Torture and Abuse:
Favorite Tools of Despotic Authority
27.06.09 As official documents have slowly
leaked out, or been released under legal pressure from
public-interest groups like the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), we’ve learned that the torture and
abuse of captives under the guidance of Vice President Dick
Cheney was part of an effort to generate evidence linking
Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in order to
justify launching war on Iraq. In other words, proceeding from
a fundamentally false premise, captives were tortured to
reveal facts that did not exist because Saddam never had any
ties to al Qaeda!
So, it turns out that the infamous lie about
al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein working together was extracted
through torture in Egypt, a notoriously brutal dictatorship
jointly sponsored by Israel and the U.S. government with
billions of dollars of American taxpayer money.
… which, incidentally,
should be hurled in the face of former Vice President Cheney,
every time he is invited onto a TV show to repeat his claims
that torture saved the US from further terrorist attacks — and
to ignore the crucial role he played in actually using torture
to launch an illegal war. [1]
The origin for the torture techniques used on
detainees is one of the most bizarre ironies yet to emerge
from this sordid tale. The military’s Joint Personnel Recovery
Agency (JPRA) directly adopted methods, like water-boarding
and sleep-deprivation, which were used by Chinese and North
Korean Communist interrogators to elicit 'confessions' from
captured American soldiers! [2] These torture tactics were
studied, and then employed only as extreme simulations for
escape and evasion training by U.S. soldiers. But then the JPRA re-engineered them to be used on detainees, just like the
Communists they fought against in Korea.
Even more outrageous, the torture and abuse of
captives in the 'War on Terror', or whatever the latest bogus
title is that’s being officially used, continues under the
Obama administration. This kind of official behavior has now
been institutionalized but it still operates using erroneous
beliefs in non-existent ‘facts’, searching for information
that doesn’t exist in order to justify pre-existing plans and
ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people in the
process, wrecking the prestige of America, and directly
endangering the safety of American’s everywhere through the
inevitable retributive counter-attacks.
In the end, though, what is
most significant about al-Libi’s torture tour through US proxy
prisons and prisons run by the CIA is the realization that,
throughout his long ordeal, US interrogators or their proxies
were persistently using torture to secure information from him
about other prisoners and other suspects — either in the
presence of these men, or through the use of photographs —
that was just as unreliable as his “confession” about the
connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and that
these other “confessions” must, in turn, have led to further
arrests and further torture, with a cumulative effect that is
truly mind-boggling in its scale. [1]
The use of torture to elicit false information that
subsequently implicates other innocent people, who are then
captured and interrogated forming a chain-reaction, is
primarily why the Obama administration is still having so much
difficulty shutting down Bush-Cheney’s showcase concentration
camp in Guantanamo Bay Cuba. They have no valid evidence to
put anyone on trial, but they can’t release them without
effectively admitting that the captives were innocent to begin
with and the whole thing is a sick fraud!
As soon as authority resorts to torture and
abuse it sends out a blazing warning signal to everyone who’s
paying attention: proper oversight has failed, this regime has
lost all legitimacy to rule, and now must be replaced through
any means necessary.
1. New Revelations About The
Torture and Alleged Suicide Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi,
by Andy Worthington, The Public Record, June 19, 2009.
2. Harsh Tactics Readied Before
Their Approval, by Joby Warrick and Peter Finn,
Washington Post, April 22, 2009.
Russia Defeats
NATO's Plans for World Domination
29.08.08 When reading news
articles in the western mass media you have to keep in mind
that what they represent is not the views and concerns of the
public, or even the collective national interest, but rather
the attitudes and concerns of the ruling elite. The Georgian
conflict is a perfect example of this. Every news article is
an outpouring of rage, vilification, and torrents of slander
directed against Russia for daring to move against Georgia. An
objective reader has to conclude that the mass-media’s anger
is totally disproportionate to the state of actual events, and
a reader familiar with recent historical events will conclude
that it represents chutzpah and hypocrisy of monumental
proportions.
Georgia started the crisis, but the West
is blaming Russia. Everywhere there is total disinformation,
distortion of facts, and international attempts to isolate
Russia. - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, August
2008.
Bush, Cheney, British PM Gordon Brown,
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, these clowns make mob
bosses and drug lords look subtle and sophisticated in
comparison. And if this is all just idle rhetoric then why are
they saying inflammatory things that they know they can’t back
up with action, guaranteeing a loss of credibility after their
true impotence is revealed? The difference between Russia’s
and the west’s leaders is like night and day, the Russians say
what they mean and act consistently and accordingly to their
statements while the west’s leaders generate clouds of angry
and distorted rhetoric and fail to follow any of it with
concomitant action, then they deflect all responsibility for
their own behavior onto their opponents, take for instance
Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband,
"The Russian president says he is not
afraid of a new Cold War. … He has a big responsibility not to
start one."
The stunning
detachment from reality reflected in the statements and
attitudes of the western political leadership should be cause
for alarm to everyone. Not only are they disconnected from the
national citizens they purport to represent in their putative
democracy, but in actuality they've been doing just about
everything they can to ratchet up tensions with Russia and
create a new Cold War even as they blame it all on Russia at
the same time!
The whole reason for NATO was to counter the military
might of the Warsaw Pact, the military defense block
encompassing Eastern Europe and the USSR. Yet after the Soviet
Union dissolved and the Warsaw Pact was disbanded NATO did
not cease to exist too, and instead NATO, guided by the
planners in Washington DC, actually went on the diplomatic
warpath, intentionally expanding into the very region of
Eastern Europe that acted as Russia’s defensive buffer against
military attack.
What did Britain and America think they
were doing? Pushing NATO deep into the old Soviet Union and
setting up a missile defence system in Poland and the Czech
Republic on the patently false pretence that it was to counter
the (non-existent) threat from Iran was bound to add to
Russia's already considerable paranoia, without achieving
anything worth having. – Lord
Robert Skidelsky [1]
Then NATO began
military operations in Afghanistan, in conjunction with extensive U.S.
diplomatic and economic efforts to manipulate and control
Central Asia, most notably for that region's oil and natural
gas resources. Georgia is a key portion of this master plan
for what in essence amounts to world domination by NATO.
Georgia hosts the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline designed to
bypass Russia entirely, and now we begin to see some of the
real reasons why the political bosses in Europe and the United
States are foaming at the mouth with rage. [2]
Now the
Bush-Cheney regime is talking about cutting arms-reduction
treaties, and Europe’s craven leaders are threatening to freeze
Russia out of the WTO and kick them out of the G8 economic
group, or even taking the 2014 Winter Olympics away from
Russia! This is the height of stupidity. Russia has gone to
enormous lengths to try and integrate with Europe politically
and economically and now the west wants to throw all of that
in Russia’s face over a week-long skirmish on Russia’s own
border! It was Georgia that started the war with
their military assault on South Ossetia, a direct result of
military aid, political backing from the west, and the promise
of NATO membership, yet the western mass-media and political
heads consistently portray Russia as the sole cause of all the
trouble.
Intentionally
inflaming tensions with Russia is stupid every way you look at
it because Russia can easily retaliate against Europe, NATO,
and U.S. military and economic efforts, from cutting off
supplying NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan to blocking
sanctions against Iran and similar UN security council
efforts, or Russia can expand relations in South and Central
America.
President Saakashvili is a hothead. He
invaded South Ossetia aiming to translate theoretical
sovereignty into practical sovereignty and lost Georgia's
theoretical sovereignty as a result. He ought to be removed by
his people, not for war crimes but for gross incompetence. – Lord
Robert Skidelsky [1]
The Georgian
people are being used as pawns by Washington, NATO, and their
increasingly unpopular leader who hides behind the shield of
nationalism. The best interests of Georgians will not be
served by any of these three forces.
The fact is that
Washington/NATO has lost in Central Asia and their misguided
backing of Georgia’s autocratic ruler is just another in a
series of embarrassing failures, and that’s really what the
threatening language and irrational invective is about. The
chess players have defeated the street bullies and sewn up the
last critical piece of the Central Asian oil and gas resource
puzzle, signing a 20-year contract to sell Turkmenistan’s
natural gas through Russia’s Gazprom. [2] NATO’s rulers have
no one to blame but themselves for starting this foolish game
of winner-take-all antagonism, shunning cooperation at every
turn in favor of unilateral victory, and then losing in the
end.
NATO’s rulers
should be held accountable for their actions by their own
people, but until justice is delivered it’s clear that the
only way NATO can learn anything is the hard way – by losing.
1.
David Miliband must stop playing with fire, by Lord Robert Skidelsky, The Times (UK) August 28, 2008.
2.
Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas, by M K
Bhadrakumar, ATOL, July 30, 2008.
Georgia Conflict Part II - The Israel Factor
06.09.08 The U$ government
is pouring cash into Georgia in order to prop up the reckless
regime of President Mikhail Saakashvili, and to protect
foreign investments that are betting on Georgia as a viable,
and potentially highly lucrative, oil and gas conduit. The
Bush administration announced a $1 billion aid package for
Georgia in September, “… making the
former Soviet republic one of the highest per capita
recipients of U.S. economic assistance. … The assistance plan,
assuming it is fully funded by this administration and the
next, would exponentially increase U.S. aid to Georgia, which
totaled about $64 million in fiscal 2008. [1]
The money is part
of an IMF and World Bank loan package, and you know what that
means -- deep trouble for the Georgian people. Georgia’s
President Saakashvilli, a New York trained lawyer, has been a
major promoter of privatization of national assets, cutting
taxes and tariffs, and generally opening up his country to
international speculative investment. Georgian Prime Minister
Gurgenidze has described it as “the
world’s most successful supply-side fiscal experiment.”
As a consequence the rich have gotten richer and the poor are
even worse off than before. The situation is like a giant
elephant draining a muddy pool of water amidst a drought. At
the same time Georgia has racked up a perilous trade deficit
that threatens the economic stability of the whole setup.
In early September
2008 Vice President Cheney made a blatant bear-baiting tour of
the Caucusus region where he promised to include Georgia in
NATO. But Cheney and his neo-con allies are interested in
Georgia for more than just the pipeline, it turns out that
Israel is deeply involved in Georgia too. In fact numerous
members of the Georgian government are Jewish. Davit
Kezerashvili, Georgia's Defense Minister, is a former Israeli
who uses his connection to facilitate purchases of Israeli
weapons using U.S. aid. [3]
The Jerusalem
Post on Aug. 12 reported, "Georgian Prime Minister Vladimir
Gurgenidze made a special call to Israel Tuesday morning to
receive a blessing from one of the Haredi community's most
important rabbis and spiritual leaders, Rabbi Aaron Leib
Steinman. "I want him to pray for us and our state," he was
quoted.
[3]
Israel even
has plans to use Georgian air-bases to get closer to Iran for
an air-attack! “This
would sharply reduce the distance Israeli fighter bombers
would have to fly to hit targets in Iran. And to reach
Georgian airstrips, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) would fly over
Turkey.”
[3]
At this point to
call Saakashvilli reckless would be an understatement, he’s
leading NATO into a war against Russia and trying to involve
the Caucasus region in a full-blown Middle Eastern war!
The Bush-Cheney
regime had to know that Georgia was going to attack South
Ossetia, and it seems pretty clear at this point that they
must have at least tacitly approved of Saakashvili’s military
assault. The top national security aide to Cheney, Joseph R.
Wood, was in Georgia just before Saakashvili launched his
attack.
Writing in the
New Statesman August 14 Misha Glenny noted how the US and
Israel had worked to arm Georgia, so that “Saakashvili and
the hawks around him came to believe the farcical
proposition that Georgia’s armed forces could take on the
military might of their northern neighbour in a conventional
fight and win.”
Glenny noted that the Georgian minister for
reintegration of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Temur
Yakobashvili, had praised Israel for its military
assistance. Following the assault on South Ossetia, Glenny
stated, Yakobashvili had said “Israel should be proud of its
military, which trained Georgian soldiers.” Thanks to its
assistance, “We killed 60 Russian soldiers yesterday alone,”
he said. “The Russians have lost more than 50 tanks, and we
have shot down 11 of their planes. They have sustained
enormous damage in terms of manpower.”
It is known that the US and Georgia held
joint war games between July 15-31, codenamed Operation
Immediate Response, which involved 1,000 US servicemen. One
week later, on August 7, Georgian forces attacked South
Ossetia. [4]
Unofficial NATO
Expansion into Georgia
As part of a
creeping expansion of NATO to include Georgia, that country has
now been integrated into the alliance's electronic warning
network.
“A Nato official said that the combined air surveillance
arrangement had been negotiated before the crisis in Georgia.
The technical switch-on, linking radars in Georgia to Nato,
happened this week however.” [2]
This action is exceedingly provocative towards Russia as it
directly threatens their military defense, now NATO can track,
monitor, and potentially attack Russian aircraft.
1.
Rice: U.S. to Give $1 Billion to 'Help Georgia Sustain
Itself, by Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, September
4, 2008.
2.
Georgia linked to Nato early warning system, by
Michael Evans,The Times (UK) September 5, 2008.
3.
Israel of the Caucasus?, by Arnaud de Borchgrave,
Washington Times, September 4, 2008.
4.
Danger grows of NATO-Russian clash in Black Sea, by
Julie Hyland and Chris Marsden, WSWS, September 1, 2008.
For more on this
topic read
NATO on the March: Plan Georgia,
by Freydis
The bigger the crime the smaller the
punishment; call yourself a government and you can commit all
the crimes you want.
Book Review:
My Autobiography, By Benito Mussolini,1928, Dover
Publications 2006
29.06.08
The title of this book is self-explanatory; it
describes Mussolini’s life and events primarily between World
War I and the ascension of the Fascist party as the government
of Italy.
Benito Mussolini was born in 1883 in northeast
Italy, the son of a blacksmith and a primary school teacher.
He describes fighting in World War I against the
Austrian Empire in the north of Italy, winning the war
militarily but then having their national gains thrown away
through post-conflict diplomatic machinations. It’s not really
clear what happened but it appears that the western leaders
thought they were creating some kind of happy new world where
war would be abolished, and that consequently Italy should just
gave up all her war territory, such as portions of
Yugoslavia with a long history of Italian cultural connections.
After losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the war this was, not
surprisingly, seen as a huge insult to the Italian people. At
the same time after the war Italy was afflicted with very stupid
and short-sighted government and national leadership, for
instance they banned flight and aircraft development and had all
airplanes dismantled!
Everyone else in Italy knew that something had to
be done and soon because the country was a mess, rapidly getting
worse; the established democratic government was running the
country into the ground. Soon economic mismanagement created
inflation, only adding fuel to the fire of discontent. Radical
socialists, communists, and anarchists could smell blood in the
water, and taking their guidance from Lenin and the new Soviet
Union set about to start a workers revolution to turn Italy into
a Soviet state.
Mussolini built up his party starting with his
newspaper, battled socialists and anarchists in the streets, got
elected to office as part of parliament, organized his troops to
march on the capital whereby the king of Italy recognized the
impending civil war and preferred the conservative social
leanings of the Fascists to the radical promises of the leftists,
so he put Mussolini in charge of the government. Mussolini
assumed government responsibility and quickly set about to
repair the crumbling image, infrastructure, and economy of the
nation.
Fascism was not initiated to be just another
political party:
I speak of movement and not of party, because
my conception always was that Fascism must assume the
characteristics of being anti-party. It was not to be tied to
old or new schools of any kind. The name Italian Fighting
Fascisti was lucky. It was most appropriate to a political
action that had to face all the old parasites and programmes
that had tried to deprave Italy. I felt that it was not only
the anti-socialist battle we had to fight; this was only a
battle on the way. There was a lot more to do. All the
conceptions of the so-called historical parties seemed to be
dresses out of measure, shape, style, usefulness. They had
grown tawdry and insufficient—unable to keep pace with the
rising tide of unexpected political exigencies, unable to
adjust to the formation of new history and new conditions of
modern life.
The old parties clung in vain to the rattling
programmes. These parties had to make pitiful repairs and
tinkerings in an attempt to adapt their theories as best they
could to the new days. It was therefore not sufficient to
create—as some have said superficially—an anti-altar to the
altar of socialism. It was necessary to imagine a wholly new
political conception, adequate to the living reality of the
twentieth century, overcoming at the same time the ideological
worship of liberalism, the limited horizons of various spent
and exhausted democracies, and finally the violently Utopian
spirit of Bolshevism.
In a word, I felt the deep necessity of an
original conception capable of placing in a new period of
history a more fruitful rhythm of human life.
It was necessary to lay the foundation of a new
civilization.
[p. 53]
According to Mussolini he built the
Fascist party from the ground up from his own effort.
The Italian Bundles of Fight were now
transforming themselves. They were to receive the new
denomination of Fascist National party, with a central
directory and supreme council over the provincial
organizations and the lesser Fascist sections which were to be
created in every locality. On that occasion I wanted with all
my desire to strip from our party the personal character which
the Fascist movement had assumed because of the stamp of my
will. But the more I wished to give the party an autonomous
organization and the more I tried, the more I received the
conviction from the evidence of the facts that the party could
not have existed and lived and could not be triumphant except
under my command, my guidance, my support and my spurs.
[p. 107]
The fascist regime was a resolute dictatorship; Mussolini assumed responsibility in the new
government:
An existence wholly new began for me. To speak
about it makes it necessary for me to abandon the usual form
of autobiographic style; I must consider the organic whole of
my governmental activity. From now on my life identifies
itself almost exclusively with thousands of acts of
government. Individuality disappears. Instead, my person
expresses, I sometimes feel, only measures and acts of
concrete character; these do not concern a single per son;
they concern the multitudes, they concern and permeate an
entire people. So one's entire life is lost in the whole.
...
Progressive inflation and the printing presses gave to
everybody the old illusion of prosperity. It created an
unstable delusion of well-being; it excited a fictitious game
of interests. All this had to be expiated when faced by the
severe Fascist financial policy.
Abroad our political reputation had diminished
progressively. We were judged as a nation without order and
discipline, unable either to prosper or produce.
[p. 148]
Obviously, given the high stakes involved, the Communists didn’t take their defeat
gracefully. Their assassination attempts on Mussolini, and
efforts to undermine the Fascist regime, were defeated because
Mussolini rearranged the social and economic order to favor the
workers, while simultaneously assuaging existing authority’s
fears of revolution with appropriately conservative platitudes.
The Communists just couldn’t compete against Fascism that was
better organized, offered a more popular product, and most
stunning of all actually delivered what they promised. This in
fact demonstrated a remarkable difference between Mussolini’s
Fascism and every other political party in that his effort
wasn’t just an exercise in seizing control over the resources of
the nation for his clique but he actually meant what he said and
aimed to organize the nation for the common good. In this regard
Mussolini compares Italian Fascism with the typical selfish
party interests:
Old men of the socialist and syndicalist poses
and postures were amazed and perplexed at the daring new
reform. Another legend fell: Fascism was not the protector of
any one class, but a supreme regulator of the relations
between all citizens of a state. The Labor Charter found
interpreters and attracted the attention of the studious in
every part of the world. It became a formidable pillar of the
new consituation of the Fascist State.
As a logical consequence of the Charter of
Labor and of all the social legislation and of the magistracy
of labor, came the necessity of instituting the Corporations.
In this institution are concentrated all the branches of
national production. Work in all its complex manifestations
and in all its breadth, whether of manual or of intellectual
nature, requires equally protection and nourishment. The
citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual
who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of
the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its corporative
conception puts men and their possibilities into productive
work and interprets for them the duties they have to fulfill.
In this new conception, which has found its
logical expression in our representative forms, the citizen is
valuable because of his productivity, his work and his
thought, and not merely because he is twenty-one years old and
has the right to vote!
[p. 205]
Fascism Old and New
An
important distinctions that needs to be made is that today’s
‘fascism’ refers to corporate control in primacy and state as
subservient helper, think of the George W. Bush administration,
war profiteering, deregulation, and so on. Mussolini’s Fascism
was the opposite, it held corporate business interests as second
with state control in primacy and thus business was regulated to
serve national interests. Now, clearly both patterns eventually
produce serious distortions, today’s fascism produces massive
corruption, an environment antithetic to the well-being of the
vast majority of the nation’s inhabitants, and is perfect for
serving special interests while stealing form everyone else. Original
Fascism unifies the nation and serves the public interest when under
benevolent guidance, but puts enormous power in the hands of one
or a few leaders who then find it all too easy to start wars of
adventure or aggression. And without impartial oversight
corruption blossoms.
A little further on I said: "Over all conflicts
of human and legitimate interests, there is the authority of
the government; the government alone is in the right position
to see things from the point of view of the general welfare.
This government is not at the disposition of this man or that
man; it is over everybody, because it takes to itself not only
the juridical conscience of the nation in the present, but
also all that the nation represents for the future. The
government has shown that it values at the highest the
productive strength of the nation. A government which follows
these principles has the right to be listened to by every one.
It has a task to fulfill. It will do it. It will do it
inexorably for the defense of the moral and material interests
of the nation."
Little by little, the old labor structure and
associations were abandoned. We were directed more and more
toward the corporative conception of the state.
[p. 204]
Fascism developed as a reaction to current
political and economic conditions:
Fascism was not the nursling of a doctrine
worked out before hand with detailed elaboration; it was born
of the need for action and it was itself from the beginning
practical rather than theoretical; it was not merely another
political party but, even in the first two years, in
opposition to all political parties as such, and itself a
living movement. The name which I then gave to the
organization fixed its character. And yet, if one were to
re-read, in the now dusty columns of that date, the report of
the meeting in which the Fasci Italiana di combattirnento
were constituted, one would there find no ordered
expression of doctrine, but a series of aphorisms,
anticipations, and aspirations which, when refined by time
from the original ore, were destined after some years to
develop into an ordered series of doctrinal concepts, forming
the Fascist political doctrine—different from all others
either of the past or the present day.
[p. 228]
Mussolini’s Fascist Italy allied with Hitler’s
Germany during World War II and eventually lost against the
combined military force of the Soviet Union and the western
powers. In the end Italians didn’t reject Mussolini and the
Fascist Party, so closely associated with his personality (much
to his own chagrin), because of his governance or policies, they
rejected him because he was attached to a war that was lost! The
winning powers enthusiastically aided the process of
discrediting Mussolini and Fascism for obvious ideological
reasons. To this day leftists hate Mussolini (and of course
Hitler) because both leaders negated the necessity of
international socialism and usurped the popular labor policies socialism
uses as their primary selling point to the public.
In comparison to Hitler, who learned much from
the struggles of Italian Fascism, Mussolini was a much more
cautious leader even to the point of foot-dragging at times.
While Hitler was a visionary of global proportions Mussolini
seems
a more parochial thinker concerned with ordering his nation,
and less so with ordering Europe or the rest of the world.
Benito Mussolini comes across as an articulate
and educated person, hardly the stereotypical strong-man
dictator. Mussolini’s demeanor throughout the book is
refreshingly practical and friendly, at times bordering on
conceited but in fairness his remarkable accomplishments certainly justify a measure of pride. Regardless of opinion
characterizing Mussolini, My Autobiography is a
fascinating book with a rare view of history and events that is
well–worth reading. Unfortunately the book doesn’t cover history
after about 1930, leaving a critical gap that will have to be
filled by other sources.
* * *
Once secret documents reveal that the British spy service MI5
built up Mussolini using large payments to fund his newspaper
and keep Italy in World War I.
Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of
the deal struck with the future dictator, said: "Britain's least
reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after
revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was
paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to
keep up the pro-war campaigning – equivalent to about £6,000 a
week today."
As
well as keeping the presses rolling at Il Popolo d'Italia, the
newspaper he edited, Mussolini also told Hoare he would send
Italian army veterans to beat up peace protesters in Milan, a
dry run for his fascist blackshirt units.
"The last thing Britain wanted were pro-peace strikes bringing
the factories in Milan to a halt. It was a lot of money to pay a
man who was a journalist at the time, but compared to the £4m
Britain was spending on the war every day, it was petty cash,"
said Martland.
From:
Recruited by
MI5: the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini, by Tom Kington,
The Guardian, October 13, 2009.
China's Choices
11.12.05 & 27.06.09 The Chinese have been doing the
same thing over and over for 4,000 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
class of wealth 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 this trend
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 an unofficial 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's 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 class of new rich 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, or if new
thinking can emerge and overcome historical trends.
|
Hook, Line, and Sinker (Nietzschian Delusions) |

November 2007 |
Balance of Power
01.10.05 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's really 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, abuse and torture are for the purposes of interrogation, but
an infantile 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. But if you read Jefferson,
maybe that was the part of the plan.
President
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.
|
Rising Stock: Investing in America's Future |

February
2004 |
The Nihilism Effect of China’s Cultural
Revolution
06.06.04 & 27.06.09
Say what you will about Mao Zedong – mass murderer, commie
bastard, lover of fine wines, he was still a very shrewd
character. Even when Mao made mistakes, and he made a lot, 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 Mao's power
competition.
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 even had
jails added inside 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. The internal rage
was so tightly channeled that the Red Guards 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 controlled and scripted 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.
No study of China is complete without Confucius; even Mao
couldn’t eliminate him, although as it turned out most Confucian
rules served Mao's needs anyway. So, even though Confucius lived
about 2,500 years ago, his edicts still exert significant
influence upon Chinese culture, and not all of it beneficial.
Much of the corruption and distortions of power and authority in
China continue because of the Confucian rule that laws and
official rules can’t be applied to authorities, because rulers
are special! [2] The injustice and social hypocrisy that this
mindset still creates today is simply staggering.
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 exist in a very peaceful and orderly system,
think of the Netherlands or England, 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.
1. Cultural Revolution, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia,
2001.
2.
No rhyme or
reason to China's rule of law, by Wu Zhong, Asia Times,
January 14, 2009.
|
Economies of Scale |
 |
What is Communism?
13.08.03 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, and 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're
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. 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.
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. From: Testimony of
Andrew S. Natsios before Senate panel on June 5, 2003.
The
American World Order
19.03.03 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 how mean you look, just get it done -- because
rules and treaties are for other people.
The
working belief is that since 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 Ariel 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're 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 Israel's 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.
***
17.03.03 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, but 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
up 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.
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 & 27.06.09 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. But language can be improved in numerous ways
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.
For many years Radio Austria International (ORF),
used to (still?) produced shortwave broadcasts in Esperanto.
The actor William Shatner was part of an unusual 1965 film called Incubus,
done entirely in Esperanto.
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.
[1]
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's
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
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.
Truth in Labeling
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're buying and
what they're really eating. It's very important for
everyone involved to know what they're 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? featuring
famous people with a listing of their pseudonyms and birth
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'll 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 just from Hungary?
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.
1. The
World Within The World, by John D.
Barrow, Oxford University Press 1988.
'For
Us Or Against Us?'
03.04.02 Ariel Sharon is a wonder
when it comes to making new enemies. Just in the past week he's
managed to outrage:
The 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, in bald
understatement, 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 their motive is 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, it's more like Apache gunships and bloodstained
walls. The long term damage to Israel's image is
incalculable.
The U.S. Government and 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 refuge 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 towards Israel 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.
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
05.12.01
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, freedom, and a safe home.
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 UN,
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
Arafat's label as '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 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 its unmitigated employment
as a panacea for all problems foreign and
domestic, they'll inevitably be drawn deeper
into a vortex of uncontrollable hatred and
vengeance from which extrication only becomes
increasingly difficult.
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.
First, 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.
Second, appearing the
moderate makes bargaining and diplomacy that much
more plausible, both foreign and domestic.
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 can't 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.
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Disconcerting Wall-Mounted Aphorism #19
[Wood, glass, printed paper; 13 x 10cm each] |

November 2006 |
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.
- Dagobert D. Runes
...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, their values and concepts of righteousness. And in this regard
the past is a record on display where the
most brutal and the 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 who 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.
This is why
despotism operates outside of petty human
morality, and although we may label slavery and
dictatorship the grandest of evils both are nevertheless products of nature, survival, and the inveterate desire
within all living beings to perpetuate
and radiate at whatever expense. So, if
you think the desire for power through the
exploitation of others is as outdated as the ruins
of Greece, you're obviously not thinking
very hard. In order to alter the future, so it's not
just a repeat of the past,
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, and
coupled with extreme wealth inequality.
We can't avoid the problematic inner 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, and certainly not
with hope, faith, or loyalty. Instead, we have to start
with stamina and intellect, and proceed with inclusive
social development. 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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