China's Choices

The Chinese have been doing the same thing over and over for 4000 years. Everything finally starts to come together in the climb back into modernity from isolation and social regression and >bang< China crashes back into riots, rebellions, and another civil war.

So it’s worth mentioning that China today, in the early 21^st century, is still in a state of unresolved civil war as Taiwan is still considered to be a renegade province by the mainland regime. No one can be certain what will happen next for China but considering the tenacious hold tradition and history have on the Chinese mind it isn’t too tough to form a likely hypothesis on near-future events. Most noticeable now is the break between the new wealth class and the party-military class that forms the heart of the military dictatorship currently running China. This disconnect is building the foundation for a second powerful, and eventually competitive, force that will challenge the ruling elite.

Deng Xiao Ping, in an effort to modernize a bleak and impoverished China, started this break by proclaiming the glories of becoming rich and it really can’t be stopped now. Today China reports over 10% GDP growth annually, with skyscrapers and factories sprouting all over the densely populated eastern coast. The central party is starting to recognize the dangerous forces that rampant wealth outside of the parties control and vast economic divisions within society are exerting upon China as a pseudo-capitalist market economy. But when the party attempts to reign in the new rich they will discover a foe that doesn’t want to be nationalized and have their wealth taken away for the sake of the party, and not even if it is done under the guise of a need for promoting the greater public good.

The current interstitial period features a tug-of-war of bribes, corruption and back room negotiations between the new rich class and the party, as both sides attempt to placate the other. This rampant corruption is intolerable to the longevity of the party as it eats away at the lingering remnants of official legitimacy it still has to govern the country. Meanwhile, a steadily rising tide of discontent in the ranks of everyone else in China, the masses that haven’t experienced any benefits from the new wealth, are becoming more violent and outspoken. This is clearly an unsustainable situation even without factoring in the massive pollution of the natural environment, the over-population problems in the cities, the unemployment crisis, the lack of health-care, the pending demographic time-bomb of millions of rapidly aging Chinese, and so on.

It is true that to a certain extent both party and the new independent rich need each other, but the goals of each side are not mutually compatible. The party still retains a tight grip on the military, as indeed the two are one and the same – the ‘People’s Army’ is really the ‘Communist Party Army’. If China had a flexible social structure then the different sides could potentially come to an agreement and work out their differences without the need to resort to violence and rebellion to rectify the rapidly compounding problems in the country. But China doesn’t have a flexible social structure, quite the opposite in fact. The Chinese don’t even have freedom of movement. For instance, all the rural Chinese flooding into the cities desperate to escape extreme poverty and find a job are there illegally because they don’t have the government paperwork allowing them to move. And they won’t get the paperwork because the government doesn’t want more people in the cities. Consequently, millions of formerly rural Chinese workers have virtually no rights because they don’t legally exist!

Watching from a safe distance it will be interesting to see if another civil war begins in China even without a resolution to the last one. 11.12.05

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Hook, Line, and Sinker (Nietzschian Delusions)

November 2007

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The bigger the crime the smaller the punishment; call yourself a government and you can commit all the crimes you want.

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Balance of Power

The events of the Cold War era show us that wars start when power becomes unbalanced. The Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) policy that emerged from the threat of nuclear self-annihilation in a hot war resulted in a relative, and perhaps counterintuitive, paucity of large-scale military conflicts over a period of five decades. And when a large scale military conflict did occur, such as the Korean war and the ‘police action’ in Vietnam, they were constrained from expanding into a worldwide conflict by a fear of nuclear Armageddon. In other words, what's especially startling about the five decades of the Cold War is how much worse it could have been.

This situation can be attributed to the balance of power that existed between the two superpower Empires, consisting of the United States and the Soviet Union, at least in nuclear weaponry. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the geopolitical scales went far out of balance resulting in the current worldwide ‘War on Terrorism’. This costly and deadly new global war will continue until the geopolitical forces return to a balanced equilibrium, either the United States becomes much weaker or the rest of the world becomes much stronger.

And war is just terrorism with better funding, the eventual goals are the same in either case – influence of public opinion and the control of resources. It shouldn’t be a surprise that terrorists, insurgents, and indeed most any weaker military force, will violate the rules of the Geneva Convention. As the weaker power they will do anything they can to achieve a competitive advantage and cheating is about the easiest way to do that; by using brutality a weaker force can create fear and terror in order to gain a force advantage. What is surprising is when a superior military power violates the Geneva Convention mandates. The United States military is undoubtedly the most potent force on the planet but they display a remarkable weakness through the use of torture and other cruel and unusual punishments on detainees, ostensibly for the purposes of interrogation but a desire for personal entertainment through the infliction of suffering on others is clearly evident as well in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and a multitude of covert and unnamed detention centers around the world the public is not even aware of, yet.

A balance of force is a very dangerous thing to lose through uncontrollable circumstance, but it’s simply embarrassing when done by choice. The Germans have always been an authoritarian group, but no greater expression of this culture of obedience to authority exists than the era of the Nazi party. The vivid historical recreation film Downfall (Der Untergang) of 2004 is a bleak and depressing account of the chaotic final days of Hitler and his staff and the insane behavior that inevitably emerges from an authority structure where allegiance is based on faith and unquestioning obedience. Downfall is quite illustrative of the need to always avoid granting too much power to too few, no matter how noble (or ignoble) their intentions may be. Americans figured this out over 200 years ago and had the mental brilliance to write it down in a Constitution, but the Germans had to learn all of this the very hard way, if indeed they have yet to figure it out at all.

Democracy is not meant to be efficient. Nazi Germany was meant to be efficient. The conceptual appeal of democracy is that it works to create a widely dispersed balance of power. By granting everyone a voice and input into the shaping of events, democracy works to keep people involved, and as long as they are involved they have a stake in the outcome. British parliamentary democracy is an especially enlightened and functional system because it doesn’t create permanent losers that are locked out of the decision making process but instead compels participants to form coalitions that must take into account even minority voices. Conversely the American dual party system is one where the winner takes all, it creates angry losers that get forced to the side and a larger section of the population that eventually becomes so disenfranchised that civil disobedience and even violent revolution become the only means of gaining a voice and a stake in the outcome.

Thomas Jefferson once stated that, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” He was right about the need for continual political turmoil and turnover, and I can think of quite a few today who have overstayed their welcome, but the sanity of violent methods in an interconnected world of compressed time and space is a problematic proposition if other options remain. Violent retribution is just an extension of the dual party system where winners take it all. Rules like these perpetuate irrational hyper-competitiveness and a mentality that doesn’t know how to say ‘sorry’ or to ever concede truth or reason in the arguments of the other side.

We need a system that is uncontrollable and a people that are unmanageable, not because these people are rebels or partisans but because they don’t believe out of faith or follow out of obedience, because they seek the source of the truth rather than what is simply socially ‘correct’ at the present moment. In order to defeat the cancerous growth and spread of despotism we need a system of contained chaos that is bounded by environmental limitations and not by arbitrary, artificial laws and dictates. In this quest one should always measure and determine action based upon the most likely subsequent consequence, what will really happen, not what you wish to happen. We have to think of each action as being an input into a larger environment because the connections between cause and effect are often unclear in complex networks such as those that characterize modern society. Achieving a desired situation is akin to building a desirable environment. 01.10.05

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Rising Stock: Investing in America's Future

February 2004

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The Nihilism Effect of China’s Cultural Revolution

Say what you will about Mao Zedong – mass murderer, commie bastard, lover of fine wines, but he was still a very shrewd character, even when he made mistakes he still managed to learn from them and bounce back into power. Take for example the infamous Cultural Revolution. This was an intra-party conflict that took the form of a nationwide social battle but the intent was to install 'revolutionary' principles in the youth of China,  meaning Maoist, communist dogma. After the disastrous central planning fiascos of the Great Leap Forward which lead to the starvation of countless millions of Chinese, Mao retained controlled over the army (PLA) but the rest was not reliable. Mao had to reassert his power after a series of failures left him increasingly marginalized politically so he created the Red Guards consisting mostly of teenagers and young adults. The original orders to the Red Guards were to question authority but the ulterior motive was to undermine the power competition to Mao.

Schools Out

During the Cultural Revolution students were encouraged to criticize authority and challenge the loyalty of superiors throughout the country. "Mao appealed to the students to 'smash the four olds': old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. Chaos ensued as Red Guards destroyed temples, artwork, books, and anything associated with traditional or foreign cultures."[1] Not surprisingly given the climate of repression already present many Chinese kids adopted their newfound powers with gusto, soon schools were closed and the students started marching around to find new venues to exploit. Red Guard (former) students were given free train tickets to travel around the country and spread ‘revolution’. This is especially notable given the strict regulations placed upon movement in communist China that remain even today. In the spirit of Mao’s reversal some schools had jails established in them to put the teachers!

Mao’s Puppets

Although it officially lasted for ten years starting in 1966, the Cultural Revolution achieved its intended aim by April 1969 when Mao was confirmed as the supreme leader of the CCP and afterwards Mao no longer needed the Red Guards; some leaders were promoted but the turmoil could not be stopped that easily. In essence the Red Guards had congealed into a cheerleading squad for the personality cult of Mao himself, waving his Little Red Book and obediently hurling questions and criticism only at Mao’s political and ideological opponents, which was Mao's plan to begin with.

However since for every dogma there is a heresy, factions inevitably formed and it soon became common for all sides to exploit the Cultural Revolution’s atmosphere to denounce their own opponents and back and forth it went. Not surprisingly in retrospect the Red Guards nearly got out of Mao’s control but given the cultural need for order in Chinese society Mao was able to come out the hero by shutting them down and reasserting his power through the Army. Mao reasserted control and sent students back to school or into the fields according to their docility towards his power cult.

It’s interesting to note the timing of China’s Cultural Revolution as compared against contemporary world events. In America and Western Europe anti-Vietnam war protests were commonplace as were challenges to authority. The Cultural Revolution was probably not China’s version of the hippy movement because it lacked the spontaneity but they both represented a release of accumulated social pressure in response to the hypocrisy and repression of authorities. Also note the vast cultural differences between the two regions. In the deeply authoritarian culture of China, even when given an outlet for rebellion, the students still chose to follow Mao as a cult god.

The Plan

The Cultural Revolution may have been a revolution in intent (for Mao) but was mostly just channeled insurrection in practice. Nonetheless it left some very deep marks on Chinese society as did Mao in general.

From 1949 the institution of the People’s Republic of China under Mao set out to destroy most every existing social institution, except perhaps the nuclear family. Whatever platitudes were used to explain this to the masses the real reason in practice was to eliminate power competition, the competition for control of the masses that existed through social mechanisms outside of the influence of the Communist government. The second reason was that Chinese society was so steeped in superstition and social conservativism that the only way to change things was to destroy the existing institutions and rebuild from the bottom. The main problem is that classical Chinese culture is riddled with superstitions like numerology, ‘mystical ecology’, feng shui, ghosts, ancestor worship, the list is lengthy. Unless it’s the correct day one can’t bury the dead or build a house. If anything bad happens it’s a curse and somebody is responsible. These superstitions make everyday life very time-consuming and difficult to say the least. Even today these beliefs are strongest where Communism was weakest such as in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Chinese culture is extremely focused on morality. It’s not the religious sort of morality westerners immediately think of but an ethical morality centered mostly on Confucian and Buddhist philosophy that in practice basically means obeying the ‘right’ and avoiding the ‘wrong’ that continually emanates from official authorities such as government and paternal family members. Arbitrary right and wrong create a sense of power over things in life that cannot be controlled, such as fate and luck. But further, obeying arbitrary moral rules absolves oneself of the need for responsibility and careful decision-making because since people want to do the 'right' thing, the choice and path has already been made! It’s ironic that Chinese culture with its intense and ingrained fear of chaos puts so much effort into controlling events that life eventually becomes chaotic and disorganized yet cultures that are wiling to embrace a diversity of new ideas and random events exists in a very peaceful and orderly system, think of the Netherlands for instance.

Aftermath

It’s a common lament of those Chinese who lived through the Cultural Revolution that whereas before and during they were idealistic and fervent believers, afterwards they believed in very little if anything. The Cultural Revolution created a level of cynicism and futility that often takes the form of simplistic materialism and capitalist motivations in China today, but it's also true that materialism is about the only outlet for energy that is available and officially safe for the Chinese public to use. But it’s important to remember that this was definitely not the intended effect of the Cultural Revolution and indeed Mao went to his grave still clinging to his belief in the success of this program. The Cultural Revolution was a cynical political power play packaged as an idealistic crusade that ended up as nihilism in the populace; nihilism was the unintended social side-effect.

Stay Out of Control

Events in the Cultural Revolution demonstrated that people in regimented and centrally controlled societies, where their individual well-being depends upon favors and handouts from authorities, will tolerate incredible abuse and suffering. This is because ostracism from the collective and independent survival seems more dangerous than tolerating the abuse of the group. Mao’s Cultural Revolution hijacked widespread youth resentment towards repression to serve central political aims. Thinking about it, there’s a certain appeal to perpetuating a cynical and uncontrollable sector of society for not only does it keep life interesting but they also serve an important function in protecting society from despotism. 06.06.04

[1] Cultural Revolution, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, 2001.

Economies of Scale

What is Communism?

North Korea has been an increasing concern both to the American government and public, or at least the western part of the country in striking distance of North Korea's missiles. The first thing China set out to do after being cutoff from the Soviets was to build an atomic bomb. Mao knew that the only way his regime could survive was to have a viable force for nuclear retaliation. North Korea's situation today is essentially the same and not surprisingly their atomic ambitions are no different.

The motivation to obtain atomic weapons and the missiles to deliver them are clear enough, but to really understand North Korea we have to stop looking at them as a government, more specifically a Communist 'hermit' state, and see them for what they really are - a simple, but quite nefarious, criminal enterprise which is ultimately devoid of any permanent ideology. The North Korean ruling clique uses the same rhetoric to mentally enslave its populace for convenience and consistency rather than out of any love for Communist dogma in itself; Stalinist-Communist rhetoric is all they know.

But despite clinging to this ridiculously outdated dogma of convenience North Korea is an enlightening example of Communism taken to its ultimate level. The contemporary commentators have all assured us that Communism is dead, just as sure as the Berlin Wall is in nearly forgotten and broken remnants, but in fact this is not the case for many millions are still living it. Indeed, the only way to really understand Communism is to study it in practice. Studying Marxism is a useless effort to understand Communism because of the immense disparity between theory and reality, for in practice it's less about standardized ideology as it is about power, more specifically authoritarian control through subterfuge. Look at China, a 'Communist' government which isn't even Communist anymore! Although the government controls everyone's lives right down to the new digital ID cards, they do allow private property and even the pursuit of private wealth in certain proscribed regions. China today is really more Fascist than Communist because they have a national control of industry but still allow private property.

The point is that regardless of the code-words, revolution (the initial formation of a new state) is just the transfer of power from those that have it to those that don't. But always remember that human nature does not change even though the names and the faces in authority positions may. Thus it is very often the case that the exploited masses merely exchange one evil overload for another but end up even worse off than before because the instigators have really done the coup seeking vengeance not the well-being of the public. President Harry Truman once wrote, "Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I’ve found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.” Before (and during) any revolution it is wise to consider who is taking control and where they are coming from.

Capitalism may be the unfettered pursuit of money-profit but Communism is definitely purified exploitation of the many by an elite few kept in place with power based on lies, and whatever words or methods are needed for that power exploitation are valid and will be employed under the guise of Communist dogma and ideology. Wherever you find it, Communism is just a cover story, a coded word for raw authoritarian control of the bodies, minds, and aspirations of the many by the few. This in itself is nothing new historically speaking but the rampant and calculated use of lies to control the minds of the exploited masses is.

By any definition life in North Korea is horrific. The stories of Korean citizens reduced to eating tree bark (or each other) to survive concurrent famines artificially created through inept and corrupt central planning are well documented. Yet despite this, and no successful example of functional Communism anywhere, the continued (minority) attraction to Communism is the same today as any day - partly due to good marketing and the progressive, powerful image that is conveyed to the public. But mostly the attraction is that it promises power to those that do not have it. It uses convincing arguments, yet none of them need actually be true, merely that they seem to be true. In the end Communism is just a lie, a ruse, because it never provides what it promises to the vast majority of those that work for it.

The structure of Soviet society in the late 1980s is best described as "a radical social pyramid." At the apex were the wealthy families who comprise under 2.5 percent of the population. ... Consumption of all types of goods and services was disproportionately enjoyed (relative to their income) by the elite Soviet class. There is considerable anecdotal evidence that members of this class received the most advanced health care, the best educational institutions for themselves and their children, and easy access to state-subsidized recreational facilities. One particular example illustrates the skewed nature of consumption. In one region of central Russia the elite (i.e., local and regional Communist Party officials) accounted for just 0.04 percent of the population, but supposedly "consumed between 56 percent and 100 percent of all the high-quality food in their region." From: Comparative Economics by James Angresano, 1996.

Everywhere you look, every example in practice is a screaming testament to this insidious fact. From Pol Pot's Cambodia to Stalin's Russia every case is the same, Communism in practice is the calculated and continuous exploitation of power by the few over the many using words and symbols to convey and convince the exact opposite of what is really happening, such as planned starvation and, poverty - targeted confusion to placate the public and defeat opponents. 13.08.03

"When discussing the regime's control over the population of North Korea, many people cite the surveillance and monitoring capability of the large military and security service apparatus. While it is true that these organizations have their eyes and ears imbedded throughout the country, it is not these physical controls that give the regime its power over the population. The regime in North Korea derives the vast majority of its influence over the minds and hearts of the people through its absolute control and manipulation of all information made available to the local population. By controlling what a person hears, reads, and sees, one controls what he or she thinks and believes." Testimony of Andrew S. Natsios before Senate panel on June 5, 2003.

The American World Order

It's important to point out that Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, the whole team which will hereafter be referred to as Bush & Associates, they all firmly believe themselves to be patriotic Americans. They are not doing what they do to be evil, they simply lack any reflective capacity to grasp the depth or effect of their egregious actions upon the public. When Bush & Associates see the millions of antiwar protesters around the world rallying to knock some sense into their administration they really believe them to all be just leftists loonies organized by some central committee and representing the whacko fringe that can safely be ignored. To the neo-conservative Bush & Associates, patriotism means using raw expressions of military might to acquire the resources needed to enhance American power and wealth. It doesn't matter how you do it or how nice or mean you look, just get it done because rules and treaties are for other people. America has the undisputed force, now is the time to use it to bend others to our will and scare the rest into fearful submission. This is about building a new world order based on fear, terror and obedience to U$ dictates. No more OPEC threats, no more 1970s style gas crisis' - Condi Rice said it best, referring to Iraq: 'let them eat their oil;' give us what we want now or you will slowly starve to death.

The Iraqis are scared out of their minds of the American military machine. They saw what the first war was like and despite the exaggerated claims of bravado and resistance they're all in the back of their minds looking for the nearest U$ soldier to surrender to. If Iraq's military forces were lackluster in 1990 just think of what's left to defend with this time around? This war is not even that in a military sense, it's like hitting an ant with a sledgehammer; standard Sharon tactic true but in his case it's more like a helicopter missile against a rock thrower.

Without doubt this is a self-righteous lot of true-believers and not surprisingly Bush & Associates are nearly all deeply religious people. They are so busy preaching their gospel and dwelling on their convictions that they fail to stop and think about the absurdity of it all. By ignoring public protests they discredit their stated respect for democracy. By abrogating international treaties on everything from space weapons to nuclear weapons testing they negate their stated value for cooperation and diplomacy. Bush & Associates make a mockery of their own values and continually undermine their own position, indeed they have become the most glaring example of everything they claim to hate from terrorist fear tactics to despotic regimes!

But the true threat of this crusading machine run amok has not been lost on world leadership. From Europe to Asia, in public they may play-up allegiance to American dictates but in private they will continue to slow and undermine the naked imperialism of Bush & Associates as the imperative threat to world stability that it is. Thus, today we are caught between two paradigms, the old view based on simplistic, jingoistic nationalism typified by Roman imperialism and the new based on cooperative internationalism typified by the World Court and United Nations. Bush and Sharon truly believe that raw power, the domination of allies and the total defeat and humiliation of opponents is the most desirable method of achieving and maintaining worldwide superiority. In the meantime it may be a bumpy ride but ultimately the old imperialist paradigm is doomed because worldwide cultural expectations of freedom and fair-trade have already shifted. 19.03.03

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Today's power elites see the era of international institutions running the world as obsolescent, the New World Order needs some tweaking - the goal of singular dominance hasn't changed but the vehicle to arrive there has. And that vehicle is now the sole remaining superpower, the good ol' United States of America. The USA has been hijacked by a faction, ideologically a collection of Zionists and pro-Israel interests like Perle and Wolfowitz, Dispensationalist Christians like Karl Rove and an assorted rabble of other 'neo-conservatives.' This clique has colluded with a few mega-corporate interests such as the fossil fuel and defense industries. And the connection between the money and the ideology is a deeply interwoven one, for after all many of the key players now making these political decisions were once members of those same favored industries. Cheney has Halliburton, Condi Rice came from Chevron oil, Rumsfeld has more connections with murky business' than anyone can unravel.

And lo it came to pass, British Petroleum merged with Amoco and swallowed up ARCO, then Exxon with Mobile and Chevron merged with Texaco and then Shell bought the U$ market licenses to both companies and ...

The United States helped build the predecessor to the United Nations, the League of Nations but then went and sabotaged it. Once again the same thing is happening. Just like the 'democracy' talking heads Bush and associates are always pushing, it's only democracy when they hear the message they want and when they don't it's dictatorship. Dubya himself said it best - listening to antiwar protesters would be like 'taking advice from a focus group'. Anything against war on Iraq is ignored or rejected while everything that supports it is trumpeted and magnified at maximum volume. Every piece of evidence real or manufactured that implicates Saddam in acts of evil are propagated while those that don't are ignored or downplayed. When the UN or any international institution says what they want to hear it's a fine upstanding group worthy of respect and when they say the wrong thing it's all just a sign of weakness and inadequacy. Hypocrisy is the first word of the hour and a savage retribution against those speakers of the truth is the second. Wherever the first is present the second must follow close behind to protect it by attacking the truth.

Just Try and Stop 'em

Today the Untied States of America finds itself completely unopposed and sees no reason to refrain from doing whatever it can do to enhance and aggrandize resources, power and wealth especially when it can enrich the privileged elite running the show. If Bush Junior's war on Iraq fails then Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer and the rest of the White House spin-team will just ignite some new military conflagration elsewhere as a diversion just like they did with Afghanistan. If Iraq works as promised they'll just fixate and play it for election 2004. Either way they see it as a win for the home team. But if they win most everyone else will lose including the American public. Everything W Bush has done in office has made the world a less stable and a more dangerous place to live in. And it's no secret that the 'W' sees Ariel Sharon as a role model, he even went so far as to say that in public, "I would act exactly like Sharon" in Israel not long ago. The two examples couldn't be more similar, both can get away with anything, the dominant mass-media covers for both and no one has the military or economic power or influence to stop them. Remember: always escalate and when in trouble over flawed policy and glaring hypocrisy just create a noisy diversion to catch the attention of the mass-media dogs. If you want to know where America will be in a year from now just look at Israel today because Bush is reading from the same script of manic militarism as Sharon; polarizing debate, escalating conflicts and effectively blowing their countries apart along every social seam and ideological fault line.

Prove me wrong

The early 21st century is the summation of the 'Cold War' fraud collapsing and the rise of a single country as undisputed master. Now we will witness a raw expression of power sugar coated with platitudes for the mass-media to distribute to a placated and uncritical, acquiescent American audience. Iraq is but the first to be taken down, all of Israel's enemies will follow. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, even Egypt, they will all fall and be reprogrammed with pliant 'democratic' puppet regimes to mindlessly pump oil barrel after barrel for enriching the oil monopolists while smiling and kissing Israeli ass for the TV cameras.

Today we live in an era where authority is founded upon lies and hypocrisy and promoted by a chronically disingenuous and paranoid leadership living in constant fear of being revealed as what they really are. I don't like liars, few people do. Lies breed vengeance and vengeance spread widely enough will inevitable strike back at the source of the lies that started it all.

Know the guilty and recognize the responsible - stay focused and stay informed. 17.03.03

Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under the cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people would never adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant. - Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762.

Liberation? Or occupation?

What's in a Name?

19.09.02 Much of the motivation behind Holology is to both better understand complex issues and also make them more lucid. Language is the primary communications tool we use in this effort, but words themselves are often an impediment to clear and concise understanding, rather than an aid. Most (possibly all) of these logical paradoxes, such as the cryptic statement 'I believe in nothing,' are merely a consequence of the language itself and are to be taken literally at the cost of sanity and sensibility.

There's numerous ways language can be improved to enhance communication and clarity. The 'E-Prime' method is one example. "Consider the forms of the verb 'to be': 'be', 'been', 'is', 'are', 'am', 'was', and 'were'. Semanticists have long recognized that these words contribute to imprecision of expression, ambiguity, and even logical mistakes. Some advocate eliminating all verbs of being, all forms of the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication. The resulting "purified" English carries the name 'E-prime'. ... Indeed, the average person commonly mistakes ambiguity for profundity. This weakness of the human mind makes people easy prey to advertisers, demagogues and snake-oil salesmen." From: Reduced English

Some have even gone so far as to create an entirely new language to circumvent the technical problems associated with English, for instance. Esperanto is an artificial one, merging Spanish, French and English into a simplified, theoretically easy to learn language. But however superior it may or may not be it has failed to achieve any widespread acceptance, this after decades of promotion and exposure.

All language is an artificial construction and therefore is merely a subjective tool with which to better understand the natural, objective structures and entities. But even as obvious as that should seem, on an everyday basis most people confuse words with the substance they symbolize, and speech for actual knowledge! In that regard mathematics is the ultimate language because although it is made up of artificial symbols it nonetheless is value neutral, it contains no cultural bias and can be understood by anyone.

Mathematical language permits irrelevancies to be excluded from the analysis of particular problems in an unambiguous fashion. It also allows us to avoid unnecessary thinking, by building certain necessary aspects of logical consistency into the mathematical formalism itself ab initia so we are assured that they will hold whenever we employ that formalism. Ordinary language does not contain these advantages. The grammatical correctness of an English sentence does not tell us anything at all about the truth or self-consistency of what it states. Some of the most powerful communicators ignore basic linguistic rules when they write, and thereby create a personal literary style. Mathematics allows no such artistic licence. From: The World Within The World, by John D. Barrow, Oxford University Press 1988.

But math is difficult to use mostly because we don't learn to communicate with math first and foremost but only in a secondary capacity; we first learn to speak and read using letters and words. But regardless of the symbols we use, or even how effective they are for communications, describing and naming is a power in itself.

There is an internal power in naming that goes all the way back to the beginning of recorded history. Adam of the Bible was given that very power to name the animals by God in the Book of Genesis 2:19 "Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was it's name." As a reminder, when I quote the Bible it's not to promote a theological viewpoint but to reference a historical document. I'm illuminating what people used to think, and millions still do, but some people have problems properly interpreting my motivation, so I feel obligated to point it out.

By granting arbitrary names to objective entities, the naming authority wields significant power within the social context as well as an indirect authority over the thought process' of the people that think and speak using those word symbols, those arbitrary names. The novelist George Orwell's demonstrated this principle in his monumental book 1984. That novel presented an extreme form of authoritarian dystopia where, by removing and perverting words and their meaning, government could control the minds of the public. By limiting the range of thought and expression despotic authorities could minimize threats to their power and channel dissent into certain endeavors that served their interests such as continual warfare or the neutralization of domestic dissidents.

Many years earlier another Englishmen wrote, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," in Act II, Scene II of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This was a poetic way of stating that the rose would still be a rose even without the name. Even without a word to describe it we would still know about a lot of things. But a rose is a physical object we can all agree is pretty much easy to define. Vague concepts, such as those in philosophy, get quite confusing. We can legitimately ask: without a word would it exist? Likely any concept artificially concocted would be difficult if not impossible to adequately convey without a suitable language and common understanding aided by an appropriate name and label. So I would tend to side with the typical linguist position that words have power, that they do influence thought, but probably not to the extreme level of Orwell's 1984 dystopia. Linguists have a tendency to elevate language higher than it really is. Words and meanings are just a reflection of the ambient culture and its values - what people currently believe, how they act, what they value and the moral rules all are expressed in contemporary language.

Food manufactures have been forced by law to accurately describe and label the contents of their products because without standards and clear labels the customer can never be sure of what they are buying and what they are eating. It's very important for everyone involved to know what they are getting but honesty has other benefits because it evens the playing field and enhances fairness and allows rewards (and punishment) to be directed at the deserving parties. Since Holology is about human intelligence and intelligence is understanding and knowledge, it's important to make both as easy to acquire as possible. Truth in labeling is one way of achieving this.

One of the projects at the Department of Research is a list of famous individuals titled Who Are they Really? Which features famous people with pseudonyms as well as real names. This is meant to be an entertaining but nonetheless informative depiction of this 'truth in labeling' concept. And after all, some have done bad things, some have done good things, but how can anyone apply adequate responsibility for either without knowing who is really who? This is trying to interject a bit more accuracy into the debate, to put the blame or the reward where it belongs and allow the reader decide what they want to think beyond that.

But this sort of thing wouldn't be needed If the mainstream media made an honest effort to inform the public in a fair and objective manner. I can give you a perfect example of this gross failure to serve the pubic interest. If you have Encarta encyclopedia, you know the one form Microsoft, type in 'Hungarian Americans' now check out the list at 'Contributions to American Culture' there. You will find Andy Grove, George Soros, Edward teller, Zukor, (Fox and Houdini I'm fairly sure) all of which are actually Jewish, nearly the entire list!

You cannot tell me Adolph Zukor of Paramount is Hungarian, come on! "Had he not wanted so much to be a merchant, Mr. Zukor might very well have become a rabbi. "I had the devil of a time persuading my uncle, Kalman Liebermann, who was a rabbi himself, that I wasn't cut out for the theological calling," said Adolph Zukor. Few things make me angrier than intentional inaccuracy, and there's no nicer way to describe it. This misinformation is from an encyclopedia after all! You're not going to see Soros at a Hungarian cultural event, he's not donating to help the preservation of the Hungarian people. He's not Hungarian and he doesn't care about Hungarians, he cares about his investments services and 'philanthropy'. Why not tell the truth that these people are FROM Hungary, they may have been born there but they certainly are not Hungarians?

So just what really is in a name? A whole lot actually - identity, authority and even a subtle form of mind control. Confusion is power, just look at any Priest or Rabbi - they earn living from interpreting that confusion to the 'unenlightened' masses, what a scam! But by improving the accuracy of names and labels and basically calling things what they truly are we undermine their false authority while interjecting sanity and fairness into the debate.

'For Us Or Against Us?'

Ariel Sharon is a wonder when it comes to making new enemies. Just in the past week he's managed to outrage:

International Red Cross:
By blocking ambulances, cutting the power to hospitals and generally impeding medical and relief aid in every way possible while endangering the lives of rescue workers. The ICRC calls it a "sudden degradation" of relations with Israel.

The Media:
By endangering the lives of journalists, forming what the IDF calls "a closed military area" excluding everyone but the Israeli military despite the fact that Israel has no legal right to do so in official Palestinian governed regions like Ramallah. This is easily the single most stupid thing Sharon has done (yet). It's got to be the first lesson every politician learns - don't ever get on the bad side of the media! And while it's one thing to revoke the credentials of two Abu Dhabi TV journalists, it's another to attack the same American news teams that have given Israel enormous allowances in the past. America's ABC, CNN, and even NBC have all been threatened with unspecified actions.

Worldwide Leftists:
It's remarkable but much of the support Israel garnered over the past 50 years was from the political left itself, viewing the Israeli mini-state as an 'underdog'. This situation has completely reversed and now western peace activists in Palestine are actually saying they're motive(s) are to help the "underdog" but it isn't Sharon's clique it's Arafat's! Also keep in mind that most of these peace activists are young people who will retain visions of IDF brutality and Palestinian suffering for lifetimes. So much for kibbutzim and happy Jewish kids fruit farming - more like Apache gunships and bloodstained walls. The long term damage to Israel's image is incalculable.

U$ Government / Bush administration:
Poorly timed actions, blatantly contradictory demands especially against Arafat, the list grows by the hour. Talk about 'biting the hand that feeds you'! If Sharon had just waited a few months the U$ military would have pounded Iraq into rubble, again, and the smoke screen of that action would have worked well for Sharon to invade the territories. Thus eliminating two enemies for another decade or so. But now he'll win neither. If he wasn't still fighting Lebanon in his monomaniacal mind he could have been an Israeli hero, now he'll be lucky if he doesn't spend his remaining years behind bars in Belgium.

Christians:
By invading Bethlehem, endangering the lives of local Priests and firing upon churches. Many Palestinians that Israel claims are valid combatants have sought refugee in the Church of the Nativity and reports of gunfire have emerged in the Santa Maria Convent also in Bethlehem. Over the past fifty years and despite the fundamental irony of doing so most Christians provide active or at least tacit moral support to the Zionist state of Israel; but will this always continue? If that support were to be lost it would absolutely be the worst thing Sharon has perpetrated upon his own people.

So what is the point?
All it takes is one maniac in executive office and things can change pretty fast.

When will this end?
Probably as long as Sharon has the authority to continue his personal vendetta / obsession against Arafat.

And finally, why should we care?
I suppose if you don't have a political, theological or racial connection to the parties involved then maybe not a whole lot. The problem is that every group that is unable or unwilling to act, speak or appear to be neutral and impartial in the issue becomes dangerously entangled in the outcome. America's favored position granted to Israel by that government has and continues to generate significant worldwide animosity due to the actions of the Israeli government and its military. This antipathy and aggression will increasingly focus not just on Israeli intransigence but also on America's with sadly predictable consequences. 03.04.02

It is blatantly averred, again and again, that any criticism of Israel's policies is an expression of anti-semitism. With that assertion the argument is supposed to be closed. Of course, I reject this attempt at censorship by thus disqualifying the grounds for debate. No amount of suffering - be it of the Tutsis, Kurds, Armenians, Vietnamese, Bosnians or Palestinians - can confer immunity from criticism. - Breyten Breytenbach

Separate & Un-Equal

Israel is a country of rampant double standards and the most glaring is the bifurcated system dividing Arab and Jewish Israeli citizens. Arabs in Israel suffer under segregated schools and deeply segregated political power for even though an Arab-Israeli can be elected to government positions they are never equated equal authority as Jewish politicians. The 120 member Knesset includes only nine Arab Israelis. It's an 'apartheid' system in every sense of the word. Also, it's interesting to note that Israel was a longtime supporter of South Africa, even covertly developing and testing nuclear weapons in conjunction with that apartheid regime, a regime that the American government sanctioned, subverted and lambasted as brutal and unjust! Many Americans even staged benefit concerts while funneling funds and moral support to the opposition leader, the communist Nelson Mandela and his associates. America itself even spent years of civil turmoil battling a system of social segregation and unequal justice only to presently support Israel's use of the same and worse against it's own citizens!

Yet as bad as the situation is for Arab-Israelis, the Palestinian populace is on an even lower footing and although Israel is not the only country in the world to exploit Palestinian labor it is the most conspicuous. Despite all the mutual animosity Israelis and Palestinians need each other economically, one for the cheap labor, the other for employment. Both sides know this but have, shall we say, differing interpretations of how it will be carried out. The Israeli government wants low paid serfs or indentured servants living completely separate lives without rights in segregated ghettos on the other side of the razor wire topped concrete barriers. Palestinians, like all workers want living wages, basic freedom, rights, safety and most controversially a nation of their own.

The desire for a Palestinian state is largely in response to the formation of the state of Israel slightly over 50 years ago by the UN; yet the reciprocal disallowance of which is a blatant double standard. The Palestinian desire for political independence, meaning the formation of a state of Palestine, is the true bone of contention between the two parties and what right-wing elements in Israel's government fear above all else. An independent Palestinian state would grant legitimacy and legal rights to the Palestinian people and could directly threaten the viability and legitimacy of the Israeli state for several reasons. First it would limit Israel expansion through the use of (illegal) settlements, second it would give the Palestinians voice at the U, and third would open the door for financial and moral support channeled directly towards a government replete with rights and sovereign boundaries.

And state sovereignty has plenty of benefits. Sharon and Arafat both have exceptionally sordid pasts but since Sharon has a state his atrocities are backed by legal force while Arafat doesn't, hence the label - terrorist. Sharon can argue from the respectable position of statesman while Arafat only that of a special interest group. The state of Israel is the darling of authoritarians from Beijing to Washington because they respect and admire power, and power Israel has in bold superabundance. Israel has biological, chemical and even an undeclared nuclear arsenal with ultramodern American equipment all unquestionably backed by American political muscle, a complicit American media and the most powerful army of lobbyists in the world. The Israeli government sees no need to bargain or grant concession to anyone. Consequently the Israeli leadership perceives the Palestinian intifada as something akin to a slave uprising.

Look beneath the hyperbole of the mouthpieces and the rhetoric of the leadership and you'll see the tools and a consistent methodology.

The IDF (Israeli Defense Force) has been remarkably consistent in method against Palestine. The IDF is targeting every element that enhances Palestinian independence, hence the destruction of the Gaza airport, the runway was torn up by Israeli bulldozers. Arafat's police called 'Force-17' has born the brunt of IDF strikes recently as well. Without understanding the true motivation of the IDF it seems especially ironic that despite Sharon's entreaties for Arafat to mop-up militants, police stations and even the jails holding Palestinian militants have been the struck by Israeli aircraft, simultaneously nullifying Arafat's only means of arresting the militants and freeing the ones he already arrested!

Peres and Sharon: each play their role but work for the same side with Arafat caught in the middle of the 'peace process', a farce that continues indefinitely yet never achieves it's stated goal.

Further evidence of this policy of subjugation and control is exercised through the IDF, Shin Bet and Mossad as the continuing policy of using assassination, 'targeted killings', against the most outspoken and troublesome leaders in order to cow the populace and weaken organized resistance.

Physicist Albert Einstein once said "Peace in Palestine cannot be achieved through force, only through understanding." The decisions are not Arafat's, they are for Sharon to make because he alone has the military and political might to determine the tone and direction of the current conflict. Yet as we've seen Israel's polices of brutally repressing all Palestinian aggression has already seriously backfired and the worst is yet to come. Repression and injustice has created a state of chronic warfare, destroyed any livelihood the Palestinians had to divert them away from violence, and turned public opinion against Israel and towards support for the Palestinian cause. As long as Israelis allow themselves to be governed by authoritarians, beasts that only understand power and it's unmitigated employment as a panacea for all problems foreign and domestic, they will inevitably be drawn deeper into a vortex of uncontrollable hatred and vengeance from which extrication only becomes increasingly difficult. 05.12.01

The Moderate

13.11.01 In order to survive at the very top in the political circus it's important to appear a moderate. This is especially true within the western frictional, factional, multi-party, multi-interest system. I said appear a moderate not to actually be one, instead the prudent and cunning establish or subtly promote vociferous opponents on both sides to facilitate this illusion of the moderate centrist. Between these two relative extremes is what defines 'moderate' in the public's mind.

The reason for doing this is multifaceted.
One it increases career longevity since few will wish to displace you through vote, coup or assassination with the more radical alternates waiting to take over. Secondly, appearing the moderate makes bargaining and diplomacy that much more plausible both foreign and domestically. Third making highly publicized and trivial concessions to opponent parties creates a useful aura of conciliation and cooperation. Thus, radical or conservative every successful political leader strives to achieve a public perception of a 'moderate' even if the true definition of that term is something else entirely. The rule to remember is that opponent parties should never be vanquished, merely kept weak, controlled and disunited.

As top boss within a dictatorship appearances can and should remain secondary to ruthless effectiveness at defeating but not eliminating opponents. Usually this implies keeping those threatening interests in chronic fratricidal conflict. It should go without saying that the most successful power-player apples both principles of the 'moderate' and enemy control within the limitations and expectations of the contemporary milieu.

Rules That Win Wars

20.09.01 Rule #1 If you can't go all the way to the capitol and park your tanks in front of the presidential palace and put your military officers in the position of lawmakers like Gen. MacArthur in Japan and then be willing to sit on the country for decades if necessary to establish the friendly government, you cannot win the war. And if your country is unwilling or unable to do this, don't even get involved. Because a war fought in half-measure is a war lost. Furthermore a wounded nation and a humiliated leadership is a far worse threat than an unmolested one.

Rule #2 If you want to win the war you have to think in the long term which is why America finds so many problems because even when they win the battle they lose the wars. They fund freedom fighters in Central America or Afghanistan then a few years after the conflict blows over they have a powerful well trained new enemy.

Look at the Hungarian rebels in the 1950s, the Kurds or the Iraqi resistance. America promises support, promises prompt aid and total allegiance then turns around and leaves these disaffected rebels out to dry or be executed by the authoritarian regimes they resisted. America consistently antagonizes dangerous people then acts collectively mystified when they end up with highly motivated enemies a short while later. If you can't learn you'll get burned.
[It's not enough to know how to tear down, one must know equally well how to build up; this is Holology.]

Ahh the wonders of war, state-sponsored mass-conflict: it's a little known fact that the great flu pandemic that killed millions, often in less than a day, was spread by the weakened and emaciated soldiers returning home from war, that being the Great war to end all wars, World War I.
That's your government at working defending the people from harm!