The Weapon of Culture

The Roman Tacitus once wrote this concerning the 'civilizing' of the barbarians of western Europe:

To induce people, hitherto scattered, uncivilized and therefore prone to fight, to grow pleasurably inured to peace and ease, Agricola gave private encouragement and official assistance to the building of temples, public squares, and private mansions... competition to gain honour from him was as effective as compulsion. Furthermore he trained the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts... The result was that in place of distaste for the Latin language came a passion to command it. In the same way our national dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the Britons were gradually led on to the amenities that make vice agreeable - arcades, baths, and sumptuous banquets. They spoke of such novelties as 'civilization' when really they were only a feature of their enslavement.

And thus the backs of the conquered barbarians were broken, and their ferocity converted to weakness and apathy.

Just imagine what the Romans could have accomplished with television.

The Making of a Martyr

11.06.01 I think any previous conviction the death penalty serves its stated purpose of preventing crime has been tarnished by the June 11th execution of accused federal building bomber Timothy McVeigh. Here's an account of what happened this morning in that small green tiled room at the federal prison in Indiana:

The lethal injection was administered to McVeigh's right leg. McVeigh made eye contact with his four witnesses, then with the 10 media witnesses, then squinted toward the tinted window shielding the 10 victims' witnesses from his view. He also stared straight at the victims in Oklahoma City by looking directly into the TV camera.

McVeigh, wearing a white T-shirt, khaki pants and slip-on sneakers, looked pale as he awaited death. His hair was cropped short. A white sheet was pulled up tightly to his chest as he lay on the gurney.

McVeigh received a mixture of sodium thiopental, to sedate him, pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant that collapses the diaphragm and lungs; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

When the first drug was administered, he let out a couple of deep breaths, then a fluttery breath. His head moved back, his gaze fixed on the ceiling, and his eyes were glassy.
From: Timothy McVeigh Put to Death, By Rex W. Huppke Associated Press Writer Monday, June 11, 2001.

A more choreographed and clinical execution could not have been performed. Is this a dehumanized murder, and if so what does it portend? Regardless, what made it especially poignant was the character of the subject on the gurney. While it's one thing to execute some raving, deranged, saliva spitting maniac, some socially useless Charles Manson psycho-killer, Timothy McVeigh did not fit that description at all. Despite what media and Murrah building victims may like to think he's not crazy or imbalanced, just rash and angry. He did what he did for a reason, and even if his conclusions are unpopular that doesn't necessarily make them invalid.

Indeed, rather than work with McVeigh or discuss what made him reach his conclusions the federal government and media outlets have made every effort to ostracize everything about him; you've heard the slogans, 'evil', 'monster', 'most-hated'. How does this resolve the issue, how does this aid understanding of motivations or prevent similar actions by others in the future? It's as if they can throw away the person as easily as the ideas by, ironically, poisoning a war veteran who worked for the same government that killed him. Is the death penalty serving any purpose here besides raw and unmitigated vengeance?

It's interesting that although society may deem it important to distinguish the means of death and the motivations of murderers, it's dubious those killed care at all since death is regardless an irreversible event. Yes 168 died in that explosive blast(s), but how many innocents die in car accidents every day? How many die suffering from undeserved diseases? Does a reason and visible source of the death make it more reprehensible? Or is it merely the manifestation of an emotional target that can be made to hurt, unlike a disease or a car, that brings out the lust for blood and revenge in everyone?

The death penalty without absolute moral superiority on the side of the executioners merely perpetuates the violence in a most insidious way. This is the hazard of lex talionis, an eye for an eye. If there is any doubt, if the trial is not flawless, then the murderer being murdered may become a martyr, or at the least further erode the legitimacy of the justice system. Public support is doubtful an asset in this regard; vociferous death penalty advocates chanting "die, die, die" are just seeking the side of might in an effort to be a vicarious member of the strongest team which at this moment is the federal government. Mayer Amschel (Rothschild) once said "if you can't make yourself loved, make yourself feared." Through the high profile punishments meted out by its 'justice' system it appears this federal regime has interpreted Mayer Amschel's phrase to mean if you can't make yourself loved through righteousness make yourself feared through totalitarianism.

The American federal government, beyond the superficial veneer of moral legitimacy, has nothing left but the right of might remaining to justify its actions and maintain popular support. Because of this McVeigh may well become a martyr as the government is compelled to increase pressure and violence upon its own citizens in order to maintain that remaining remnant of legitimacy based on force, but justifying McVeigh's ideas and actions in the process.

McVeigh's lawyer Robert Nigh somberly reminded reporters that the government not only executed the Oklahoma City bomber, but also a soldier, a son and a brother. He said there was "nothing reasonable or moral about what we did today." (ibid)

The results shouldn't be surprising when a martyr is made from a prophet of violence.

The Oppression of Expression

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. - H.L. Mencken

27.05.01 It seems that fairness is a losing position anymore, so much abuse of rights that soon no one has them. The problem is in the popular inability to distinguish between the free expression of disparate ideas in debate, and the intentionally offensive. If authority says such and such is 'cyberhate', or whatever euphemism they invent to categorize whatever's currently socially unacceptable, who can argue? It's the classic conundrum that the good guys attempting to defend freedom of speech appear the bad guys because they must defend the worst elements. But unfortunately, in a legalistic society, if the worst elements can't be free then no one can!

Thanks to the correct policy of our Party on physical training and sport and the strenuous efforts made by the officials in this field, great successes have been achieved. Through the efforts to implement the Party's policy on physical training and sport, sycophancy and dogmatism have been overcome, Juche has been thoroughly established in this field and big strides have been made in popularizing physical training and sport. ¹
From page one of my gold embossed 25 page booklet kindly sent to me by the government in Pyongyang, titled 'KIM JONG IL, on popularizing physical training and sport and developing sporting skills rapidly' .

To American senses this may seem like low-grade propaganda, and perhaps it is. The DPRK regime can get away with this because they've no competition for the minds and opinions of the North Korean people due to the complete absence of contrary expression. This demonstrates the necessity of alternate opinions and not just, but especially, extremist and unpopular opinions, taboo, racism, sedition, Satanism - everything, because freedom cannot exist in half measure.

The danger of controlling Internet pornography, for example, is the creation of a bin with which to throw anything that authority deems unfit, a bin to throw legitimate debate and thought just by labeling it smut. It's nearly impossible to cut it any other way, all or nothing. And this generates a lot of misunderstanding and acrimonious feuding that's really not deserved. What's especially insidious is that once those freedoms are gone no one questions the validity of the repressive measures. Think of airport security, the intrusions everyone just accepts without questioning, or seizure of assets without trial, military used against civilians, our 'war on drugs' in general. The stick-your-head-in-the-sand reaction is intensely palpable. I know I'd like to believe that we'll always have a technological loophole to subvert government Internet restrictions, but can we bet on it? I think freedom needs to go on the offensive - imminently, less we all end up looking at blank walls a whitewashed world. And success here is predicated upon knowing how to fight back with the right tools, using the correct message, something like:

Do you want the government telling you how to raise your family, telling you what you can and can't see, hear and think? Do you want special interest groups warping political opinion so they can use our elected leaders as attack dogs for their personal enemies? Stand up for your rights, tell them you can protect yourself, that you're not stupid and lazy but can determine for yourself what's safe and what isn't. Get the software for your computer, don't let the government mandate it onto your computer! Make content reception a family and personal issue, not one for government and special interest groups.

1. This book was compiled from a speech made by Kim, and most of it's fairly soporific, spelling out the Party plan for physical training in schools and elsewhere to achieve national greatness in world competition. Just thought you'd want to know...

EastWest

June 2004

Korea Unified

A unified Korea would significantly alter the topography of political East Asia, especially an industrialized and unified Korea. A unified Korea would be competition China could do without, and a formidable opponent Japan would rather not deal with. But it's an inevitability because North Korea is running out of time, having already exhausted its Cold War reason d'être, it's few allies, and dearly departed Dear leader Kim Il Sung. Both Koreas have a latent desire for unification, but two things are holding it up, one is an amicable political atmosphere allowing Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong Il, or their successors, to politically justify unification. The second is the U$ military forces occupying the South, all 37,000 of them. The second obstacle is becoming more of a liability to the South Korean government than anything else. Popular support for American forces is waning fast. The latest outrage over a toxic spill is indicative of the change in sentiment; the country's pretty trashy to begin with, why Koreans would care about a small amount of formaldehyde dumped in the sewer just goes to show it's symbol not principle.

Oh yeah I suppose I should mention that all the protesters are North Korean communist agents and student radicals don't you know? Or at least that's the American party line. If so I think the North Koreans have more communists in the South than the North. Anyway, the U$ government is fairly intent on antagonizing and confronting the North Koreans if for no other reason than to justify their repackaged 'Star Wars' defense scheme/money-hole. And without doubt the DPRK is well prepared to meet and exceed the (propaganda) challenge.

Change will come not from the U$, but from the mutual interests of the two Korea's themselves. Soon the Korea's will be unified, or at least vaguely linked together, the U$ will be out of Korea and Okinawa, freeing up the entire East Pacific basin. The big question is who will fill this power vacuum? 31.07.00

Imperial Lessons from Kosovo

The Kosovo conflict has been in the news (again). These problems will not be going away anytime soon, nor can it be conveniently ignored by the media. In fact it’s already spread north into the Serbian border region due largely to the ineffectual nature of KFOR and NATO patrols. In general this escapade continues to demonstrate valuable lessons in modern empire politics.

But first for clarity, here is the entire Kosovo conflict between NATO and Serbia defined. Some will say it's part of a New World Order globalist plan, but that’s really misleading, it’s not that insidious or far reaching. Nor is it about mineral rights, because the only established mines were contracted out to Mytelenios in Greece long before the war; everything else is in the ground and would require long and expensive investment to get it out. The humanitarian angle is pure smoke screen period. No, for NATO Kosovo is a very tactical scenario with a few strategic elements, just enough to warrant a small war.

It’s really about empire building. The European community simply can’t maintain its position with rogue states on its periphery, like Serbia, and loose cannons like Milosivec still nipping at their heels. Security and expansion, vital to the survival of any empire, are hindered by festering sores such as the Balkans. The U$ empire, and its lesser vassal lackey the EU using its military arm of NATO, went to both parties, Albania and Serbia, back around the point of Ramboulet and delivered an ultimatum – play along and join our empire, or we’ll pound you into dust. Serbia said ‘get bent’, while Albania being without senior partner (Russia they spurned and even gave up on China after that) had less to bargain with and acquiesced. NATO now had leverage, and the axis property in question (Kosovo) went to Albania.

You see, the Balkans is divided between ancient powers, and whoever holds the critical territories becomes the regional authority. The current axis is Kosovo-Mitrovica, but it could potentially be Macedonia, Bosnia, etc. If Serbia controls Kosovo they'll be the player' but if Albania holds Kosovo the tables are turned. Milosivec is the first to admit this, Kosovo is key to Serbia’s viability as a nation, but Albania needs it nearly as much. NATO now having a dupe in Albania logically ceded demographic control of Kosovo to Albania. The propaganda wheels start grinding away, vilifying Milosivec the former western ally, while simultaneously uplifting Albania and its militant criminal tentacles, such as the KLA (UCK), who miraculously morph from terrorist group to friendly protectors of Albanian downtrodden.

After a neat and painless air war the infrastructure is pummeled to fragments and the Peace Police move in. KFOR will maintain the multi-ethnic status of Kosovo because the majority is Albanian and this is necessary to keep the province an Albanian territory and away from Milosivec, that obstinate block to 'progress'.

General Clark said, explaining that ''NATO is like a ratchet: once it has locked on, it can only go one way, only get a tighter and tighter grip.'' ''Mitrovica is going to be multiethnic, and that means ending the intimidation and other dirty work of the military units, gangs and thugs who have been sent there by Belgrade.

The plan is to eventually run down Milosivec’s authority in Kosovo, thereby turning it from a problem into a solution. The sad truth is this is never going to happen, because if Kosovo is multi-ethnic then you have chronic violence and hatred, meaning no peace and perpetual peace-police stationed there. The other option is to divide it up and force out the Serbians, but then you create another dangerous situation by giving too much power to the Albanians, and nobody, least of all NATO, trusts them.

And the cycle continues, just as every time before. If economic control, meaning open capitalistic economy, isn’t present and a friendly dictator isn’t in power, then the hard sell is necessary. Otherwise the soft pedal, so well honed in the western nations, is perfectly fine. Keep control of the media outlets so only ‘good’ politicians get elected, and lock out the ‘bad’ guys by labeling them ‘far-right’, ‘extremist’, etc. The hard sell is only necessary in the wayward countries of the world that get in the way of all those grand plans. Places like Serbia and Iraq or the former South Africa or Rhodesia. Vilify, ostracize, then move in with military force if necessary. Send in peace troops to sit on the lid of the pot and keep it from boiling over, then parcel out the economic assets and buy up everything, thereby wresting control from the indigenous politicians and handing it over to the finance capitalists in New York and London.

So we see this modern empire is founded on economic control of political institutions and infrastructure, and secondly everything else it can get a hold of. Like all empires it must continue to expand or it will quickly stall and wither. The European geographical continent is the destined boundary for the European community. Eastern Europe, Turkey, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and even Russia will have to come ‘into the fold’ in the near future. This is not a question but an inevitability for the U$/EU empire.

The first link is always economic control. This predicates entrance to domestic markets and eventually international trade. China is a good example of this happening in Asia. The Empire really doesn’t care what kind of weapons China has, nukes, bio-weapons, lasers, etc. if they want to buy it America will sell. The only thing that matters is getting them into the economic fold, in this case the WTO. As soon as Western finance has access to the Chinese economy the previous leadership in China - chairman, politburo, and so on, all take the back seat to the new king - $$$. China’s leadership will be handcuffed and on their knees to the banks because they'll need the western loans and will do anything to keep the money flowing in and the people employed; "Let China have its toys and let them have Taiwan, just as long as they let us in the economic door". Evidently China’s leadership is deluded enough to think they can ride this dragon and come out the winner, or perhaps their troubled country dictates no other option. Either way money’s what makes this empire go ‘round. 02.03.00

Lessons of Angkar

Pol Pot's "ultranationalist Communist" regime was supported by the U$A and legally upheld by the UN. Rarely seen in public, the man born Saloth Sar in Kompong Thom in 1928 had a Chinese mother, studied in Paris, and met Mao in China. Called angkar 'the organization', Pol Pot's direct rule only lasted from 1975-1979.

The goals were anything but modest, the cities were emptied, Kompong Thom, Takeo, Phnom Penh, etc. With a singular vision of an agrarian nation no room was left for urban decadence. All the masses needed to know was how to grow rice. Trade and money were evil, just as were all western influences, like TV, radio and air conditioning. All contaminated people and material were destroyed; money and personal property were abolished. The new society had two populations: the old (poor) people who always lived agrarian lifestyles, and the new (rich) people from the cities who were now forced to adopt the rural lifestyle.

The agrarian culture being 'infinitely superior', the old people were given authority over the new. Some of the people complained "We were used as machinery". Men and women were separated, children became state property, while marriage and conjugal visits required the approval of authorities. Dissent was not tolerated; likewise examples were made of dissenters - fear motivated any marginal portions of the populace in the proper direction.

'Rules to die by' (translated)

1. You must answer accordingly to my questions. Don't turn them away.

2. Don't try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me.

3. Don't be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.

4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

5. Don't tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrocution you must not cry at all.

7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.

8. Don't make pretexts about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.

9. If you don't follow all the above rules, you will get many many lashes of electric wire.

10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you will get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.
Your choice [Italics added for cynicism]

Pol Pot's regime provides several enlightening historical lessons, that is for anyone who cares to listen. It goes to show that beneath the bleating cries of compassion and didactic lessons on inalienable 'rights' and moral 'laws' very few members of the human species operate on a level above the animal. If Homo-sapian sapien (and I'm being generous with the second sapien) chooses to treat others as animals, they'll inevitably be treated as an animal themselves.

Two methods exist to control animal populations - the carrot and the club; reward or fear and punishment. Cute gifts for proper behaviour work to a point, but eventually the herd must move in a direction that runs counter to short sighted sensibilities, so the club becomes necessary. Pol Pot was a master of 'club' tactics, although in fairness such crude methods are never as creative, and generally require little intelligence - just a clear goal and a strong will. Still, whatever one thinks of brutal methods, they do work in a tactical sense, which is all that most despots care about.

Brother against brother, destroy the chaff

Animals are basically all the same, you can interchange them and replace them easily, although they don't see it that way themselves. The distinctions they concoct between each other are useful for nullifying opposition forces when carefully employed. We take the wealthy and swap their roles with the poor. One group has new power, while the other has power no more. These artificial schisms are awesome allies indeed; what is psychologically real in the world of the animal is all that counts because, after all, 'seeing is believing'.

The herd must be weak before it can be strong

No leadership wants a weak population in the long term, only in the beginning phase for purposes of social malleability. Real change occurs when men die. After five years of angkar the remaining population was two-thirds women. Since males create most social friction anyway, large-scale purges had a convenient secondary benefit. Unfortunately, the follow-up was never carried out as the Vietnamese army invaded and forced Pol Pot from power in Phnom Penh.

Even the smallest carrot becomes a feast in the eyes of the starving

The simplest way to create a control structure is to reduce living requirements down to a point where even life is a reward and not a right. Not only does this lower the sustenance level but it makes rewards that much easier to provide. A token gesture can have great impact. Animals can unequivocally comprehend pain, pain in the gut from hunger, pain from cold, pain from torture. Animals will do what is required to stop the pain; your reward is an absence of pain. Likewise the weakened are less likely to resist orders.

With internal enemies quashed, the people move outward

But external enemies never rest. After the initial spasms of development, growth must occur. A singular enemy and a fighting population means a cohesive population. After destruction comes construction. If this is how we're going to behave then the cities must be emptied again, and burned to the ground. Money and trade abolished - cash burned and the presses destroyed. The simple minds of the animal people need not be clouded with complex ideas and unsettling notions. What they need to know they will, what they need to live, they will have. New institutions will be built on the ash heaps of the old. If an animal population is incapable of voluntarily working for the collective benefit, perhaps they will do it via force.

Freedom is no right, only a fleeting reward earned through sacrifice, built on the lives of our ancestral millions. Outside the pink and blue padded nursery of our western civilization exists a very harsh and brutal world. Our present situation can hardly be considered the norm. Enjoy playtime while it lasts. 07.12.99 & 25.06.09

The New Holy Trinity

A force exists in modern America which is akin to the Biblical Trinity, a power in three parts that is basically one beast. I’m not talking about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I’m talking about the media: entertainment, advertising, and news.

The first entity, the entertainment industry, I can forgive for pandering to the base and the crass. It’s basically all about money - making lots and lots of it, and true, ultra-rich filmmakers can afford to do propaganda pieces to serve their own causes and beliefs. But still no one makes you pay $8 to see a film or watch the Friday night prime-time line-up of mind-numbingly insipid idiocy. The entertainment media is essentially one of voluntary participation.

When we get to advertising though it starts to get problematic. Once again the cardinal rule is making loads of money anyway and every way possible. But as it gets increasingly difficult to find any place NOT covered with advertising I have to protest. Somewhere the line has to be drawn between personal profit and social and individual sanity. Of course here in the U$A don’t expect that issue to get any debate because advertising is what funds all media, and especially the news media, which leads me to ...

News, which is by far the most offensive of the three media components. Yeah thanks CNN I wasn’t aware that airline delays are worse than ever and gas prices have changed recently as I waited on my delayed flights and drive past the gas stations. I mean come on, these people don’t report news, they report history and restate the patently obvious. For now I’ll skip the behaviorist implications of these scare/sooth tactics. What is important here is that the news media should not be devoid of social responsibility, it serves a critical role of communicating events within both the nation and the world. Especially in an ‘information age’ communication is more important than ever. If those communications channels are clogged with fiction and fantasy substituted for reality, how is any productive evolution to occur? It can’t, because everyone is too busy believing in unreality and replacing terminally real problems with ephemeral pseudo-crisis.

The paradox lies in the fact that advertising dollars are the primary means of income for the news, both in print and broadcast, This is why magazines, like Newsweek or Chucker Huntin’ Monthly, consist of 40% on up of advertising and subscription cards. But in a country that basis every ethical and moral decision on the ouija board of the almighty dollar, social responsibility just goes out the window. Hence the plethora of tabloid sub-journalism, celebrity and Hollywood mags, TV Guide etc. And along with social responsibility the next victim is truth and objective fact. News becomes income driven, news morphs into entertainment and vice-versa. The worst tragedies, the most outrageous excess, anything can be packaged and sold as ‘newstainment’. Combine this with the fact that most people lead such limited lives that what’s on TV is ‘real’ to them and then combine that with a hefty dose of gullibility and faith in the ethical pillars of journalism and you’ve got one powerful force set on a feedback loop, because what the people want to see is what they will get. This regression spawns real/sensational shows like Cops or Court TV, wonderfully warping both constitution and truth in simultaneous fashion. The masses want circuses and police chases, not scientific analysis and reasoned debate. And since the people are the ones viewing the advertising, which funds the networks, the people will see circuses and police chases.

The gratuitously self-credibility enhancing investigative reporting shows have to be the worst offenses that crawl from underneath the news-tainment rock. By appearing to hound out wrongdoers and con-artists they appear the moral guardians of law and justice, while merely diverting their own culpability in the direction of similar dirt-bags. 20/20 and 60 Minutes serve an invaluable service to the news-tainment industry by earning desperately needed credibility in a heavily corrupted entertainment world. Similarly we have the political talk shows that showcase 'radical' extremes in debate, with the Democratic centrist on one side and the Republican moderate on the other, thereby neatly determining the scope of proper and acceptable political conversation. Pat Buchanan is an insane extremist, he supports tariffs!

The point is that whether it’s advertising or a news program it’s all fundamentally the same. Advertising money determines what programs get renewed, which in turn is influenced by what people want to see since then a larger audience will be viewing the advertising, generating greater revenues which means similar programming will spawn ... you get the picture. It should be no surprise that so many TV shows are carbon copies of each other, popular tastes are pretty simple to please once you find the right recipe of asinine innuendo, simplistic stereotypes, and visual intrigue.

This really isn’t anything new to anyone vaguely aware of everyday life in a TV society. But I think it’s little used free ammunition for the critics of capitalism and free market economics. Regulation is not always an evil, and the opposite extreme - a total lack of regulations is even worse. Fear of government authority is well justified in a historical context but common sense tells us that all life is sacrifice and compromise. American’s have such a simplistic, directed paranoia - busying guarding against one enemy that they miss the uncounted other evils that slip past them.

What is the point in being anti-government when the government has no power that the media does not concede? Who has the advertising medium and contrived debates that determine all major elections? Whose programs and commercials determine socially acceptable behaviour, conduct and appearance? Besides those aspects, superficially nothing else matters in a ‘democratic’ country.

The media Trinity goes by more than one name but much like its Biblical twin the people need only concern themselves with one - you can call it God. 08.11.99

1984

It’s a good thing most people never fully grasp what it is they want out of life; if they did then the story line to Orwell’s 1984 would become reality. 

Charcescue must have read that novel because it really seemed like a history of Romania’s communist legacy; the sexual distortions, the mental programming, etc.

Why is it that the individual has more power and wealth today than ever before yet we feel more atomised than ever? One man could theoretically destroy civilization yet we collectively fear group authority under the collective guise of power-politics?? Maybe it’s that rational guided goal seeking inherent in the political machine that's so scary, you know an evil robot with one program and nothing can stop it? Individuals are reasonable and can be changed, misguided or misled, but a political machine with the same goal is "unstoppable", "unreasonable". Yet the irony is that these power-politic machines are always guided by a unitary personality, i.e. Stalin or a Mao. How reasonable was Stalin? probably as much as anybody else, but he was part of a structure that had its own inertia.

Another thing - why does every modern version of totalitarianism have to be evil? I mean totalitarianism has been the historically dominant mode of government for all of recorded time? The modern individual has more power at their fingertips than ever before! The individual has nothing to fear from government except what they concede to the ruling force. If you let government ban your computer then you lose that individual power - it’s that simple. Truthfully every society earns their government, bad people earn bad government, and vice-versa. That's why it's so difficult to have sympathy for the ‘oppressed’ peoples of the world - you only get what you pay for! 13.11.97

A War Against Fascism, or Hitler?

One little corner of modern history has always bothered me. That’s the fact that General Franco stayed in power in Spain all the way up to 1976! Think about it, a fascist State on continental Europe, just south of France! Not in Cyprus or in Iceland, right in mainland Europe.

But this creates a huge quandary, after all WWII was an epic battle against FASCISM, right?! But Franco was actually the very first Fascist anyway, nor did he ever apologize or backpedal (as far as I, know although towards the end it was a pretty soft dictatorship).

So was WWII really a war against Fascism or just against Hitler and his anti-Semitic ideas? If it was a war against the political concept of Fascism, then why wasn’t Spain invaded too? Why wasn’t Franco forced from power? Certainly not because western powers were unable to!

Obviously the whole idea that WWII was a war against Fascist government is total garbage. Indeed many governments today are even more Fascist in everything but name, yet often they're actually supported by the west. Sheesh just study the modern German government today! No, the real reason for World War II was to depose Adolph Hitler and exorcise his ideas from the public conscience. 27.02.99

The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D(isplaced) P(ersons) as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. 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. - President Harry Truman

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Disconcerting Wall-Mounted Aphorism #19 [Wood, glass, printed paper; 13 x 10cm each]

November 2006

'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.
 

the many for one