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 21st 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
|
Hook, Line, and Sinker (Nietzschian Delusions) |

November 2007 |
The bigger the crime the smaller the
punishment; call yourself a government and you can commit all
the crimes you want.
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
|
Rising Stock: Investing in America's Future |

February
2004 |
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
***
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? |
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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.
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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!
'Final Word'
(The Holological Significance)
"It almost
seems that the carnage of today becomes
tomorrow's romance, and the worst of men
reach Olympus instead of Hades." Despotism
by Dagobert D. Runes, page 94, 1963
Philosophical Library Inc.
...yeah
"almost." The profoundly simple
rule that explains all of despotism is
merely that the survivors propagate over
the dead meaning they spread their ideas
and their genes, the concept of their
righteousness and the influence of their
kin. And in this regard very often the
more brutal and the more violent are
rewarded. The victors don't just write
the history books they are the
history books because they define the
future. Which is why we don't read about
the millions of slaves and indentured
servants that built the monuments and the
mansions we only read of the kings and
conquerors that used their broken bodies
and spilled blood to fulfill their grand
designs. Once again humanity succumbs to
the laws of the universe. This is why
despotism operates outside of petty human
morality and we may label slavery and
dictatorship the grandest of evils but
they're nevertheless products of nature,
of survival and the inveterate desire
within all living beings to perpetuate
and radiate at whatever expense. So if
you think the desire for power and
exploitation is as outdated as the ruins
of Greece you're obviously not thinking
very hard. In order to alter the future
everyone needs to unambiguously
understand the rules and avoid sugar
coating it in fantasy
Historically
despotism is a product of the
urbanization of human populations, more
specifically with the concept of State be
it codified within Church or Kingdom
coupled with extreme wealth inequality.
We can't avoid the torturous nature of
despotism but we can guide it in a
more pleasant and propitious direction
with the foresight to detect it in
advance and the collective vigilance to
act. Not with the lazy pseudo-solution of
law and constitution because we all know
how fast that gets warped. Certainly not
with hope, faith or loyalty but instead
with stamina and intellect. The only
viable antidote to the troubles of
despotism are the arming of the
individual mind with fact instead
of fantasy and firearms instead of
faith.
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