Crisis and Hope by Noam Chomsky

Download and read the text of this speech (PDF). He talks about many subjects, beginning with the roots of the current financial crisis, putting it in some perspective with regard to other current global crises including extreme poverty, hunger, human rights and worker rights. U.S. foreign policy as always gets special attention. Here's an excerpt on the Afpak war (boldface added):

"Well, while Obama’s signaling very clearly his intention to establish a firm and large-scale presence in the region, he’s also, as you know, sharply escalating the AfPak war, following Petraeus’s strategy to drive the Taliban into Pakistan, with potentially awful results for this extremely dangerous and unstable state, which is facing insurrections throughout its territory. These are the most extreme in the tribal areas, which cross the AfPak border. It’s an artificial line imposed by the British called the Durand Line, and the same people live on both sides of it—Pashtun tribes—and they’ve never accepted it. And, in fact, the Afghanistan government never accepted it either, as long as it was independent. Well, that’s where most of the fighting is going on. One of the leading specialists on the region, Selig Harrison, he recently wrote that the outcome of Washington’s current policies, Obama’s policies, might well be, what he calls them, “Islamic Pashtunistan,” Pashtun-based separate kind of quasi-state. The Pakistani ambassador warned that if the Taliban and Pashtun nationalism merge, we’ve had it. And we’re on the verge of that.

The prospects become still more ominous with the escalation of drone attacks that embitter the population with their huge civilian toll, and more recently, just a couple days ago, in fact, with the unprecedented authority that has just been granted to General Stanley McChrystal, who’s taking charge. He’s a kind of a wild-eyed Special Forces assassin. He’s been put in charge of heading the operations. Petraeus’s own counter-insurgency adviser in Iraq, General David Kilcullen —Colonel, I think—he describes the Obama-Petraeus-McChrystal policies as a fundamental “strategic error” which may lead to the collapse of Pakistan. He says it’s a calamity that would “dwarf” all other current issues, given the country’s size, strategic location and nuclear stockpile.

It’s also not too encouraging that Pakistan and India are now rapidly expanding their nuclear arsenals. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals were developed with Reagan’s crucial aid. And India’s nuclear weapons program got a major shot in the arm with the recent US-India nuclear agreement. It’s also a sharp blow to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Two countries have twice come close to nuclear war over Kashmir, and they’re also engaged in a kind of a proxy war in Afghanistan. These developments pose a very serious threat to world peace, even to human survival. Well, a lot to say about this crisis, but no time here."


Knowing and acting with integrity despite internal and external contradictions

The fusion of being and doing, of knowledge and action, is a very central component to Hegelian Marxism. This 'theory-praxis' dialectical unity itself is such a nuanced and indispensable revelator of the power in each individual half, that without it they both remain shallow, incomplete, even false. It can be claimed and assented to here that to know something (in truth or not) is indeed an act itself, the performance of the subtle act of knowing (or of claiming to know). But, as to whether the conceptual knowledge is actually grasped or known, to really know is never just to passively be a knower, but it also inevitably implores one to act as such. This is to say that being someone who knows is not to act in direct contradiction of the truth possessed, of that which is known, but to act as one who knows and therefore does accordingly. Likewise, to reverse engineer the manifest evidence of, the essence of, the pure act of directed intention, the intentioned actor of some particular deed would unfailingly have to depend on a sufficient grasp of the knowledge of self, and perhaps of the surrounding situation, in order to claim sufficient intentionality, or at least to claim a stance within a varying range of degrees of conscious intentionality.

As a Marxist-Anarchist, any knowledge I claim to know or possess, by this, its own, logic, drives the act to which it addresses and owes its existence, and in a likewise manner, the act performed with directed intent reveals the knowledge claimed with regard to it. Any act which stands in contradictory opposition to clearly stated claims to knowledge, even to beliefs in or affinities to such claims made by others, would only serve to refute both the position taken and the act done. Thus arrives the conflict so prevalent in modern society- How can one maintain both principled positions and decisive actions while maintaining one's integrity? T ask this is to ask how one preserves the special relationship of dialectical unity between the screed and the deed. Tricky, I suppose, and not any less so for a Marxist-Anarchist rather contentedly earning wages in a quintessential capitalist economy, and reluctantly though consistently participating in an uber-consumerist society.

Without appealing too deeply to reason, the personal path of integrity may take its form almost absurdly from this very contradiction. To reject capitalism and consumerism is ultimately to exert oneself in such a way precisely when the freedom from constraints or limitations reasonably allow. To exchange labor or time for wages, or to exchange said wages for commodities like housing, food, transportation, etc. is only to operate within given constraints from the natural and normal demands upon contemporary human life. To exert oneself by and towards the principles of Marxist or anarchist rejection of the framework surrounding all this and more, including the notions of property ownership and of sovereign state authority, is to present a more forceful contradiction to the initial contradiction, if you will. By this I mean that if it seems like a contradiction for a Marxist to work for wages or for an anarchist to own books, the contradiction of a wage-earning book-owner to dedicate much free time and effort towards analyzing and rejecting the entire framework of his existence as such, and not just in thought but in action, by actually taking the books paid for by earned wage and reading them, and maybe writing something inspired from them, and even doing certain things in his life differently, with the actions having been initiated by his exposure to them, then this alternating revolution of theory and praxis when free of constraints conforms with the originally claimed positions with respect to knowledge and behavior just as much or greater than the former contradiction nullifies it. Of course I would have to carefully define such constraints and qualify the reasonableness of each, and should there be an extended reduction of or even absence of constraint, there would likely be at least several important limitations to the achievement of a crucial, lasting Marxist-Anarchist knowledge-action dialectical unity that would also have to be addressed.

This can all be addressed tomorrow, can it not? (but don't call me a Procrastinator!). I would say it will, unless of course my so-called knowledge of a set of principles governing my life forcefully sidetracks me fromt theory in general and directs me to comment more specifically, say, on the continuation of our collective dystopic fetishism, the soulless guilt-laden spectacle-paralysis of the overwhelming majorities of American and European societies, in viewing events like the Iranian revolts most recently, or the Gaza siege or the genocides and human disasters in Africa, Iraq, or Sri Lanka and how such episodes as they play out only reinforce the grip of power by the ruling elite kleptautocracy, as they basically watch us watching and 'know' in their heart of hearts that we won't actually 'do' because we by and large don't 'know', don't want to know. But if we did, if we just started to... Perhaps tomorrow (my point exactly).

June 17, 2009



The regime of deceit in the realm of words and thoughts

The employment of deceit, in various and evolving forms and styles, seems to have always existed as a prime activity among those whose purity of soul, which I say quite frankly and without a trace of irony, has long been consumed by the interest of pursuing, maintaining or increasing their power and wealth, or connections thereto. Indeed, a most prominent position in the pursuit of any self-interest, whether in the boardroom, the bedroom, or even under the hypocritical guise of the historical institutions of so-called morality, is held in reserve for the crafty manipulation of language, whether observably manifest in spoken or written form. Also, more subtle in its existence than the open wordplay of language subversion (as opposed to intricate or elaborate linguistic elucidation, which may or may not coexist with such subversion), the everpresent realm of thought is also a battlefield of significance for the power-hungry deceiver to conquer and thus to claim all which his lustfulness and greed compel him toward. The absolutely best lies, not in the sense of the greatest good but rather meaning those lies that are quintessentially representational of the very notion of what a lie is, are those astonishingly bold claims that insist thir conformity to the entirety of truth, when the claims themselves are in fact the exact opposite of what the actual truth is. This is pure deceit, the ultimate and most sought after weapon of any deceiver, whether this affinity is explicitly affirmed or would otherwise be assented to. In the spirit of coming into a greater awareness of such mass deceptiveness, we may open our doors of percetion as wide as possible, in order to see many of these not-so-pure, quasi-perfect deceits all around us. Propagandist phraseology, as one particular form of carefully implemented deceit, has evolved and been introduced into individual and mass consciousness with such methodically refined execution strategies as to warrant a vigilance and resistance of equal or greater presence.

(Some contemporary attempts to identify, structuralize, codify and make sense of this seemingly timeless and omnipresent activity:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_manipulation_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_deception_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_camouflage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

'In the interest of national security'
'To promote democracy and freedom'
'We will root out the preexisting threat'
'We intend to achieve a lasting peace'
'It is in our interest to ensure fairness'
'It was an accident'
'...died of unknown or natural causes'

These are just some hastily thrown together examples to serve as an introduction to the endeavor of uncovering the actual truth underneath deceptive propaganda regularly employed in questionable media. They serve as thought-provocateurs, and also to orient a rational, practical, and concerned reader, as an autonomous individual, towards a framework within which these and other phrases like them can be quickly and thoroughly dissected, and their persuasive grip be summarily removed as if by magic spell. While it is conceded that interpretations of these and similar phrases may vary widely with respect to the individual and their particularly chosen field or fields of understanding and awareness, my claim regarding such phrases and the uncovering of the truths they attempt to conceal is that a commonality can be found among the many interpretations, within each of which that essence of commonality must be present, and wherein the central kernel of the actual truth must be both addressed directly and reconciled with completely.

On the wider level, it is of the utmost importance to see that an entire regime of word- and thought- control ever threatens to destroy the true freedom and liberty of the individual and collective unless it is addressed as the formidable foe it is. Only when this regime of deceit is completely dismantled once and for all will disappear from the face of the earth the deceit itself along with those who employ it, whether consciously or not, whether intentionally or unwittingly, whether successfully at times or never at all, for even the attempt to deceive is in the heart of the failed deceiver. Along with this deceit and deceiver will the driving force of excessive desire also evaporate, but this can all occur only when the entire scope and magnitude of the situation is recognized and understood as well as possible.

June 15, 2009



Life activity within the human collective

In any study of the history of society, or more particularly of human subgroups more accurately called 'collectives', the first major problematic may be how to properly and best define a group or groups of people. Once this problematic has been resolved, and once the definition has been well-formed as to what a collective actually is, any general conceptual framework or theoretical system of collectives could then be applied to particular collectives throughout history or of the present time, in order to better understand each of them. Finally, any knowledge gained in this analysis might be used to jump carefully to a declaration of broader truths, grand truths on the order of magnitude covering all people throughout all time.

Such systems of understanding human collectives could be evaluated with respect to each other, assessing the effectiveness of those with different foundations. It is my preferred method in such a practice of the analysis of the collective, to define any collective predominantly by what they actually do. By this I mean actively endeavoring to understand any group, either self-associated or not, by looking directly at any evident patterns of 'life-activity'. It is worthy of note that there ought to be a distinction made here between such 'doing' or 'life-activity' and any cultural context within which the activity takes place. By this I mean that, for example, if some group of people wear some particular kind of clothing or eat some particular kind of food, or prefer some particular form of artistic expression or leisure activity, that this manner of dress or taste in food or preference in art or pleasure can indeed be seen independent from the culture with which it is otherwise so fused during the normal, regularly employment of our rather biased consciousness. The reason for this separation of activity from its cultural context is because such typical, biased cultural analysis irreparably subjectivizes and 'otherizes' (or even alters and fetishizes) the evident activity, placing it somewhere within the range of familiar to foreign activity, associating it with somewhat similar activity that it really does not have any connection to, rather than seeing it from a more universalist perspective, that of human activity being always driven in some way by human needs for food, clothing, shelter, safety, health, etc. and no less importantly, meaning. It is this last need that perhaps causes much strife in our modern society, within the collectives we see today. To understand life-activity as associated with universal human needs, even crudely, in my view can avoid the taint of cultural bias enough to provide a sensible framework with which to uncover truths about both the collective and the individual within the collective.

One reason for my strong preference of life-activity as a starting point to systematize the understanding of collectives of individual humans, is that most other methods of identity, be they formed around a definition on the order of some common ethnic, racial or national characteristic, intuitively seem less effective, even when taken independently from their respective biases. Even less effective than ethnic, racial, or national foundations of collective identity would be the creation of an edifice like these but rather hinging on the tenuous association of any group of people to some particular geographic region they as a collective would either claim sovereign right over, or have lived within, however long a period of time their continuous existence there be proven or possessive claim be asserted. Though it may be tempting to utilize such less rigorous standards when defining a collective, whether the goal be academic (to understand what it is to be human and what a society of people is) or whether it is to advance some political or ideological agenda (pseudoscientific support of a nationalist agenda or belief in racial supremacy) it is my contention here that such frameworks are ultimately both limited in their reflection of the truth, and limiting in their enlightening capacity. These limits within these frameworks exist precisely due to higher levels of ambiguity and arbitrariness present in any cultural, ethnic, racial, analysis as opposed to continuous, directly observable activity. Though it would be conceded that a theoretical analysis of the human collective entirely free from all forms of projection or anthropomorphism is probably impossible, the observation of manifest aggregate activity in the present time, or of evident and sufficiently reliable traces of such activity from the past, may ultimately generate a better theoretical system with which to understand humans through their participation in collectives. By looking at what people actually do, instead of who they are or where they are, or what they themselves claim of themselves, or even what we would like to say they are, we can formulate better awareness of ourselves, an awareness less tainted with political or ideological motives.

As a preferred starting point for social analysis, defining a group by its actions encounters a second problematic, one of circular reasoning. How is it possible to define a group by actions of its individuals without too loosely or too stricly isolating the activity taken under consideration? {elaborate} The acceptance of this quagmire, I believe, paradoxically and counter-intuitively supports the method it seems to attack. In other words, and in the most simple terms I can use, when the identities of groups are established, however self-declared or seemingly obvious such identity some group identities might be, only those groups that can be established with respect to one or more of their common actions are worthy of consideration as a collective. This simply means, according to my view, and for the purposes of this line of social analysis, 'you are what you do, not what you say you are, nor where you are, nor what I would like you to be, nor what I see you as'. If you claim some identity yet your actions show otherwise, for the purposes of this discussion, you are not what you claim, and that part in the collective you claim right to has not been earned. In this sense, the circular reasoning problematic becomes a kind of filtering device to eliminate or disqualify groups from the status of being a true 'collective'- this is how I define the term 'collective'.{a quick sketch of the line of thought begun here:
look at successive examples of collectives worthy of analysis, and assess their impact on the world-

armies and their unmatched and unequivocally negative impact on the lives of people; dismissing the claim of armies of military force as a 'necessary evil' needed to protect and regulate; connecting military collectives to states, the next class of collective in the discussion.

states and their hegemonic effects on the lives of people, some that are admittedly good but also some that are very bad; the assertion or claim of belonging to or being part of the state versus the refusal, rejection, or denial of it, all with respect to the actions of any individual or group making the claim- meaning you can claim you belong to the state and by that claim act on its behalf, for the people it claims to act on behalf of, while your actions (as being part of one or more of the collectives of statesmen, or militiamen, or of lawmen such as legislators, politicians, policemen etc.) show the inflicting of great harms upon those very people you claim to protect, notwithstanding even more harm to those you take upon yourself to deem to be 'enemy' of the people of the state which you claim you belong to, even though the people of the state don't consider them any more an enemy than they probably consider you to be one, and rightfully so by your actions; again, by revealing the collective through actions, showing that statesmen are by virtue of their actions more affiliated with the transnational capitalist parasite collective than with ordinary common people, who are generally good and decent with the same universal needs for food, shelter, clothing, protection, health, and liberties as anyone else anywhere throughout all history.

companies, in the traditional sense, are designed for profiteering, exploitation, environmental destruction, obliteration of meaning in human life and existence, and are just as complicit as any collectives in the modern development of the biopolitics of state, with respect to claiming rightful sovereignty over property, a claim to right that encompasses the ownership and regulation of the lives of people, just as much or even more insidiously than outright slavery did and still does in parts of the world.

collectives of lesser importance in this line of analysis, though similar in many ways:

religions have been reduced, in terms of the definition of the formation of their collectives, to the most pervasively and powerfully divisive forms of separation between men that have ever been known.

political parties are likewise divisive but on a simpler, more basic, and more ambiguous level, as often is the case where seemingly oppositional parties are actually indistinguishable with respect to, once again, their actions, which often involve self-enrichment, exploitation, alignment with military, corporate, cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, or any other collective which serves an agenda of self-designated importance.Fragments

originally written but removed and saved here for development, not yet re-included:

of qualities or from among the various evident and manifest forms of social organization that have existed throughout history, and defining what develops over time as a continuous progression or advancement, even refining of, these forms of activity.

June 11, 2009



Getting from here to there: Anarchist succession to the authoritarian oppression of all 'modern' society

I would argue that it is always important to be mindful of the big picture, not to neglect it, even while focusing on particulars and mundane everyday affairs. For example, a consistent mindset of antiwar/propeace & anti-oppressive societal structures/pro individual happiness and liberation, this would serve very well in advancing informed and principled positions on everything from the bailout to Iraq, Gaza, DRCongo, Pakistan-Afghanistan, torture, govt secrecy, social protest movements and activist organization efforts, and anything else up for determination, as it might be important to determine the best assessment of how to achieve the best or most desirable outcome given the accurately perceived, dynamically evolving scenario presented.

I am almost thoroughly convinced that anarchism is the best way for humans to collectively exist, but a major obstacle to be considered would be the release from subordination to authority, this is the growing pains stage of human societal evolution that perhaps frightens many a potential rational and reasonable person away from the sound, invigoratingly optimistic notions of the historical philosophical strains of the school of thought collectively known as anarchism. Some kind of 'transition stage' has often been posited in forms of analytic historicism, and it seems likely that should the objective ever be consciously plotted, as to actively endeavoring to bring about release of the collective human family from authority of the powerful, that the transition stage would pose a problem. The enormous preceding task, however, would be to dismantle the highly networked social infrastructure centered around sovereign governments supported by wellentrenched judicial and legal frameworks and the brute force of military network infrastructure, the wealthy and independently operating transnational captalist organizations, and the conspiring and complicit who stand to gain from the devastation, destruction and plunder these two main groups wreak.

I view this as a problem in the eschatological historicity of mankind, since a sudden autonomy would be extremely foreign for the human race after so many years of unhealthy subordination and repression at the hands of the powerful. The potential event of anarchist rejection of modern oppressive society, theoretically taken as an almost generic instance of the classic emergent phenomenon arising within a complex system (of which there are many cases in many areas of human understanding*)- this event, taken in the context of a complex system such as global society, would in essence conform to the basic notions of any other emergence from any other complex system - it would be the natural and spontaneous product of the system itself. So, when taken as such, an informed and principled collectivist anarchist revolution and subsequent establishment of a new form social structural organization, precisely and namely the very void of a social structure and system, therefore could not possibly be prevented or stopped by any means whatsoever; it would be like any other spontaneous emergence, a foregone conclusion. While all of this presupposes many considerations and there is certainly much to be debated and considered as to how we would define anarchism and of course whether anarchistic society is now achievable or would ever be, or even ought to be sought, and if so why, nevertheless, a serious and primary consideration in the theoretical and hypothetical realm on the topic would very well be that sudden void of power, an oppressive power under which mankind has more or less always been under since the beginning of recorded social history. Indeed social history is nothing more than a function of, from a wide-lens perspective in a hopefully not-too-far-off anarchistic future it would even be an identity equation of, authoritarian oppression. Meaning should the power void be opened and successfully traversed, the humans present to bear witness of the dead system would record how until that very point was achieved where there indeed were no gods and no masters on the earth, so called 'modern' societies were nothing but structures of authoritarian oppression to one degree or another, even that grand failed experiment in freedom known as America and the liberal-democratic values of the Western World.

*See Klaus Mainzer's Thinking in Complexity for an introduction to some examples.

April 24, 2009


Fork in the road of desire

Forging ahead, to establish more clearly a mission purpose, and along with it an evolving self-identity to develop. In other words, what are my goals? What are some of the most important ways to invest my time? In what particular direction can I best develop my self in order to reach my goals? Given individual strengths and weaknesses, what are some simple, practical ways to move in a productive way towards real achievable goals?

I think we've got commonality in wanting real happiness, all human beings and probably all living things. Sometimes we think we are happy but are not, sometimes we think we are happy but only have a weaker, fleeting form of happiness. Sometimes we want to be happy but don't know what it is or how to get it. It is even the case that sometimes we're not sure if we're truly happy but when we consider it we find we really are. Finally, sometimes other people seem happy but are really miserable. So how can we tell what's going on inside, and should we care about others at all? If we do care about others at all, what can or should we do about it? Something each day perhaps.

Monetary wealth simply does not make me as happy as other things do, and the pursuit of relational dominance does even less so. By the way, I have found that any given social climate with respect to wargames will have more or less of these kinds of activities depending on where you are. First of all, it is commonly understood that among humans, males tend to exhibit them much more. In my living quarters for instance, I prefer the minimum or no social wargames. This would be akin to, or a microcosm of, utopia-as-ideal, or universal peace and harmony in all of the world. However, in a collaborative community, perhaps it can be claimed that some of these interpersonal aggression operations would support productivity, although too much or not the right or optimal kind of coercion, bullying, forcing, or manipulation can be very counter-productive. I would opine that none of it is needed or ought to be tolerated whatsoever, and that contrary to commonly held views, this brute mentality is frictional and counterproductive, ultimately affects the bottom line, and anyplace with this outright nastiness in its topographical consciousness loses out in all ways to other more well-developed microcosmic utopias, always. Simply put, universally speaking, goals and objectives can always be achieved easier, faster, better and more thoroughly when free of the social virus of brutishness. By this logic of which I am quite convinced, and on micro levels of power and on the macro worldview level, peace is greater (more powerful?) than war. The humbler one wins.

Again, people want to be happy as a rule but monetary abundance doesn't generate as much happiness within me as other things with which I invest my time to pursue. So to openly reject the desire to be rich and powerful, and to sacrifice of time and devote energy to a simple, genuine personal humanist agenda is therefore easier to me. The other things that make me personally happy are what I can best sum up as experiential wealth. I honestly feel experientially wealthy, wealthy in a way relatively freer from causing others to suffer. These things include a partner, animals, music and art, and learning- hopefully all in a way that zen maintains is best, which is to be free of unhealthy attachments such as co-dependency, addiction, or with discordance or imbalance. How matters as well.

This note being principally a reminder to myself lest I forget- topics for next time possibly to include ways in which America can be more of a harmonious successful society (also the whole world), and to show how global and interpersonal (and even sometimes intrapersonal) warfare can be stigmatized as parasitic to best serve the interests of all, right up to and even including the opportunists who perpetually engineer it.

April 22, 2009


Beginning to see the (dark)

By the way, that's more than just 'theoretically supposed to be public money' that is being hauled off by the same reckless and irresponsible bankers who gambled and leveraged and lost their own millions and other people's millions. It's public money. So, after the great wealth disappearing act of 2008 and '09, do we now silently and complicitly agree to hand our money over too? WHY??!?? Really doesn't make any sense, and it can't be more simply put. The government is our government, they don't own us. Or they shouldn't but something went wrong and they essentially control us beyond any uncertainty. But why relinquish our premise that truth is truth, and the government, state, society, country, and its wealth belong collectively to us? The government's money is not theirs. How could it be? It's ours! It belongs to the public, the electorate, the taxpayers. It is explicitly stated in foundational documents of our state and society(, ones that I'm too lazy too look up right now,) that the available Treasury money- the public's money- ought to be dispersed and dispensed in a highly accountable and responsible fashion.

I can't believe how these people risked and risked and risked, and the more risk they took the more they were encouraged and praised and rewarded internally, even more for leveraging beyond already unbelievable ratios, then the whole thing fell apart and we dig into our pockets for them but not for the hardworking single parent who got laid off or whose company closed let alone the millions of our human brothers and sisters without shelter, running water, sanitary waste disposal or hygienic facilities.

Doesn't exactly help lighten things up the fact that I also read some Chalmers Johnson today. The guy is not a doomsdayer or a conspiracy nut or a charismatic figure like LaRouche, not quite a dove or even a true lib. You might even want to succumb to your temptation to call this WWII vet, retired long-time professor and respected expert on East Asia, and former top-level civilian contractor to the CIA an America hater, and think for a split second you could get away with it before you knew better.

Anyway, I just read some Chalmers Johnson, and basically the cold water slap in the face is truly depressing for the instaphoto polaroid he provides of the thoroughly rotting guts of this entire America-plundered and -exploited and -manipulated and -dominated global society. Basically he comes across as a traditionalist, a conservative in the apolitical true original sense of the word, who is openly and clearly stating his (suddenly not so) radical view that the only thing to be done to rescue the common man from the tyranny of Empire is some kind of Revolution. The Pentagon is a monster, American citizens are hostages of the financial and military apparati.

It's like the breakfast of champions, the Tang to an astronaut, to read him or Chomsky or Zinn or Scheuer or Scahill. On a different less directly political level it's also Foucault or Marx. Keeps the human soul alive. Makes you actually feel redemption while simultaneously getting depressed in realizing exactly that which you've been trying not to look at in the world.

April 2, 2009



Confronting the Real Evils in the World
(latest draft, to be reviewed and extended)

Our individual perspectives on issues such as evil in the world are often skewed by the particular places we each hold within the societies to which we belong. The more opulent or relatively abundant among the world's population, and especially those of us unhappy over the admittedly significant drop in their net worth due to the recession, probably have less of a right to claim injustice than they possess a powerful collective voice. On the other end of the spectrum, the vast majority of impoverished people sadly possess little more than their fragile lives and even less say about their dire situations, though their claim is surely equal or greater. When considering the recession scaremongering and so on that gets covered in the media and debated in public mind daily, we see in a big-picture, world-perspective analysis that it really only serves as a smokescreen that masks the following unpaltable fact: While gripes about the recession and other first-world concerns are fairly measured in the tens of thousands of jobs and billions and trillions of currency units 'lost', this is really only a lesser part of the more sinister set of evils among us. These very real evils negatively affect many millions of people to a relatively far greater degree. So should any single one of us stick to whining about the recession in order to avoid confronting the uncomfortable truth about the real evils in the world?

The power wielded by the American government, and its international allies both in governments and among private interests, is simply outrageous and dangerous to all the people of the world. The majority of America's own decent citizens are included among the worst affected though they are also most able and likely to oppose it, resist it, and eventually defeat it. At the present time, virtually the entire world population is being held hostage more or less by this ultra-powerful, single-mindedly self interested elite network. The world power center is visibly American and Western European government officials, military commanders and business leaders. But this power center is also supported by others throughout the rest of the world who decide it is best for them to play nice or roll over rather than face being targeted by, say, economic sanctions or a covertly engineered coup attempt. Full-scale military assault operations or long-term neo-colonialist occupations have also historically been used as punishment for 'uncooperative' foreign states right up to the present time.

The evils we see today, and the methods of cultivating and inflicting those evils, are perhaps more numerous, more sophisticated, and darker than at any other time in human history. To decent human beings, the resilient good citizens of the world, these power-mad men and women ought to be seen as nothing more than than the socially carcinogenic parasites that they are. They are a plague amidst our otherwise beautiful global society. In their position to serve as agents for good, they instead allow and facilitate evils of all kinds, or at best fail to contain or eliminate the evils among us. Indeed, they are the actual terrorists who, in their daily actions and future plans, daily pursue more power and more profit. They are commit evils of all kinds daily. Some of these are briefly discussed below.

The world now, as all throughout human history, is plagued throughout with destructive operations of openly declared and fully engaged war. Elsewhere it is contaminated, as usual, with other more subtle death operations like genocide and starvation, along with fancier modern varieties of enslavement where their consequential actions that inevitably lead to war, genocide and famine have not fully ripened. Genocide in particular serves as a source for special outrage among the conscience-led. It continues day after day in large areas of the world, affecting many people, yet it goes almost totally unnoticed. It is sad to say that much too little is ever done, if at all, to help end the manufacture of death all over the world.

The ruling elite currently keep their positions with the potential to effect real positive change in many ways, but instead many of them seek to openly and efficiently propel what can be called nothing other than evil. A network for the proliferation and distribution of instruments of death and destruction is cultivated for more power and greater profits. Money schemes of the major financial and governmental institutions enslave individuals and entire populations. Other more subtle though just as oppressive anti-human evils flourish amidst a culture dominated by cutthroat visciousness. These timeless forms of oppression which ought to be stamped out for good include racism, sexism, class division, and divisive 'otherizations' of all kinds. For those of us relatively free of the considerations of the worst evils, there is even the much more subtle violence of lesser evils like consumerism, cultural fascism, and the corrosion of the social foundations of education and healthcare.

War, weapons proliferation, genocide, famine, poverty, drug distribution, and other financial schemes and forms of enslavement; human trafficking, extralegal detainment, false imprisonment and other human rights violations; racism, sexism, elitism and other divisive hatreds; the barrage of corporatist and consumerist ideology in our society, the alienating force of cultural fascism in our society, indeed the pervasive corrosion of the foundations of any good society: we can and should look at each and every one of these evils systematically in order to understand them in totality, and to resist, oppose, and defeat them once and for all.

March 26, 2009


Terrorism American Style

"the doctrine that was taught was that if you want information you use physical abuse, you use false imprisonment, you use threats to family members, you use virtually any method necessary to get what you want. Torture and killing. If there's someone you don't want, you kill them. If you don't if you can't get the information you want, if you can't get that person to shut up or stop what they're doing you simply assassinate them, and you assassinate them with one of your death squads." A former SOA instructor. (watch the video)

Forget about al-Qaeda and the Taliban (for a minute).

Actually, in the spirit of the last post, there is a link between radical Islamic resistance and the subject of this post, U.S. controlled Latin American puppet states. Except in this case American foreign policy doesn't just cause a backlash response of terrorism. It is the terror. This fact is easy to shy away from but difficult to deny given the slightest inquiry into the true causes for destabilized Mexico, brutal puppet regimes, and dehumanized, impoverished masses in Central and Latin America (not to mention other major conflicts and crisises that I hope to address in later posts, on the current conditions, true causes and American involvement in the disasters in Iraq (link 2) (link 3), Darfur, Palestine, Haiti, and other places).

For years the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (or 'WHINSEC') has taught and encouraged (in a very effective manner) the worst kinds of terrorism and atrocities known to man. Basically, it trains men from Latin American countries to go back home as top experts and practitioners of the fine art of how exactly one goes about mindlessly killing, raping, torturing, kidnapping, brutalizing and destroying civilian populations largely at random and totally without conscience. WHINSEC has done this for years, originally under the name School of the Americas. Some brave justice-minded folks (soaw.org) have been actively appealing for the end of this nightmare in the name of the untold thousands of past and future victims of horrific violence at the hands of SOA trained soldiers/mercenaries/terrorists.

Honestly, how can SOA/WHINSEC possibly be any good at all for America? Let alone the terrorized populations of Mexico, El Salvador and the rest of Central and South America? WHINSEC is the classic example of the worst kind of outmoded imperialist policy action of the past century, policy which essentially reproduces and enhances to the next level the shameful continuum put in motion with the first wave of European brutality in the New World five hundred years ago. The upside since then was to forcibly establish or maintain control of subservient colonies, and to own slaves either outright or effectively through economic measures. The slaves produce goods for you to trade, profit and thrive, and your job is to keep that going wickedly and without remorse. The downside of this model is the reduction of innumerable people's lives to worthlessness (including, it may be argued, the transgressors and the complicit Amercan public who also greedily and directly benefit from such systemic atrocity). If there ever could be such a human morality whereby one can somehow be complicit in the darkest evil imaginable yet be able to somehow justify it, this economic model might approach some kind of sense.

Nowadays- and this is a simplification- added to that model is a sort of reverse flow: the goods are produced via the wage-slavery model of representationless sweatshop subsistence workers, but over time the playing field of production has since been somewhat leveled; manufacturing technologies and business know-how and processes have spread throughout the world. So on top of the 'supply side terror' comes the 'demand side terror': consumer markets are forced open via free trade agreements and debt imposition which kill locally owned production, thus, the targeted competition is outpriced and eliminated. So big business moves in to meet the demand, simultaneously claiming an unchallenged market while innocently claiming that the forces of the free market, due to some unexplainable socially altruistic alchemy, compel them to sell their goods there. The profits are reaped, but the already oppressed masses need to be kept in check, and any movement against the ruthless dictatorship needs to be quickly smashed. Then and only then is everyone happy, right?

This is where WHINSEC and similar evil social engineering programs some into play. Again, only if you can with a clear conscience totally disregard moral universalism* and claim that mass murder, beheading, gang rape, torture, terrorizing violence and kidnapping are not that bad or it doesn't matter because there are methods to get away with those sorts of activities, then there's no problem. Then the gigantic multinational corporations, the undeniable true promoters of terror and violence meet their quarterly earnings forecasts and post profits to hearty applause in boardrooms and power elite glee on golf courses all over America.

This is a key part of the story surrounding the escalating Mexican Drug War started in 2006, and also of global terrorism. To a lesser extent it even factors into a better understanding of the wost global economic crisis in several generations. It is a central part of the story that is intentionally being withheld by mainstream news, not being told for obvious reasons: because they're in bed with the corporates….actually, they're one and the same, aren't they? (another topic for a later post) But they don't want you to know what you probably don't want to think about anyway, and not for any other reason than this do they need you to look away: no one wants to admit that America is THE world's leading producer and exporter of terrorism and atrocity.

I'm personally curious enough about all this to look into the WHINSEC/SOA among other related issues, and would encourage and invite you as well to find some good information available online such as YouTube clips (here and here) and official reports and see for yourself rather
than take my word for it.

*- the Chomsky principle paraphrased is that a person or country should not harshly apply some arbitrary morality standard to another person or country that they won't apply to themselves, in light of their own atrocious, self-interested behaviors and actions. i.e you can't call them terrorists if you do the same thing even more so and more effectively.

March 23, 2009

movements founded in righteousness
grassroots actions for human rights and justice
the continuum of heroism right up to now
personal sacrifice and devotion to the cause

positive contributions great and small
effecting real change in the world
affecting peoples lives for the better

awareness of history & current events
confronting uncomfortable truths
implicating passivity and blissful ignorance

read more

March 13, 2009