An Anomic Army Marches Home to America
(and they’ve been trained to kill)

18.10.03 Wars don’t end when victory is declared, the damaging effects last long afterwards and not just in the theater of operations but also back home. America is anything but insulated from the damaging fallout from this discretionary and unnecessary war based on lies from beginning to end. Reading about the war in Iraq, one thing I can’t get out of my mind is the after-effects, the future Timothy McVeigh bombers and John Allen Muhammad snipers. They're out there waiting to be sent home from a living nightmare to become unemployed, angry and with a mountain of festering psychological baggage.

Disillusion, anger and a thirst for revenge against the lying string-pullers in Washington DC who’ve sent you and your best friends into a no-win situation where you face death, struggle and omnipresent pubic animosity every day. Someone is gonna pay…

Many of these soldiers are young, and in many ways naïve and idealistic, they're victims of a massive gap of expectations – between what they believe based on what they’ve been told, and what they actually find out to be true. Equally critical is the fact that most are male, they're not especially adept at effectively expressing the intense emotions of how they feel using words, but violent actions come easily. This coupled with a burned-in, battle-hardened attitude is a recipe for disaster. Even more appalling is the lack of counseling being given to returning soldiers, especially Reserve troops, apparently due to lack of resources!

Wake up call for the 'GI Joe' generation - real life be different than TV!

William Gentry, an Iraq veteran and prosecutor in San Diego, explained, “You are unleashing certain things in a human being we don’t allow in civic society, and getting it all back in the box can be difficult for some people.”

Indeed, much of military training centers around a deliberate ‘re-programming’ which encourages an “us or them,” “whatever it takes” outlook, resulting in behaviors and attitudes that are incompatible with civilian life and deep distrust and confusion among mentally traumatized troops. …

According to a letter written to Nebraska state authorities by Strasburg’s former platoon leader, Captain Benjamin Tiffner—who the Times noted was killed by an improvised explosive device in Baghdad in November—Strasburg needed care for combat trauma caused by following orders. “Seth has been asked and required to do very violent things in defense of his country,” Tiffner wrote. “He spent the majority of 2003 to 2005 in Iraq solving very dangerous problems by using violence and the threat of violence as his main tools. He was congratulated and given awards for these actions. This builds in a person the propensity to deal with life’s problems through violence and the threat of violence.”
From: Mounting social distress among returning US troops, by Naomi Spencer, February 7, 2008.

America's Economy is Based on Perpetual War

15.09.03 It's increasingly apparent that America is in a losing position trying to fight threatening beliefs, like radical Islam, with guns and bombs. But I have a feeling that one or more members of W. Bush and Associates have an awareness of the futility in their campaign of world war. From an electoral sense, as well as from a shortsighted economic view, defeat of the enemy is not the goal and in fact that would be counter-productive. The motivation behind modern warfare is the confluence of short-term political gain and medium-term economic realities.

Direct federal spending is the quickest and simplest means (but most costly due to the interest due on the debt) of boosting the domestic economy; it's directly equated into Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Further, the simplest method of doing that is massive defense spending. President Reagan read from the same script during the Cold War spending federal cash wildly on every conceivable weapons system from stealth aircraft to space based weapons like the Star Wars Defense Initiative (SDI), and even trying to build an entirely new class of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, among other things. The primary aim was boosting the domestic economy, but the secondary reason was competition against the Soviet Union; it was a race to bankruptcy.

The only way America can get away with deficit spending on the scale it does is the fact the debt is Dollar denominated which means paying it off is as easy as inflating the currency - just print a new dollar to pay off an old one! Even better, from a sitting politicians viewpoint the negative financial consequences will nearly always fall on the following administration not your own!

In practice the gainers from this system are not as obvious as might be thought. Perpetual war gives the defense contractors something to do, but anymore it only keeps their doors open as the world arms market is saturated with competing products. A bigger windfall goes to private companies who work as direct government contractors such as SAIC or Halliburton. Few pundits recognize the fact that most of the money isn't going into bombs and tanks it's just a massive accumulation of little things, like packaged food, uniforms, replacement parts, and especially military support services. Predominately in the American southeast, entire towns are employed by the military, often around bases, and indeed massive unemployment there would ensue if the military funding tap was cut off. Similarly, many factories exist which do nothing but make products for the military, everything from glass cleaner to hats, and many of these small business are run by former military officers who get their contracts based on personal connections.

The war economy's effects and beneficiaries are not as thinly spread as many think. But we often fall to realize that all military spending in America is never turned off, it's like a faucet spewing taxpayer money and it goes from medium flow to full blast depending on Presidential whim. Further it's also borrowed money, it isn't a gain like steel or computer chip production, it's a loss. Now true, there's a certain economic logic to direct federal spending because it can boost a sluggish economy, but when it becomes locked-in and institutionalized then it's like a subsidy, it's not in balance with supply and demand. This is especially ironic when considering the 'free-trade' aim to remove government subsidies for national industry. So the federal government can't legally help to build a computer chip factory to give Americans jobs but it can build a Navy base and employ both military people and a town full of support civilians.

Clearly this system of perpetual war for near-term economic gain is perverse, to say the least, but it helps to explain the need for new enemies every decade and especially ones that are amorphous and impossible to actually defeat, like 'terrorism' or drugs. And now the 'war on terrorism', along with the Department of Homeland Defense, has spawned its own satellite industry of security and technology-based factories and insider contracts, it's like a second military! The war economy grows bigger by the day while the legitimate, independent economy shrinks. 

America spends more on its military then about every other major country combined! The yearly budget for the Defense Department is now estimated at $450 billion give or take a few billion. No comparable military force exists anywhere to compete with the United States military machine; where's the justification anymore? It doesn't have to be this way.

America absolutely has to create independently viable industries for the 21st century, and hopefully ones that benefit the public and not just give them idle employment. There are so many places to put the money besides weapons and military support. Nanotechnology, biotech, why not find a synthetic fuel that costs less than $20 a barrel and eliminate foreign fossil fuel dependence? Or build a research colony on the Moon or Mars? Why not replace the space shuttle or find a cheaper way to move cargo into orbit and open up entirely new economies!? Explore the bottom of the ocean or just give every American a huge cash check - after all the spending would achieve the same goal from a traditional Keynesian economic perspective as long as they spend it (not a problem I'm sure)! The list is endless and Americans are creative people for the most part, why can't they translate that asset into novel government policy? There's never been a better time.

Understanding bin Laden

11.09.03 For brevity I'm going to start out by using at least two assumptions and one reasonable conclusion. The assumptions are that al Qaida is a real, organized terrorist group with the primary aim of attacking United States interests worldwide and that Osama bin Laden is the leader of al Qaida. The conclusion is that the attacks on the WTC towers and the Pentagon were, if not directed by Osama, at the very least enthusiastically approved of; Osama has stated as much himself.

Osama is himself a former money man and he knows how the western business world works, for that is what he trained for and did for a living before becoming a militant, religious radical. He views the United States as an imminent threat to his religion and his beliefs, and especially that of his ethnic brethren in the Arab world and his religious brethren throughout the globe. Why? Well, briefly here's the history:

All of this enmity goes back to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 which deprived Palestinians and Arabs of land they considered to be their own by virtue of the fact they and their ancestors before them had lived, farmed and died in that geographic location for hundreds of years. Similarly, for hundreds of years Jews lived dispersed throughout the world (but mostly in Eastern Europe) united by their religion.

Zionism was invented in the 19th century as a tool to connect Jews throughout the world with something they had not had before - a common home. Zionism used religious literature to define the Jewish homeland as the land west of the Jordan River. Palestine was not the first place considered, even Brazil and Madagascar were tossed around at one point, but it was the most viable of the options at the time because it was close to Europe and controlled by a receptive nation - England. Influential Jews made a deal with England during World War I to sponsor their side of the war in return for assistance in creating their new Zionist homeland. This alliance culminated in the Balfour Declaration which committed England to the creation of a Zionists state in that strategic wedge of land in Western Asia, but it really only gave the Jews a foot in the door and a tentative string of settlements.

The actual British motivation behind the restructuring of Palestine was much less one of charity towards Jews as it was of simple opportunism. The British government colluded with Jewish Zionism in order to cement control over a strategically important region of the world while also denying control to opponents, especially their inveterate economic competitors in central Europe (Germany). The Balfour Declaration was also seen as a means of getting the Jews out of the country; unfortunately for England the ‘win-win’ situation never materialized.

During World War II the Jewish leadership again sided with the allies and the return payment being full-blown statehood after the war - in other words, completing what they had started. Indeed this is quite ironic given the current Israeli government resistance to the present Palestinian effort to achieve statehood, but as we'll see this sad tale is rife with double-standards. Anyway, by the end of World War II England was for all practical purposes defeated and their Imperial power was eclipsed by that of the United States, but the objectives of both remained interwoven.

Transfer of Power - Political Power Follows Economic

Two devastating, fratricidal world wars in the space of 40 years had left Europe physically and economically ruined.  Control of the imploded British Empire, and basically everything that colonial Europe controlled plus the direct influence of world affairs that went with it, all were transferred to the source of the money which financed both world wars - the United States of America.

The United Nations was one of the primary elements in the post-war restructuring of the world order. The United States helped found the United Nations which although created for multiple, often humanitarian reasons, was essentially seen by the elite in America as a tool for granting legitimacy to certain international policy decisions, especially in this case concerning the Jews and Israel. One of the first acts of the new United Nations was to officially recognize Israel as a state in 1948. Wars followed, the Arabs lost, and Israel expanded - that's the story up until the present.

Today the United States government is an unwavering and uncritical ally of the state of Israel, and by extension Israeli government policies such as the expansion of illegal settlements in occupied territory. This alliance takes the form of billions of dollars in military aid in equipment and technology, as well as direct financial assistance in the form of cash payments as 'foreign aid' and loan guarantees, among other things. Since Israel is an implacable foe of Arab states and Islam in general Osama bin Laden reasons, just as former General Ariel Sharon of Israel does, that coexistence is impossible and defeat of the enemy is the only path leading to victory. Further, since Israel would not have the military tools or finances to survive independently from the United States (they don't), in order to stop Israel one must stop America, right? So now the question is: how do you stop America?

Tactics of a Terrorist

It's very important to realize that Osama sees the United States as a financial leviathan which can only be defeated by going to the heart and stopping the blood flow of this enemy beast; the heart is New York and the blood is money - Dollars. Osama's conclusion defines the palette of targets for al Qaida. The heart of the financial world, and thus the American financial empire is New York which is the main center for world trade - gold is priced and sold in Dollars, so is oil and most other crucial commodities.

Two of the biggest strikes so far have been the WTC towers and a hotel bombed in Bali, both of which are clear attacks on western finances; WTC is trade and Bali is tourism. Secondary targets for al Qaida are military, hence the attacks on the USS Cole and the Pentagon. But the widely dispersed range of targets in time and space testify to the disorganized and haphazard nature of al Qaida's terrorist network and its asymmetrical combat. The asymmetrical nature of the conflict is necessary because the terrorists cannot control the battlefield but must instead wait and plot in order to find the most opportune moment to strike, and when they do must attack a target with the highest reward to them and the greatest damage to the enemy for the least effort; they seek the biggest bang for the buck.

In a strategic sense Al Qaida faces a serious deficiency in the pacing of attacks, they instead are essentially random and do not escalate; this indicates a lack of central coordination and tactical control of the battlefield. Such lack of coordination has to be less than desirable from al Qaida's perspective but may be an acceptable tradeoff for achieving the security of a decentralized terrorist network.

Al Qaida may well be more of a symbol than an actual coordinated entity, likely an umbrella label for multiple, loosely connected gangs of hotheads and Islamic religious radicals who identify with Osama bin Laden and his ideals and band together on a local level to plot and attack according to their resources. Al Qaida organizes training in some cases and this allows for at least a semblance of coordination in tactics and targets because at least one member in each regional terrorist group has been clued in on the goals and spiritual mission.

The Bankrupting of America

The frightening conclusion here is that if al Qaida, meaning Osama bin Laden, truly sees success in their holy crusade as being won through the financial destruction of America then Osama has found about the most desirable opponent he could pray for in President George W. Bush. No wonder Osama is convinced his mission is sanctioned by Allah for Bush has forced a discretionary war on America against Iraq without sound pretext and without any discretionary spending to pay for it! Today America is actually paying foreign countries, like Poland, to send their troops into Iraq to create the illusion of an international effort and get a few America soldiers out of the firing line. The official cost of continuing operations in Iraq is estimated at 4,000,000,000 US Dollars per month. Further, there's still no evidence to connect terrorism, i.e. Osama bin Laden, with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who ran a secular, socialist regime. Factoring in the costs for fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq and everywhere else brings annual defense spending to around half a trillion dollars a year!

The end result is that Bush got his war in Iraq and every American is now paying for it, some with their very lives and the rest with their own money as the carnage continues long after victory was declared. To pay for this stunning debacle the federal government is taking out loans so fast the worldwide debt market is choking on the volume of paper flooding it! The price of gold is rising noticeably as it's seen as about the last safe-haven in times of high debt and financial turmoil. Current federal deficits are being compared to Reagan's tenure of reckless Cold War spending and the war in Iraq is approaching similar costs as that of the Vietnam conflict. So where's the reward? Where are the gains?

The truth is America gains nothing from war in Iraq but loses on a scale too vast to fathom. The financial loss is staggering and the political loss is nearly as appalling, for not only has the United Nations been undermined but the world community itself has been fragmented by the unilateral approach of the Bush administration.

The winners are not America, or even her allies, but rather its enemies. Osama has been completely justified in claiming America is a menace to the Muslim world and gains a theater of direct combat in Iraq with which to send fighters to attack and kill Americans. New converts are flooding in to train, fight and die for al Qaida amidst the rhetoric and polarization of dialogue which obscures the real issues of ignorance, poverty, injustice and flagrantly biased foreign policy.

Logic would dictate that the interests of a sovereign and independent state like the United States would be best served through fair and objective dealings with all foreign nations, not with taking sides and then refusing to question or analyze unhealthy relationships. Taking sides in any conflict, much less one as fractious as that between the Jews and Arabs, should be taken only with the greatest of trepidation and planning, and likely should not be done at all. Promoting injustice and getting deeply involved in foreign conflicts is a recipe for violent retribution.

The present situation is entirely unsustainable, but America is trapped between two formidable and seemingly immovable objects. Over the past fifty years the Jewish lobby in America has built an incredibly potent machine for manipulating United States foreign policy to favor the state of Israel and its government to the point that no federal representative can question this state of affairs without swift and severe retribution. Questioning Israel, or American foreign policy concerning the total support of that west-Asian mini-state, means career suicide for an American politician and instead the ones that want to climb the ladder do the opposite, they ask how much more can be given to Israel!

It appears that America will continue down the same perilous path until it either reaches financial oblivion and is physically unable to sustain the current state of worldwide warfare and military sponsorship of ultra-violent militant regimes, or until it seriously reevaluates its external associations and adopts a foreign policy as detached and impartial as practically possible, thereby undercutting the explosive fuel of injustice powering the likes of dangerous terrorists like Osama bin Laden.

In a dream ending for the chapter of history being written now in Iraq, neo-conservatives fantasised before the war about a privatised, pro-American Iraqi oil industry. This would have access to the world's second largest hydrocarbon reserves and produce so much oil that Saudi Arabia, in charge of Opec, would lose its grip on petrol prices.

The world would then be swimming in inexpensive petrol - the cost of which would be dictated by the market, not by an anti-American price-fixing club run by Riyadh. Low prices would also mean falling revenues for oil-producers, which in the Middle East might precipitate the collapse of regimes hostile to the US. These hopes are now being dissipated like sand before the desert wind.

Oil is dribbling, rather than pumping, from Iraq's bomb-blasted oil industry. Sabotage and theft mean Iraq's oil production remains at a fraction of the levels achieved under Saddam. With reconstruction failing to take off, there is little sign of a post-Ba'athist dividend in the form of low oil prices. The result is that US action in Iraq has not weakened Opec, and hence Saudi Arabia, but strengthened it. Oops!
Ironic isn't it that Iraq under Saddam produced far more oil for worldwide consumption than under the 'liberated' rule of President Bush?
From: Bush's oil move backfires, The Guardian, August 5, 2003.

The Israeli Factor

14.04.03 One simply cannot understand American foreign policy without Israel in the equation and this war plan unfolding today is about Israel at least as much as it is about oil. But the oil is not so much for American consumption as it is political and economic control of a crucial commodity. This is the same criticism leveled against Saddam when he invaded Kuwait - he could control half the world's oil supplies and extort world governments and influence policy, oh no! But now Bush does the same thing and it's a wonderful new world of freedom and democracy! The point is that oil is a commodity that must be controlled in order to further American-Israeli interests, with an emphasis on the second one.

Arab diplomatic sources said the U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq shut down the Iraqi-Syrian oil pipeline that extended from Kirkuk to the Syrian port city of Banyas. The Iraqi oil then continued via pipeline to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. - World Tribune

First task: turn off the spigot. Not only does the U$ now have military bases in the heart of west-Asia but Iran is nearly surrounded, with nominally American controlled Afghanistan on the other side, and Syria is nearly surrounded with Israel on the other flank. All these enemies of Israel can be kept in line through fear, and directly targeted through economic warfare such as the sanctions about to be slapped on a 'non-compliant' Syria and the oil deprivation against Syria and Lebanon of more limited effect. And of course the Palestinian suicide 'martyr' families won't be getting those $10,000 dollar payments from Saddam anymore.

Israel is set to get a direct pipeline of Iraqi oil through Jordan, terminating at the Israeli port of Haifa. What a deal! Let no one claim the Bush administrations is difficult to predict anymore, Hitler's policies of military aggression had more subtlety and nuance than Bush & Associates. Look at the biggest supporters for this war on Iraq, who are they? Neo-conservatives, Likud backers, Israel lobby and the Christian Fundamentalists and Dispensationalists.

Much of the American public knows they've been lied to about this war on Iraq, from beginning to end, but the widespread attitude in America is - so what? Who cares? Which itself is indicative of shortsighted ignorance among other flaws, but whatever the case they should care and here's why:

Public acquiescence shows those in government that blatant, self-serving lies and hypocrisy are deemed completely acceptable behavior by the American electorate.

 

The root source of terrorism is economic and social instability and this present age of imperialistic warfare is like gasoline on that smoldering fire.

 

The political elite are crafting a self-fulfilling situation wherein greater worldwide instability plays directly into their plans. They can use this artificial disorder as a pretext to consolidate their power, deprive the public of its rights, negate the Constitution and use increased warfare as a smokescreen and diversion against escalating domestic problems.

 

Israel is not friendly to American interests, they consume billions of American taxpayer dollars in aid and economic subsidies, re-sell sensitive, top-of-the-line American military equipment around the world (China and India are major customers) and kills American citizens without remorse, compensation or even an official apology such as Rachel Corrie or Thomas Hurndall.* As the saying goes with friends like Israel who needs enemies?!

 

Countries, just like individuals, are known by the company they keep. The Israeli government is regularly censured by the UN and multiple Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) for their apartheid social-political structure, chronic abuse and degradation of women, military-police brutality, and gross-violations of human-rights, just to start with.

The Bush administration has consistently stifled the efforts of developing world debt-relief organizations, yet suddenly after Iraq has been 'regime changed': whoa, these poor people need help with ! Iraq's foreign debts total up to 300 billion dollars. The double standards of Bush & Associates are as blatant as they are shameless, they don't even care - it seems that only divine retribution for hubris can stop them now anyway. But in the meantime they'll be busy knocking down all of Israel's enemies one after the other. Witness that immediately after Iraq is wasted and the countries money and natural resources expropriated into U$ control, Rumsfeld and the rest start vilifying Syria. Now it seems Syria has a vast arsenal of deadly chemical weapons while protecting all of Saddam's minions recently vanished from Iraq. Phase two begins.

"[Israel has] a long list of issues we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it would be best done through the Americans." - Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz

And of course the Bush administration has so much credibility after telling the world that Iraq had everything from chemical to nuclear weapons hidden ready to torch the world (how?!) if America didn't go in and 'take out' Saddam. Then where are these weapons?! If the Iraqi military machine was so big and bad why did they crumble like a sandcastle at high tide?

So the American government has defied world opinion to do this completely discretionary war against Iraq, already spent at least $80 billion dollars to begin with, trade and budget deficits are hovering around record levels, unemployment is increasing and the world economy is set for a 'double-dip' recession. Anger and resentment at the hypocrisy and injustice has already fanned the flames of fundamentalism and polarized opinion, setting the stage for even more bloody and contentious conflict throughout the near future. So then what do American's get from this prelude to perpetual war? Where's the benefit to the public, the taxpayer, the voter, the unemployed, the working mom, the small-business owner? I'm at a loss.

Any consistent criticism of Israel always draws out the same tired whine from the supporters of the dysfunctional status-quo - 'you can't say that it's anti-Semitism!' Look, if you're honestly trying to identify facts and speak the truth you can't let spurious, emotionally charged slander like anti-Semitism stop you and this is why: the portion of the Israeli populace that actually wants to clean up their corrupt and brutal government and integrate with the world needs external support to achieve their task. As long as American presidential administrations tacitly and overtly support the worst excess' and regimes in Israel such as the Likud party and Ariel Sharon, Israel will not become safer, livable or respected but rather more dangerous more hated and more isolated throughout the world. Further, if America continues to share the same bed with Israel, America and Americans will get up with the same diseases.

* All right, Thomas Hurndall is British and he's only brain dead, but the fact remains that the killing of activists really is being done on purpose by the Israeli military. And indeed it's difficult to conceive how a sniper bullet through the head can be anything but intentional. The Israeli military knows that if they just slay a few they can claim it's an accident and maintain just enough plausibility to cover their own butts and still scare away the protesters and cameras so they can go back to the business of demolishing homes and fruit trees as part of project: creeping colonies.

A Visual dictionary of modern American warfare

You Can't Spell War Without Dubya

21.02.03 Notice to Americans and non-Americans living in those other countries that are not America. Here is your official George W Bush update, just in case you've been in prison or an uncharted desert isle the past six months.

The 'War on Terrorism' has so far cost at least $28 billion dollars and considering how much safer we all feel it has to be money well spent, right?

 

Headline: U$ budget deficit at record levels as federal spending runs amok. Spending money is easy when it's someone else's and they even let you sign checks with a stamp!! Attention Federal Reserve: America needs greenbacks, don't let her down - keep those printing presses hot boys!

 

After just a few years of surplus' the government has announced it's out of cash and has to borrow more, a lot more, or go bankrupt. Keen observers out there may be feeling deja vu right about now since the federal government just went through the same debt ceiling battle nine months ago. So, how much more are we talking? $500 billion dollars would likely be a very close guess. Sorry guys can't help ya, my savings account is already tapped out, try Japan.

 

Bush buddy Donald Rumsfeld pushes for abolition of the Chemical Weapons Convention so he can preemptively gas the Iraqis. The nightly news may have forgotten to tell you that one, probably just an honest mistake.

 

Bush and trusty sidekick, the venomous Condi Rice, declare that massive worldwide protests against unprovoked war on Iraq are all just working for the benefit of that dastard Saddam. Further, these significant efforts by the public to voice a non-executive-approved-opinion will be ignored by the President because they just get in the way of freedom and democracy. Whoa, and I was nervous there for a second - stick to your guns Dubya (you've got a lot of 'em).

 

Oil prices are set to reach record highs in the near future as they soar towards $40 dollars a barrel, or in layman's terms $2.25 a gallon for regular. Fill 'er up!

 

Oh yeah and the Pentagon (with enthusiastic Presidential approval of course) decided to invade the southern Philippines. Thousands of Marines are now chasing down an army of a few hundred bad guys called the Abu Sayyaf who like to kidnap for cash (Philippine military intelligence estimates 100 members). Overkill you say? Hey it's a big jungle and we need something to keep the salivating news-crews busy until the real fireworks kick off. Besides nobody remembers what Jingoism is anyway. [Note: This plan went down in flames in early March. Turns out there are a few people left in the Philippine government that don't want to abrogate their constitution. Sure surprised Rumsfeld. 06.03.03]

Icon America

Our 'Democracy' Is a Lie

07.11.02 Observing the most recent U$ election, the only consistent element to the results that I could discern, because really a lot of it seemed almost random if not outright foolish on the part of the electorate, is that whoever spends the most money on their campaign walks away the winner. This is essentially given as a dirty fact within political science, at least in the sense that large financial advantages of one side or the other rarely results in a loss at the polls for the wealthy side.

If this is the case, think about what it means for American 'democracy'? If democracy is a commodity to be bought and sold, then there really is no democracy is there?! Reality is somewhere between a popularity contest and a very raw plutocracy. One way to test this would be to chart the winning side against the amount of money they spent on advertising and campaign promotion. If the correlation is as solid as I think it is then it will directly show that indeed elections are just another tradable commodity bought by the highest bidder.

Certain exceptions to this rule exist, for example if one candidate runs a very negative campaign that flings mud beyond the bounds of acceptability, they can sabotage their campaign despite financial and incumbency advantages. And theoretically if a candidate is universally disliked by media owners then the controllers of the primary information portals can refuse to sell that candidate airtime for commercials or billboards for ads or, radio spots, etc. In this case even a rich candidate could not win short of actually buying their own media empire, which has happened. Italy's Berlusconi is one example and I suppose Bloomberg in New York would be a smaller scale version too.

Initiatives that are placed on ballots are usually too complex for the average voter to figure out, and determining their eventual consequences is a task beyond just about anyone. So people just vote according to whichever side pushes their position the hardest using advertising. Tax increases are a little different because the public can directly understand the personal impact, but even there, if the tax increase is small and the proponents have serious cash to throw at it they can very often push it through.

Thus I would conclude that the November 2002 Republican party 'blow-out' if you want to call it that was largely due to their superior funding. President Bush has already broken records in his fundraising efforts (many of them set by Bill Clinton), so this election outcome really shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

Another element within American politics is the two party system. This system won't change anytime soon because of the above stated financial supposition. Only the two primary parties, Republicans and Democrats, possess the fundraising capability, the money machinery to compete in the election process. This is why even rich third party candidates have a difficult time getting elected. Ross Perot had to spend millions and millions of his own dollars to compete in a presidential election and lose anyway.

Democracy is based upon numerous assumptions, most notably that each individual voter carefully chooses the candidate that they perceive to be the most qualified and most likely to represent their needs and concerns in public office. Secondly, once elected those candidates will proceed to do what they promised they would do. All right, you can stop laughing now. Seriously, you and I both know neither assumption has any bearing upon reality. The choices presented to us on the ballot is rarely, if ever, what we really want to choose between, and every politician is a liar at some point or another.

Democracy is flawed in a similar way capitalism is by virtue of the disparity between promise and practical reality. A free market is a myth, an illusion, and both beliefs are predicated upon this mythical 'free market' of information to make them fair. Both democracy and capitalism are presented to us as operating under a situation of totally free information but in reality the information we get is far from complete and usually corrupted. We can't see all the outcomes and all the actual possibilities, just a few, and of those few we realistically see it is further narrowed down by obstructions, meaning lies, disinformation, confusion as well as the restrictions from the information portals that bring us the news. Furthermore anyone that obtains the power to limit information has an obvious interest in doing so against their opponents and in support of the candidates, issues or whatever they favor.

In a capitalist system money buys just about anything, not just information itself but more importantly the control of that information. So when people quip 'information is power' what they really mean is 'control of information is power'! This is why in our 'free' western society, the open and unobstructed exchange of information is not just a luxury but a necessity; anything less is not democracy but dictatorship. The authors of the American Constitution started well with the 1st amendment, the freedom to speak and express yourself, but that's only half the battle. As we've already seen it's not enough to just be able to say what you want we have to be able to learn and find out what we want too.

The $200 Billion Question

17.09.02 The latest figure on war with Iraq puts the total cost at US $200 billion dollars, and even at that astronomical level is widely deemed a conservative figure. This is up from previous estimates of around 60-90 billion based on extrapolations from the original Gulf War which was mostly reimbursed from allied coffers, such as Japan and Saudi Arabia.

Clearly, an important question to ask is, just what kind of war are we talking about, full blown land invasion, pinpoint air strikes, intimidating insults, diplomatic trash talk? Whatever the actual case will turn out to be, the $200 billion price tag is as good as place as any to start with, numerically speaking, since it comes from President Bush's chief economic advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, head of the White House National Economic Council.

So let's start with that. How much is 200 billion? I don't really know, I can't imagine ONE billion of anything and I doubt that anyone else can either. So the best thing to do is find a comparison. The entire Apollo moon project which was initiated by the visionary President Kennedy and lasted over a decade, cost $25 and a half billion dollars. That's 1960s dollars mind you. So, courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, I adjusted that figure for inflation to find out how much it cost in today's dollars to put astronauts on the moon for the first time in history. If 1965 = $25.5 billion then 2002 = $145.15 billion. So the entire Apollo moon project cost less than the official estimate of a new war on Iraq will cost. Instead of blowing up an impoverished third world country, we could send 8 missions to the moon (Apollo 11-18) and still have over 50 billion dollars left over!

Don't want to explore space, perhaps send American's to Mars? More materialistic in your desires? Think of 200 billion this way. If instead of allowing another sad chapter in a personal vendetta between national leaders to continue, we just treated this money as a direct loan to the American public (which indeed it is, all debt spending anyway). If every man, woman and child living in America, 270 million of them, were to get an equal piece, that would mean everyone in America got $740.74, not a bad deal. I could use a cool 700 dollars, how about you? Or more likely just dealing it all out to every taxpayer. I'm estimating 100 million since the IRS website was of no help, that would be a very nice $2000 dollars for each one.

The outcome of a question is dependent upon the options and how it's phrased. I have a distinct feeling that if instead of just asking the American public if they support a war on Iraq but if they would instead prefer a check for $2000, well, let's just say the answer would be nearly universal.

The Use of Farce Against Iraq

04.09.02 Anymore one can't utter the word America without the word war somewhere in the first few sentences. They say if you've got it flaunt it, but I don't think that was supposed to mean the shameless application of superior military force against every weaker nation within striking distance. Nevertheless that seems the case, especially if your nation happens to be on top of a large oil or gas supply.

Everything blamed on Saddam the U$ has either done to its own people, or even worse. The US has tacitly and overtly supported Saddam's own actions, especially when he was an ally against the big bad post-Shaw Iranian monster. For instance, the U$ government covertly used poison gas on its own soldiers during cold-war era naval tests. That same democratic government also turned a blind eye to Saddam's very same gas attacks used by Bush and similar warmongers today to justify a 'regime change' in Iraq! And actually the U$ government has gone even further than Saddam Hussein has. President Truman ordered the use of nuclear weapons on a defeated enemy (so as to actually test them in combat) not once but twice!

Endless talk of war on Iraq serves as a smokescreen to hide the fact that American and UK aircraft routinely strike sites in northern and southern Iraq as part of the ongoing operation to control the 'No-fly zones' over the top and bottom thirds of that country.

It started out innocently enough, allied warplanes circle around like vultures with a right to self-defense if Saddam happened to fire any missiles or light up any radars. However this limited targets of allied rage to missile and electronic sites. Once those were destroyed the rules of engagement had to be altered, obviously. Now the rules are pretty much - 'if it looks unfriendly, shoot it up'. Either way most people have not a clue this is going on, or don't care. So instead of reporting air strikes over Iraq the mainstream media can fight for ratings with endless talk show debates on bombing Iraq 'today' or 'tomorrow' when in reality the only part of Iraq left to attack is the central third of the country where Baghdad and Saddam Hussein reside. The only thing left to blow up in Iraq is Saddam.

No one really wins here, not the long-suffering Iraqi people plagued by despotic abuse and starvation inflicting sanctions courtesy of world authorities. Not the America people who, despite the entertaining charge from a televised carnage in another far off land, gain nothing but worldwide enmity and another generation of suicide warriors. Not even the 'W' Bush who will likely meet the same ignominious electoral defeat as his father in a remarkably similar situation about a decade earlier.

Those who care or dare to look will find that a very serious crack has formed in the foundation of The Empire of Lies. This fracture was started when the first American bombs fell on Afghanistan. Just since the second world war America has attacked and bombed: China 1945-46 and 1950-53, Korea 1950-53, Guatemala 1954 and1967-69, Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959-60, the Belgian Congo 1964, Peru 1965, Laos 1964-73, Vietnam 1961-73, Cambodia 1969-70, Grenada 1983, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1980s, Nicaragua 1980s, Panama 1989, Iraq 1991-?, Bosnia 1995, Sudan 1998, Serbia 1999, Afghanistan 2001-? Not to mention various 'dirty-wars' and 'black operations' too numerous to mention. I don't know about you but I think I see a pattern of aggression here.

Essentially every war recorded in the popular history of America was (conveniently) started by enemies, thus neatly absolving America of ensuing atrocities while also justifying blatant jingoistic antagonism. For example, we all should know that the Vietnam war was officially initiated by the concocted Tonkin Gulf incident, due to the belligerency of President Lyndon Johnson. World War II was a similar case. While not conducting provocations in the North Atlantic against the German Navy, the Americans actually fired the first shot before Pearl Harbor against the Japanese. This startling fact was proven thanks to evidence discovered along with a sunken Japanese midget submarine off the coast of Hawaii. The first shot against Japan was ignored by military and congressional tribunals investigating the attack on Pearl Harbor. Nine wartime commissions of inquiry ignored the fact of the first American shot, and the incident that sunk the Japanese submarine was omitted from historical accounts.

Even more outrageous, the American government actually had advance knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack having already broken the 'Purple' code. Authorities in Washington delayed informing Hawaii to make sure that Pearl Harbor happened and Roosevelt's war could get started.

Obtaining crucial signals wasn't that much of a problem on Halsey Street at the beginning of the Second World War. U.S. cryptographers had broken the Japanese Purple Code and were able to tell the Portland station which radio frequencies to listen to and when to do it.

'We didn't know exactly what we were monitoring," McCann said in 1971. "We just took the stuff and sent it on." The results should have given the United States a huge advantage.

In mid-November 1941, McCann and his crew got orders to pay close attention to a certain Tokyo radio station. The codebreakers had deciphered Special Message No. 2353 of the Japanese Foreign Ministry ordering its Washington embassy to "destroy all code papers etc.' if the Tokyo station used a certain phrase in a weather forecast. "Higashi no Kaze ame" — Wind-Rain" — would mean that Japan had decided to attack the United States.

Halsey Street picked up the phrase twice in plain language Nov. 19, and on Dec. 4 intercepted and forwarded a stream of Japanese Imperial Fleet Headquarters messages to a task force at sea. [1]

But that's only part of what really happened, for in 1941 high ranking Japanese Naval officers visited Pearl Harbor where they were gladly sold every kind of map and aerial photo they wanted while posing as tourists. The attack plan they used was exactly the same as the one created and tested in 1932 by Admiral Harry Yarnell of the US Navy. All the Japanese had to do was read it. [2]

The machinery of the state run amok, as well as the institutions functioning in conjunction, fight battles with guns and lies. But never forget that we're all in the middle of a war of the mind and no ammunition is more devastating than revelations of truth.

1. 'Northwest spy station sees all, hears all', by James Long, The Oregonian, Sunday April 28, 2002.

2. More of Paul Harvey's The Rest of The Story, by Paul Aurandt, Morrow 1980.

Downward Spiral

24.07.02 Anti-American sentiment is on the rise worldwide, a predictable and understandable product of federal government actions and rampant cultural misunderstandings. The way in which America functions is something both Americans themselves are often in the dark about, because they have no other references, and outside audiences have a difficult time figuring out just who's really in charge and what the motives are because they use a traditional domestic template to understand a unique foreign occurrence.

America is a vastly misunderstood paradox for many reasons, mostly because of media distortions but also simple cultural misunderstandings. I think this is a bit tough to adequately convey to external audiences and perhaps explains much of the antipathy towards American society, but we have no core constituencies. All the power and all the resources are divided up according to who has the greatest influence at present within the spoils process. Conversely, the European system for example is much more academic, much more let's be nice and we can agree upon a method of making everyone happy, the socialist model has immense public appeal. But there you have a core interest, a consistent, singular culture and ethnicity. Hell, even Mexico has this. Everybody understands what to expect in Mexico, the culture, the people, etc. But what is America?! It's Mexico on this block, it's Greece on that block, it's China on that block...

Revolution and direct social action are often viewed in radically different ways between America and the rest of the world. In Europe these people are usually seen as either communist agitators or fascist thugs both of which want to take over the government so they can tell others what to do. Most Americans couldn't care less about the damn government, they're concerned with their own interests. Europeans see that aggression and interpret it to mean "believe what I do or I beat you up". In America this process isn't for fun, this is for survival. We can't kick back and collect unemployment for years like some European welfare state, if we get sick or injured there's no health care, and the ones with jobs do 40,50,60 hour work weeks not 35. If you want anything here you have to fight for it and all you get is what you can take. This isn't a demo-cracy it's a mob-ocracy! Welcome to the Balkanized America 2002.

Community is destroyed and undermined by good intentions and flawed planning, zoning laws, inconsistent building regulations, layers and layers of government all trying to regulate a huge country of vastly disparate norms, cultures and standards. Federal and state policies carve everything up into districts creating ghettos and ethnic enclaves coupled with the rise of commercial professionalism and the erosion of traditional private and informal social ties, often wreaking havoc with community bonds and healthy social connections. This is America turned fully into a business and not a nation. Asian gangs, skinheads, Crips, Bloods, I mean I don't like gangs but I can completely understand the reasoning driving people into them. They're trying to protect themselves, their friends and their territory. The structure of U$ politics and how resources are apportioned creates this mess because it doesn't address their needs. It gives them no jobs, police harassment, discrimination, and lip service to their deeply rooted problems. Then wages a narco-war against its own people and whines about drug abuse. No shit these people are selling drugs, what the hell else can they do for income?

Today we've got middle-aged people reaching retirement but instead of the pensions system their parents had they have stock market portfolios. The stock market has crashed and now they can't retire. The generation of my parents will be working until they die because they have no money. This means people my age can't get jobs, can't break into the marketplace and start a career because all the open slots are filled.

We've got a 'Social Security' system that most fear will be hollowed-out and full of IOUs by the time my generation reaches that age, yet we've still got to pay a big chunk of our wages into it! We know this because we see how the resources are funneled off, we see how the government steals from its own and how they do the exact same it now accuses private corporations of doing - cooking the books, lying about income, and defrauding customers. Back during the Clinton years the budget magically went from deficit to surplus because of a cute little accounting trick, counting Social Security money as income even though it has to be paid out again later!

If you wait on your ass here the avalanche will bury you. One has to be an activist here, you wait in one place long enough and you're dead meat. So to survive one has to fight for what you need and the bigger you are the more influence you have and the better your slice of the pie, so to speak. It's an ominous commentary on society that the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) is the largest interest group in the U$A now. It will only get bigger as the population gets older. Leftists like to talk about 'unity,' 'solidarity' and similar ludicrous fictions. How can we have unity when everything you get is at my expense? One can't co-opt this type of a system, a system where equilibrium is maintained by the frantic distribution of dwindling resources amongst competing factions, it can only be exploited until it collapses.

Planet U.S.A. (Axis of the Universe)

October 2004

12.08.02 From an article by The Economist, A stigma that never fades, "Roughly one in five black men has been incarcerated at some point in his life; one in three has been convicted of a felony." I had to read that part several times to get the full impact; stunning if true. Connected to this but from another unofficial source: "On any given day, nearly a third of all young black males are in prison, on probation, or on parole." So is the truth racist or are we just inundated by misleading statistics? Well the Economist being the race baiting rag that it is .... not ,I decided I should check out the statistics myself. Unfortunately since they didn't cite the report they used it was pretty much impossible to find that specific data point, but what I did find was nonetheless quite interesting.

"In 1997, a quarter of the people living with HIV or AIDS in the United States had come out of prison that year. The numbers are even higher for hepatitis C and tuberculosis. When a resistant form of TB hit New York city in the late 1980s, 80% of cases were traced to prisons." See the 1996 HIV in prisons report and keep in mind, "The average prison sentence is still only 28 months."

"In 2000, nearly 6.5 million people were under some form of correctional supervision including:" 4 million just on probation!

The demographic information is buried within the reports but the dollar amounts are much easier to find, for example America spends $54 billion a year on the entire prison system.

17.03.02 "I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run," Bush on Osama, March 2002. Every time the Bush administration people are asked about Osama they say they're "in hot pursuit" but when asked where he's at they say they don't know. How can you be in hot pursuit if you don't even know where your target is?!

"The war on terrorism was bigger than any one person." ibid. Now Bin Laden's vanishing act is so good that he's even missing from much of the administrations dialogue on terrorism to be replaced by 'axis of evil' hyperbole and the imperative threat to humanity posed by the dastardly Saddam Hussein.

But Osama is not the only one versed in the art of vanishing into thin air, the "eviscerated" Taliban seem to be remarkably adept at doing the same against U$ military forces. One moment "hundreds" of Al-Qaeda / Taliban soldiers have been killed and the next they find a dozen bodies and a smoldering campfire in the newly liberated mountainside cave. The war that's supposed to be over doesn't look like it will be ending anytime soon. Instead the brutal reality is American, Canadian and many other western forces are now pitted against a cunning, well trained army of guerrilla forces sharp enough to take down helicopters with small arms fire, spin their opposition in circles while drawing their fire then leave suffering only minor damage! At the same time U$ forces are being tricked by duplicitous local warlords into bombing friendly Afghans who just happen to be the warlords competition. This highlights the fundamental difficulty plaguing intelligence and planning in this operation, that being just dividing the friendly from the enemy.

And even a half-wit can appreciate the absurdity of a B-2 stealth bomber dropping precision munitions on a mountainside. It seems like a concerted effort to use the most expensive weapons against the most mundane targets.

The most glaring issue remains unanswered - how does this operation serve American interests and how is it making America safer?

• "Officials said blood was drawn from 300 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters held at a U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This could be used to create a DNA database to track them."

• 'Operation Anaconda': "One senior Afghan leader, Commander Abdullah, said that the enemy fighters fled during the heavy U.S. air bombardment. Another commander Abdul Wali Zardran, said that coalition forces did not wipe out al-Qaida's fighters. "Americans don't listen to anyone," Zardran said. "They do what they want. Most people escaped. You can't call that a success."

• "If we expect to kill every terrorist in the world, that's going to keep us going beyond doomsday." - Senator Robert Byrd

Crisis Colombia

22.02.02 Colombia is best known for its drugs and coffee, but it also produces oil, and coupled with Mexico and Venezuela, sates much of North America's voracious appetite for gasoline, and best of all in a cheap, reliable, non-Arab form. So it should be no surprise the increasing frequency of interest in Colombian events, especially as they've been rapidly deteriorating lately.

The statistics tell their own story. Colombia has been embroiled in a civil war for 38 years. A large portion of southern Colombia was ceded to the guerrillas as a demilitarized zone by President Andres Pastrana in peace talks. Over 3,500 people die every year in the conflict and 40,000 have died over the past ten years. Over 30,000 cars are stolen each year which some say end up in the demilitarized zone in the south. Those rebels are composed of outlawed right-wing military commanders and their associated death squads now numbering over 10,000 and ideologically murky, leftist rebels of which Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is the most notable with around 15,000. The other leftist group has 4,000 soldiers and goes by the name National Liberation Army, or ELN.

It's difficult to discern exactly what, if anything, ideology has to do with the characters involved in this tragicomedy being played out in the stifling humidity of the South American jungle. More than anything it really seems like just a power play among disaffected leadership cliques barely running, or trying to run the zoo that is Colombia.

But of course from the American standpoint it's never enough to let a Western hemisphere nation get bogged down in a civil war alone and indeed Washington has been arming and training the Colombian military for years on a rapidly increasing curve of cost and involvement. The pretext for the past decade or so has always been counter-narcotics, in other words it was legal to support and arm an untrustworthy government because it was for the express purposes of stifling the supply of illegal drugs reaching North American black-markets. Of course, as even the lukewarm perceptions of a fool can predict, depressing supply only at one point without decreasing demand at the receiving end only boosts production of drugs in another unstable and impoverished portion of the world. But herein lies a self-fulfilling prophecy because Colombian drugs have not waned over that time period but the apparent need for increased military training and hardware to stem the rising drug tide has increased remarkably.

If the guerillas aren't going away, if the drugs aren't going away, if American involvement isn't going away, what are we left with? Some pundits have called it the next Vietnam (but Pinochet's Chile might be a more apt comparison). It certainly has many of the factors, impenetrable jungle, guerilla safe zones and the facade of your standard issue, left-right ideological conflict. Regardless of the parallels or differences, America has spent over one billion dollars just in the last year on Colombia. Colombia receives more aid than any other outside of the middle east, meaning Israel and Egypt. The Clinton administration devised 'Plan Colombia' to funnel millions of dollars into that south American regime while Bush has adopted the same program but at higher funding levels and more overt assistance.

Welcome to FARC country, Colombia

Bush has also requested $731 million for the Andean Counterdrug Initiative in fiscal year 2003, including $439 million for Colombia, and an additional $98 million in military aid to help train a Colombian brigade to guard the 490-mile (780-km) Cano Limon pipeline whose oil field is operated by U.S. firm Occidental Petroleum Corp. - Reuters, February 2002.

President Bush's latest maneuver has been to mostly drop the flawed and failing counter-narcotics boilerplate excuse and simply state that aid to Colombia is for protecting the oil pipeline running out of the southern part of the country. Yes the same one that gets bombed and leaks all over the place on a near daily basis. How is the big question. Details, details. We all know oil and related industries of exploiting natural resources are very important to this administration. And why shouldn't they be? Money talks and when you can pump oil out of the ground for pennies and sell it for $20 bucks a barrel on the market, that's a serious profit margin! Are the corporations involved in that scam ever going to sincerely promote their replacement? Will they ever openly allow alternate forms of energy to reach the consumer in a cheap and reliable form equal or better than gasoline? If they did it would be suicide.

Now the crisis in Colombia is about oil and the issue is made complex by the simple fact that oil originates in guerrilla held territory in the south and has to be piped to the ports in the north. Even though the Colombian government made peace deals with the guerrillas, chronic, low level insurgency has been ongoing throughout the country (and the wider region actually). The Colombian President has now declared war upon the guerrillas, dumping dialogue, giving up on peace talks and sending the military with American aid into guerrilla territory. The timing of this move, although superficially precipitated by a rather typical guerilla kidnapping, is interesting because it coincides perfectly with Bush's change in approach from drugs to oil.

One thing is for sure, Colombia's president Pastrana would never have declared full war on the rebels if he didn't have the unconditional backing of his powerful neighbor to the north, the good 'ol US of A. And now it looks like the jungle's of Colombia are set to get even hotter.

Triumph Over Reason

10.12.01 USA! USA! USA! Who cares about Al-Qaeda anymore, the monstrous and immense Taliban have been defeated because they're now an amorphous guerilla group you can't easily find or target - out of sight out of mind. And let no one question the stellar ability of the U$ war machine to slay the innocent for vague, opportunistic geopolitical goals, then play up the wrong victory for a few popularity points from the dazed electorate while creating a brutal, chaotic, destabilized situation replete with increased anti-American animosity in yet another impoverished country. It should seem ironic that more American soldiers have been killed by the ultra-accurate laser/GPS guided munitions of their own military than the enemy can claim credit for, oh but you'd have to be getting your factoids and agenda driven sound-bite from some other 'news' source than the redacted domestic outlets, ABCNNBCBS et al.

The Pentagon's Generals get a thrill from boasting of more violence to come, since 'now the world knows the consequences of supporting terrorism!' neatly crystallizing dissociated sentiment into a monomaniacal 'us first at the expense of everyone else' mentality. It's not necessarily a new policy just a convenient culmination in presidential administration and chance events.

'So fuck the rest of the world, it's just U$A and Israel all the way and everyone that doesn't totally support us is against us!'  Evidence? Here's a recent one, what of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) consisting of no less than 144 countries. This December, just an hour before the meeting was to conclude in agreement, the U$ delegation does a complete turnaround and demands that any legally binding elements be removed, thereby totally sabotaging the convention. This move left the other members with a lot of wasted time and effort as well as some appropriately unkind words for America's egregious behavior. Just a few more toes crushed with the cowboy boots, eh Bush?

Bush, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, America's triumvirate of treason in the name of 'patriotism' and Israel's Sharon must be reading the same book on domination and repression through intimidation and abuse of power. It's hardly any secret the two nations are joined at the hip in foreign policy goals. Both countries do the same thing anymore, act conciliatory even though you aren't, set up diplomatic channels then trash them at the last minute and blame everyone but your own intransigence for the damage that ensues. It shouldn't come as any surprise the similar horrific conclusion that will play out for America just as it already is for Israel. But what's really frightening is the shared attitude apparent in the Bush administration's overall tone since September 11th, namely the repetition of America's completely blameless nature coupled with the absolute rejection of all appropriate responsibility for past actions or present policy. Just like the West Bank Hamas suicide bombers, Bush like Sharon is using September 11th as a blank check to attack any country from Afghanistan to Zaire, and any group or individual from Middle Eastern-looking cab drivers to Islamic charities in Texas, anywhere and anytime. 'So who cares, wars are brutal, people die, accidents happen give 'em a break! '

Bush and Rumsfeld's reckless and vindictive rhetoric against military opponents and the demonization of enemies directly undermines America's moral authority crucial to winning this undeclared war (assuming it can ever be won). Secondly, the public proclamations of 'no mercy' are flagrant promotions of Geneva convention illegality. Finally it magnifies the fighting resolve of opponents, because if they're sure of execution or torture upon surrender the enemy becomes immensely more dangerous and fanatical. This was a key point in the Gulf War conflict. America's military leadership carefully employed a reputation for humane treatment of war prisoners in propaganda, and for the most part in battlefield conduct, to defeat the resistance of Iraqi soldiers. Consequently despite Saddam's direct threats of death against his own soldiers, Iraqi troops defected in droves.

This is common sense and psychological warfare 101, but the Bush administration is throwing that reputation away with wayward words and dastardly deeds, and once it's gone it will essentially be impossible to regain! Future conflict will be immensely more violent and bloody because of their policy, all the while Americans are immersed in a new world no longer able to glibly believe they're protected from flawed foreign policy and distant conflict.

A Menace To Society

11.12.01 You know the September terrorists who perpetrated the attack are bad enough but venal politicians exploiting the tragedy to further their agendas, aggrandize their authority and attack opponents are far, far worse, especially the ones that find zeal in vitiating the Bill of Rights - meet Attorney General John Ashcroft, menace to American society (cue ominous music). No one can really know what this guy is thinking, maybe he actually believes he's making America safer, he already believes Jesus is giving him divine guidance on how to subtly update the Constitution (with a blowtorch) so it wouldn't surprise me. Not that it ultimately matters given the irreparable damage being done to the Bill of Rights and rule of law, all of which would have been unthinkable only three months ago.

Where did Bush find this clown? Missouri, but they didn't want him, they voted for the dead guy (Carnahan) instead, so where else could an authoritarian religious zealot find work but with the Bush administration? Nobody voted for him to be Attorney General, he was appointed by Bush who most Americans didn't vote for either. The Supreme Court appointed Bush to the office of President and last time I checked the American people were never asked for their electoral input on determining the members of the Supreme Court either, all are appointed. So much for 'representative' democracy where it counts and when it really matters; no, this brand of democracy is just a misnamed form of collective punishment. So what's our unelected representative sworn to uphold the Constitution been doing in office lately?

On the fifth of November the Justice Department reported a total of 1,182 detained in connection with the terror investigation. All of those detained entered the country completely legally but are being held on thin or nonexistent pretexts, meaning they didn't cross the t's on the work visa, or whatever. For various excuses, er I mean reasons, the justice Department is unable to state exactly how many are still locked away and how many have been released. So, in other words they don't know and aren't keeping track. Indeed not even the identities of those being detained can be released because it will purportedly damage the case against them. And besides, the ever fair and benevolent Justice Department is protecting their identities you see! None of those detained have been charged with a terrorism-related offense.

 

Without a twitch on his poker face Ashcroft has denied singling out anyone on the basis of race, creed, or national origin for his worldwide roundup of 'suspicious' people nearly or indeed all of which are of Arab or Central Asian descent. So it's all just a remarkable coincidence, right John?

 

John Ashcroft's public appeal to report "anything suspicious" to the FBI has netted over 400,000 tips from dutiful snitches across America. Yet oddly enough none of those leads have done anything but divert FBI resources from other crimes while yielding NO substantive clues in the September 11th terrorist attack.

 

This terror investigation has sent out lists of names of vaguely, potentially suspect but otherwise completely innocent people to be rounded up and interrogated by police. So far only one city has balked at this flagrant violation of law, that being Portland Oregon because it contravenes state law. Not surprisingly Ashcroft's minions fire back declaring his decrees completely legal, you know don't worry about it just do what we tell you, dammit.

 

The same month Ashcroft already angered many Oregonians for attacking their four year old 'Death With Dignity' law passed twice by state voters and functioning without complaint or problem. Suddenly in November 2001 during the middle of the terrorist investigation and an undeclared war on Afghanistan, Ashcroft, evidently with little better to do, determines Oregon is way out of line and orders an immediate halt to all assisted suicides. Complicated issues are always easier when Jesus is telling you what to do, right John?

 

Ashcroft has mandated that prisoners no longer have the right to private legal counsel, granting his office the power to eavesdrop on any such conversations at his discretion.

 

The FBI has invested some six million man-hours into the largest criminal investigation in American history yet remains completely unable to prove any terrorist conspiracy took place on September 11.

 

The argument used by Ashcroft and the Bush administration for its drastic actions is inaccurate at best and completely erroneous at worst because the United States is not at war, only Congress can declare war and no such thing has happened. But Ashcroft has already demonstrated his respect for the spirit of freedom and Constitution by personally stating that criticism of his authoritarian measures aids the terrorists.

 

How many more bullet pointed outrages on American civil liberties is dictator Ashcroft going to perpetrate before he either shuts down all dissent or shrivels up in the sunlight of honest, open debate and adherence to Constitution and law only to ooze back into the dark crevice he came out of?

The most likely explanation, that everyone involved died a fiery death in the plane crashes, seems logical to me. Yet it's clearly unacceptable to Ashcroft, Bush and the FBI since they can't use it as a pretext for establishing a police-state. Secret trials, secret charges, no legal privacy, racial profiling, extended detention, jailing without charges and now even trial under military tribunals with Bush's latest Executive Order; does all this sound like an expression of confidence in securing a conviction for the truly guilty? Or more like this massive, globe-straddling security investigation combing the world for weeks, so desperate for a patsy (or a thousand) that it's reduced to framing innocent people and trashing the Bill of Rights and hundreds of years of legal procedure in the process?

Seems to me like the desperate maneuvering of a failed and fundamentally flawed, illegal investigation working from the singular pretext of de facto guilt and the monomaniacal desire to guarantee the desired verdict and maximize punishment regardless of involvement. Those a part of this including Ashcroft and President Bush are guilty of far worse crimes than anyone they could possibly trump up charges against and prosecute. America, let's quit this foolish game of hypocritical rhetoric and besotted language and for once just call it as it really is. Anyone supporting these flagrantly illegal policies regardless of the purported expedient justification or public placating excuses, is not a patriot, they are not pro-American they are in direct opposition to those estimable values - it's called being a traitor.

Finding Patriotism

01.11.01 The entire allied campaign is falling apart faster than a Mexican Rolex; Pakistan's pronouncement that America's "bogged down" is if anything an understatement. And yet this would be difficult to perceive from purely domestic American mass-media channels; even CNN has agreed not to show so many sad pictures of shrapnel shredded refugees or flaming Red Cross buildings that it could alter American public opinion.

Regardless of whatever fantasy world the dominant American media and its allied partners in Federal office want to blithely inhabit, the remainder of the planet is under no such false illusions. Depending on who you ask it's either a plot to run an oil pipeline through the country or yet another Israeli proxy war utilizing the enthusiastic dupe of the American military machine to destroy their mortal Islamic opponents. But that's of course assuming the Bush administration even has a plan outside of the immediacy of electoral, and more importantly plutocratic, expediency; which is more than I would personally posit given the superficial evidence. Unfortunately the only thing clearly not an issue or reason for the conflict is the destitute situation of the Afghan people themselves. Despite the halfhearted efforts by the UN and the overlooked pleas of aid groups it's remarkable how little official concern was given to the abuses of the Taliban or the brutality of Northern Alliance warlords before September 11th, and equally remarkable is the bombastic rhetoric applied to such abuses by Bush and Blair in the opportunistic aftermath.

Yet the end result is not leading anyone, let alone the world, to victory as President Bush proudly proclaimed at the ignominious start of it all. It's conveying the message America is impotent to rectify even the most black and white issues (superficially speaking anyway), and that America is rudely incompetent at defeating technologically challenged opponents, like the Taliban militia, despite the most advanced weaponry money can buy. Furthermore, the global political order is equally inept for America and her allies can agree on virtually nothing, let alone a definition of terrorist, because every leadership throws in its own self-centered definition. Domestic security is proving even more challenging as anthrax letters keep popping up. Government is powerless to stop even this seemingly tepid but decidedly low-tech terrorism effort. The only ones arrested so far have been pranksters. Given this astonishing track record it should fill us all with pride and hope that the nascent worldwide recession will be met with equal aplomb and tact by the 'experts' and elected officials alike.

Despite the incessant calumniation to the contrary the true patriots are the ones opposing this war with reason and sanity because they're aware the whole thing is a one way ticket to more of the same terrorism it purports to eliminate. War and social destabilization are gasoline on the fire of religious extremism, completely undermining the tenuous position of moderates and diplomats. Furthermore it's increasingly apparent that military confrontation with Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda through the proxy of Afghanistan is a trap for America, it can only enhance the stature and broaden support of fundamentalism around the world. The day America dropped the first bomb on Afghanistan is the day America's leadership declared their divorce from reality and the best interests of the American people.

Confirming this hypothesis is the fact that instead of stepping down the military mess, most of the planners instead favor an increase in the bombing campaign as means of achieving a solution. The vociferous senator Dean McCain should know all about what 'military advisors,' 'quagmire' and "Vietnam' means; and tell us Senator super-pilot, how many times were you shot down? And what of your wife's booze empire that brought you the cash to even become a hotshot politician in the first place? Some American's will be dying to know.

The people looking out for America and its citizens aren't the brain-dead flag-wavers, the same "patriots" that have never owned a flag until everyone else started buying them. They certainly aren't the reactionary politicians using American soldiers to dig another mission-oriented morass to die in. The real American patriots are the critical media (the few left anyway) and those illuminating America's suicidal foreign policy and fatally-flawed foreign entanglements among other issues. The same ones that the "patriots" and government want silenced and censored (for national safety of course). Similarly it's typical of the era to call black white, call war peace and cogent criticism extremism or hatred, or whatever the latest First-amendment-stifling euphemism is.

24.10.01 These Humanitarian Daily Rations being air-dropped over Afghanistan are just repackaged MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) used by the military. Go to an Army surplus store and pick one up if you've never seen one. The stores near military bases have loads of them, even though they're clearly marked as government property and not for resale, but the enlisted are so poorly paid they sell them as a supplement to food stamps; well that and booze money. The point is these meals are dehydrated to reduce weight and preserve the food which means that if you don't drink a lot of water while eating these things you'll regret it. Contents of one HDR: "Beans with Tomato Sauce, Beans and Tomato Vinaigrette, Biscuit, Fruit Pastry, Fruit Bar, Short Bread, Peanut Butter, Strawberry Jam, instructions, and utensils package including salt, pepper, napkin and a match." I have yet to see water listed in the contents of these humanitarian rations or a package of water shown in the pictures. Making the whole concepts look like a sick farce on the part of the American military and policy planners, but I'm open to alternate evidence if found.

Food is of course important in impoverished war torn regions, but water is even more so. Look at the countryside in Afghanistan, does it seem like they have a lot of choices for potable water? The biggest concern of immediacy for refugee populations is finding clean potable water. In Kandahar for instance the power grid has been bombed leaving the civilian inhabitants without lights or well pumps, meaning no water. This appalling situation is undoubtedly typical of other population regions in the war zone. The domestic American media do nothing but report the air drops as flat factual events, leaving out the remaining details such as: are the needy Afghans actually receiving the food, can they eat the high protein 'portable McDonalds' contents? Do they understand the instructions? Fearful of mines, do they even pick them up? Are the Taliban thugs getting to the food drops first, and where is the water? All these issues remain (apparently) unanswered.

The Idiocy is Palpable

22.10.01 Alert! Severe weather warning emanating from the Capitol region and headed for your suburb! Prediction: steady showers of BS with scattered thunderstorms of hollow rhetoric, followed by persistent stifling smog of misinformation and propaganda blanketing the heavily populated valleys.

The strategic bombing campaign of U$ forces is set to starve to death half a million in Afghanistan this winter, far exceeding even the wildest despotic fantasies of the Taliban theocracy. Always with an eye out for a good public relations ploy the same government drops 'Humanitarian Daily Rations' into the smoking bomb craters next to the mine fields, a heart-warming display of philanthropic concern few would expect from the aggressive, homophobic, simplistic jingoism of the American military. The fact that the refugees can't eat the high protein food packets, being incompatible with their diet, is likely an honest mistake. Just like the bombing of a clearly marked Red Cross food warehouse, I mean, war happens right?! Oh and deaths from the bombed hospital and senior citizen home are just "collateral damage" so there's no need to reprimand anyone in the U$ chain of command. Meanwhile the "eviscerated" Taliban army, to quote recent statements from American military planners, demonstrates a remarkable ability to counterattack their Northern Alliance foes while simultaneously aborting any nascent faith in American aid the opposition may have harbored.

Domestically the FBI is moving to dump decades of crime-fighting tradition for (surprise) counter-terrorism! Thanks to the carefully planned whim of reactionary policy courtesy of America's homegrown King George II and enforced by his legion of appointed lackeys. Why? Because America doesn't have a crime problem, America has a terrorism problem - quit living in the past! No doubt the proud elite of career federal police look forward to their new mission consisting of sniffing white powders and pawing through garbage at the Fresh Kills landfill until retirement.

This radical change of mission makes perfect since given the magnificent successes already accumulated since September 11th. It's just too bad none of over 900 arrested have been shown to have participated in the attack, or indeed to have much of anything to do with it at all. But don't worry our leaders know what they're doing, or at least what the Political Action Committee position papers tell them to do, which is why public opinion polls solidly reflect a sharp boost in faith for official leadership, that perennial benefit of war. In this era of hazard and terrorism behind every dark corner, truth is too dangerous to trust to just anyone. That's why all the facts and purported linking evidence must stay safely locked up within national security departments. Which merely highlights the true reason for it all: sound and fury, posturing to placate a puzzled public at the price of violated constitutional rights via illegal arrest, detention based on secret or nonexistent evidence not to mention the promise of torture to extract the appropriate answers demanded by an increasingly desperate investigation.

The more flawed the scheme the greater the need for spin and propaganda to project the necessary aura of righteousness while obfuscating the policy blunder and glaring contradictions. Starving refugees and bombing caves in an impoverished and desolate nation might seem inappropriate in a milieu of reason, objectivity and sanity, but sanity is being shouted down by the voluble, omnipresent reminder of moral superiority packaged in patriotic songs, store signs and fervent flag waving. The dead weight of the dumb masses always seeking an outlet for blind conformity and ego-enhancement via the contemporary collective stab at success, lose no time or shame in bandwagoning onto a winning battle preceding a losing war. Now Americans can revive their unhealthy love-affair with repetitive chants and mandated doctrine, dogma and orthodoxy, reminding us that apparently the only way to be a patriot is spout slogans and a express mindless obedience to a singular interpretation of Americanism.

Muddled Military

17.10.01 It's patently obvious as the present central Asian war on Afghanistan unfolds that the Pentagon remains as linear and ossified as ever in its imagination and war-making. Instead of the premature trumpeted triumph of an asymmetrical battle plan striving to defeat this amorphous terrorist enemy the conflict boils down to a pathetic redux of the Gulf War, replete with laser guided Paveway's through the "air-shafts" of mud huts and B-52 carpet bombing of deserted camps with the apparent goal being, surprise! once again to merely bomb the enemy until they capitulate or, if not, just give up and have the victory party anyway with the ever complicit and unquestioning major media outlets as guests of honor.

There is virtually no place left in today's world for this type of outdated warfare, strategic bombing is all but useless for achieving political, economic and social goals meaning goals that have significance anymore. It's extremely expensive (how many billions a piece for a B-2 bomber?) especially in comparisons to the minuscule benefits it confers. The U$ military is fighting World War III with World War two techniques. Not that they care because they'll jump at any chance to justify themselves in a postmodern world of military obsolescence. Economics and communications are the battlefields of the present and to win the war here you can't use a helicopter gunship and grunts with rifles.

Secondly, our present social fixation with cyber-terrorism, steganography, bio-terror and similar fear factors while remaining perfectly predictable phantasms for a techno-culture, are only significant in that they all miss the point! If a 'terrorist', or indeed anyone for economic or criminal motive, wishes to disrupt the nation the simplest means are the most cost-effective and easiest to perpetrate. For example all they need do is throw a wire across the power lines and the lights go out, or for the less imaginative it's even easier today, just spill some sweet&low on the floor and call in an anthrax threat to the building! Another example, the Trans-Alaska pipeline was shot this month with one rifle bullet by a local yokel. The subsequent half-inch hole managed to not only spill thousands of gallons of oil, create a horrendous environmental mess costing plenty to clean up, but also shut down 95% of Alaska's North Slope oil production!

The point is we cannot protect everything, indeed to even attempt to do so is doomed to failure because it's fundamentally reactionary. Example: Bush's new, brilliantly named, Department of Homeland Security which promises to add over a trillion dollars to the budget and still remain of questionable legality and transparent redundancy. Unless we address the root issues creating terrorism, the desperation, the poverty and the flawed foreign policy, we will always be unsafe. In a country like America with so much internal decay and a dearth of affordable public health care it should seem ironic that the President is spending the concocted budget surplus consisting of a temporary peak in Social Security funds for an illegal war of revenge against foreign terrorists!

As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march out to war, they pay troops and stay at home: when it is necessary to meet in council, they name deputies and stay at home. By reason of idleness and money, they end by having soldiers to enslave their country and representatives to sell it. From: On The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762.

America - The Land of Self-Created Enemies

	Public Enemy #1 Osama Bin Laden, CIA proxy soldier
	Public Enemy #1 Saddam Hussein, armed by America as a reliable ally for years
	Public Enemy #1 Timothy McVeigh, US Army soldier
	Public Enemy #1 Slobodon Milosivec, New York banker and peace-dealer at Dayton
	Public Enemy #1 Manuel Noriega, star student at School of the Americas
	Public Enemy #1 Ferdinand Marcos, Philippine dictator
	Public Enemy #1 Augusto Pinochet, military dictator of Chile
	Public Enemy #1 Mobutu Sese-Seko, inveterate dictator & CIA tool over Zaire (Congo)
	Public Enemy #1 Fidel Castro, CIA sponsored freedom fighter until 1960.
	America - how many more enemies do you need to build-up and then tear down? Why not just bomb the whole world? It won't make the country safer but it's the American Way, apparently.
	America - if you really want to combat terrorism maybe you should start at the source, your own Capitol.

Terrorism Brings Out The Worst in Americans in the Form of Officially Sanctioned Racism

12.09.01 In my news page the very day before the terror attack I ran a headline concerning an Internet provider in Texas that was raided by the FBI and shut down for hosting Arab and Palestinian web sites. Serious speculation concerns the motivation and legality of the operation as well as the forces pushing to have free expression silenced for political reasons. The event may be related to the subsequent aerial bombing of New York and Washington and even if not it begins a very disconcerting story of the erosion of cherished American liberties and blatant racial double-standards throughout the country.

Can you say witch-hunt?

On to the frenetic search for the guilty parties, assuming perhaps erroneously that they didn't all go up in flames during the plane crashes. The FBI and police are clearly approaching this investigation with a sharply delineated preconceived idea of who they want to crucify, and that's anybody that fits the description of a Middle easterner. Don't believe me? Read this excerpt from an MSNBC article:

Media outlets also reported that a train that had passed through Boston was halted, evacuated and searched Wednesday in Providence, R.I. One man wearing a green turban was led away in handcuffs.
Col. Richard Sullivan, the Providence police chief, said later that the man did not appear to have any connection with the terrorist acts. But he was charged with a weapons violation for carrying a knife, Sullivan said. He remained in custody on Wednesday afternoon.

Italics were added for emphasis. That's the complete description of the event, really, it's so ridiculous it's laughable but scary too. It's not even the description of an Arab, that's a Sikh! He carries a knife and always wears a turban because that's his religious uniform. These cops are so stupid (and racist) they're busting people that have nothing to do with anything!

They don't have to do this. If the federal police would just stop, get their act together, effectively communicate what they know and don't with the public and the local police. In other words, 'don't panic arrest and make a joke and a lawsuit victim out of your police force.' But instead they allow witch hunts and racially-motivated violence against the Arab community fueled by ignorance intentionally allowed to perpetuate in a vacuum of rumors and spin. None other than Peter Jennings of ABC news stated on television that every Synagogue in Manhattan had a cop stationed in front of it after the terror attack. But said nothing of equal protection for the Mosque's which would seem to me to be much more in immediate danger, but I guess some are more important than others.

"These are the fruits of the new U.S. order." - Iraqi TV

Come on here let's try and minimize the credence that Iraqi TV has and work not to substantiate their claims but defeat them!

"This is perhaps the most audacious terrorist attack that's ever taken place in the world," said Chris Yates, an aviation expert at Jane's Transport in London. "It takes a logistics operation from the terror group involved that is second to none. Only a very small handful of terror groups is on that list." Look it doesn't take a genius to read between the lies here, these terrorists were so good that the federal government has no clue what really happened, they're reduced to arresting Sikhs on trains and parading out the same old tired boogie man Osama bin Terrorist. Painted into a corner by their own foreign policy blunders, Bush is forced to contemplate how to retaliate against a nation already under attack: Iraq!

Many new recruits are joining the American military as young and old line up to sign their lives away to the government for "job security" as the recruiters call it, all to battle those dastardly rifle-toting "towel-head" video game bad-guys. Can you see what they're doing, using racist sentiment and stereotypes established by media to generate support for fratricidal orgies of mutual suicide called war? A Near-East conflict that nothing positive can emerge from; violence begets violence. America has got to stop building enemies and start building dialogue and understanding.

"The question is not who did it, but why America creates more enemies than friends," Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed

America, why are you making your "enemies" look more reasonable than your own national policy?! If there was ever any sanity in America it's becoming increasingly difficult to find any evidence of it.

You know, if Americans really want war, if they want to fight for a kid-killing conflict to vanquish only the opponents of foreign nations yet again, they'll have no trouble getting involved. But the only way out is through the mass destruction of even more American landmarks. If you claim to be anti-racist, as most Americans do, then don't be a hypocrite and act like it's fine to bash Arabs or allow your police, government and news readers to do the same. And if you don't see a problem with this policy then stop claiming to be opposed to racism.

TV IS YOUR REALITY, REALITY IS YOUR TV

"It's sort of like a terrorism movie you see on television," said terrorism expert Michael Gunter at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville

"It was something only Hollywood could have dreamed up: The nation under attack, the Pentagon in flames. But here were military officers in full dress uniform, dazed and cowering as they abandoned their offices and ran," said the Scripps Howard news service.

"It's incredible. I thought I was watching a Hollywood movie," said Hong Kong school teacher Doris Tang.

"I can't believe what I'm seeing. I never thought I would see anything like this in my lifetime," said 20-year-old Beverly Evans of Dallas. "How can we stop something like this from happening?"

America, time to wake up....

"The Americans have forgotten that God exists. They have us by the throat and now they find themselves in a science fiction film scenario, but this time Rambo's not there to save the White House." Egyptian taxi driver Abdel Karim.

"The myth of the indestructible United States has gone up in smoke." said Khalil Matar, 43, soap factory worker in Egypt.

"They brought America to our knees and it scares the hell out of me," traveler Beth Tabler of San Diego, waiting for a flight at Lindbergh Field.

Headlines scream out a DEATH TOLL: $$,$$$

The public shrieks in horror, this can't happen to America only by America in places like Afghanistan, Sudan, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Serbia... This isn't right, they bomb us from the air and we can't fight back!

Money Matters More

"There is no shortage of cash and no reason to expect one,'' said Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert McTeer on Wednesday.

Glass and steel emblems of perfectly exceptional American progress explode and collapse in a New York-sized cloud of smoke and pulverized concrete -- a telegenic bout of unscheduled urban renewal. Just two buildings in a large city crumble to dust and a meltdown of the modern markets ensues.

"Economists said there could be untold damage to the U.S. financial system, noting many key stock market players in the World Trade Center building were likely killed."

The papers of money rain from the sky like the brimstone of an apocalyptic Sodom.

Guided by Lies & Myths

Americans listened to their meretricious media, built and endured invasive security arrangements for travel and recoiled in Pavlovian fear at story after story of impending biological and chemical terror. Americans reveled in the glow of a world dominating military, spent billions on advanced weaponry and missile shields, even braced for a technological Pearl Harbor, only to be defeated by desire, preparatory planning and a few madmen with knives.

The entire U.S. intelligence community, including all of its expensive satellites, is helpless against any enemy that practices operations security. That means, if they don't use the phone, don't use a computer, and if they do all their business face to face with single-trusted companions, there is no way the existing intelligence infrastructure can anticipate this kind of coordinated attack," Steele said There's no way to defend ourselves against this kind of thing. We actually have to spend money on plowshares instead of swords.

A commander in chief stunned like a deer in the headlights of a speeding machine only able to hide and spout peculiar, hollow phrases "Today we've had a national tragedy," and "difficult moment for America." A people stripped of self-defense only to be let down when authorities fail them yet again, serving themselves on military bases and underground bunkers, plotting to protect their sweaty behinds, American corporate interests and the American public in that order. A public so misinformed and misguided by media and authorities most can't even comprehend the simple steps that led to such horrific atrocities. Role models, idols and spin-doctors alike left flabbergasted by an 'unpredictable' event lodged deep within their scotomas.

"There is no logic to these attacks." - James Zogby

It's only an illogical world if you reject logic...
It's only an unpredictable world if you refuse to entertain a future outside of fantasy. 11.09.01

05.06.01 It should come as no surprise that Americans act like a gaggle of fools even off camera, just look at the public faces, the mentors and role-models. All TV stars, politicians and similar grade-A losers in a culture where victims are the heroes and heroes are the ones that get shot out of the sky on bombing missions, kids afflicted by tragedy and an endless sideshow of groveling talk show freaks.
The perpetual effort to appeal to mass audiences necessitates dumbing-down the level of hero to the point that instead of striving to emulate, the public can achieve smug superiority simply by being passively average - the Homer Simpson effect or the reason for the inveterate popularity of the village idiot. Problem is far too many imitate the imbeciles instead of ridiculing them.

American Psychosis

18.09.01 Americans seem both fickle and inscrutable, they post 'God Bless America' on the reader boards in front of their stores, unashamedly equating fervent patriotism with product purchasing, yet few complain. Every plan is reactionary and usually doomed to failure but they plow ahead and muddle through it, elated to be doing something even if it only makes things worse; few worry about it.

Now, the French for example, have a powerful admiration for their own culture and way of life but they, like all mature nations, realize that the Chinese act like Chinese and the Iranians act like Iranians. America has the same admiration for its own culture but they see the Chinese and wonder why they don't act like Americans and look at the Iranians and can't figure out why they don't want to be like us. This pernicious befuddlement is coupled with a boisterous, outgoing motivation to impose Americanism upon these same peoples, and not so much out of arrogance as just sheer ignorance. Which is quaint at first but when the Americans start pushing their weight around with force it's only understandable that mature cultures start to push back. And here the misunderstanding begins.

The misunderstanding is on the part of the Americans not the rest of the world, even though Americans don't see it that way, (big surprise) they see everything from their own perspective and are completely incapable of grasping the motivations of other, non-Americanized cultures and peoples. They failed in their wars against Vietnam because of it, Korea because of it, and will continue to succeed in spreading their values by force only in spite of themselves. The more the world rejects America the more America will feel the need to employ force to install friendly leaderships and reliable Americanized consumer cultures, because they simply can't understand anyone that doesn't want to be just like they are and 'just because your nation has a thousand year history and a proud culture is no excuse, all that garbage is old and weird, you need McDonalds and Disney animated characters'.

Unfortunately, average America consists primarily of a nation of infants, naive and vulnerable because they grow up in simple, overprotected, and idealized environments that breed foolish behavior and a wayward, naive outlook. Because they avoid pain and tough choices in their lives they grow up unable to maturely face difficult decisions and realistic no-win situations. Americans have a distinct inability to deal with a reality outside fiction and fantasy which colors every conversation and comparison. Hence popular perceptions of reality are so proscribed that entertainment and mass-media references suffice to describe the sensations and imaginations of the typical American.

The Gray Death

22.05.01 For such a young country America is replete with old and dying things. According to the latest census information the median age of the U$ population went from 32.9 in 1990 to 35.3 just ten years later making Americans as a whole older than ever before. The average life expectancy in America for 1900 was 47. Today it's closer to 76 thanks to medical advances and less strenuous lifestyles. Yet even though geriatric science has succeeded in keeping the bodies alive 30 years longer, the minds expire long before creating a generation of mentally-atrophied invalids necessitating vast economic expenditures in both time, money and social care.

The percentage of the population over 65 is going from around 15% up to 30% over the next 30 years, with this trend even more pronounced in Western Europe and Japan than North America. The old population is headed towards a grand total of one billion people worldwide in various states of terminal mental and physical decline, along with the concomitant range of resentment, incapacity and senility. But not only can this demographic still vote, still drive and still desperately attempt to do everything they could before, they exercise significant political muscle through influential Political Action Committees and consistently activist voting records (AARP, Gray Panthers, etc.) not to mention the dangerous driving records.

Demographic ratios will soon tip in favor of the elderly easily exceeding the number of young healthy and productive workers, generating serious financial pressures upon welfare systems and unprecedented social pressures upon disparate and distorted coexisting groups. Today the average person over 65 takes at least 13 different medications in a year, according to 1999 data. supporting entire medical industries with tax dollars whose sole purpose is to extend meaningless lives, not to give them purpose or value to their existence but merely to provide a drug-induced stay of execution, like a credit extension for the balloon payment on the mandatory debt of life. Like dead-things on life-support housed in storage units known as multi-dwelling-retirement-care-condominium-complexes. These suburban monuments to a dying populace with manicured lawns and young underpaid staff are sprouting across the quiet parts of the country like mushrooms, and inhabited by archaic, bitter and brainless denizens kept alive by direct government social security funding and massive infusions of drugs. Tepid bodies with vapid minds and depleting accumulations of cash accrued over lifetimes of toil and mostly vain socialization.

The average cost per year for nursing home patients is $47,000, with the cost shooting up as disabilities accumulate. The primary beneficiaries of this are the housing owners and the pharmaceutical companies, as well as the medical industry, all working to maintain above room temperature body temperatures long enough to keep the money rolling in. And when the 'old of the old' generation finally expires they're ready for the next, like the baby boomers (defined as those born between 1946 and 1964) already beginning to retire and estimated at 76 million Americans. What keeps this warped stasis going? Government complacency in grubbing for votes and the ease of increasing the taxing of young labor to keep the money funneled directly from federal funds to the old age housing conglomerates and the drug companies so they stay flush. Forget productive economic participation, under the present order the aged are deemed simply entities to extort, bodies to exploit, fund accounts to drain and scam. Without participation in the outside society, an enclosed, gated, walled and guarded community is just characterized by denial and obliviousness, slowly waiting to die. Psychologically speaking personal purpose is crucial, it is a far greater crime than euthanasia to keep persons around like living fossils to generate resentment in multiple parties.

In economically modern countries old people have been made redundant except as a means of direct federal fund funneling into specific economic sectors. And yet the role of the young has also been rapidly altered in modern economies changing from work-oriented responsible laborers to play and learning-oriented irresponsible atoms. It need not be this way but change is unlikely until the working ages get squeezed hard enough with rising taxes and decreasing benefits to fight back.

16.05.01 To understand America and Americans one must embrace the concept of the zero-sum game; simplistic bifurcated competition consisting solely of winners or losers void of any reasonable middle. America is fertile ground for zealously and preeminent self-righteousness where 'everyone must believe what I do or else...' From environmentalism to politics to religion we encounter the same paradigm of either-or, but rarely either-and. Whereas most countries seek at least a superficial level of social harmony and inter-party cohesion, if not social consensus through either, say, Canadian cooperation or Chinese authoritarian dictates, Americans are thoroughly wedded to the notion of basal Darwinian competition.

To grant an opponent's validity is a sign of weakness and to value alternative input for forming ideological balance is blood in the water. Yet instead of fratricidal competition building stronger winners it far more often merely destroys the competitors; and while this occurs the space is made for the cooperators to emerge.

Freedom & Potential

24.02.01 As much as I criticize America it still has a lot going for it. American pop-culture is surely reprehensible but the traditional model has its own faults, not the least of which being archaic, gender-driven cultural artifacts entrenched within ossified European society; kinde, kuche, kirche and whatever the equally insulting French equivalent is. Americans are in general a very dynamic group capable of rapidly adjusting to changing circumstances and successfully competing with anyone when the need becomes unavoidably manifest. Americans are a very adaptable group, they're quick to try new things but slow to grasp the point or envision the consequences which is where the incurable optimism comes into play.

By taking risks that most others avoid they often gain, wealth and prosperity, and to some extent that profit is able to offset the losses incurred from the failures. How is this possible? Largely because of their freedom from the above shackles of outmoded stereotypes and primitive cultural notions. A strong sense of merit based reward pervades American culture that simply gets ignored elsewhere with predictable consequences. The 'secret' is not mandating or imposing what people will be through cultural structures,  but letting them determine that for themselves!

Yet despite the marvelous success in freeing people from the anchors of history America today is ironically attempting to impose its own binders upon success through quotas and hollow legalistic guarantees imposed upon lines of disabilities, gender, race, creed, and so on.

Regardless of the implementation of these restrictions America has decisively demonstrated like none before the unparalleled success inherent within a system of fairness based upon skill, ability and the free expression of individual strengths within a structured society. The future belongs to those who can amplify this concept not limit it.

Are Cops Racist?

27.01.01 One's answer to the question is quite nearly a litmus test for their political stripe, but taking the issue seriously for a moment, the answer may not be what it seems... Although I don't wish to disparage the efforts of police officers most of which are honest and diligent, I am forced to disagree with the system and it's errant rules. All police officers are parts of the institution that pays their wages, and therefore they are the system, just as the hand works for the mind of the body it's attached to.

The average citizen believes that only criminals fear the police, but police aren't that discriminatory. Cops are far too often vultures without sympathy for anyone but themselves and perhaps fellow cops; they see everyone as the same criminal scum because that's primarily what they deal with on a daily basis. They develop a moral-god complex where they begin to believe they really are superior to the rest of the world and above the rules because of the endless series of losers they bust on a daily basis.

But crime is an interesting phenomenon in more than one way. Although the ideal is to stop all crime cops know that even if possible it would only put them out of a job! In actuality a stasis emerges between visible crime and police pressure. The crimes that affect average people, visible crime and the crime trumpeted by the media, that's the high-profile stuff that your city and state police go after because it demonstrates results and it placates the taxpayers. But that crime is just the tip of the iceberg, the icing on the cake of criminal activities. The stuff that's really going on, the crimes that are less visible or take place mostly in slums and ghettos anyway, gets a lot of (if not total) free reign. That stasis allows for a lot of bad stuff to happen just as long as it doesn't directly affect the taxpaying public. The police see little need to strain their already thin resources on these zones, especially since it's human nature that no one wants to do more work than they have to. Of course those regions are inhabited primarily by minorities. So in away the police are racist in the sense of unequal protection.

Influence of the Mass-Media & Film

This stasis also has a cultural component in that society believes a certain amount of trouble is acceptable. For example, much youth hooliganism and trouble-making are generally deemed normal rather than criminal, and this also overlaps with cultural difficulties in defining 'adult' as well as trying kids for adult crimes. It's sort of a double standard because if we could magically excise the entire demographic of males aged 15-25 the violent crime rate would drop to nil!

If our society was really serious about battling violent crime they'd target the root demographic, or at least make an attempt to integrate the disassociated plethora of subcultures and move them into productive society. Instead, culture is defined by the media which does the opposite by glamorizing gangs, drugs, and violent crime through music, movies and television. The cinema is a powerful tool for molding behavior, especially of the young viewer, because they lack the mature discriminatory capabilities of their adult counterparts. They all too often interpret the confusing or the shallow and crass to be 'deep' and meaningful because cinema is so heavily symbolical in its method of informational conveyance. Movies are about image and symbols and both products are always much more significant within the dimly lit subterranean interpretations of the mind than on the 2D screen. So not surprisingly how one feels towards a movie is a very subjective experience. Another example, the dead rapper Tupac Shakur poignantly stated "I didn't have a [criminal] record before I made a record." And this just goes to show that rap artists need publicity to sell records, and the best way to get the spotlight in a very competitive market is to stab or rape and get a date in the courtroom. Who can argue that the music business doesn't promote violence? It's a very sick industry.

So instead of prudence and discipline to attain positive life-goals we have a milieu that promotes hedonistic foolishness and violent pseudo-solutions to the increasing array of self-inflicted youth problems. Considering that minority youth is so predominantly involved in these self-destructive behaviors it's seems that the real racists are the media moguls, rather than the reactionary force of the police responding to criminal actions.

Legal Racism

08.11.00 According to Newsweek "It can cost up to $71,000 a year to house an inmate in New York's Rikers Island." $71,000?! To send some loser to a roach infested, stinking' cage for 20 years to effectively train him how to be an even more vicious nogoodnik? For that much money why don't we just cut out the middleman here and give Mr. Deadbeat 70 grand a year if he can stay out of trouble? Say 'hey bud here's a TV, a recliner and plenty of beer. You think you can keep from bothering anyone for a year if we give you 70k in cash?' How about just six months for $35,000?

Seems like a pretty good enticement to me. Could you hole up in your apartment for six months and collect a check every week to stay out of trouble with the law? Oh but then we wouldn't have all those wonderful jobs for guards and prison construction crews. Our economy would no doubt collapse without the slave labor provided by the inmates. My God! The cost of license plates would skyrocket; is that what you want Mr. and Mrs. taxpayer? Is it! Career criminals making better wages than you!

World's largest prison: the Los Angeles Twin Towers complex.

If it wasn't for the fact people's lives, both innocent family and hardened criminal, are being ruined everyday it would be tough not to laugh at the sheer absurdity of our entire criminal 'justice' system. Tearing apart communities and incarcerating people for actions they're largely incapable of choosing a socially appropriate outcome for. The apex of idiocy lies within the sheer racism of the entire legal system in our western world. Laws written by white men are applied equally to Black, Latino and Asian regardless of disparate cultures and morality! Colonialist imperialism turned inward. Why does our society expect blacks to act like whites, obey white laws, despite chronic and blatant evidence of the completely erroneous reasoning underpinning this mindset? Racial statistics show that blacks and Hispanics are overwhelmingly involved in crimes, crimes codified in laws written by whites. Our laws are racist, they are designed by whites, for whites, but we subjects blacks Asians and Hispanics to them equally. Forcing the square peg through the round hole, it fails 1000 times but our society seems to think that it will work on the 1001st time. So are blacks and Hispanics more prone to crime? Or are they just acting according to different rules from different values?

Sarcasm Incorporated

28.09.00 Isn't it great how every town looks like every other one now? I so hate going to new places and finding regional restaurants, new motels or unique stores. Do they have a 'Red Robin' here, a 'Wal Mart', Cine-multi-plex theaters, strip-malls, what about 'Motel-6'? Great! I know exactly what to expect, even which aisles to look for my favorite Brand-Name™ merchandise at the lowest® prices. And what's the point in buying things if it hasn't been marketed and approved© by New York or Hollywood ad-executives and PR firms? I mean why trust anyone else? After all they always know what's most fashionable and which things are really the best buys. There's nothing worse than spending one's hard earned cash on products that may be supporting shifty, crooked local businesses. And they don't even have flashy ads and proper product posturing. A sure sign of inferior goods; heck if they can't afford to advertise how good can it possibly be? Without doubt, if there's a God® in heaven he must be an American wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a brand-name logo.

International Geographic

August 2009

Dangerous Precedent

21.10.00 The most popular avant garde charity causes seem to increasingly target Islamic culture, perhaps people lost interest in the ozone hole and rescuing the Amazonian rainforest, although Global Warming remains a surefire donation magnet. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a good example and as senselessly hurtful as  it seems to western senses it's at minimum foolish and at worst dangerous to slide down the slippery slope of moral interventionism. I'm not saying this behavior should be condoned, merely left alone so we can properly deal with our own problems first over those of others.

America has been steamrolling native cultures for decades, luring them into adopting our religion, morality, dress and way of life. Not only is this Imperialistic and arrogant it's destined to fail, heaping scorn and enmity upon America the 'benefactor' in the near future. When one tries to intervene in the mores and values of foreigners, attempting to rectify their 'wrongs' and 'evils' through money, legislation and force the end result may be to superficially change behavior but it never alters the mindset, the subterranean motivations for their actions. The Imperialist comes off as hypocritical because they intervene here and not there, they aid one group but not another due to the sheer impossibility of aiding everyone at once but also because they're really motivated not by eleemosynary altruism but by politics and economic interests. Hence the Sudanese imbroglio over oil and slavery, pure politics. Much of the developing world wants the U$A to be the globo-cop and beat up local bullies like Saddam Hussein; but we shouldn't mistake this for a genuine desire for American cultural and political assimilation. As ego-deflating as it may be, the real reason is they just want somebody to take the heat for them, to be the shield and absorb the arrows of criticism.

The rest of the world knows American interventionism is pure hypocrisy, they know for example that Israel determines near east foreign policy. Even a poorly educated Palestinian kid can figure out what most Americans can't. But then he's living it every day - he throws rock while the Israelis use American military equipment to blow-up his friends.

The point is every group believes that their mode of life is superior, but you don't impress the rest by bludgeoning them into adopting your ways. It is wiser to lead by example than by meddling and force.

Never underestimate the American capacity to figure out what's really going on ... after it's too late to do anything about it.

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