writing genuinly shocied me though. From an Australian perspective, some Americans may be interested to know that I am genuinly shocied that the American media is THAT BAD!. Do you mean to tell me that there truly is little or NO coverage of these matters? How is America then a true democracy? Is this why Bush and co, not to mention the American Corporate culture are like they are; they can get away with it, corporate culture owning and controling so much of the media? Is America then a facist state?
Just think about it!

What's to think about? If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

Whatever Happened to the Commons, or Democracy Inaction

2008-05-29T10:49:00.004-04:00

Obama in the Sights

2008-05-26T13:36:00.002-04:00

Old news by now, but still interesting.

This:

Ever since she realized back in early March that Obama was going to take the nomination Hillary Clintons long-term strategy has been to do her best to ensure McCain will win this November so she can become the Democratic nominee in 2012. But she had a short term strategy too and on Friday she deliberately made it explicit in a newspaper office in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. There she suggested that some is likely to step up to the plate and assassinate Barack Obama in the waning moments of the California primary, just as Bobby Kennedy was forty years go almost to the day. The wish is mother to the deed. If anything does happen to Obama in California Mrs Clinton should surely be indicted as a co-conspirator.

How to else construe her grotesque remarks in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in the editorial offices of the Argus Leader newspaper. Here she told the editors, "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

There is no other way to construe these sentences, not thrown over her shoulder on a campaign walk, but delivered in measured tones to the Argus-Leader editorial board, but to interpret them as Mrs Clintons more or less explicit statement that she is spending a million a day just to keep her hat in the ring because Obama might well get killed.
Alexander Cockburn: Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate.

Then this:

Fox News Jokes About Killing Obama

To paraphrase Clausewitz: Assassination is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means.

Welcome to Rome, 2008.

The Midas Touch: An Example of how Golem's POV Co-Opts Any Movement

2008-05-14T11:18:00.003-04:00

Note: Annotational emphasis is mine.

Michael Moore making '9/11' sequel

Documentary to be released in 2009
(Variety, May 13)
By PAMELA MCCLINTOCK, ANNE THOMPSON

Michael Moore is making a sequel to "Fahrenheit 9/11" for Overture Films and Paramount Vantage, which will shop the project to international buyers when the Cannes Film Festival and market get under way today.

The two companies are co-financing and co-producing the untitled doc, which will be released next year. Overture will distribute the film domestically, while Vantage will handle international.

Moore may be leaving the Weinstein Co. -- where he made his last two films, including "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- but Overture and Vantage are no strangers to the filmmaker. Overture CEO Chris McGurk and chief operating officer Danny Rosett were both at MGM and United Artists, home of Moore's "Bowling for Columbine."

Moore also knows Vantage topper Nick Meyer, former president of Lionsgate's international arm. Lionsgate teamed with Bob and Harvey Weinstein and distributed "Fahrenheit 9/11" after Disney refused to let Miramax do so. Lionsgate again teamed with the Weinsteins to distribute Moore's most recent docu, "Sicko."

"Fahrenheit 9/11," a scathing indictment of George W. Bush's war on terrorism and a hit at the worldwide box office, won the coveted Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2004. "Bowling for Columbine" also played at Cannes, and "Sicko" preemed at the fest last year.

Moore's new doc could play at Cannes next year, if it isn't released earlier in the spring. He's already at work on the film.

"Clearly, we have a movie of global appeal here. Michael Moore is a very talented filmmaker, and this is a branded property," Meyer said, adding that the Weinsteins helped build that brand.

Sequel will pick up where "Fahrenheit 9/11" left off. In the time since, Bush's popularity has plummeted, while the Iraq war continues and the economy falters.

"It's a vote of confidence on Michael's part and a great partnership for all of us," Rosett said. "There is a voracious appetite for this kind of commentary."

Moore has made three of the five top-grossing documentaries of all time. "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the highest-grossing docu ever domestically, earning $119.1 million. It grossed another $100 million at the international box office.

Moore's decision not to make his next film with the Weinstein Co. comes after "Sicko" failed to ignite at the box office. Film, which took on the U.S. health care system, grossed $24.5 million domestically and $11.2 million internationally. Topically, the film didn't resonate with overseas auds.

Deal strengthens the relationship between Vantage and Overture. Last year, the two entered into an exclusive international distribution deal that gives Overture access to Vantage's international sales division, as well as the distrib arm of Paramount Pictures Intl.

Vantage will likely keep distribution rights to certain overseas territories after selling off the rest.

Bob and Harvey Weinstein will get an exec producing credit.

Corporate Profits Threatened by Heinous Theft of a Sixteen-Cent Blob of Dough

2008-05-08T10:15:00.006-04:00

Fired? Fired?! She should have been thrown in jail! Take her kids away from her! Let's bring back stoning for chrissakes!

Tim Hortons fires single mom over free Timbit

May 08, 2008 04:30 AM
The Canadian Press

LONDON, Ont.Giving a free Timbit to a baby has cost a single mother of four her job.

Nicole Lilliman, 27, was fired yesterday from her Tim Hortons job for giving one of the 16-cent blobs of fried dough to a tot.

"I have been fired for giving a baby a Timbit," Lilliman said yesterday.

"It was just out of my heart she was pointing and going `ah, ah...' I should have gone to my purse and got the change, but it was busy."

Lilliman, who has worked at the store for three years, said she thought little of the incident since Timbits are often doled out to dogs and children.

She said the baby was about 11 months old, and she gave her the treat to quiet her, since her mom a Tims' regular had been ``having a bad day."

"I could see (the dismissal) if it was a sandwich or something," she said. "But it was a Timbit."

Three managers greeted her yesterday, saying she had been caught on video giving free food to a child.

"They said, `Remember, Monday you gave out a free Timbit,' " she said.

"I had to think, then I was like, `Oh yeah,' and I smiled because I thought I'd get a warning."

Instead, she was fired for theft.

Giving food away is against the rules, said Tim Hortons district manager Nicole Mitchell.

The Timbits given to pets, Mitchell added, are usually "day-old and recycled."

Oh, but wait, there's more.

Tim Hortons rehires Timbit donor

May 08, 2008 10:14 AM
Curtis Rush
STAFF REPORTER

A day after she was fired for giving away a single Timbit to a child, a Tim Hortons employee in London, Ont., has her job back.

Nicole Lilliman, a single mother of four, has been rehired at another Tim Hortons restaurant after what the chain described as an overreaction by a manager.

Lilliman was fired yesterday after she was seen giving one of the small blobs of fried dough to a small child who came in with a regular customer on Monday.

The 27-year-old woman, who worked at the outlet for three years, said she didnt see any harm in giving away the 16-cent treat, since Timbits are often doled out to children and dogs.

But a manager fired Lilliman after telling her that giving food away free was against the rules.

Hours later, Lilliman received a call offering her a job at another Tim Hortons store.

"She wasn't comfortable returning to the same location, so she has been rehired at another location but with the same franchise owner," said Tim Hortons spokesperson Rachel Douglas.

Douglas said Lilliman was very "gracious" in accepting the offer, and will be repaid for any loss in pay.

Tim Hortons does not have a corporate policy governing the giving away of doughnuts, Douglas said, adding that franchise owners are free to set their own policies.

"We're working with the store owner on this policy, she said, calling Lillimans firing an overreaction and not appropriate.

At worst, she said Lilliman should have been warned about the owner's policy.

Douglas also said it's common for Timbits to be given away if they are day-olds.

"This incident was very disappointing for us," she said.

Clearly justice has not triumphed. The manager who original fired that vicious felon should be promoted for her zealous diligence. Instead criminal behaviour is rewarded. Absolutely disgraceful... it sends the wrong message. It's a sad day for capitalism.

itsaNaziWorldOrder

2008-05-06T17:04:00.006-04:00

I tend to find the comments at Common Dreams far more interesting and insightful than the articles.

There are some commenters there I love reading for their intelligence, insight, articulateness, and passion: luckylefty, COMark, RichM, galen, bakunin, and a few others.

Today is the first day I've seen comments from someone named itsaNaziWorldOrder (commenting at this article). Not only are his analyses in line with mine, but he extends them further along the same vectors, bringing something new to the mix, a frisson that I find both enticing and... troubling? Are his analyses too astute? I can't help but wonder...

Insider or PsyOp?

Astute Analysis or TinFoil Hat?

Political Fact or Convincing Storytelling?

You decide:

itsaNaziWorldOrder May 6th, 2008 11:59 am
I was heavily involved with Iranian opposition leaders prior to Khomeini's return and also related to many who held positions of influence under the Shah.

And, it is without question that what was being sold on the world's stage, in our CIA run and corporate run media is very far from the truth.

It is a matter of accepted history that MI6 and the CIA orchestrated a coup to oust Mossadegh and replace him with the second Pahlavi.

This puppeted government of the Shah was completely administered by foreign secret services and business interests. During the Shah's tenure, a brutal domestic secret service operation kept dissidents and opposition in check by the use of torture, assassinations, strict information control (prison sentences could even be meted out for having the wrong book in possession when crossing the border into Iran) and just as strictly controlled access to economic and social advancement.

Iran was a country ruled by an elite for the elite.

When the revolution came, it was a surprise to many to see the sudden and overwhelming popularity of Khomeini. And many Iranians living outside Iran as students, etc. were surprised by the sudden dominance of Khomeini.

And I think it has to be asked, why Khomeini? Was it because the people were so devout they would only accept a religious leader with opposition credentials? What about Khomeinis time of exile in Iraq? Saddam was actually assisted to power (like the Shah) by foreign secret services including the CIA. Why would Khomeini be so much safer in Iraq?

My own observations and years of experience since have convinced me that the Islamic 'revolution' was entirely staged for the same reasons that the Taliban was created, to revision a society and ready it for war-making programs and demonizing on the world's stage.

Furthermore, my personal involvement with these events has revealed how deceitful the histories written have been... such as complete fabrication of events with believable but entirely fallacious character profiles.

Iran is a pawn in the game of genocide. The Iran-Iraq war, largely administered for the fun and profits of the world's elite was being run in Iran by German secret services and in Iraq by the CIA.

Iran today, like times before, is an exercise in the war-maker's art. And the people of Iran have as little to do with events unfolding in their lives as you and I do with the GMO programs that put sub-standard food on our shelves and bankrupt local economies around the world.

itsaNaziWorldOrder May 6th, 2008 12:54 pm
"War is still the only game worth playing."

Cyrus Samrad, Iranian industrialist, foreign secret service collaborator and US State Department favorite.

The war games of the elite consider the 'riff raff' of nations, disposable goods.

Said with a grin, "My people are happier when they are hungry, they don't complain so much." Cyrus Samrad

Could the international elite find a better 'comprador' to administer their interests?

What do you think such people think and do when they operating in this country and other places outside Iran? Their money is being used to bribe local officials, and engage in many other heinous crimes to defeat community vitality and maximize their own profits and fun.

But, these are not the Iranian people, they are the parasitic Iranian super-elite and the very ones who help set the stage for the Iranian masses to be genocided.

itsaNaziWorldOrder May 6th, 2008 1:49 pm
>"And this ENTIRE enterprise ABSOLUTELY DEPENDS on one thing.
>
>Petroleum. And the access and control of it."

Wrong again! Oil dependency itself was a planned outcome. Truly one needs to go back yet further to watch how various programs in different parts of the world perfectly dovetailed to bring about near world-wide oil dependency.

Oil production in the Middle East has ALWAYS been a highly controlled industry. Puppet regimes are in place to provide a credible shield for the machinations of international corporate interest. And they have no power whatsoever to affect oil production, pricing or distribution.

You are told they have but it is false. What moneys Saudis (and others) receive for oil, is spent according to strict guidelines established by international elitist interests; what they consider innocuous or beneficial-to-themselves expenditures.

Since early last century, all Middle Eastern oil (and the phony political institutions set-up to provide cover) has been controlled by the same European cartel and their American partners.

The economic justification for political unrest (fostered by the elite) is just another smokescreen and one being used to make war (genocide) more palatable to those being sent to fight it or being taxed to support it.

These ridiculous lies have all have one thing in common; they help create the illusion that war has some economic or political justification outside the interests of a tiny group of elite war-planners.

War profits are huge! But the exercise of totalitarian power is the real interest of those who orchestrate wars. Those who are its victims are left completely incapacitated and readied for 'new' scripting. Think about it.

Genocide is the process whereby the aspirations and potentials of individuals and/or groups are defeated. It involves numbers of community-defeating programs, all of which we can witness being used to defeat any hope of sustainability or individuality in people around the world, and Iran is certainly no exception.

Until the idea of government as a good for the people is replaced with an understanding of our actual government as a protection for an elite power model to maintain and extend control, we have no hope of understanding the total lies from which all wars (genocides) spring.

Indeed, 9/11 (as pretty much everyone knows) was an 'inside job'. It helped provide justification for intensifying the genocide in Iraq and facilitated the surveillance programs and terror programs that have all but silenced genuine opposition to this international Nazi War Machine.

itsaNaziWorldOrder May 6th, 2008 2:16 pm
> "One thing the rich filth hadnt counted on was food shortages coming so soon. They also are probably a little surprised by the timing of the upcoming worldwide economic collapse."

They not only count on it, they have orchestrated it! Recently a documentary called "The World According to Monsanto" came out, and then was removed from Google video. Try to find it. It is one of the most important documentaries you will ever watch.

I also generally post this link on hunger from Food First http://foodfirst.org/en/12myths It is an excellent treatment of the subject and quite credibly reveals that most of the assumptions we have been taught regarding food shortages are balderdash.

As for economic collapse...

I was in Argentina a few years after the peso collapsed. There I met a man, Jim Sass, who was a retired naval officer and whose wife was a former US embassy attaché and who had worked in US embassies in Russia and China.

Wow! What stories I could tell! Suffice it to say that they were in Argentina picking over the recently fallen plums (farms, wineries, etc.) and making international deals with the spoils. One day after taking us to see his new and fabulous estate, he said rather proudly, "I was the one who came up with the plan for the collapse of the peso!" (So, those of you who thought it was due to Argentinas corrupt politicians and other bunglers of state... well, they would not be there if they were not willing to be complicit... but Argentina's peso tanked due to a 'low-intensity warfare' hit, plain and simple!)

What benefit does this have for the people of the US? Absolutely none! For, it is also in the interests of these megalomaniacs to insure uncontested markets for their ill-gotten goods... which means local economies are undercut to insure a market monopoly/dominance.

itsaNaziWorldOrder May 6th, 2008 2:44 pm

> "The current war may be about oil, but let's not forget that conflict with the Middle East now is a thousand years ongoing and it's about religion."

Wars throughout the world including the Middle East are certainly more than a thousand years old and they have NEVER been about religion... but, religion has certainly been used time and again to embroil the unwitting in the war-making machinations of the empire builders.

Let's look at recent history... Afghanistan.

The Taliban are being funded with American and British funds distributed with the help of Pakistani intelligence. Brezinski is generally credited with the plan to convert Afghanistan to a nation of 'Islamic' fanatics.

Textbooks to help revision Afghanistan to a 'fundamentalist' Islamic state were written in Michigan!! Sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists and others are often involved in research and projects that are funded and/or guided by military interests.

Minority tribes in Vietnam were studied by US professors at Berkeley for instance during US involvement there to better understand how to approach minority groups (and enlist their support) to facilitate the general chaos being implemented across Indochinese societies.

Religion is a tool of social demarcation, factioning. It is played and highlighted as the case may be to increase mis-understandings between and fear in target populations. Another useful tool in the war-makers chest is Gladio-style terrorism. Random acts of incredible violence that can then be blamed on the group one is attempting to demonize (9/11 is a perfect case in point).

A few years back, as many will remember, Iraqi terrorists were caught and Oops! They turned out to be British agents!

itsaNaziWorldOrder May 6th, 2008 3:07 pm
> "By the Rules of Recopricity it is America that should be overthrown."

'America' is being overthrown. Our currency is being eroded, and since I had been told it would be brought to ten percent of its current value (that was three years ago), I think we are only in the beginning phase.

Opportunity (capital investment) outside the corporate structure is tightly controlled by a banking establishment that is fully integrated within the military/polices state hierarchy.

Everywhere across society the military is stepping in to offer 'jobs' to those who can't find work.

The sustainability of communities is under complete attack and the corporations have nearly vanquished all independent operators... FBI surveillance is regular around the clock with high-tech laden reconnaissance flights over all major US cities.

And on and on and on...

What can we do? First, nothing stupid. COINTELPRO is alive and well and much better funded with many more agents at work and much more surveillance and offensive tools at its disposal, and government sponsored assassinations are still undertaken in American society.

http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9905a/jbcointelpro.html

itsaNaziWorldOrder May 6th, 2008 3:12 pm
> "Wow- the conspiracy afficionado's really came out of the woodwork on this one."

My credentials are very solid. I have to go to a meeting but you can ask whatever you like by way of verification and I will answer when I return.

My reports (commnets) are focused on experiences I personally had with some of people who were certainly key players behind the scenes of community shattering events.

itsaNaziWorldOrder May 6th, 2008 8:03 pm
> "You ask us to believe that a secret held by thousands has been perfectly kept (and in the utter absence of proof to the contrary)."

My personal experience with the ‘need to know’ community is that they keep secrets incredibly well. One of the reasons that has occurred to me for this is that they love identifying as one of those ‘in the know’ (and chosen to play ‘in the game’ too).

Somehow this translates into making them feel ’special’ and empowered.

BTW, these qualities are a matter of assessment for many psychological tests. So there is not as much risk as one might guess.

Do you really suppose that FBI undercover operators go to the local bar and talk about their top secret stalking and surveillance operations? What about top secret biological warfare experiments? Or past MK-Ultra experiments? etc., etc., etc.

Being a part of a 'team' so to speak is sufficient generally to make people WANT to keep those secrets with which they have been entrusted… a matter to many of personal 'honor' or accomplishment but also as one very necessary 'entrance fee' for be allowed to remain within that select group.

Reporters working on a newspaper often have this sense of ‘being on the inside’ as do many people in many professions. No, keeping a secret, especially one that you share with friends (co-conspirators) is not only easy, for many it is great fun, and important to personal and group bonding.

Thousands of people in on the planning of 9/11? You mean the Ten Thousand Club? Those who managed to pass every security test? Hmm… It’s a badge of personal honor even if only the select initiates can recognize each other.

And, opening ones mouth about a state secret (after taking an oath of secrecy) could get one killed…

itsaNaziWorldOrder May 6th, 2008 8:40 pm
In reference to the Iranian ‘revolution’:

“In the end, you will find that England was behind it.”

Cyrus Samrad, 1983

Please consider what role England played in genociding thousands of Indian tribes and nations in the Americas (not to mention the destructions of the natural environments) and the subsequent establishment of ‘democratic’ institutions… and even the funding of BOTH sides of the ‘American’ ‘revolution’…

And now consider England’s role in establishing Israel… a plum by any standards in the war-maker’s tool chest…

If one could look at the picture from all global sides; the US and Israel seem more like instruments than architects, each with their own specialized functions.

For the after-dinner mint here's this comment, posted at the same article, that confirms many of itsaNaziWorldOrder's veil-shattering assertions.

Q: When you take the red pill, do you see things as they are, or does the mind-altering result only present you with a different hallucination?

MiMiCcS May 6th, 2008 9:00 pm
We are essentially just another commonwealth nation of the British Empire, we do the dirt work for them, and our leaders that do good get knighted by the Queen.

You should read “A Century of War” by William Engdahl.

http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/02/94746.html

“It Began in November 1978 with a White House Iran task force that recommended Washington end support for the Shah and replace him with Ayatollah Khomeini, then living in France. It would be by the same type coup that overthrew the Iranian government in 1953 along with broader aims that again are in play in the region.

Key then (and now) was to balkanize the Middle East along tribal and religious lines - a simple divide and conquer strategy that worked in the 1990s Balkan wars. The aim was to create an “Arc of Crisis” that would spread to Central Asia and the Soviet Union. Another 1978 event highlighted the urgency. At the time, the Shah was negotiating a 25-year oil agreement with British Petroleum (BP), but talks broke down in October. BP demanded exclusive rights to future Iranian output but refused to guarantee oil purchases. The Shah balked and was on the verge of independently seeking new buyers with eager ones lined up in Germany, France, Japan and elsewhere.

Washington and London were alarmed and acted. They implemented destabilization plans, starting with cutting Iranian oil purchases. Economic pressures followed, and trained US and UK agitators exacerbated them by fanning religious discontent and overall turmoil. Oil strikes as well were used. They crippled production and made things worse. American security advisors recommended Iran’s Savak secret police use repressive tactics to maximize antipathy to the Shah. The Carter administration cynically protested human rights abuses, and BBC correspondents exaggerated anti-Shah protests to rev up hysteria against him. At the same time, it gave Khomeini an open platform to speak and prevented the Shah from replying.

Things came to a head in January, 1979 when he fled the country, and Khomeini returned to Tehran and proclaimed a theocratic state. Chaos was unleashed, and by May the new regime cancelled plans for further nuclear reactor development. At the same time, Iran’s oil exports were cut off, and the Saudis inexplicably cut their own in January. Spot prices skyrocketed, and a second oil shock ensued that was as deviously conceived as the first one. Then it got worse. In October, newly appointed Fed Chairman Paul Volker unleashed a new scheme that turned calamity into catastrophe by design.

It was a radical new monetary policy on the pretext of “squeezing inflation out of the system.” In fact, it was made-in-Washington fraud to preserve dollar hegemony, make it the world’s most sought currency, and crush industrial growth to let political and financial power prop up dollar strength. Volker succeeded by raising interest rates from 10% to 16% and finally 20% in weeks. World policy makers were stunned, economies plunged into the deepest recession since the 1930s, and the dollar began an extraordinary five year ascent.

The combined effect of oil and Volker shocks took “the bloom off the nuclear rose” and ended its threat to Anglo-American oil supremacy. And if more was needed it came on March 28, 1979 in the middle of Pennsylvania at a place called Three Mile Island. Conveniently, at the same time The China Syndrome was released that fictionalized the ongoing event. The combined effect was public hysteria, and later investigation revealed critical valves had illegally been closed. In addition, FEMA controlled all news to create panic. The scheme worked, and Anglo-American supremacy was reasserted over the industrial and financial world. Nothing is stable forever, however, and within a decade new rumblings would be felt.

Imposing the New World Order

The combined effects of two oil shocks and resulting inflation created a new US “landed aristocracy” while the vast majority of Americans saw their living standards sink. It was the same type scheme Margaret Thatcher imposed on Britain when she declared “there is no alternative.” Preaching free market hokum, she claimed deficit spending was the culprit, not two oil shocks causing 18% UK inflation. Her remedy - kill the patient to save it by cutting the money supply and government spending while sharply hiking interest rates to 17% in weeks, thereby causing depression she called the “Thatcher revolution.” Engdahl had another view saying: “Never in modern history had an industrialized nation undergone such (a counterproductive) shock” in so short a time, except in wartime emergency. Thatcher crushed the economy by design the way Volker did in America.”

The Bilderbergers and TLC want 200 dollar a barrel oil. Striking Iran will get us there, and then they will Volckerize the US economy with high interest rates as in the 80’s and destroy whats left of it, and set the stage for martial law to quell the food riots and One World Government will be ushered in to fill the vacuum.

A Necessary Fence

2008-04-24T14:50:00.017-04:00

We very much welcome a victory by either party.
—John Browne, Amoco CEO, on the outcome of the 2000 Presidential Election

Hillary, Obama, and McCain are the best America can come up with? How much more transparent can it be that the office of President is a slot filled by the one who can claw their way to the top to best serve their elite puppetmasters? A harridan, an empty vessel, and a bona-fide nut, all espousing minor variations of the same ideological theme. Once again the voters are asked to take it up the ass, this time without any lubricant, and, though some party-poopers may grumble a bit, they obligingly bend over.

The transparent and illimitable contempt of the ruling classes towards the public certainly seems warranted, given how easily the public gloms onto the spectacle of a cynical and vicious race between equally repellant moral monsters, instead of demanding candidates that serve the increasingly dire needs of a society in precipitous decline.

When Murka emerged triumphant from the Landowner's War Against Taxes (aka The Murkan Revolution) it had to fashion some sort of government that cleverly promised freedom and the pursuit of happiness for everybody (ie: white males) while simultaneously protecting the wealth and power of the privileged. As Chomsky likes to quote James Madison: "the primary reponsibility of government is 'to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.'"

This is a good thing to keep in mind when considering how, just to give an arbitrary example, the majority is faced once again with a presidential election in which the three front runners all share a viewpoint that benefits the power elite against the interests of the majority.

For a more technical analysis of how this came to be, here's a summary from biographer Robert A. Caro's third tome on LBJ:

[The] creators of a government of the people feared not only the people's rulers but the people themselves, the people in their numbers, the people in their passions, what the Founding Father Edmund Randolph called "the turbulence and follies of democracy."

The Framers of the Constitution feared the people's power because they were, many of them, members of what in America constituted an aristocracy, an aristocracy of the educated, the well-born, and the well-to-do, and they mistrusted those who were not educated or well-born or well-to-do. More specifically, they feared the people's power because, possessing, and esteeming property, they wanted the rights of property protected against those who did not possess it. In the notes he made for a speech in the Constitutional Convention, James Madison wrote of the "real or supposed difference of interests" between "the rich and the poor"—"those who will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings"—and of the fact that over the ages to come the latter would come to outnumber the former. "According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the latter," he noted. "Symptoms, of a leveling spirit, as we have understood, have sufficiently appeared in certain quarters to give notice of the future danger." But the Framers feared the people's power also because they hated tyranny, and they knew there could be a tyranny of the people as well as the tyranny of a King, particularly in a system designed so that, in many ways, the majority ruled. "Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power," Madison wrote. These abuses were more likely because the emotions of men in the mass ran high and fast, they were "liable to err... from fickleness and passion," and "the major interest might under sudden impulses be tempted to commit injustice on the minority."

So the Framers wanted to check and restrain not only the people's rulers, but the people; they wanted to erect what Madison called "a necessary fence" against the majority will. To create such a fence, they decided that the Congress would have not one house but two, and that while the lower house would be designed to reflect the popular will, that would not be the purpose of the upper house. How, Madison asked, is "the future danger"—the danger of "a levelling spirit"—"to be guarded against on republican principles? How is the danger in all cases of interested coalitions to oppress the minority to be guarded against? Among other means by the establishment of a body in the government sufficiently respectable for its wisdom and virtue, to aid on such emergencies, the preponderance of justice by throwing its weight into that scale." This body, said Madison, was to be the Senate. Summarizing in the Constitutional Convention the ends that would be served by this proposed upper house of Congress, Madison said they were "first to protect the people against their rulers; secondly to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led."

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

...When one of the Framers, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, suggested that [senators] be elected by the people, not a single member of the Convention rose to support him. "The people should have as little to do as may be about the government," Roger Sherman declared. "They lack information and are constantly liable to be misled." After Elbridge Gerry said that "The evils we experience flow from an excess of democracy," the Framers took steps to guard against such an excess. There would, they decided, be a "filtration" or "refinement" of the people's will before it reached the Senate: senators would be elected not by the people but by the legislatures of their respective states—a drastic filtration since in 1787 the franchise was so narrow that the legislatures themselves were elected by only a small percentage of the citizenry.

That Mr. Caro is talking about the Senate does not mean the same sorts of embedded elite-protecting failsafes don't also apply to the executive branch: the President is not chosen by the people, remember, but by an electoral college; and, before that, by even more granular filtering that occurs every step of the way via machine-driven candidate selection between two factions of a single party that doesn't like outsiders hampering the works. (The farcical ritual of the awesome importance to always have to select between the lesser of two evils to prevent a worse evil is specifically designed to preclude any challenges coming from without; that's why the greatest vituperation is directed at those who threaten to vote for a third party candidate, especially those who dare to challenge the whole game (ie: protecting the interests of property) from the left.)

Murka is a country founded on the rights of property, and about the only thing that's changed since its bloody birth is that some things that were once property — ie: people — achieved legal personhood (after much more bloodletting, of course). It's also interesting to consider that shortly after this wrenching transformation of property into people — so vigorously and violently opposed, remember — that a new class of person was created, almost as if to compensate for the loss; and, in a fitting irony, these newly defined legal fictitious entities, these "corporate persons", quickly became everyone's new master, making slaves of us all. (Tragically this unholy beast, accidentally summoned yet!, proved uncontrollable and now seeks to enslave the world.)

This is the schizophrenic fissure at the root of the Murkan psyche — the promise of freedom for all, while structurally handing it only to the propertied classes. And into this yawning chasm — which is roped off and ignored by the entire society — has crept a theology of greed that, like some kind of horrific economic black hole, threatens to engulf the world in its eschatological ecstasy. A whimpering end of history indeed.

And with the concentration of media power, that "necessary fence" is truly a propaganda enclosure. As one of the Framers said, "They lack information and are constantly liable to be misled." Clearly, this is proven time and time again — with each election, in fact; or with each war, with each corporate bailout, with each humane bombing, with each extrajudicial assassination, with each new free-trade agreement, with each new law against some consensual act, with each denial of executive malfeasance, with each tax cut for the wealthy, with each new surge, with each spending cut for human aid, with each justification for precision bombing funerals and weddings, with each new supreme court justice, with each new terror alert, with each new security precaution, with each removal of footwear at the airport, with each new non-lethal weapon, with each protest pen, with each red-herring (sex scandal; prayer in schools; etc), with each passage of some bill that empowers the police state, with each new rollback of some legal protection (eg: habeas corpus), with each new justification of torture; etc...

So next time you're wondering how it is that a purported "democracy" like Murka proffers three such miserable choices for president, keep in mind that the Framers of the Constitution themselves hated democracy — for everybody, that is, except themselves. We the People set the tone for the new country's penchant for euphemistic doublespeak when what was clearly meant was We the Propertied. Murka is their game, their casino, their land, and it always has been. The house always wins, and the fix is always in. Always. The role of the public in their table game of democracy is exactly like that of the audience in America's Funniest Home Videos: to dissemble enthusiasm while calmly and happily voting for one of the pre-ordained candidates chosen by some invisible body of judges who have a knack for narrowing all the choices down to the three most disappointing.

The War on Terror in 118 words

2008-04-22T16:18:00.001-04:00

...the misnamed "war on terror" is, in theory and in practice, a war of terror waged against resistant individuals and populations who have risen up against U.S. imperialist depredations. As the Empire's hegemony is challenged across the planet, the control of other nations' resources deemed "vital" by U.S. multinational corporate looters, not the safety or security of the American people, is the primary motivator of America's destructive wars of conquest.

Since 9/11, the Bush administration and their legal sycophants in the Justice Department and right-wing think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society, have claimed that the criminal regime in Washington has the legal right to employ any tactic to pursue its sordid agenda.

The Torture Agenda by Tom Burghardt

'sociopathic behavior becoming the norm'

2008-04-16T17:27:00.004-04:00

It's all falling apart.

A frightening, astute comment by Galen April 16th, 2008 12:04 pm following this article:

Capitalism that holds the reigns of government is FASCISM!

There are multiple revolving doors between government, industry and the intelligence services.

Therefore, there are multiple avenues for evil men to come to power, and many of them are corrupt beyond the concept.

A new study was recently released that stated that sociopathic behavior was becoming the accepted norm.

Given the polluted society (North America) that was examined, it’s no surprise. All you have to do is listen on the street corners to hear the youth of today brag about how often they are arrested and jailed. How women and girls are degraded sexually by their male peer and the fashion industry. And take into account how utterly pervasive technology that separates you from daily human contact has become. Cars, cellphones,i-Pods. All DESIGNED to ISOLATE you from your fellow human being.

If you do not know who your fellows are, you care nothing about them, and therefore can feel no empathy for them. This allows you to behave in ways unthinkably barbaric to them. QED.

This present form of capitalist consumerism masquerading as government and society is the ultimate expression of greed and inhumanity. we have become, LITERALLY, nothing more than cogs and gears in a vast money machine that runs on blood.

This, too, is also an important observation in the same comment section by TrudyS April 16th, 2008 11:36 am:

This reminds me of an Einstein quote: “Two things are infinite:the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

No matter how many times the stock market crashes, or inflation wipes out savings, or corporate scandals are exposed, people continuely clammer for investment portfolio’s or real estate speculation so that they can become rich beyond their wildest dreams. Greed is rampant but no one sees it in themselves, only in those with more than they have. Avarice (greed for those who don’t know what avarice means) is one of the seven deadly sins for a reason. Unfortunately, like too many other things it gets glossed over or ignored completely. The blame for the situation we find ourselves in goes all around, how many people supported de-regulation in order to get ‘government off our backs’? How many people agreed that all government agencies should be run like businesses?

Until we recognize our own culpability in all of this, nothing will change. One of the ‘family values’ that so many people embrace should be sharing and caring without judgement and teaching our children that greed is dangerous to all.

I have come to the conclusion that Greed really is the most deadly of the seven deadly sins. Greed is not only the psychopathy that defines our epoch, it is the very hermeneutic filter of our worldview, the religious ether of our time that compels conformity. BushCo, the bankers, the entire financial system driving the world to what may be its eschatological denouement are the modern economic incarnation of Torquemada and his Inquisition, compelling obedience to the Word of Private Property under pain of genocidal death. No one is without sin, and all must be converted.

Government as Criminal Conspiracy

2008-02-12T11:03:00.008-05:00

From Robert Anton Wilson's Everything is Under Control:

The view that our government per se is nothing more nor less than one giant criminal conspiracy appears in both extreme right-wing and extreme left-wing forms. Anarchists hold that government is not a "necessary evil" as conservatives think but an unnecessary evil. This viewpoint is expressed variously by Proudhon, Bakunin, Tolstoy, Kropotkin, Warren, Malatesta, and many others. It was probably stated most succinctly by Tom Paine, who wrote, "The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and most rascally individuals of mankind."

Tolstoy put it even more bluntly: "Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us."

Lysander Spooner, lawyer and libertarian, deflated the "democratic" claims of modern governments with succinct sarcasm:
The right of absolute and irresponsible dominion is the right of property, and the right of property is the right of absolute, irresponsible dominion... But these men who claim and exercise absolute and irresponsible dominion over us dare not be consistent, and claim to be our masters or to own us as property. They say they are only our servants, agents, attorneys, and representatives. But this declaration involves an absurdity, a contradiction. No man can be my servant, agent, attorney, or representative, and be, at the same time, uncontrollable by me, and irresponsible to me for his acts.

RAW [Robert Anton Wilson] ends his entry by quoting Proudhon's famous vitriol about what it means to be governed.

I especially love Paine's quote (hence its formatting in bold), which to me beautifully encapsulates in a single sentence the inherent catch-22 of our species qua homo politicus, and thus why government — of any sort — can never succeed as an instrument of social organization working for the benefit of all: the very avowal of a wish to lead indicates a probable psychological predisposition making one ill suited to lead for the common good. (Why? Well... a wish to lead automatically implies a hierarchy — with the leader perched above the others, of course; it implies a non-egalitarian structure where the leader feels they have the right, or, more dangerously, the calling, to determine what is right for others. A leader, by definition, expects followers, not peers.)

To help illustrate this "Government as Criminal Conspiracy" thesis, how about a quick peek into the mentality of Murka's Ruling Class? Chris Floyd's look at Mitt Romney's exit speech is a good place to start. Here's a nugget:

The Terror War is simply an extension of the long-held goal of the American elite... to maintain and extend their dominion over the world's natural resources and political arrangements — and the exorbitant profits this dominion produces. There is ample evidence in the historical record of the Anglo-American elite's abiding — and quite open — anxieties on this score, going back for generations. Literally millions of people all over the world have been sacrificed to these ambitions and anxieties, which have not abated but grow more frantic and acute with each passing year.

And thus the climax of Romney's peroration: a frantic blithering about "evil and radical jihad" and "the inevitable military ambitions of China" and the burning need to "raise military spending to 4 percent of our GDP" and overriding imperative to keep the Terror War raging, particularly its central front in Iraq. None of this is remotely connected to the actual wellbeing, security and prosperity of the American people; quite the opposite. It is, however, absolutely vital to the preservation of the elite's power, privilege, self-image and status. And as they demonstrate day after day, they don't care how many people must die or suffer for this.

If you're feeling particularly brave check out John Spritzler's compelling theories about the origins of World War II. An excerpt, to whet your appetite (pp 60-61, em. mine):

Enormous revolutionary impulses were released by the restoration of peace immediately following the conclusion of WWI. The American ruling elite was frightened; so frightened that it resorted to the kind of actions that were dangerous because they risked revealing to the general public how undemocratic was the real exercise of governmental power in the country. Not only were government military forces ordered to attack Americans, and the right to assemble revoked, but other laws that made the country appear to be a democracy were flagrantly ignored. U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer conducted the infamous "Palmer Raids" against radicals and leftists in 1919. He struck without warning and without warrants, smashed union offices and the headquarters of Communist, Socialist, and other radical organizations, and arrested over five thousand people, deporting two hundred and forty nine. Also revealing, Congress refused to seat the duly elected socialist from Wisconsin, Victor Berger. Such heavy-handed actions were not necessary during the just concluded war. For America's ruling elite, war was not the problem; peace was.

Any feelings of deja vu one may have after reading this are understandable...

This Presidential Debate Brought To You By...

2008-01-15T18:35:00.000-05:00

NBC BATTLES TO KEEP KUCINICH OUT OF THE DEBATE

As Milton Friedman reminds us, "The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits."

GE, which owns NBC, has a sacred duty to its stockholders. They would be insane to include Kucinich in the debate: he advocates things that would adversely affect their bottom line, like, say, getting America's murderous hordes out of Iraq asap, something the vast majority of the public wants but which would eat into GE's armament profits.

That's why they're spending untold sums of money on their "crack" legal team to work through the night, conjuring up legal ways to keep him out of the debate (even though it's a foregone conclusion that the initial decision will be overturned by some higher federal judge). (Q: If a presidential candidate talks in the forest but no one hears him, does he make a sound?)

So what's the problem? Having him join the debate would be a conflict of interest between the social responsibility of the corporation, and some imaginary civic responsibility people think a privately-owned network ought to have to some imaginary democratic society. Plus, Clinton sold the public airwaves to them during his watch, and now it's time to return the favor. Their decision makes complete sense for a whole host of reasons.

Plus, in the Orwellian spirit of the times, if a corporation is legally defined as a person, then they are completely correct in claiming that the ruling is an infringement on their first amendments rights to exercise free speech. Just because the serfs en masse have their own needs doesn't mean their feudal lord has any mandate to respect them. (Then again, just because the serfs don't trust nor like their feudal lord doesn't mean they won't still serve him. In fact, the more the feudal lord is aware of their disgust, the more overtly arrogant, condescending and malicious their behavior. What is a serf to a feudal lord?!)

This is a crystalline example of the fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the economic needs and power of the private corporation, and what best serves the public interest. My advice is that since no one is going to do anything about it — no big violent protests, no banding together in communal insurrection, etc. — the least you can do is to stop watching TV altogether, stop whining, and stop playing their game: just because America is now officially run as a crooked casino, it doesn't mean that you have to play at the tables.

This presidential debate brought to you by...

Gilead Sciences, makers of Tamiflu ("Are you ready for the next pestilence?")

Raytheon, home of non-lethal crowd control systems ("The friendly Active Denial System!")

Goldman-Sachs, the world's banker ("We'll help you die rich!")

Kellogg, Brown & Root, building Democracy around the world ("Coming soon to a town near you!")

and Diebold, makers of little black democracy boxes ("Delivering votes — the new-fashioned way!")

Please make your selection from one of these three fine candidates.

Thank you for exercising your freedom in the greatest democracy the world has ever seen. Your vote counts in ~~Mexico~~ ~~Russia~~ ~~Pakistan~~ America!

[updated <3 hours later]

Court: MSNBC Can Bar Kucinich

I, for one, am shocked! Shocked, I say!

A Quick Strategy Guide For Getting Through The Coming Cataclysm

2007-12-11T16:36:00.001-05:00

A comment left by rtdrury December 11th, 2007 1:49 am at this article by Chris Hedges (which includes this wonderful quote: Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience can no longer tolerate abuse and despotism. They are carried out not because they are effective but because they are right...Resistance is about affirming life in a world awash in death.):

The tax-deferred savings is a good idea. The charities are too but volunteer yourself in the organization first to learn what it’s up to. The other thing is to reduce your taxable income to reduce your tax obligation. It helps a lot to make plans to 1.) buy a lot for your house/garden asap with cash. 2.) build your own house, 3.) grow your own food, 4.) drive very little, 5.) repair things and barter, 6.) do without expensive medical treatments. 7.) have your kids train themselves instead of going to college. 8.) work in your local economy, and avoid the capitalist economy.

We can lower our taxes and much more by taking this approach. We both utilize and build our minds, bodies and spirits this way. The big difference between self-sufficiency today and self-sufficiency a century ago is that today we have better access to information, and we are building infrastructure today to streamline self-sufficiency. It’s something we’d like to do anyway. So when we take ourselves out of the capitalist economy, the capitalist economy shrinks and the local economy grows. We interact/integrate with the planet and the people, instead of with the capitalist mafia.

Once again, when we take ourselves out of the capitalist economy, the capitalist economy shrinks and the local economy grows. We interact/integrate with the planet and the people, instead of with the capitalist mafia, via:

buy a lot for your house/garden asap with cash

build your own house

grow your own food

drive very little

repair things and barter

do without expensive medical treatments

have your kids train themselves instead of going to college

work in your local economy, and avoid the capitalist economy

Excellent advice.

A Quick Contemporary-American History Lesson

2007-12-11T13:53:00.000-05:00

A comment left by Malcolm Martin December 11th, 2007 12:48 pm at this article by Chris Hedges (which includes this wonderful quote: Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience can no longer tolerate abuse and despotism. They are carried out not because they are effective but because they are right...Resistance is about affirming life in a world awash in death.):

Our bourgeois democracy, which has been narrowing in recent years will in time be shut down completely under the pressures of an expanding war in the Middle East and the deep economic crisis which is just around the corner. Elections will never again decide matters of substance in the United States of America.

As our capitalist economy enters its final stages, a nearly seamless political transition to fascism is taking place. The trappings of bourgeois democracy are a brake on profits and so they are being shredded. The Constitution and its Bill of Rights are being rendered meaningless by plans for perpetual war, by presidential signing statements and the theory of the unitary executive, extraordinary rendition, government surveillance programs and the like. Programs based on democratic principles like the public schools, Social Security, Medicare, affirmative action and welfare are being starved to death. Separate and parallel InterNet and military forces are being constructed along with internment camps and the legal construct for a martial law declaration. Blackwater will ultimately fight US military regulars in the streets of this country. (Too many sons and daughters of the working class in the US military to be trusted by the bourgeoisie.) The mass media and electoral machinery and both major political parties are now fully under the control of those in power. Bloodless coups in 2000 and 2004 installed George W. Bush in the White House and no future ballot will remove the candidates of the ruling class from power.

Pointing out the defects born of a flagging capitalism has become as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. The ruling class brushes its liberal democratic/progressive critics off like gnats as long as they stay away from the third rail. But let one of these voices dare mention unity based on working class-consciousness and a mobilization to strike at profits (think Boston Tea Party, Flint Sit-down, Montgomery Bus Boycott) and great danger would shortly thereafter visit.

Let’s dream for a minute, like Dr. King did before he became too dangerously revolutionary to allow to live. In this dream, on an appointed day, at an appointed hour, Americans across the country turn their cars off in the street, pocket the keys, and walk home to wait. Wait for the oil industry to be nationalized and the ExxonMobil directorate to be arrested, or better yet, wait for Bush and Cheney to vacate government housing. Hey, December 16th is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party!

A Quick Modern-American History Lesson

2007-12-10T18:16:00.000-05:00

A comment left by #luckylefty December 10th, 2007 2:40 pm at this article by Chris Hedges (which includes this wonderful quote: Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience can no longer tolerate abuse and despotism. They are carried out not because they are effective but because they are right...Resistance is about affirming life in a world awash in death.):

Thomas Albright:

“I think things have come to the point where patriots have to be willing to go to jail to change things. Not just a few, but many. That is what it will take. In fact, we have been at that point since at least o4.”

Make that 1964. Yes, we took some steps. They were real. We actually started to make real differences in this country. Our actions, opening the doors of economic opportunity and civil rights for minorities and women; our actions opposing our colonial war of conquest in Vietnam; our actions to stop the wholesale degradation of the workplace and the environment - triggered a backlash that has found its fulfillment in George W. Bush. In the meantime, over the last 40 years, the richfilth have successfully retaken America. After 40 years of aggressive Class War, we now have the distribution of wealth we had back in 1880.

The first wave of this Assault on America was a pincer movement: Civil Authority & Wall Street. Civil Authority led the way with COINTELPRO & MK ULTRA. Short version of this strategy can be simply stated: Infiltrate the Movements; Kill, neutralize, or falsely imprison the leaders; Terrorize & atomize the followers. This strategy was fully implemented by all Authority: State/Local/Federal. In some places nearly half the people on the steering committees were State, Local, Fed cops. And these were people peacefully protesting and exercising their Right of Free Speech guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. WE WERE ENEMY #1. “Opposition to the war in this country is the greatest single weapon working against the US,” candidate Nixon ’68 to VFW in NY. You can make your own list of those executed, hounded into silence or suicide, or falsely imprisoned.

Once the Feds broke the movements, Wall Street went to work. Actually, they started with Taft-Hartley and started moving manufacturing out of the heavily unionized Northeast to the low wage South and West. By the mid 60’s the majors were going to the Machiladoras. Starting in the early ‘70’s, Wall Street started off-shoring middle class union jobs to slave labor pits around the globe. By the 80’s with Ray-gun the job loss through off-shoring and LBO/devour arbitrage was full steam. During this period, having broken the movements for Economic & Social Justice, Wall Street and Feds worked together again by implementing a strategy called: The Gold or the Bullet. So when domestic Leaders arose, they got bought off or they went bye-bye. Ritual Defamation has worked massively well back to Rome & Athens. The ones who got bought off got their grants every year, never pissed off anybody, and succeeded by failing. Here’s the critical point:

The glue that made all this possible: White Male Supremacy & Gender Slavery. This is Nixon’s Southern Strategy after LBJ lost the Dixiecrats in ‘64/’65 by passing, under immense pressure, the Civil Rights & Voting Rights Acts. Racism & Women’s Rights. “Pluck the magic twanger froggie – Hiya Kids, Hiya Hiya.” As the jobs went away, as the misery index rose, Fundamentalism, fully funded & supported by the most far right richfilth in America, was waiting with open arms to receive the people America (and the Democrats) abandoned. Mega-churches fed their racism a beggar’s banquet. Told them women were the source of Evil in the world and have to be subordinated to a White Male. Fed them daily scapegoats to blame for the ills of their lives. And of course in that world women cannot be allowed economic or biological self-determination – hence – Gender Slavery.

So no, nobody’s marching. Damn few gonna go to jail. Are you going to pay my rent when I go to the pokey for 6 months (it’s a tiny 1 bd for $1000/mo and that’s cheap here)? Fuck me. Right? I did what I wanted to do, right? So I should accept the consequences of my actions, right? Are you going to hire me when I have a police record for “whatever”? They call that YOYO. You are on your own. If you believe that, your belief makes you a Republican. Don’t fret. If you are, you are part of the Silent Majority. You will not be taken to the camps, unless by mistake. Unfortunately, the Masters never admit they make a mistake.

The comfort I have is the sure and simple understanding that whatever we do now, the Party is over. You need only read the pages of this website for more than a few days and you know. Nothing here will change until the Monster Shatters, and it will, because everything else is changing. Richfilth lack the genes for flexibility and self-restraint. They want only one thing. Richfilth for 4000 years have only wanted one thing: Everything, Forever. They can’t help themselves, they’re Parasites.

Shock & Awe? Wait til you wake up one Monday morning and your rent just multiplied x3, and gasoline is x3, and food is x3. And the only thing that isn’t x3, is your wages. That’s when the icy knife of fear goes deep into your guts. It is the moment when the prey knows it is about to be eaten. Bet on it. You’ll be in very good company however. Hundreds of Black men knew exactly the same fear when they saw the torchlight mob out the window of their jail cell. In that moment you will know who you really are. Consider it the wages of the Sin. The sin of forgetting, WITT, we are in this together.

Peace.

Executed for asking Why

2007-11-16T14:50:00.000-05:00

Good luck finding articles about Gracia Beaugris, an unarmed 19 year-old Haitian immigrant executed in a Miama alley a few weeks ago.

The few mainstream articles that quickly followed have been archived for paying customers only. [Update: mainstream 1; mainstream 2.] The following teasers from the Miami Herald written shortly after the incident are beautiful examples of standard-issue knee-jerk MadLib-style authoritarian justifications that are assaults on reason and common sense — assuming you know more about the story than what is presented for public consumption.

Officer had to shoot teen, union says

A police union attorney said a Miami-Dade officer was justified in using deadly force when a teen lunged at him, beating, biting and reaching for the officer's gun. Bruised, beaten and bitten in a violent scuffle, a Miami-Dade officer shot and killed a 19-year-old in a North Miami alleyway, police said Friday.

Officer Christopher Villano scuffled late Thursday with Gracia Beaugris for four to five minutes and believed the...
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
Bruised, beaten and bitten in a violent scuffle, a Miami-Dade officer shot and killed a 19-year-old in a North Miami alleyway, police said Friday.

Officer Christopher Villano scuffled late Thursday with Gracia Beaugris for four to five minutes and believed the teenager was reaching for his sidearm.

"The officer has no choice but to fire," union attorney Andrew Axelrad said Friday. "He would have been justified in firing sooner."

But for those who like he-said/she-said games, here's the other reality at play in the story:

It appears that the young man died because he had gotten, "sick and tired of being sick and tired." He had been hassled by the cops before, he heard stories about his boys being harassed by police, surely he was probably aware of other folks being harassed who looked like him. So when this cop stopped and frisked him and his friends, he decided to object by asking, "Why?"

That question may have gotten him killed. According to witnesses, when the youth asked why he had been stopped and frisked, the officer cursed at him and pushed him. Beaugris offered resistance and was choked and then shot in the arm by the officer, which caused him to fall to the ground.

What has the community so outraged is that the cop then shot the teen two more times - once in the head - while he lay on the ground defenseless, killing him. Calling it a murder would not be inappropriate.

Which version is closer to the truth? I expect it's something between the two, though closer to the second: anyone who has experienced police harrassment and abuse will find the second version all too credible. Officers, especially ones drunk on power mixed with fear and distrust, do not like any challenges to their unquestionable authority.

The youth was most likely, like the second story said, "sick and tired" of being harassed for no reason: he asked why he was being frisked; got rudely rebuffed; last straw; snapped, lashed out in frustration at, and/or self-protection from, some racist scared powermad peckerwood cop; received a fatal response in panic.

But there's one thing that's decisive in this story: shooting the head of a downed and unarmed person is compelling evidence for the claim of murder. In fact, this story kind of has the feel of some Nazi thug shooting a Jew for daring to stand up for himself, for demanding to know why he's being maltreated, for asserting that he, too, has a right to be treated with respect, that he has feelings, has a right to receive a reasonable answer to a reasonable question, is a human being and not some mass-produced thing that must conform to spec, who got fed up with being victimized once too often and took a fatal stand.

What's the lesson?

In today's America, daring to ask why of "authority" can prove fatal.

But that's only if you believe such things can happen in today's America. Fortunately for most of its citizens, the news will never burden their conscience with such things. (Just like it doesn't confuse them with different perspectives.)

Maybe, though, I'm wrong. Maybe, in fact, the officer really did have no choice but to fire, once the attempt to establish two-way communication was quickly precluded. Maybe he really should have fired sooner.

Yeah, that's it.

In fact, maybe he should have fired just as soon as the troublemaker looked like he was going to open his fucking mouth to give lip. Can't have citizens acting all uppity, you know. Can't have anyone dare to challenge the ~~word~~ image of authority. Need to instill unconditional respect, unconditional respect. Jump high on command, kneel down, bow low, cringe, cower, fall prostrate, take off your shoes and socks, say "Yez Massah!" and mean it. It's the only way society will be made safe. And it's the only way Freedom™ can be guaranteed for all.

America, after all, is the land of the Free™. America is all about Freedom™. That's why we have men like Rudy Giuliani running for president. He understands Freedom™. Here are his immortal words on the topic: "Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do." Clearly Gracia Beaugris, an immigrant, didn't understand what Freedom™ means in America, and he paid the ultimate price for it.

Yes, America is all about Freedom™: the Freedom™ to be tazed, shot, murdered by powermad cops; the Freedom™ to be a victim of institutional injustice; the Freedom™ of mainstream media to manipulate you; the Freedom™ of citizens to obey authority; the Freedom™ to be in perpetual cognitive dissonance from a twisted culture's inherent doublethink about everything.

In the bigger picture, Freedom™ is about the right to embezzle public monies, pass regressive laws, wage profitable wars on obvious lies, lie cheat and steal with complete impunity. The Freedom™, ultimately, for criminals to thrive — so long as they're the ones with power and bear image's imprimatur of authority. The list of all of America's Freedoms™ really is endless.

If Freedom™ is about Authority, then America may well be the most Freedom™ loving nation that has ever existed.

And what are we to make of Giuliani's "lawful authority" when the laws are written by, enforced by, and at the service of criminals? when "lawful authority" itself is criminal?

Cagan, She Wolf of Homeland Security

2007-10-03T14:36:00.000-04:00

Here's Nazi Chic BushCo Babe Debra 'I hate all Iranians' Cagan. This unholy spawn of BushCo-Nazi inbreeding is yet another blatant proof that more attendees from the Wannsee Conference have reincarnated in the boardrooms of BushCo.

But we should be careful to note that though ~~Rosa Klebb~~ Debra Cagan may hate all Iranians, it's not for any baroquely grand racial or political ideology. She may harbor a genuine hatred of The Other common to all faux-aristo Trogs like the rest of her BushCo clan; but, deep down, it's really nothing personal — it's just the serviceable symptom of a business strategy hatched by fanatical partisans. Fundamentally, BushCo's intended Final Solution for Iraq and Iran — and any other resource rich, refractory country — is for no greater reason than clearing the land of its verminous natives (ie: sinful heathen not converted to the gospel of Trog-neoliberalism) the easier to loot it. It's all just part of neoliberalism's global manifest destiny. (And littering the land with depleted uranium is kinda slow. Nukes are gonna be so much quicker.)

How much more obvious can it be by now that SPECTRE has taken over the White House?

(And guess what? 007 works for them (in fact, he always has), and he's got lots of new toys at his disposal developed by his pal Q.)

"Nurse Ratshit now does housecalls"

2007-09-20T11:24:00.001-04:00

Here's a beautiful, darkfunny rant that admixes clarity, poetry, righteous anger and political sophistication. I can't imagine a more succinct, more accurate summary for where Murka is right now.

Following this article (excerpt):

What is the lesson for us from this and from other closing societies, some of them democracies? You can have a working Congress or Parliament; newspapers; human rights groups; even elections; but when ordinary people start to be hurt by the state for speaking out, dissent closes quickly and the shock chills opposition very, very fast. Once that happens, democracy has been so weakened that major tactical and strategic incursions — greater violations of democratic process — are far more likely. If there is dissent about the vote in Florida in this next presidential election — and the police are tasering voters rights groups — we will still have an election.

What we will not have is liberty.

We have to understand what time it is. When the state starts to hurt people for asking questions, we can no longer operate on the leisurely time of a strong democracy...

is this brilliant comment by Pancho September 20th, 2007 4:35 am:

Concerning the young dissident "citizen Meyer", he certainly had the wind knocked out of his barely unfurled sails as he brandished a dangerous weapon (Mr Palast's rather inocuous Armed Madhouse) certainly not the threat to the ship of state or ship of fools depending on how one views modern amerika that the brandishing of Mao's Little Red Book or Das Kapital back in the heyday of disgruntled youth, flower power and Nam by damn would have entailed!

Faced with the two-party or better siamese twins party, mickey mouse donald duck pepsi coke burger pig mousocracy under which amerikans are forced to eek out their futures Mr. Meyer's excitement is all too understandable. If some of the old fogies here consider the young Meyer's passion to be disgruntlement, outrage and sedition then by Jesus let's stoke up the camp furnaces already and get on with the next stage of the rapture rupture Zionist masterplan and get these kids to goosestep into the chambers of redemption in the fascist Homeland camps sprouting around amerika for those with the eyes still to see and the frontal lobe still to discern.

Ken Keasy can be happy as he grooves in his grave that Nurse Ratshit now does housecalls and campus calls when the disadvantaged Afro-amerikan police goons of state are called in to haul away our academic MacMurphys who insist on exhibiting their psychosis in public. "One bad apple, Billy Bibbit and the whole barrel goes rotten!" You can hear Mistress of Electro shock and dominatrix of frontal lobotomy exclaim to the started patients standing meekly by as the "thug" is wrestled to the floor and "medicated".

Ah amerika, you never let me down. When I expect it can't get any worse, bombing and exterminating on 3 continents in how many sub-wars of your great terror war then you up the ante and shoot yourself in the dick once again. Let's do it right and open a damn chain of Abu Ghraibs nationwide goddamn it!

If amerikans are to learn anything from this latest in-your-face brownshirt stormtrooping overkill, let it be that the "democrats" should be beyond your contempt. You are on your own and there is no Mr. Gorbachev anywhere in sight. As Ketchup Kerry (Reagan's vegetable) stood there babbling and blathering as Mr. Winston Smith, the square peg was pushed through the round hole for all to see, the last illusion of your precious democratic freedoms and choice must surely have taken a kick between the legs.

Ketchup Kerry jumped the Swift Boat once again, plain as the tattoo on your darlin's ass and proved to the rest of the world whatever about the sheeple in the land of the blah blah blah and the home of the blah blah blah, that that particular shill and wanna be "commander in chief" of your corporate warring militia mercenaries harvesting the people of Iraq will protect the interests of your elite and abuse your "rights" as long as he is paid to do it so help me Gawd.

So take your prozac, your crack and coke and shut your damn mouth hole because your opinions mean diddley squat in sewer pipe media 'merka! That's what Ketchup was blathering about and if you don't buy it then play The Cuckoo sequence backwards one more time and listen to the meaningless droning of the man skulking in the background you once were naive enough to think might save your sorry asses!

Of course the real tragedy in all of this is not that there are those scum in the student body that supported the violation of Meyer's once "inalienable" rights but that the rest of them, the ones with the brains just didn't have the balls to fight for those long lost rights as the "Jew" in their midst was hauled away to face his unenviable destiny.

Perhaps it's time for a refresher about where Murka seems to be heading...

[Here is a good, more straightforward analysis of the event and its ramification.] (excerpt):

This event says a great deal about the state of American democracy. It speaks to the immense nervousness and fear within the entire political establishment over the growth of popular opposition, especially among young people, to its policies of militarism and social reaction.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
If what transpired Monday night is the response to some questions raised by one person at a public forum, what is being prepared in the event of mass protests and social and political struggles? The obvious answer is mass repression and state violence.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
Is there a connection between this outrageous attack on free speech and the vast network of data bases being assembled by government authorities, compiled by means of illegal spying and other police state measure instituted in the name of the “war on terror?”

"The Last line of defense...is gone too"

2007-08-17T11:38:00.001-04:00

Dave Lindorff: Convicting Padilla: Bad News for All Americans--Especially Journalists

With habeas corpus a thing of the past, with arrest and detention without charge permitted, with torture and spying without court oversight all the rage, with prosecutors free to tape conversations between lawyers and their clients, and with the judicial branch now infested by rightwing judges who would have been at home in courtrooms of the Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany, for all they seem to care about common law tradition, the only real thing holding the line against absolute tyranny in the U.S. has been the jury.

Now, with Jose Padilla--a US citizen who was originally picked up and held incommunicado on a military base for three and a half years, publicly accused (though never charged) with planning to construct and detonate a so-called "dirty" nuclear device (this a guy without a high school education!), all based upon hearsay, evidence elicited by torture, and a few overheard wiretapped conversations where prosecutors claimed words like "zucchini" were code for explosive devices-convicted on a charge of "planning to murder," we see that juries in this era of a bogus "war on terror" are ready to believe anything.

That last line of defense-the common sense or ordinary citizens is in a jury box-is gone too.

A Fantasia on Tenure Denial

2007-07-10T18:19:00.000-04:00

I've been closely following the Norman Finkelstein tenure denial. I agree with the numerous commentators who find this worrisome, to say the least.

Though not about Finkelstein per se, I find the following as good a summary as I've encountered about what this is about:

A sledgehammer is being taken to academia in the U.S. Its critical thinkers and dissenters are in grave danger of being mowed down and silenced. Labels like "sedition," "treason," "collaboration," and "support for terrorists" are bandied about by a man who strategizes with Karl Rove. In the current political climate, these spurious charges are designed to destroy the richness of academic life, to ruin careers, and to incite violence and government persecution against those who have been targeted.

There is far too little critical thinking and dissent in society as a whole. That is the criminal situation. And critical thinking and dissent must not only be defended in the colleges and universities but spread in society. This is what the reactionaries want to prevent. And it is why a major assault on academia is emanating from and connected to the highest office in the land.

The one ray of light in this is the surprising media spotlight illuminating such an important scandal from the usually enshaded halls of academe. This story resonates because it so clearly reveals the bad-faith and tawdry McCarthyist tactics pursued by malignant interests to silence those who dare to challenge them. The outcry has been surprisingly vociferous, and Father Holtschneider, the President of DePaul, has been roundly castigated for cowardly choosing the politically expedient over the principled.

The inordinate attention paid to this scandal may yet serve as another mote removed from the public's eyesight. (Sheehan's celebrated renunciation of the Dems is another one. As is Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence. As is Cheney's refusal to hand over classified docs. As are the Supreme Court's recent decisions. Etc etc etc) Unsurprisingly, as the public's eyesight improves so has its disgust at institutional authority reached historic levels. The people "running" the country (running it into the ground) are seen increasingly for what they are: a coterie of amoral unprincipled small-minded Mammon-whores, zealots, and vorocrats barricaded behind their own self(ish)-interests, finding ways to profit from jiggling the toilet handle that's flushing America (and the world with it) down the crapper.

[Make no mistake. These people are mass murderers, whether or not they possess the cognitive capacity to even see their role in it: they think nothing of sacrificing countless innocent lives in the furtherance of their political and financial fortunes. Millions die and suffer horribly because of these puny unimaginative dregs of humanity, and for no greater reason than how, in the calculus of their decision-making, it will affect their chance of re-election or career advancement, their status amongst their peers, their 'face', their portfolios: "We think the price is worth it."]

So, what's going to change? Tragically, it's a historical truth that when authority loses its justification it resorts increasingly to repression and catastrophe to maintain their hold on power. When "fighting the enemy within" (ie: overt repression) doesn't work — and, no matter how docile and ignorant the American public is, it's not a strategy that's going to work given the culture's deeply held convictions about democracy and individual rights — then the focus must be on some external threat to keep the folks in line. (In fact some argue that this is the very reason why World War II occurred.) Whether the engineered external catastrophe involves bioterrorism (including the apocalyptic avian flu we've been hearing so much about), or the fallout from nuking Iran (for whatever fabricated reason), or a big boom in some American city, one thing is clear: the lunatics running the ship of state are not the sort to relinquish the helm as they plow the ship towards the iceberg.

Note: the following added 2 hours after posting this.

As if on cue:

Officials worry of summer terror attack

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
51 minutes ago [07/10/07 ~8:41pm]

WASHINGTON - U.S. counterterror officials are warning of an increased risk of an attack this summer, given al-Qaida's apparent interest in summertime strikes and increased al-Qaida training in the Afghan-Pakistani border region.

On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune that he had a "gut feeling" about a new period of increased risk.

He based his assessment on earlier patterns of terrorists in Europe and intelligence he would not disclose.

"Summertime seems to be appealing to them," Chertoff said in his discussion with the newspaper about terrorists. "We worry that they are rebuilding their activities."

Other U.S. counterterrorism officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, shared Chertoff's concern and said that al-Qaida and like-minded groups have been able to plot and train more freely in the tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border in recent months. Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding in the rugged region.

"The threat coming out of there is very real, even if there aren't a lot of specifics attached to it," one of the officials said.

Chertoff's department has not made any move to increase the nation's color-coded terror alert system. Now, airlines are under orange — or high — alert, which is the second most serious level on a five-point scale. The rest of the country remains a step below at yellow, or elevated.

Chertoff said he is convinced that terrorists are regrouping. "Our edge is technology and the vigilance of the ordinary citizen," he said.

The secretary also urged Americans to be watchful for suspicious activities in the wake of recent terror incidents in England and Scotland. On June 29, two cars packed with gas cylinders and nails were discovered in London's entertainment district. The next day, two extremists smashed their flaming Jeep Cherokee into security barriers at Glasgow Airport's main terminal.

Al-Qaida and its sympathizers have shown an interest in summertime attacks. Some examples from recent years:

• In 2005, London faced two separate sets of transit attacks. The July 7 attacks on three trains and a bus killed 52. A second attack on July 21 was bungled when the detonators failed to light the explosives.

• Last summer, international counterterror authorities said they foiled a plot to use liquid explosives to take down roughly 10 U.S.-bound airliners leaving Britain.

Coming Attractions: Prison Populations, Guinea Pigs & Profits — An Israeli Entrepreneurial Success Story

2007-06-15T16:35:00.000-04:00

Naomi Klein: Laboratory for a Fortressed World

At a glance, things aren't going well for Israel. But here's a puzzle: why, in the midst of such chaos and carnage, is the Israeli economy booming like it's 1999, with a roaring stock market and growth rates nearing China's?

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

...Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the "global war on terror."

...Thirty homeland security companies were launched in Israel in the past six months alone, thanks in large part to lavish government subsidies that have transformed the Israeli army and the country's universities into incubators for security and weapons start-ups (something to keep in mind in the debates about the academic boycott).

Next week, the most established of these companies will travel to Europe for the Paris Air Show, the arms industrys equivalent of Fashion Week. One of the Israeli companies exhibiting is Suspect Detection Systems (SDS), which will be showcasing its Cogito1002, a white, sci-fi-looking security kiosk that asks air travelers to answer a series of computer-generated questions, tailored to their country of origin, while they hold their hand on a "biofeedback" sensor. The device reads the body's reactions to the questions and certain responses flag the passenger as "suspect."

Like hundreds of other Israeli security start-ups, SDS boasts that it was founded by veterans of Israel's secret police and that its products were road-tested on Palestinians. Not only has the company tried out the biofeedback terminals at a West Bank checkpoint, it claims the "concept is supported and enhanced by knowledge acquired and assimilated from the analysis of thousands of case studies related to suicide bombers in Israel."

Another star of the Paris Air Show will be Israeli defense giant Elbit, which plans to showcase its Hermes 450 and 900 unmanned air vehicles. As recently as May, according to press reports, Israel used the drones on bombing missions in Gaza. Once tested in the territories, they are exported abroad: the Hermes has already been used at the Arizona-Mexico border; Cogito1002 terminals are being auditioned at an unnamed US airport; and Elbit, one of the companies behind Israel's "security barrier," has partnered with Boeing to construct the Department of Homeland Security's $2.5 billion "virtual" border fence around the United States.

Since Israel began its policy of sealing off the occupied territories with checkpoints and walls, human rights activists have often compared Gaza and the West Bank to open-air prisons. But in researching the explosion of Israel's homeland security sector...it strikes me that they are something else too: laboratories where the terrifying tools of our security states are being field-tested. Palestinians — whether living in the West Bank or what the Israeli politicians are already calling "Hamasistan" — are no longer just targets. They are guinea pigs.

It's Coming (addendum 2)

2007-06-15T14:42:00.000-04:00

Yet more indications of the impending Engineered Catastrophic Event (ECE)...

Bush Plunges to New Low in Poll

US President George W. Bushs approval rating plunged to a new low of 29 percent in the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, the Journal reported Thursday.

Plot Shows Dangers of Mundane Targets

Until a suspected terrorist plot was revealed, few people even knew there was a pipeline of highly combustible jet fuel snaking beneath the nation's largest city.

But authorities said Monday that it's one of countless lesser-known targets - including waterway retaining walls, dingy rail yards and tunnel ventilation systems - that they struggle to protect from attacks.

US Bond Market Upheaval and Confusion

The US Gross Domestic Product, officially distorted and stated, showed a pathetic 0.6% revision in 1Q2007. When a national economy depends upon $3 billion per day in foreign capital, AND it is slowing to a recognized crawl, foreigners might be exiting, stage anywhere. The lowly USA Today reports that the full 2006 federal deficit was not the $248 billion promoted with fanfare, but rather $1300 billion in red ink. The method used was standard corporate accounting practices, not pro-forma garbage methods intended to deceive. The Leading Economic Indicators are almost all negative, except those related to massive monetary inflation (money supply) and stock indexes (see the Plunge Protection Team). As deficits are expected to continue until removal of both the Executive and Congress via public referendum, USTBonds are exposed from a flood of supply. Foreign capital inflows have changed lately, turning dangerous negative. This will continue.

Trade and financial system negotiations with China are going nowhere, plain & simple.
The US is dictating terms. The Chinese hold all the cards, found in export trade...

The US side prefers not to notice how the impact of sudden currency upward revaluation would inflict dislocations and severe disruption in China. My guess is the US wants precisely to knock China off its newfound legs, and see it embroiled in a crisis. China made big news with its $300 billion investment account, to siphon money out of its SAFE forex reserves account. Despite a suspicious $3 billion in Blackstone (to avoid disclosure, to curry favor), the trend is clear that sovereign wealth funds are crucial in the investment arena. China might have taken its hand off the BUY button with its massive trade surpluses to purchase USTBonds for a spell.

Wall Street, Iraq and the Declining Dollar

A mismanaged war, the oil crisis and a flood of US currency are setting the stage for economic disaster, investment banker Ken Miller reports.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
No matter how the Iraq War ends, it is clear that the United States is incapable of militarily securing territory against the wishes of a hostile population. And the Iraq War is at the heart of two alarming trends that are likely to have a negative impact on America's position in the world: The demand for oil is rising while the supply is declining, and the demand for the US dollar is declining while the supply of dollars is rising.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
So the printing presses are spewing out more dollars, which are being collected by China, Japan and others. And those countries are showing signs of concern that they have too much of their foreign exchange reserves tied up in our currency. Likewise, certain other nations are evidencing a declining interest in accepting the dollar as a medium of exchange. It was in October 2000 that Saddam insisted that Iraq's oil be paid for in euros. But now Russia wants payment for the energy it exports in rubles. Venezuela and Iran insist on euros. Kuwait has recently unpegged its dinar from the dollar in favor of a basket of currencies.

The dollar has indeed shown symptoms of its decline in popularity during the Bush years. The dollar has weakened against the euro, gold, copper and other hard assets and currencies...

Mainstream economists seem to agree that best-case, the dollar will continue a stately decline, but in a world where the United States has lost so much respect, where we continue to flood the world with dollars and borrow to finance our consumer habit, we could find that one of those sharp, depression-inducing discontinuities occurs--like, say, a run on the dollar.

Trade war looms over US, China

Ties between the US and China could become turbulent as combative US law makers threaten Beijing with punitive trade sanctions that could draw the ire of Chinese leadership.

A week of high-level talks in Washington failed to end their biggest dispute, over China's undervalued currency, opening the prospect of a trade war between the world's richest and the world's most rapidly growing nations.

The Pentagon warned on Friday that cash-flush China was militarising under an opaque budget and that Beijing's ballistic nuclear missiles could now strike the US.

The administration of US President George W Bush seems to have taken a more aggressive trade stance, while many in congress discuss passing, not just proposing, anti-China bills.

It's Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun

So what is really happening? Actually, it's simple. The difference today is that China and other large investors from abroad, including Middle Eastern oil magnates, are telling the U.S. that if interest rates come down, thereby devaluing their already-sliding dollar portfolios further, they will no longer support with their investments the bloated U.S. trade and fiscal deficits.

Of course we got ourselves into this quandary by shipping our manufacturing to China and other cheap-labor markets over the last generation. Dollar hegemony is backfiring. In fact China is using its American dollars to replace the International Monetary Fund as a lender to developing nations in Africa and elsewhere. As an additional insult, China now may be dictating a new generation of economic decline for the American people who are forced to buy their products at Wal-Mart by maxing out what is left of our available credit card debt.

China Arming Terrorists

New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.

U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been used in the past by China to hide its arms-proliferation activities from the United States, according to U.S. officials with access to the intelligence reports.

Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms.

The Washington Times reported June 5 that Chinese-made HN-5 anti-aircraft missiles were being used by the Taliban.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that the flow of Iranian arms to Afghanistan is "fairly substantial" and that it is likely taking place with the help of the Iranian government.

Defense officials are upset that Chinese weapons are being used to kill Americans. "Americans are being killed by Chinese-supplied weapons, with the full knowledge and understanding of Beijing where these weapons are going," one official said.

The arms shipments show that the idea that China is helping the United States in the war on terrorism is "utter nonsense," the official said.

Lieberman: U.S. Should Weigh Iran Attack

Sen. Joseph Lieberman said Sunday the United States should consider a military strike against Iran because of Tehran's involvement in Iraq.

The Case for Bombing Iran: I hope and pray that President Bush will do it

Since a ground invasion of Iran must be ruled out for many different reasons, the job would have to be done, if it is to be done at all, by a campaign of air strikes. Furthermore, because Iran's nuclear facilities are dispersed, and because some of them are underground, many sorties and bunker-busting munitions would be required. And because such a campaign is beyond the capabilities of Israel, and the will, let alone the courage, of any of our other allies, it could be carried out only by the United States. Even then, we would probably be unable to get at all the underground facilities, which means that, if Iran were still intent on going nuclear, it would not have to start over again from scratch. But a bombing campaign would without question set back its nuclear program for years to come, and might even lead to the overthrow of the mullahs.

Could al Qaeda Attack Trigger War With Iran?

Following revelations of a George W. Bush administration policy to hold Iran responsible for any al Qaeda attack on the U.S. that could be portrayed as planned on Iranian soil, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinksi warned last week that Washington might use such an incident as a pretext to bomb Iran.

Interview of the Vice President by Bret Baier, FOX News

QUESTION: Last time we talked, we talked about George Tenet's book a little bit. In that book, he says that the al Qaeda leadership is inside Iran; and while they're under some loose house arrest, they may have been plotting attacks and they have plotted attacks from Iranian soil. Do you believe that to be true?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: We are confident that there are a number of senior al Qaeda officials in Iran and they've been there since the spring of '03. About the time that we launched operations into Iraq, the Iranians rounded up a number of al Qaeda individuals and placed them under house arrest and they're still there.

We think obviously there are other elements that are responsible for overall leadership of al Qaeda, specifically Osama bin Laden, Zawahiri. They are not in Iran, but there are some senior officials in Iran. They've been held there for some time. But activities they've been engaged in, I'm really not at liberty to discuss.

QUESTION: But clearly they're there and operating?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: We know they're there, and I don't want to go beyond that.

Notice: Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Iran

On March 15, 1995, by Executive Order 12957, the President declared a national emergency with respect to Iran pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706) to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the actions and policies of the Government of Iran...

Because the actions and policies of the Government of Iran continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, the national emergency declared on March 15, 1995, must continue in effect beyond March 15, 2007. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to Iran. Because the emergency declared by Executive Order 12957 constitutes an emergency separate from that declared on November 14, 1979, by Executive Order 12170, this renewal is distinct from the emergency renewal of November 2006.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,

March 8, 2007.

In U.S., Terrorism's Peril Undiminished

"The United States may have to declare martial law someday," Downing [Wayne Downing, Bush's ex-deputy national security advisor for counterterrorism] said, "in the case of a devastating attack with weapons of mass destruction causing tens of thousands of casualties. This could mean that the military would be given the authority to impose curfews, protect businesses and communities, even make arrests."

Governors normally have jurisdiction over public health emergencies, but a widespread biological attack would cross state boundaries. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson has the power to declare a national public health emergency, in which he could impose a quarantine and require inoculation or treatment of unwilling citizens in the name of public health.

Oregon takes part in bioterror drill next week

Oregon will test its mettle in reacting to dirty bombs next week.

In a computer-generated exercise that begins Thursday, several dirty bombs will be detonated in Eastern Oregon. In the aftermath of this mock disaster, blood and urine samples will be collected, turned over to Oregon health officials and transported to a lab in Boise for processing. The specimens will then be forwarded to the Centers for Disease Control and other state labs for testing.

"These types of drills are an important element in making sure that we have a fast, accurate and complete response to public health concerns in the event we ever experience a real disaster," said Eric Clark, Oregon's Chemical Terrorism Laboratory coordinator.

Four East Oregon counties are taking part in the scenario: Baker, Malheur, Union and Wallowa. Other states will be involved as well, including Idaho, Washington, Alaska, Florida, Arizona, Hawaii, California, Mississippi and Montana.

Diversionary Use of Force and Presidential Agenda Setting

Karl DeRouen Jr., Department of Political Science, University of Canterbury; Jeffrey Peake, Department of Political Science, Bowling Green State University

Recent efforts at accounting for presidential use of force short of war have centered on diversionary theory (DeRouen 2000; Fordham 1998a; Levy 1989a, 1989b). The general argument is that presidents have incentive to treat an external use of force as a "scapegoat" during times of domestic distress such as high unemployment, inflation, scandal or other domestic turmoil (see Brace and Hinckley 1992; Levy 1989a; 1989b). For instance many questioned whether President Reagan ordered the invasion of Grenada in 1983 while the nation mourned the loss of 200 Marines killed in Lebanon. More recently, pundits questioned the motives of President Clinton in ordering military strikes at Serbia, Sudan, and Afghanistan in 1998 and 1999 because the President was in the midst of being impeached. The scapegoat explanation has become linked to presidential approval because a sizable percentage of all rallies in presidential approval in the post-war era have been related to the use of force short of war. Presidential foreign policy decision making is conceivably affected by the intense media coverage of uses of force. This media attention ostensibly helps focus public attention away from troublesome domestic issues providing a domestic political incentive for presidents to use force.

Note: the following added 06/18/07

Seems I'm not the only one with open eyes. Here's the thoughts of a former Ronnie RayGun/WSJ/National Review insider:

The Bush regime has concluded that a conventional attack on Iran would do no more than stir up a hornet's nest and release retaliatory actions that the US could not manage. The Bush regime is convinced that only nuclear weapons can bring the mullahs to heel.

The Bush regime's plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons puts General Pace's departure in a different light. How can President Bush succeed with an order to attack with nuclear weapons when America's highest ranking military officer says that such an order is "illegal and immoral" and that everyone in the military has an "absolute responsibility" to disobey it?

An alternative explanation for Pace's departure is that Pace had to go so that malleable toadies can be installed in his place.

Pace's departure removes a known obstacle to a nuclear attack on Iran, thus advancing that possible course of action. A plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons might also explain the otherwise inexplicable "National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive" (NSPD-51 AND HSPD-20) that Bush issued on May 9. Bush's directive allows him to declare a "national emergency" on his authority alone without ratification by Congress. Once Bush declares a national emergency, he can take over all functions of government at every level, as well as private organizations and businesses, and remain in total control until he declares the emergency to be over.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

What catastrophic emergency short of a massive attack on the US with nuclear ICBMs can possibly justify such a directive?
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
A speculative answer is that, with appropriate propaganda, the directive could be triggered by a US nuclear attack on Iran. The use of nuclear weapons arouses the ultimate fear. A US nuclear attack would send Russian and Chinese ICBMs into high alert. False flag operations could be staged in the US. The US media would hype such developments to the hilt, portraying danger everywhere. Fear of the regime's new detention centers would silence most voices of protest as the regime declares its "national emergency."

The Problem

2007-06-12T08:46:00.000-04:00

Michael Taussig, The Magic of the State:

Money, says Karl Marx, serves in capitalism as the universal equivalent of value, and value is congealed labor power.

What is this value, this congealed labor power?

At times you can read Marx and the other great economists of his era (when philosophers of that changing world worried about such things as "value") as if they were searching for the lodestone, the "Fort Knox" of value, and, determined that this quintessence resides in "labor."

But the value of labor?

Well, that resides in . . . the value of the commodities required to reproduce labor!

Once more the circle, the Great Wheel rumbling, and again the figure of the prince intervenes to remind us that "labor" is not only a power like horse-power or a natural substance to be bought and sold like gasoline but also and always a matter of command and submission, a matter of control over the bodily and creative power of another human being — albeit effected not through politics per se, not through slavery or serfdom or family, but through "freedom of the market," the freedom that was fought for in the founding violence against the mercantilism of the colonial power so as to open up trade worldwide and establish the civil rights of citizenry in place of castes and slavery. It was one of the intellectual triumphs of Marxism to have investigated how the person was translated into the worker and how the worker was translated by market culture into a reified object of labor and how therefore command over persons is effected through the anonymity of market mechanisms, how cruetly and exploitation and all manner of degradations and glory were effected through the language of numbers, efficiency, and substances. But what seem to have often been lost from sight in tracing this move from the literality of personhood to the abstraction of number and thinghood are both the original impulse to investigate the conditions for human freedom and the recognition that the reified notion of "labor" was precisely a mechanism for control over persons and bodies.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Value, therefore, even and especially in the state of freedom created by the self-regulating market, is ultimately command over labor by means of command over people as things.

It's Coming (addendum)

2007-05-31T17:16:00.000-04:00

I added an addendum to my post from a few days ago about BushCo's dictatorial so-called 'Continuity of Government' presidential directive. I'll just provide a quick summary here...

Unbridled Executive Power: The Unitary King George

Bush could use this directive to suspend the election... Bush and Cheney may be unwilling to relinquish power to a successor administration.

Qaeda Video Threatens Attacks on America

...your failure to heed our demands and the demands of reason means that you and your people will — Allah willing — experience things which will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11th, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Virginia Tech.

US military begins planning for avian flu pandemic

Transportation within states or internationally will be restricted to contain the spread of the virus, and communities may voluntarily close schools and limit public gatherings.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
"When directed by the president, DoD will provide support to civil authorities in the event of a civil disturbance," the document said. "DoD will augment civilian law enforcement efforts to restore and maintain order in accordance with existing statutes."

Can you say Burning of the Reichstag?

A Cursory Glance In Passing Down A Deep Political Chasm

2007-05-26T15:17:00.000-04:00

In doing a bit of quick research into Carl Schmitt I came across this article by Alan Wolfe. It's worth a read. I just want to quickly share a few pregnant excerpts from it.

In The Concept of the Political, Schmitt wrote that every realm of human endeavor is structured by an irreducible duality. Morality is concerned with good and evil, aesthetics with the beautiful and ugly, and economics with the profitable and unprofitable. In politics, the core distinction is between friend and enemy. That is what makes politics different from everything else. Jesus's call to love your enemy is perfectly appropriate for religion, but it is incompatible with the life-or-death stakes politics always involves. Moral philosophers are preoccupied with justice, but politics has nothing to do with making the world fairer. Economic exchange requires only competition; it does not demand annihilation. Not so politics.

No wonder that Schmitt admired thinkers such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, who treated politics without illusions. Leaders inspired by them, in no way in thrall to the individualism of liberal thought, are willing to recognize that sometimes politics involves the sacrifice of life. They are better at fighting wars than liberals because they dispense with such notions as the common good or the interests of all humanity. ("Humanity," Schmitt wrote in a typically terse formulation that is brilliant if you admire it and chilling if you do not, "cannot wage war because it has no enemy.") Conservatives are not bothered by injustice because they recognize that politics means maximizing your side's advantages, not giving them away. If unity can be achieved only by repressing dissent, even at risk of violating the rule of law, that is how conservatives will achieve it.

Liberals think of politics as a means; conservatives as an end. Politics, for liberals, stops at the water's edge; for conservatives, politics never stops. Liberals think of conservatives as potential future allies; conservatives treat liberals as unworthy of recognition. Liberals believe that policies ought to be judged against an independent ideal such as human welfare or the greatest good for the greatest number; conservatives evaluate policies by whether they advance their conservative causes. Liberals instinctively want to dampen passions; conservatives are bent on inflaming them. Liberals think there is a third way between liberalism and conservatism; conservatives believe that anyone who is not a conservative is a liberal. Liberals want to put boundaries on the political by claiming that individuals have certain rights that no government can take away; conservatives argue that in cases of emergency — conservatives always find cases of emergency — the reach and capacity of the state cannot be challenged.

(I'm not going to split semantic hairs by trying to introduce nomenclatural precision. Since this is a cursory glance I will permit these antipodal generalizations to stand.)

If ... (if) ... these generalizations are true — or, at the least, provide an introductory way to approach such different political styles — then it goes some way towards explaining the chasm that exists between those who seek a better world — a world where justice and mutual actualization are paramount objectives — and those who seek to preserve the status quo at all costs, or their own aggrandizement, or just plain simple power. The problem is that one side is playing a game to be won at all costs, while the other side takes into account factors unrelated to gaming.

In some ways this is all moot now, though, since it seems that everyone in government is playing the same game, a game completely unrelated to improving the lives of their constituents. We should also note that Mr. Wolfe's distinction between liberals and conservatives should not lead one to draw a similar distinction between demoncraps and repugnicans: there are certainly differences between parasites and predators, but no one wants to be a victim of either.

It also goes some way towards explaining how a certain reputed democratic ship of state is quickly bearing towards an authoritarian iceberg.

Politics is war conducted by other means. In political warfare you do not fight just to prevail in an argument, but to destroy the enemy's fighting ability... In political wars, the aggressor usually prevails... You cannot cripple an opponent by outwitting him in a political debate. You can do it only by following Lenin's injunction: 'In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent's argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth.'
—David Horowitz, ~~conservative activist~~ unhinged asshole

It's Coming

2007-05-25T10:23:00.000-04:00

First, a few tiny milestones, a mere sampling:

Military Commissions Act (aka BushCo's Power Grab)

Signing Statements (aka Bypass Laws by Fiat) (aka Above The Law)

H.R. 5122 (aka Martial Law Made Easy)

On May 9, 2007...
National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive
NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51
HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20
Subject: National Continuity Policy

Highlights (all emphases mine):

1: This directive establishes a comprehensive national policy on the continuity of Federal Government structures and operations and a single National Continuity Coordinator responsible for coordinating the development and implementation of Federal continuity policies... to ensure a comprehensive and integrated national continuity program that will enhance the credibility of our national security posture and enable a more rapid and effective response to and recovery from a national emergency.

2b: "Catastrophic Emergency" means any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions

2c: "Continuity of Government," or "COG," means a coordinated effort within the Federal Government's executive branch to ensure that National Essential Functions continue to be performed during a Catastrophic Emergency;

2e: "Enduring Constitutional Government," or "ECG," means a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government, coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers among the branches, to preserve the constitutional framework under which the Nation is governed and the capability of all three branches of government to execute constitutional responsibilities and provide for orderly succession, appropriate transition of leadership, and interoperability and support of the National Essential Functions during a catastrophic emergency

4: Continuity requirements shall be incorporated into daily operations of all executive departments and agencies. As a result of the asymmetric threat environment, adequate warning of potential emergencies that could pose a significant risk to the homeland might not be available, and therefore all continuity planning shall be based on the assumption that no such warning will be received. Emphasis will be placed upon geographic dispersion of leadership, staff, and infrastructure in order to increase survivability and maintain uninterrupted Government Functions. Risk management principles shall be applied to ensure that appropriate operational readiness decisions are based on the probability of an attack or other incident and its consequences.

11b: Succession orders and pre-planned devolution of authorities that ensure the emergency delegation of authority must be planned and documented in advance in accordance with applicable law

12: In order to provide a coordinated response to escalating threat levels or actual emergencies, the Continuity of Government Readiness Conditions (COGCON) system establishes executive branch continuity program readiness levels, focusing on possible threats to the National Capital Region. The President will determine and issue the COGCON Level. Executive departments and agencies shall comply with the requirements and assigned responsibilities under the COGCON program. During COOP activation, executive departments and agencies shall report their readiness status to the Secretary of Homeland Security or the Secretary's designee.

23: Annex A and the classified Continuity Annexes, attached hereto, are hereby incorporated into and made a part of this directive.

24: Security. This directive and the information contained herein shall be protected from unauthorized disclosure, provided that, except for Annex A, the Annexes attached to this directive are classified and shall be accorded appropriate handling, consistent with applicable Executive Orders.

Some thoughts from the peanut gallery...

Bush grants presidency extraordinary powers
But the new directive appears to supersede the National Emergency Act by creating the new position of national continuity coordinator without any specific act of Congress authorizing the position, Corsi says.

The directive also makes no reference to Congress and its language appears to negate any requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists.

It suggests instead that the powers of the directive can be implemented without any congressional approval or oversight.

Bush makes power grab

Translated into layman's terms, when the president determines a national emergency has occurred, the president can declare to the office of the presidency powers usually assumed by dictators to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over.

Ironically, the directive sees no contradiction in the assumption of dictatorial powers by the president with the goal of maintaining constitutional continuity through an emergency.

Bush To Be Dictator In A Catastrophic Emergency

The language written in the directive is disturbing because it doesn't say that the President will work with the other branches of government equally to ensure a constitutional government is protected. It says clearly that there will be a cooperative effort among the three branches that will be coordinated by the President. If the President is coordinating these efforts it effectively puts him in charge of every branch. The language in the directive is entirely Orwellian in nature making it seem that it is a cooperative effort between all three branches but than it says that the President is in charge of the cooperative effort.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
The directive itself recognizes that each branch is already responsible for directing their own continuity of government procedures. If that's the case than why does the President need to coordinate these procedures for all of the branches? This is nothing more than a power grab that centralizes power and will make the President a dictator in the case of a so called Catastrophic Emergency.

Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency

It defines a "catastrophic emergency" as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function."

This could mean another 9/11, or another Katrina, or a major earthquake in California, I imagine, since it says it would include "localized acts of nature, accidents, and technological or attack-related emergencies."

The document emphasizes the need to ensure "the continued function of our form of government under the Constitution, including the functioning of the three separate branches of government," it states.

But it says flat out: "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government."
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
The document also contains "classified Continuity Annexes."

Plus, it appears I'm not the only one who sees how it might unfold.

It is so over...

If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship.
—Carl Schmitt

The Senate and the Empire

The Senate lived on for a while after the fall of the Republic, technically maintaining its old powers, but the Emperor had the support of the military, and the Senate's powers were ultimately doomed. As soon as the Senate bowed to the Emperor Augustus, it was a downhill trend. The Roman Senate became a pathetic rubber-stamp body. When it tried to oppose some of the emperors, the emperors often relied on intimidation and brute force to get their way. In one famous incident, soldiers were ominously marched into the senate; they did nothing, but the terrified Senators backed away from challenging the emperor's dictates. At other times, there were active purges and slaughters of the Senatorial families, and the senate was stacked with nobility reliant on the Emperor for their positions and support.

The Senate was one of the few remaining Republican political institutions that survived into the Empire. By Tacitus' time, the Senate was almost completely dominated by the various emperors. The proud and aristocratic Senators, who had never been champions of the common Roman in any case, bristled under the murderous authority of the Emperor as subjects themselves.

The rich and powerful had contempt for "average" Roman. The elites' greedy attempts to undermine the few freedoms enjoyed by the Republicans resulted in their own ultimate enslavement to a succession of corrupt families and brutal emperors.

—The Roman Senate

Note: The following added May 31, 2007 [again, all em. mine]

Marjorie Cohn:

Unbridled Executive Power: The Unitary King George

As of December 22, 2006, Bush had used the words "unitary executive" 145 times in his signing statements and executive orders. [former deputy assistant attorney general John] Yoo, one of the chief architects of Bush's doctrine of unfettered executive power, wrote memoranda advising Bush that because he was commander in chief, he could make war any time he thought there was a threat, and he didn't have to comply with the Geneva Conventions.

In a 2005 debate with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel, Yoo argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering that a young child of a suspect in custody be tortured, even by crushing the child's testicles.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
One wonders what Bush & Co. are setting up with the new Presidential Directive. What if, heaven forbid, some sort of catastrophic event were to occur just before the 2008 election? Bush could use this directive to suspend the election. This administration has gone to great lengths to remain in Iraq. It has built huge permanent military bases and pushed to privatize Iraq's oil. Bush and Cheney may be unwilling to relinquish power to a successor administration.

(This is what I've been saying all along. Glad others are starting to ken this.)

So... is it conceivable that the following horrific threat could be preparing us for the inevitable catastrophic emergency? It sure would provide a convenient excuse to help BushCo finally alleviate their hegemonic blueballs from all that Iranian nuclear cockteasing, wouldn't it?

Qaeda Video Threatens Attacks on America

By ANNA JOHNSON; Associated Press; May 31, 2007
CAIRO, Egypt An American member of Al Qaeda warned President Bush to end American involvement in all Islamic lands or face an attack worse than the September 11, 2001, assault, according to a new videotape.

Here's a snippet from the video:

In other words, you're losing on all fronts and losing big time.

Bush, the die has been cast and the blood has been spilled and there is no way to undo what you have done.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
This is not a call for negotiations. We don't negotiate with baby killers and war criminals like you. No, these are legitimate demands which must be met. And your failure to heed our demands and the demands of reason means that you and your people will — Allah willing — experience things which will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11th, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Virginia Tech.

No? Too obvious? (But when did that ever stop them from anything?)

How about this one — it's a bit more subtle, and has had a much longer gestation period to help us get used to the idea:

US military begins planning for avian flu pandemic

The US military has begun to plan for a possible avian flu pandemic that could kill as many as three million people in the United States in as little as six weeks, a Pentagon planning document said.

The Defense Department's "Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza," which was posted Wednesday on a Pentagon website, lays out guidelines and planning assumptions for US military services and combatant commands.

Possible scenarios include US troops being called in to put down riots, guard pharmaceutical plants and shipments, and help restrict the movement of people inside the country and across its borders.

The plan envisions fast moving, catastrophic waves of disease that would overwhelm health facilities and cripple the ability of state and local authorities to provide even basic commodities or services.

"A pandemic in the United States could result in 20-35 percent of the population becoming ill, three percent being hospitalized, and a fatality rate of one percent," the document said in a section on "planning assumptions."
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
Transportation within states or internationally will be restricted to contain the spread of the virus, and communities may voluntarily close schools and limit public gatherings.

Additionally, the Defense Department will develop a plan to ensure the continuity of operations of the US government and be prepared to support civilian authorities with medical supplies, airlift and security forces.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
"When directed by the president, DoD will provide support to civil authorities in the event of a civil disturbance," the document said. "DoD will augment civilian law enforcement efforts to restore and maintain order in accordance with existing statutes."

(This, too, is what I've been saying.)

Keep your eyes open... there are probably some more PR-promulgated apocalyptic scenarios coming soon to a meme near you!

Note: Read this for more signs of the impending Engineered Catastrophic Event.

"Reckoning will come, though..."

2007-05-10T14:28:00.000-04:00

Joe Bageant

In the world's big picture, however — the unedited version we are never allowed to see in American media — most American fundamentalists are being screwed blue by the same global economic pillage as, say, the Quiche Indians of Guatemala. Working class American fundamentalists suffer extractive capitalism's vampirism the same as the Third World, but by a more incremental yet nonetheless relentless process. A scam is a scam and while you may blame the victims for ignorance, you cannot blame them for trust and good will toward men.

Now hold onto your drawers and get this. Some working class fundamentalists are beginning to get a sense of what even the most educated of Americans seem congenitally blind to — the inevitable brutality of capitalism's march through history — mainly because it is marching in their direction this time, creating bankruptcy, lost homes, credit meltdowns, and job insecurity for the hardest working, most obedient and faithful people in America — the traditional working class. Just like their brothers in the Third World, the economic "cures" they are subjected to always turn out to be worse than the sickness. Some now notice that when unemployment rises, so does the stock market, and when real wages drop the "economy" soars, according to the news reports. All sorts of folks are beginning to disabuse themselves of the notion that the American economy and the American people are the same thing. As in: "I work like hell, get paid and I buy stuff and I pay taxes. Ain't that the fucking economy?" Or as one very dedicated local blue collar fundamentalist put it a while back when I was writing my book, "The big guys have always had it all over the little feller, but it's gettin' entawrly out of hand. Sooner or later somethin's gotta be done to give a workin man a chance again. This ain't what Our Lord intended."

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Reckoning will come though, and it will come like it always does for the human race, too late, and long after the princes of the earth have absconded with the goods. For Americans it will come when the secret militias in this country start cracking open their basement arms caches, and exercise those skills learned in Iraq, Afghanistan and along the perimeter of the Empire's last desperate efforts on behalf of the richest of the rich. By then however, it will be too late for a thin network of firepower and explosives to do much except add its members to the official terrorist list, along side scores of Muslim cab drivers and halal meat vendors.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

The good news is that genuine human liberation for ordinary humanity can come much sooner than catastrophe. And in coming it will require real leaders, born of and among the lost and wasted lifetimes of toil — not from the political theorists, nor the meaninglessly educated hothouse plants from the managing classes. Working class liberation leaders are beginning to evolve from the sons and daughters of Baptist truck drivers or 55-year old Wal-Mart greeters with varicose veins and no health insurance. I get emails from them and I find them in corners of American politics such as West Virginia's emerging but understandably as yet disoriented Mountain Party. Liberation's future leadership is out there right now, stocking the shelves of the supermarkets tonight, buffing the floors of the nation's universities and banks, checking on the calf-cow pairs in the late season snows of Montana, and likely as not they are gun owning, non-drinking Christians doing solitary jobs with lots of time to think. And they experience things like loneliness, modern alienation, and an inner emptiness within that now quaint concept called the soul. Which drives so many of them to the last place that even addresses the souls of people such as themselves — fundamentalist churches.

Addendum

Beth Shulman

The “you are on your own” notion of government and freedom has meant that American families must live with stagnant wages at a time of high profits and productivity without a way to get ahead no matter how hard they try. It has meant health insecurity for workers and their families as fewer and fewer jobs provide health care coverage. It has meant that workers face their older years without the means they counted on to retire, as corporations have slashed traditional pension plans. And it has meant that half of Americans don’t have the fundamental right to take a day off from work when they are sick without losing a job or a paycheck.

It has meant parents having to forgo a child’s high school or college graduation or a PTA meeting because twenty percent of America’s workers do not have any vacation or personal days. It has meant parents tag teaming their shifts to provide their children supervision leading to increased divorce rates because they can’t afford child care. It has meant families who are more stressed out as jobs become more and more insecure. And it has meant more families just struggling to get by with one out of every three workers making less than what it takes to have basic self-sufficiency. All this has been dumped on the already sagging shoulders of working families while government has stood on the sidelines.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
This is a false freedom that forces us to make false choices. Americans aren’t free when they have to choose between paying the rent and providing child care for their children. Parents aren’t free when they must choose between being responsible workers and responsible family members. The elderly aren’t free when they must choose to continue working in their later years because they don’t have pensions. Families aren’t free when they have to declare bankruptcy when they can’t pay their hospital bills. Mothers and fathers aren’t free when they don’t have time to be with their children because they are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet. And children aren’t free when they can’t get the basic tools to succeed and fulfill their potential as human beings.

Normal Finkelstein

Q: Do you think that professors have an obligation to engage in political activity?

A: They don't have an obligation as professors; they have an obligation as citizens. They have the luxury of devoting their working life to trying to ferret out the facts and the truth about what's going on.

For most other working people, their working lives are devoted to jobs which have minimal levels of personal gratification and have very little to do with mental activity of the sort that creates informed citizens. So since you have the luxury of sitting around and reading books, you do have an obligation as a citizen to pursue and expose the truth.

Thomas Jefferson

...the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this [Revolutionary] war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.

Alexander Berkman

Yet the American worker remains loyal to the government and is the first to defend it against criticism. He is still the most devoted champion of the "grand and noble institutions of the greatest country on earth." Why? because he believes that they are his institutions, that he, as sovereign and free citizen, is running them and that he could change if he so wished. It is his faith in the existing order that constitutes its greatest security against revolution. His faith is stupid and unjustified, and some day it will break down and with it American capitalism and despotism. But as long as that faith persists, American plutocracy is safe against revolution.

As men's minds broaden and develop, as they advance to new ideas and lose faith in their former beliefs, institutions begin to change and are ultimately done away with. The people grow to understand their former views were false, that they were not truth but prejudice and superstition.

In this way many ideas, once held to be true, have come to be regarded as wrong and evil. Thus the ideas of the divine right of kings, of slavery and serfdom. There was a time when the whole world believed those institutions to be right, just, and unchangeable. In the measure that those superstitions and false beliefs were fought by advanced thinkers, they became discredited and lost their hold upon the people, and finally the institutions that incorporated those ideas were abolished.

Aristotle

Everywhere inequality is a cause of revolution, but an inequality in which there is no proportion — for instance, a perpetual monarchy among equals; and always it is the desire of equality which rises in rebellion.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
What share insolence and avarice have in creating revolutions, and how they work, is plain enough. When the magistrates are insolent and grasping they conspire against one another and also against the constitution from which they derive their power, making their gains either at the expense of individuals or of the public.

Why (State) Terrorism Is Burgeoning

2007-03-09T18:17:00.000-05:00

Both the power of the elite and the degree of social inequality have grown hugely in the last two to three decades. It strikes me that the growth in state terror is fundamentally linked to the continuing growth in the concentration of power in the hands of the power elite, and the increase in the social inequality and stratification — the ever widening gap between rich and poor, within countries and between them — which every social observer has noted as one of the main characteristics of the global scene since the rise of the New Right in the West in the 1970s. There appears to be a direct correlation between the increasing power and wealth of the elite, the steadily increasing gap between rich and poor, and the growth of state terror, perhaps the three most obvious global characteristics of the last quarter of the twentieth century. I suggest that state terror is a dependent variable in the equation of inequality, not the independent variable many elites, governments, and establishment "terrorism experts" claim it to be.

Social stratification is the central feature of the state and civilization, and Gerald Berreman, Morton Fried, John Bodley, and other like-minded anthropologists have emphasized it as the most dangerous feature of contemporary society. Berreman, who has dedicated his professional life to the study of systems of social inequality, has observed that social stratification "refers to the fact that some categories of people get more of the valued things in life and others get less; a few get most, and most get the rest. Some live well and long; some live poorly and briefly. There is a ranking, in other words, of access to goods, services and experiences — to what the social theorist Max Weber called 'life chances.' There are national elites and international elites; the national poor and international poor. There are rich nations and poor nations." Bodley has argued that social stratification is linked to all of our major contemporary human problems, and is the most fundamental characteristic of civilization "from which other critical problem-causing features are ultimately derived." Social stratification leads to such conflict-inducing factors as the market economy; ethnic, religious, and ideological discrimination; socioeconomic deprivation; political inequality and its correlates such as infringement of rights, injustice, and oppression; the absence of effective channels of peaceful or systemic resolution of grievances and conflicts; exploitation and alienation; and, apropos our topic, state terror to maintain and defend the order of stratification against challenges to elite rule and the social, economic, and political status quo.

These anthropologists have also stressed the link between social stratification and the state. Fried defines the state as "a collection of specialized institutions and agencies that maintain an order of stratification," and Berreman observes that "stratification and the state are one in origin, one in function — creation, protection and continuation of the powerful and privileged at the expense of the rest." Fried also notes that

It is the task of maintaining general social order that stands at the heart of the development of the state. And at the heart of the problem of maintaining general order is the need to defend the central order of stratification...Undoubtedly...one means of doing this is to indoctrinate all members of society with the belief that the social order is right or good or simply inevitable. But there has never been a state which survived on this basis alone. Every state known to history has had a physical apparatus for removing or otherwise dealing with those who failed to get the message.

Physical power alone is not sufficient to integrate a state. Integration must be based on legitimacy, not just force. The crisis of the state at the turn of the century is that as social inequality grows, the ideological bases of state legitimacy are breaking down. Increasing numbers of people — the masses — are politically alienated, and when popular legitimacy cannot be maintained by ideological means, elites rely on force — on terror — to protect and advance their interests. For the state and power elite, where consensus fails, coercion rules.

Berreman has argued that systems of social stratification are "everywhere characterised by conformity rather than consensus, by conflict rather than tranquility, by enforcement rather than by endorsement, by resentment rather than by contentment." and what he observed over twenty years ago seems to be ever truer today: "Naked power is being resorted to more unabashedly as the conflict becomes more evident...the incidence, the likelihood and the impact of overt conflict between individuals is increasing both within and between societies and nations...Present trends suggest a worldwide polarisation in access to power, privilege and resources — the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' increases with a diminishing willingness among the poor to continue to suffer deprivation, and among the wealthy to ameliorate it." All the major world problems are growing at an accelerated rate, and the gap between the few who have much and the many who have little, between rich and poor, between developed nations and developing ones, is growing ever wider. Karl Marx, who argued that this was the inevitable result of free-market capitalism, referred to this process as "progressive emiseration." It should be no surprise that in an era of increasing global emiseration, states and elites have resorted increasingly to terror to contain challenges to the politicoeconomic status quo. Like other social crises, state terror is a dependent variable in the equation of inequality.

—Jeffrey A. Sluka, "Introduction: State Terror and Anthropology", p32-34, Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror

To some this is all self-evident. To others this is akin to positing heliocentrism to zealous geocentrists. I, for one, am grateful for such an unabashedly passionate, honest, clear yet scholarly articulation of anthropological common sense.

By the way, the book this was quoted from is Fascinating, Insightful, and Provocative. It is a terrific entry point into a painfully unknown academic field of original, important, brave (truly!), scholarly (but accessible), hardcore investigations into all aspects of state terror. Highly Highly Recommended!

And Kudos! to University of Pennyslvania Press for their consequential (and hopefully seminal) Ethnography of Political Violence series!

Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland, Papua New Guinea, USA

2007-02-01T12:35:00.000-05:00

AP

The United States lags far behind virtually all wealthy countries with regard to family-oriented workplace policies such as maternity leave, paid sick days and support for breast-feeding, a new study by Harvard and McGill University researchers says.

The new data comes as politicians and lobbyists wrangle over whether to scale back the existing federal law providing unpaid family leaves or to push new legislation allowing paid leaves.

The study, officially being issued Thursday, says workplace policies for families in the United States are weaker than those of all high-income countries and many middle- and low-income countries. Notably, it says the U.S. is one of only five countries out of 173 in the survey that does not guarantee some form of paid maternity leave; the others are Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea.

[HAHAHAHAHAHA<choke><splutter>HAHAHAHAHA!!!]

Thank Goodness Supervillains Exist Only In Comicbooks

2007-01-31T11:29:00.000-05:00

From the Wikipedia entry on Supervillains:

Common Traits

While supervillains vary greatly, there are a number of attributes that define the character. Most supervillains have at least a few of the following traits:
√ A desire to commit spectacular crimes and/or rule the world or in some cases an entire universe through whatever means necessary.

√ A generally irritable and spiteful disposition and contempt for heroes, ordinary civilians, lackeys, and anyone else who may get in their way.

√ A sadistic nature and tendency to revel in their sociopathic behavior and/or supposed intellectual superiority.

√ An enemy or group of enemies that he or she repeatedly fights.

√ A desire for revenge against said enemies. The method of revenge often goes beyond simply killing them to making them suffer before death, such as using deathtraps.

√ A brilliant scientific mind that he or she chooses to use for evil (see also mad scientist and evil genius).

√ Superhuman abilities or special skills, similar to those of superheroes. Frequently, these skills are gained through selfish (and sometimes foolish) meddling with science as opposed to the "natural" or "accidental" gifts possessed by superheroes. Compare the origin of the Green Goblin and that of his nemesis, Spider-Man.

√ A dark and threatening-looking headquarters or lair, the location of which is usually kept secret from police, superheroes and the general public. Examples include Magnetos headquarters Asteroid M and The Legion of Dooms Hall of Doom. However, some supervillains who feel secure from prosecution live and work in palatial buildings, such as Doctor Doom's castles in his country of Latveria and the office buildings and research facilities of the Green Goblins alter ego Norman Osborn. Others are mobile and do not have one particular base of operations.

√ A theme by which he or she plots his crimes. For example, The Riddler plots his crimes around riddles, puzzles and word games and Mysterio plots his around movie special effects. Furthermore, most themed villains will stubbornly keep with their style even when it seems impractical or ridiculous to others in view of their typical lack of success.

√ Although super villain team-ups occasionally occur and some supervillain teams exist, such as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and Sinister Six, most supervillains do not collaborate with one another but employ a team of simple-minded and expendable henchmen to assist them. Some supervillains, such as Darth Vader, Berg Katse and Cobra Commander, control entire armies whose troops are considered equally expendable and subject to murderously draconian discipline.

√ Due to a cowardly nature or physical inequality to their foes, some supervillains manipulate events from behind the scenes. For example, the physical inequality of Lex Luthor, a man of human intellectual prowress compared to the sun-powered alien physciality of the character of Superman represents the duality of mind versus body. Also see: Ernst Stavro Blofeld of the James Bond novel and film series.

√ A strong commitment to their criminal profession to the point where they will quickly resume their activities in their favorite area immediately after escaping prison or recovering from serious injury.

√ A refusal to accept responsibility for personal mistakes and setbacks in favor of blaming their enemies or subordinates.

√ A back story or origin story that explains how the character transformed from an ordinary person into a supervillain. The story usually involves some great tragedy that marked the change. In the case of many supervillains, including Two-Face, Magneto, Doctor Doom, Mr. Freeze, and some versions of Lex Luthor, this story involves a one-time friendship with their future foe.

'a good serviceable fiction'

2007-01-29T09:59:00.000-05:00

Judges 18

Danites Seek Territory

1 In those days there was no king of Israel; and in those days the tribe of the Danites was seeking an inheritance for themselves to live in, for until that day an inheritance had not been allotted to them as a possession among the tribes of Israel.

2 So the sons of Dan sent from their family five men out of their whole number, valiant men from Zorah and Eshtaol, to spy out the land and to search it; and they said to them, "Go, search the land " And they came to the hill country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah, and lodged there.

3 When they were near the house of Micah, they recognized the voice of the young man, the Levite; and they turned aside there and said to him, "Who brought you here? And what are you doing in this place? And what do you have here?"

4 He said to them, "Thus and so has Micah done to me, and he has hired me and I have become his priest."

5 They said to him, "Inquire of God, please, that we may know whether our way on which we are going will be prosperous."

6 The priest said to them, "Go in peace; your way in which you are going has the LORD'S approval."

7 Then the five men departed and came to Laish and saw the people who were in it living in security, after the manner of the Sidonians, quiet and secure; for there was no ruler humiliating them for anything in the land, and they were far from the Sidonians and had no dealings with anyone.

8 When they came back to their brothers at Zorah and Eshtaol, their brothers said to them, "What do you report?"

9 They said, "Arise, and let us go up against them; for we have seen the land, and behold, it is very good. And will you sit still? Do not delay to go, to enter, to possess the land.

10 "When you enter, you will come to a secure people with a spacious land; for God has given it into your hand, a place where there is no lack of anything that is on the earth."

11 Then from the family of the Danites, from Zorah and from Eshtaol, six hundred men armed with weapons of war set out.

12 They went up and camped at Kiriath-jearim in Judah. Therefore they called that place Mahaneh-dan to this day; behold, it is west of Kiriath-jearim.

13 They passed from there to the hill country of Ephraim and came to the house of Micah.

Danites Take Micah's Idols

14 Then the five men who went to spy out the country of Laish said to their kinsmen, "Do you know that there are in these houses an ephod and household idols and a graven image and a molten image? Now therefore, consider what you should do."

15 They turned aside there and came to the house of the young man, the Levite, to the house of Micah, and asked him of his welfare.

16 The six hundred men armed with their weapons of war, who were of the sons of Dan, stood by the entrance of the gate.

17 Now the five men who went to spy out the land went up and entered there, and took the graven image and the ephod and household idols and the molten image, while the priest stood by the entrance of the gate with the six hundred men armed with weapons of war.

18 When these went into Micah's house and took the graven image, the ephod and household idols and the molten image, the priest said to them, "What are you doing?"

19 They said to him, "Be silent, put your hand over your mouth and come with us, and be to us a father and a priest. Is it better for you to be a priest to the house of one man, or to be priest to a tribe and a family in Israel?"

20 The priest's heart was glad, and he took the ephod and household idols and the graven image and went among the people.

21 Then they turned and departed, and put the little ones and the livestock and the valuables in front of them.

22 When they had gone some distance from the house of Micah, the men who were in the houses near Micah's house assembled and overtook the sons of Dan.

23 They cried to the sons of Dan, who turned around and said to Micah, "What is the matter with you, that you have assembled together?"

24 He said, "You have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest, and have gone away, and what do I have besides? So how can you say to me, 'What is the matter with you?'"

25 The sons of Dan said to him, "Do not let your voice be heard among us, or else fierce men will fall upon you and you will lose your life, with the lives of your household."

26 So the sons of Dan went on their way; and when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back to his house.

27 Then they took what Micah had made and the priest who had belonged to him, and came to Laish, to a people quiet and secure, and struck them with the edge of the sword; and they burned the city with fire.

28 And there was no one to deliver them, because it was far from Sidon and they had no dealings with anyone, and it was in the valley which is near Beth-rehob. And they rebuilt the city and lived in it.

29 They called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father who was born in Israel; however, the name of the city formerly was Laish.

30 The sons of Dan set up for themselves the graven image; and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.

31 So they set up for themselves Micah's graven image which he had made, all the time that the house of God was at Shiloh.

Judges 18:1-31 (New American Standard Bible)

It is a lie that Palestinians "had their own land, first of all, occupied." This is like saying that Texans had their own land occupied by Hispanics, ignoring the fact that Hispanics were there first. The very word Palestine is a Roman appellation for the people called Philistines, who were not Arabs but red-haired sailors from the Aegean. The Jews were there as well.

In short, first of all the Jews were in the land before the Arabs.

Second of all, the Arabs who inhabited the Palestine Mandate in 1948, at the time of the creation the state of Israel, considered themselves Syrians.

Third, the Palestine Mandate was not created on land taken from the Syrians or the Arabs. It was taken from the Turks.

It was not taken from the Turks by the Jews, but by the British and the French. They took it because Turkey sided with Germany in the First World War and, of course, lost. The Turkish empire had ruled the entire region including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan for four hundred years before Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan were artificially created by the English and the French. Jordan - a state whose majority is Palestinian - occupies 80% of the Palestine Mandate.

So it is a preposterous lie to say that the Palestinians had their own land and that it was occupied by the Jews.

Fourth, the individual plots of land that Jews now own were in the first instance bought from the Arabs who regarded themselves as Syrians and who lived in the area of Israel. The only property that was confiscated was confiscated as a spoil of the aggressive war that five Arab states waged against Israel from the day of its birth. Five Arab armies invaded Israel, a sovereign state, with the declared intent of "pushing the Jews into the sea." The cry today of the Muslim majority in the Middle East is to "liberate Palestine from the river to the sea." In other words push the Jews into the sea.

By the standards of occupation and legitimacy Jimmy Carter invokes, Israel has more legitimacy as a Jewish state than Texas does as an American state, rather than a Mexican province.

The fifth Jimmy Carter lie in this lone Jimmy Carter sentence is the claim that the Jews have colonized anything. "The Israelis have built more than 200 settlements inside Palestine."

Why is it wrong of the Jews to live in the West Bank? (The 7000 Jews of Gaza, of course, have already been expunged as result of the Arabs' genocidal hate.) Why can't Jews have settlements in the West Bank?

The answer is because the Palestinians Arabs are filled with a racist and theocratic hate towards the Jews. They can't tolerate a non-Muslim, non-Arab people — however small a minority — living in their midst. (The 7000 Jews of Gaza - out of a population of 1.2 million - were law-abiding and peaceful and created a horticultural industry that produced ten percent of Gaza's gross national product. But they were Jews. And that was intolerable to Palestine's Nazis. So they had to be removed.)

Contrast Carter's attack on Jews living in the West bank as "colonizers" who must be expelled with the fact that more than a million Arabs live in Israel, where Israel provides them with more rights - including the right to vote and elect Arab members of Israel's government - than any Arab who lives in any Arab state in the Middle East.

There is indeed a wall now between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. But it is not a wall to keep Arabs out of Israel because they are Arab, as Carter maliciously maintains. There are more than a million Arabs living in Israel. There are indeed checkpoints in the West Bank and into Israel and obstacles to Palestinians crossing them. But this is not because the Israelis discriminate against Palestinians because they are Muslims or Arabs.

It is because too many Palestinians have shown themselves to be bloodthirsty, murderers who have been indoctrinated by their religious leaders and their government to believe in a sick Islamic fantasy that it is their Muslim duty to kill Jews by blowing themselves up; and that, if they do so, they will go to heaven along with 70 members of their family; and, that, if they are lucky enough to be male they will be rewarded by 72 virgins on the other side.

David Horowitz. Jimmy Carter: Jew-Hater, Genocide-Enabler, Liar

—No wait don't not that no I, wait... She caught the corner of the table, flushed, —oh... getting breath, —oh. He'd straightened up with the Natural History magazine.

—I thought you'd thrown it out.

—No that's all right yes, yes for that story about, on the cover? you said they steal cattle? And her sudden urgency seemed to weigh everything on his response, the Masai and their cattle raids, as though right now in this kitchen, clinging to the table corner, nothing else mattered.

—Well, well yes, he said — they, it's their ancient belief that all the cattle in the world belong to them. When they raid other tribes they're just taking back what was stolen from them long ago, a good serviceable fiction isn't it ... He held the magazine out to her —you might want to read it? It's not what I want anyhow, there's a piece here on the Piltdown fraud I can just tear it out and...

William Gaddis. Carpenter's Gothic

Counter-spin:
here
here
here
etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

At last, a voice of REASON!

2007-01-26T10:32:00.000-05:00

Every so often I come across a hilarious book review at Amazon written by some comic talent who understands the power of satire. The following review for a book written by some FrontPager for the 100% mentality Trogs had me laughing all afternoon.

[Note: I noticed that Amazon has removed the review by "True Christian American" of William Blum's vital book Killing Hope. Hence I will reproduce the following review in its entirety so as to prevent its tossing into the memory hole. I'm sad but not surprised Amazon removes such reviews...]

Here, now, Martin Dawson's 5-star review of How To Be a Good Leftist:

Great book!!!, January 16, 2001

Reviewer: Martin Dawson (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews

I am a radical Rightist. Actually, I consider most Rightists to be too socialistic, big-government commies! I alone and individually am THE TRUE Rightist! The rest of you are wimps!

Rightist believe that their system is inerrant and infallible and that a mysterious superstitious force called (Adam Smith's) "Invisible Hand" will make us all Holy and Pure. Modern Rightists are just out for a power grab like all other political entities. After all the LOGIC is undeniable: If government is SO BAD, then WHY do the Rightists want to be a part of it!!! Why do they run for office??? THEY want power and control and have duped the true "freedom-lovers" like me into thinking that they have all the answers. Just like Newt did, the powers-to-be in the right wing will betray us!!! They don't seem to understand the concepts of PRIVATE PROPERTY.

For example: If I have a cable TV (CATV) line coming on my property, it is MY PROPERTY. The RF signal in the line is MINE. I paid for it and I can do with it what I want! And that includes selling it, giving it away etc. Why should some stupid idea like "Intellectual property" force and create a tyranny on MY personal property? If I sit in my back yard and an RF signal from the Clark Belt falls on my Real Estate I have the right to do with that RF what I want. And that includes decipher and decrypt it and SELL IT, give it away etc. In fact, a few years ago up in the West Virginia Mountains almost all the Satellite guys were just buying One decoder and cloning the EPROM (by burning a new one). What is wrong with that? I wish the Rightists recognized MY liberty to do with MY property what I wanted to instead of supporting big government regulation through ideas of "copyright" and "intellectual property".

Using your friend, William of Occam, I do not believe that anything like copyright or patents exist. They are an unneeded abstraction that needlessly multiplies entities. A video tape is a video tape. A book is a book. A CATV box is a CATV box. I own it thus I own it. What kind of superstition and voodoo says that I may own the physical material but I do not own the right to do anything with it that I want to? Let EVERYTHING be in the marketplace. The "free market" is what makes the world work. We wrecked the world in the 19th century when we destroyed the ability of people like me to own slaves. Are you or any of your family for sale?

Slaves were MY PRIVATE PROPERTY. How dare the Republican-Big Government-Liberal Tax and Spend Lincolnites send an army and take MY PROPERTY away from me without paying me? How dare the government steal my Private Property and then TAX ME to pay for the upkeep (welfare) of what was once my private property and what I was doing well with before. What kind of religious superstitious voodoo says that "humans" have certain "rights"? Where did they come from? God? The only "right" anyone has is to be "free" and that means FREE to make YOU a slave and do whatever I want with you. Bleeding hearts say that humans have "rights"! Phooey, show me what the rights look like? WHERE did they get the rights?

Slavery could have been ended if the slaves all would have just bought their own freedom. Why weren't they saving money and making investments and helping themselves buy their own freedom? NOOOO...they wanted some big government internal war program to come and save them. For example, old people on Social Security...Phooey! My 86 year old Grandmother is perfectly capable of supporting herself through prostitution with a few old rich geezers in her rest home. What is wrong with that? If we cut off her Social Security, she would have the motivation to get up off her duff and on to her back. I mean, you gotta give people an incentive to work. You give anybody anything for free and they get lazy and pretty soon start expecting charity. The best charity is to kick the poor in the ass and tell them to "get a job, bum!".

Some bleeding heart is always out there whining about how bad things are. Hey, they are BAD. I make almost $200,000 a year and I am getting robbed in taxes and regulated to death. I am NOT my brother's keeper! I shouldn't have to be. Let him take care of himself. No one promised anyone a perfect world. You gotta work for it. You know that when the doctor jerked me out of my mother's womb, held me up by my ankles and smacked my bare ass I never heard "society" promise me that they would take care of me? What is this place, Russia? Everyone needs to take care of themselves.

Can you imagine taxing the lions to support the gazelle's? It is a jungle. It is a dog-eat-dog world where the strong survive and the weak die. We are punishing the successful rich to support the inferior, unfit, losers and we are going broke doing it.

WHO is smart enough to define "fraud"? (BIG government Rightists?) When a Lion has colors that look like the landscape, is he a "fraud" to the gazelles??? Who died and left Newt Gingrich as God to define, "fraud"? When you start trying to protect people from "fraud" like the Rightists want, you weaken them. You make them too trustworthy. They come to expect big government to always be out there "keeping and eye". We need to have a population that looks out for themselves (Caveat Emptor-Let the buyer beware).

If the entire population is absolutely cynical and skeptical we would have a wonderful economic system. So, you may drop 50 cents into a Coke machine and get a can of nitric acid. That is a good thing. It teaches you to be wary. The word will spread about Coke and pretty soon the marketplace will drive them out of business. Who cares about all the suckers that did drink the stuff and get sick? They provided jobs for Emergency rooms and doctors and hospitals. It is all about business and profits isn't it?

One of the worst things in this country was Socialist Upton Sinclair's book, The Jungle. It forced government meat inspections which don't work anyway. So, a few people get E-Coli. Big deal. The marketplace is at work.

Yea , IT WAS ME who was in Miami after Hurricane Andrew selling water at 10 bucks a jug and generators at $2,500 a pop. I even sold baby formula to mothers at $50 a can. Hey, man, I believe in a FREE MARKET SYSTEM. You know what the State of Florida did? They sent these socialistic commie bleeding heart big-government people down there and wrecked my business! I was making buck fair and square. They accused me of "gouging" Hey man, its a FREE MARKET and I can charge what I can get. Where do the socialists come off telling me that I can't do business?

I believe in a FREE MARKET. I should be able to buy the roads that you drive on from your house to your workplace and CHARGE YOU A TOLL. These damn "public roads" are just the first step toward Communism! I believe in "privatizing" everything and charging user's fees. (Just like the so-called Rightists claim to want) If fact, I should be able to buy ALL the land around your property and charge you a fee to get off your property and to travel on my land. I would only charge you a couple hundred bucks to go to the grocery store. I am just sorry if you can not brew anti-biotic's in your bathtub. It is too bad that you can't drill for gasoline in your backyard. Make yourself self-sufficient and grow your own food. Take care of yourself. Learn to do your own brain surgery on yourself.

Why should I pay ANY taxes? I provide an income of 8 employees. What needs to happen is for all the very poor people in this country to be heavily taxed and give all the money to people like me. By taxing the poor you would force them to work harder and therefore get out of the low income brackets! Make taxation raise people's standards and not lower them. My principle: A decreasing tax rate! 75% under $6,000 a year to $0 above $185,000 a year.(that is about a thousand dollars less than I make)

If you could tax a guy making, say 45 cents an hour at the 50% rate and give it to me, I could build a bigger factory, invest the money and create more jobs! My slogan "tax the poor and give it to the rich". I mean, Anson, we are the people who are getting the job done! Did you ever see a poor person do anything but be a drag on society? I never took one red cent from the government, I only gave. I am not sitting around loafing or wasting my life away being a drag on society. Society needs to cut me some slack just like they are doing now to the lazy, stupid, uneducated, unmotivated leeches we call the "poor". Yesterday I was on the toilet talking on my cell phone and I shorted the market and made $16,000 in 14 minutes. Why can't the poor do this??? I can make money sitting on the john. Why can't they? I only pay my people the minimum wage and that is too high. If I could get some boat people in her for 45 cents an hour I could really complete with Wal-Mart. Last year I was forced by the government to put in dust fans because they were afraid that my workers were getting damaged lungs.

A Harsh Mirror

2007-01-22T14:47:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from Bernard Chazelle's impassioned, cynical, biting, surgically accurate Bush the Empire Slayer:

Historians will ponder how one gangly caveman and nineteen scrawny associates turned America into the land of the kind-of-free (53rd freest press in the world, tied with Botswana) and the home of the petrified. The sons and daughters of the nation that stood up to Hitler and Tojo now file through airport security barefoot, much as they would walk, shoeless, into a mosque — a mosque, they pray, empty of Muslims.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Breathtaking as they were, the majestic vistas of Rumsfeld's ineptitude were little more than a convenient excuse for war advocates with egg on their faces. The grand whining parade has already begun, and mealy-mouthed apologists are being wheeled in on bloated floats to proffer lame excuses about inadequate troop levels, insufficient 4GW training, political fecklessness, etc. Eventually, the chest beating will die down as it always does, with the blame for the debacle pinned on the dirty antiwar hippies.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Until we whacked them on the head, Iraqis had never expressed much desire to attack us. To the lesser minds, therefore, the idea of fighting them there so we wouldn't have to fight them here always teetered on the edge of insanity. To the neocons' delight, 9/11 came to cleanse the public discourse of the yelpings of lesser minds.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

The war has given the American mainstream media a brilliant opportunity to prove its essential worthlessness. It has shown itself to be little more than a circus of entertainers and cheerleaders for whom every season is the silly season.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

Victors are never war criminals. That's because they get to write the history books. Bush won't have that chance. The die has been cast and the hour is too late for him or anyone to alter the unforgiving judgment of posterity. Therein, paradoxically, lies our quandary. For, if freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, then Bush is a free man — free to pursue the most malignant policies, heedless of the consequences to his unworsenable presidential standing. Beware the desperation of a cornered man.

The apostle of imperial dominance, Bush slew the "last empire." The towering figure of our time, he is a piteously small man. The self-anointed emissary of a "higher father," he is servant to no power but himself. The captain of the sinking ship has laid his command upon his fellow Americans: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for me." No sacrifice of life shall be too great, no damage to civil liberties too high, no expenses too vast for a vainglorious man deluded by fantastic dreams of redemption by force.

But who besides the bereaved will mourn? Who besides the orphan will whimper? Who besides the humiliated will stare back? Who besides the thugs and the craven will lead? Patriotism is a lovely thing. In its name, some go dying by the side of an Iraqi road in twitching agony; others go shopping in oversized automobiles festooned with yellow ribbons. We all play our part — and nobody else's.

Yeats bemoaned an era when the best lacked all conviction, while the worst were full of passionate intensity. Today, Kristol blusters and hectors, Cheney scolds and forebodes, Bush struts and smirks. Meanwhile, the giant, timid chorus listens politely to the deafening silence of the outraged — and the mad march of war goes on.

An Inspector Lohmann 'Crystal Ball of Prescience' Award Goes To...

2007-01-10T17:38:00.000-05:00

Summary:

Global Research Editorial Note

The US has initiated a new military aggression against a sovereign country, in defiance of international law, using the threat of "Islamic terrorism" as a pretext. The threat of this illusive outside enemy is fabricated. Washington's hidden agenda is to create instability in the Horn of Africa, a region rich in oil resources, with a view to eventually justifying military intervention under a bogus UN humanitarian mandate.

Washington's justification for bombing two sites in Somalia is that members of Al Qaeda were allegedly "fleeing" through Somalia, when we know for a fact that Al Qaeda, which is a creation of the US intelligence apparatus, has consistently, throughout the post-Cold war era been covertly supported by US intelligence and its Pakistani counterpart, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) The White House has not confirmed the attack and nobody in Washington is asking questions.

Who could have foreseen such an out-of-the-blue attack?

Here, now... The Winning Entry:

Then:
December 13 2001

Now:
January 10 2007

Will Somalia be next? U.S. targets another poor country

U.S. forces pummel al-Qaeda targets in Somalia

An article filed with the Telegraph of London by Robert Fox and Jessica Berry on Dec. 2 reported "Britain has been asked by America to help prepare military strikes against Somalia in the next phase of the global campaign against Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. ... A team of senior British military officers who visited U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., last week was asked to prepare the strategy for attacks on sites in Somalia."

The rationale for all these military preparations is said to be Somalia's harboring of terrorists. But a report by BBC Africa analyst Elizabeth Blunt on Dec. 4 said "Somalia may still be a patchwork of feuding factions, but when a BBC team visited Mogadishu last week it found everyone united in asserting that there were no terrorist training camps in the country and that any American attack would be a great mistake."

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

If Bush spreads his war of exploitation and plunder to Africa, he will only further antagonize another huge section of the world's people, including many millions of workers here in the United States. That is probably why Washington is asking London to do some of the dirty work. But for the U.S. to get Britain, the world's biggest former colonial power, to attack Somalia only exposes both imperialist ruling classes as robbers bent on world domination.

The strikes appear to mark a very public escalation of U.S. military involvement, previously limited to tacit support of Ethiopia's December invasion of Somalia. It also underscores the willingness of U.S. President George W. Bush to wage war wherever a possible terrorist emerges.

⋅ ⋅ ⋅

After weeks of staying determinedly in the shadows while its ally Ethiopia invaded Somalia with thousands of troops, tanks and helicopter gunships, the sudden decision by the Bush administration to publicly raise the profile of its operations in the country suggests a deliberate change in policy.

U.S. Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency have paid close attention to Somalia since 2001, and Washington is believed to have provided covert intelligence assistance to Ethiopia's military effort over the past few weeks.

Congratulations to

Deirdre Griswold, and Michel Chossudovsky and his Centre for Global Research

for their intelligence, realism, and foresight. Their deep understanding of how the world really works has easily earned them this award.

Want to understand what's going on? I can't think of a better book than Michel Chossudovsky's America's "War on Terrorism" to help you fill in the pieces of the puzzle.

Here's a nice excerpt from pages 116-117. Hopefully it will be enough to whet your curiosity so you'll buy the book with all speed.

The American Empire

The onslaught of the US-led war also coincides with a worldwide depression, leading to the impoverishment of millions of people. While the civilian economy plummets, extensive financial resources are funneled towards America's war machine. The most advanced weapons systems are being developed by America's military-industrial complex with a view to achieving a position of global military and economic dominance, not only in relation to China and Russia, but also in relation to the European Union, which Washington considers as an encroachment upon America's global hegemony.

Behind America's "war on terrorism" is the militarization of vast regions of the world, leading to the consolidation of what is best described as the "American Empire". Since the 1999 war in Yugoslavia, an Anglo-American military axis has developed, based on a close coordination between Britain and the US in defense, foreign policy and intelligence. Israel is the launch pad of the Anglo-American axis in the Middle East. The objective behind this war is to "re-colonize" not only China and the countries of the former Soviet block, but also Iran, Iraq and the Indian peninsula.

War and globalization go hand in hand. The powers of the Wall Street financial establishment, the Anglo-American oil giants and the US-U.K. defense contractors are undeniably behind this process, which consists in extending the frontiers of the global market system. Ultimately, the purpose of "America's New War" is to transform sovereign nations into open territories (or "free trade areas"), both through "military means", as well as through and imposition of deadly "free market" reforms.

Defined under Washington's 1999 SRS [the Silk Road Strategy "outlines a framework for the development of America's business empire along an extensive geographical corridor" through Central Asia and the South Caucasus], America's war is intent upon destroying an entire region, which, in the course of history, was the cradle of ancient civilizations linking Western Europe to the Far East. In turn, covert support to Islamic insurgencies (channeled by the CIA through Pakistan's ISI) in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, China and India has been used by Washington as an instrument of conquest — ie, deliberately destabilizing national societies and fostering ethnic and social divisions.

More generally, war and "free market" reforms destroy civilization by forcing national societies into abysmal poverty.

A Ricercare of Random Quotes of No Particular Consequence

2007-01-09T14:41:00.000-05:00

→In his tour de force Planet of Slums, Mike Davis observes, "the Pentagon's best minds have dared to venture where most United Nations, World Bank or State Department types fear to go [T]hey now assert that the feral, failed cities' of the Third World --especially their slum outskirts -- will be the distinctive battlespace of the twenty-first century." Pentagon war-fighting doctrine, he notes, "is being reshaped accordingly to support a low-intensity world war of unlimited duration against criminalized segments of the urban poor."

→The military system that Rumsfeld and his precursors created is increasingly dysfunctional and meant only to suit the expensive demands and pretensions of the powerful companies in the military-industrial complex. The emphasis on expensive weaponry is good for the American economy; successful counterinsurgency war costs too little to maintain full employment. It bears scant relationship to the political problems that the U. S. has confronted for decades-and more now than ever.

→In other words, for Bush and his friends, defeat really is "unthinkable", just as it was to Kaiser Wilhelm when Wilson proposed a "victorless Peace" to Germany in 1917. Unless there is victory, the entire NeoCon world gets swept away, as do the Likudniks.

For that reason, expect a savage campaign to clear Baghdad of insurgents - which will fail with the loss of a great deal of American and Iraqi blood, followed by an all out bombing attack on Iran.

For the NeoCons, there is no other choice available to them, that is the tragedy.

→Washington's Hidden Agenda

US foreign policy is not geared towards curbing the tide of Islamic fundamentalism. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The significant development of "radical Islam", in the wake of September 11, in the Middle East and Central Asia is consistent with Washington's hdiden agenda. The latter consists of sustaining rather than combatting international terrorism, with a view to destabalizing national societies and preventing the articulation of genuine social movements directed against the American Empire. Washington continues to support—through CIA covert operations—the development of Islamic fundamentalism, particularly in China and India.

Throughout the developing world, the growth of sectarian, fundamentalist and other such organizations tends to serve US interests. These various organizations and armed insurgents have been developed, particularly in countries where state institutions have collapsed under the brunt of IMF economic reforms.

The application of IMF economic medicine often breeds an atmosphere of ethnic and social strife, which in turn favors the development of fundamentalism and communal violence.

These fundamentalist organizations contribute by destroying and displacing secular institutions.

In the short term, fundamentalism creates social and ethnic divisions. It undermines the capacity of people to organize against the American Empire. These organizations or movements, such as the Taliban, often foment "opposition to Uncle Sam" in a way which does not constitute any real threat to America's broader geopolitical and economic interests. Meanwhile, Washington has supported their development as a means of disarming social movements, which it fears may threaten US economic and political hegemony.

→A RAY gun that makes people run off because they think they are on fire could be in use by early next year.

The Active Denial System - dubbed the Goodbye Gun by US military chiefs - fires a harmless beam which causes an intense burning sensation.

It will be used to disperse large crowds and is set to be deployed in Iraq.

Tests showed a person can withstand the beam for up to five seconds before wanting to step away.

→Documents acquired for Wired News using the Freedom of Information Act claim that most of the radiation (83 percent) is instantly absorbed by the top layer of the skin, heating it rapidly.

The beam produces what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect," or "prompt and highly motivated escape behavior." In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
The beam penetrates clothing, but not stone or metal. Blocking it is harder than you might think. Wearing a tinfoil shirt is not enough -- you would have to be wrapped like a turkey to be completely protected. The experimenters found that even a small exposed area was enough to produce the Goodbye effect, so any gaps would negate protection. Holding up a sheet of metal won't work either, unless it covers your whole body and you can keep the tips of your fingers out of sight.

→Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is "martial law."

Section 1076 of the massive Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies." Section 333, "Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law" states that "the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of ("refuse" or "fail" in) maintaining public order, "in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy."

For the current President, "enforcement of the laws to restore public order" means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against "disorderly" citizenry - protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.

The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called "illegal aliens," "potential terrorists" and other "undesirables" for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That's right. Under the cover of a trumped-up "immigration emergency" and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.

→ The greatest danger in every democratic community has always arisen from the tyranny of the majority which asserts itself most strongly when the respect for free expression of opinion becomes weak and demagogues lustful for power, or when privileged minorities turn the ignorance of the masses to their own advantage.

→Here's the evolution of the Democrats' war platform since November 7, 2006, the day the voters presented a clear mandate: "End the war! Get out of Iraq!" and took the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives away from the Republicans.

So somewhat to their surprise the Democrats recaptured both the Senate and the House. Then they went to work--to obliterate the mandate.

→WASHINGTON [AP] - The first of up to 20,000 additional U.S. troops will move into Iraq by month's end under President Bush's new war plan, a senior defense official said Tuesday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged to hold a vote on the increase, which many Democrats oppose.

→Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

→[Never] will the vicious control without the aid of law. Society ever has and must ever have a very large majority who naturally fall into order, social adjustment and a rational, permissible means of life. The disorganized vicious would be far less powerful than the organized vicious, and would soon disappear.

...murder, robbery, pillage, rapine, have often been commended by the ruling powers, not only permitted, but under certain conditions that seemed to work to the advantage of the ruler, this conduct has been deemed worthy of the greatest praise.

The rulers make penal codes for the regulation and control of the earth and all the property thereon — the earth which was made long ages before they were evolved, and will still remain ages after they are dust. Not only do they make these rules to control the earth for their brief, haughty lives, but they provide that it may pass from hand to hand forever. The generations now living, or rather those that are dead and gone, fixed the status of unborn millions, and decreed that they shall have no place to live except upon such terms as may be dictated by those who then controlled the earth. To retain all the means of life in the hands of the few and compel the many to do service to support these few requires the machinery of the state. It is for this that penal laws are made...

→The public functionaries are not, as is commonly believed, the guardians of order. Order, which is harmony, doesn't need guardians, precisely because it is order. That which needs guardians is disorder and a disorder which is scandalous, shameful, and humiliating to those of us who weren't born to be slaves, a disorder which reigns over the political and social life of humanity.

To maintain disorder, that is, to maintain political and social inequality, to maintain the privileges of the ruling class and the submission of the ruled, that is why governments, laws, policemen, soldiers, jailers, judges, hangmen, and the whole mob of high and petty functionaries who suck the energies of the humble people are needed. These functionaries don't exist to protect humanity, but to maintain its submission, to keep it enslaved for the benefit of those who have contrived to retain the land and the factories for themselves up to this moment.

→ ...General Tira proposes an even more aggressive political tactic, "We must clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia so that it also persuades the US to strike Iran. For our part, we must prepare an independent military strike by coordinating flights in Iraqi airspace with the US. We should also coordinate with Azerbaijan the use of airbases in its territory and also enlist the support of the Azeri minority in Iran. In addition, we must immediately start preparing for an Iranian response to an attack."

Based on the urgency of General Tira's extraordinary pleas, it is immediately apparent that he has been shocked by the turn of political events inside America. By this time, he has learned from official US sources that the long-anticipated attack against Iran has been shelved because of tectonic shifts in American politics.

→Now that the Democrats are back in power, the American public can finally exhale. Bush is doomed. Cheney is on the ropes. Condi is updating her resume while Rove prepares his exodus. Well, such an optimistic outlook is boldly misguided...

A Quick Game of Blog Tag

2006-12-19T21:10:00.000-05:00

The rules say that I now have to post five things most people don't know about me. I then get to tag five other bloggers.

I love marathon driving. I've driven across North America coast-to-coast several times in a convertible two-seater with minimal stopping. My record is travelling across Canada on the trans-Canada highway from Vancouver, BC to Fredericton, NB then to Boston, MA in 60 hours.
I received a Sharp Shooter certificate in riflery at summer camp. (I was a good shot.)
I actually shed a tear or two when overwhelmed by beauty or things genuinely sweet. (Sibelius's 5th and Babe get me every time.)
I have a thing for shemales.
I believe I have Restless Legs Syndrome.

Joho → RageBoy → Tom → Me →

'Till Next Year

2006-12-11T21:16:00.000-05:00

I'm going on a short hiatus.

See you next year.

Be well.

Here's a little parting gift. I recently received an invitation to join the christian bloggers. Tempting as it is for a fox to be invited into the henhouse, I think I'll decline. But here's a blogger who accepted the invitation — a result, I expect, of his post about finding jesus in a most unusual place. His heartfelt remembrance of Pinochet is a masterpiece!

(And here's another, while I'm at it. [via The Defeatists])