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The Truth Won't Set Us Free

2009-11-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

We know the truth. Michael Werbowski, in "America: After the Fall", tells us ...

20 years after the fall of communism, American-style capitalism has also fallen. But the downfall was silent, without any visible walls toppling or crumbling. The 9/11-like collapse of the financial firms of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers left no piles of rubble or slabs of fractured concrete on the ground, just lots of laid off traders and deal makers. But the brokerage and investment banks' end signaled the death knell of market capitalism as we knew it; another misbegotten ideology born out of the musings of Adam Smith, Ricardo and Milton Friedman was laid to rest unceremoniously. The troika which presumed that man’s most bestial instincts can be curbed in the pursuit of profit and happiness were wrong ...

The president’s inverted version of “perestroika” (that is, the restructuring or retooling of the economy) has been fine tuned to meet the need of the oligarchs and corporate barons who support him and prompt him behind the curtains. Obama and his czar–commissars (and his adoring minions of PR spin operatives) have deftly in a brilliant slight of hand in one swift jest, effectively expropriated the entire financial and industrial sectors in America by means of massive taxpayer funded “bail outs”. These ploys have turned the essence of capitalism upside down, by rewarding cronyism and criminal behavior to the point where “crime pays” very handsomely indeed, and enables billionaires, fraudsters and financiers to obtain great gain almost without almost any pain or punishment. These perverse policies are likely to fail. In the end, Gorbachev’s policies, although ostensibly well meaning, actually hastened the demise of the Soviet state. This later led to its fragmentation and disintegration of the communist superpower and its Eastern Empire. America’s current plight may lead to a similar outcome.

We know the truth. In his piece, "Self-jiving Nation", Jim Kunstler writes ...

If you think we have been in a crisis of finance and economy for the past year or so, consider that we have also been sunk in a comprehensive crisis of leadership. Nobody in authority is willing to face the truth, state the truth, and offer a reality-based idea about how to meet the truth, This is a leadership failure not just in politics and government, but also in business, in the university faculties, in the editorial and production offices of the news media, and even among a barely-breathing clergy ...

We know the truth, but we can't handle it. We grasp at straws of hope, looking for anything in the media blabber and bluster to light the sky over the wasteland. Even the survivalists don't seem to grasp that "The World as We Know It" is gone; what we see now is a chimera, and that's about all.

See it or not, most of us are sucking on a try breast of truly "faith-based" delusion that somehow "recovery" is just over the horizon.

I cringe when I hear that this will be a "jobless recovery". That is the new leader on the list of oxymora. An economic landscape which benefits only those who steal their money from the people is the new truth. We have not, through "bailouts", invested in a system in which the rich elitists reinvest their riches in the interest of a valued, common society of equal human beings. Fuggedaboutit!

But instead of moving gamely through the steps of dealing with our grief over the loss of comfortable, debt-generated illusion, we are caught in the vicious cycle of denial and anger, denial and anger, ad infinitum. And instead of turning our anger against those who have stolen our dreams (they were nothing more than that), we rage against each other in polarized cults, thinking we inhabit our own chosen political temples of truth. Such folly. Heh. We've got 'em just where they want us.

The truth is plain. Last week at the International Forecaster, in "A New System For The Privleged Is Not A Remedy For The Economy", the author writes ...

Our usurping, . . . spendthrift President, together with our corrupt, elitist-bootlicking Congress of money-grabbing Dumbos and Jackasses, are spending us into a multi-trillion dollar hyperinflationary oblivion as their ratings by their constituents drop into the toilet bowl, ratings which are disgracefully the lowest in all of US history. With a diabolical "Robin Hood in Reverse" plan in place since 1913 for the extortion of money from the US middle class to reduce their serfs to poverty and abject slavery, the Illuminati have managed to use the Federal Reserve Act and US income tax, together with the Social Security Ponzi Scheme, phony, orchestrated wars for profit, socialization of bankster-gangster losses, the globalism/free trade/off-shoring/outsourcing/legal-illegal immigration agendas, and a totally bought-and-paid-for President, Congress, judiciary and regulatory agencies, to reduce US citizens to consumerist credit addicts, living pay check to pay check like narcissistic hedonists ...

There's that word again - "narcissist".

This is from a book review piece done back in April by MSNBC/Today Show, "Me, me, me! America’s ‘Narcissism Epidemic’" ...

A popular song declares, with no apparent sarcasm, "I believe that the world should revolve around me!" People buy expensive homes with loans far beyond their ability to pay — or at least they did until the mortgage market collapsed as a result. Babies wear bibs embroidered with "Supermodel" or "Chick Magnet" and suck on "Bling" pacifiers while their parents read modernized nursery rhymes from This Little Piggy Went to Prada. People strive to create a "personal brand" (also called "self-branding"), packaging themselves like a product to be sold. Ads for financial services proclaim that retirement helps you return to childhood and pursue your dreams. High school students pummel classmates and then seek attention for their violence by posting YouTube videos of the beatings.

Although these seem like a random collection of current trends, all are rooted in a single underlying shift in the American psychology: the relentless rise of narcissism in our culture. Not only are there more narcissists than ever, but non-narcissistic people are seduced by the increasing emphasis on material wealth, physical appearance, celebrity worship, and attention seeking. Standards have shifted, sucking otherwise humble people into the vortex of granite countertops, tricked-out MySpace pages, and plastic surgery. A popular dance track repeats the words "money, success, fame, glamour" over and over, declaring that all other values have "either been discredited or destroyed."

The United States is currently suffering from an epidemic of narcissism. Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines an epidemic as an affliction "affecting ... a disproportionately large number of individuals within a population," and narcissism more than fits the bill. In data from 37,000 college students, narcissistic personality traits rose just as fast as obesity from the 1980s to the present, with the shift especially pronounced for women ...

Yes, you see, we know the truth. We just can't do anything with the awful stuff.

Consider ... the primary thesis of classical liberalism, now brought to the farthest extremes in our society, dictates that the individual embodies the highest form of being, endowed with inalienable rights. No matter that the pursuit of such rights pretty much guarantees the alienation of everyone else's rights. The reconciliation was supposed to be managed by capitalism, thus taking the need for personal responsibility away from the individual and allowing "markets" to govern our behaviors. That, as Werbowski notes above, has finally failed, leaving the thieves with the keys and combinations to all the safes.

The truth is this: we have been and are being inexorably distracted from grasping the truth - wars, health care "reform", same-sex marriage, economic "recovery" statistics, cash for clunkers, political and media peccadilloes, and all the silly crap we are fed on a daily basis are a cacophonous diverson from the stark reality that the bread is all but gone and the circus is in town.

In "Social Decay in America" at CounterPunch, John stanton writes ...

American society merrily avoids accountability and responsibility. Americans seek the loophole and blame others--be they individuals, networks or nations--for their own deficiencies. American leaders direct the consequences of poor judgment down the chain-of-command. Why?

The American people have taken the bait from the nation’s op-ed writers and talking heads, corporate CEO’s, financiers, the president, members of congress, justices of the Supreme Court, governors, sports/movie/think-tank/academic stars, and military leaders. In the USA these are the script writers of the American narrative and masters of the American consciousness. They stand firm in their belief that the masses down below will follow their words and deeds, even die for them. They are the Unaccountable Elite.

And the American people don’t disappoint. Only on rare occasions is an “American leader” taken to task by a concerned public. The American people revel in their leaders, glorifying and emulating them and striving, one day, to make it like their idols did. In so doing they have forsaken their duty as American citizens to hold their leaders to account and, as consumers, divine what is theater and what is not ...

Maybe, just maybe, the truth will set some of us free. But first, it is driving us crazy.

Categories: Americanism, narcissism, post-democracy, post-economics, post-society, reality

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Nobel: "Put Up or Shut Up"

2009-10-14T18:54:00.000-04:00

I have thought very carefully before adding my voice to the discussion about the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace. What I've discovered is that few, if any, have written or talked about the irony of the award, concentrating on whether Obama "deserved" the prize.

It is obvious that Obama has not "earned" it. But that's not the point. As many have noted, the Peace Prize has indeed been awarded in the past on an "aspirational" note in the hope that certain efforts had sown the most fertile seeds in the soil of hope. But y'all know how I feel about "hope": hope don't feed the bulldog.

I think what the Nobel Committee is saying to Obama is nothing less than "Put Up or Shut Up". It is a recognition that Obama talks a good game most of time, even considering the contradictions between what he speaks about on the stump and the policies he's continued or created. The actions don't match the words - it's as simple as that. The Committee is saying, "Look, man. Talking peace and making peace just ain't the same breed of cat".

Truth be told, some pretty nasty folks have been in the mix in the past. Hitler was nominated. Stalin made off with one. Run your finger down the list of 208 winners and you get the impression that the criteria are sometimes pretty questionable. Even more questionable when you factor in the resouces of the Nobel Institute, the organization of scholars, researchers, and impressive resources which advises the Committee on its selections. George Will's recent on-the-air comment about "seriousness" is well taken. So awarding the prize to a man who has done little besides make speeches about peace is really not so odious. At least they didn't choose Ahmadinejad.

As Matt Taibbi notes in "On the Nobel Prize for Occasional Peace",

It’s hard to believe, but there have been sillier moments in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize than this recent fiasco involving Barack Obama — it’s just so hard to remember them when you’re rolling around on the ground and spitting up greenish foam in a state of shock, as most of us were this past weekend as the news of Obama’s amazing award rolled over the airwaves.

The Nobel Peace Prize long ago ceased to be an award given to people who really spend their whole careers agitating for peace. Like most awards the Prize has evolved into a kind of maraschino cherry for hardcore careerists to place atop their resumes, a reward not for dissidence but on the contrary for gamely upholding the values of Western society as it perceives itself, for putting a good face on things (in Obama’s place, literally so).

Even when the award is given to a genuine dissident, it tends to be a dissident hailing from a country we consider outside the fold of Western civilization, a rogue state, “not one of us” — South Africa from the apartheid days, for instance, or the regime occupying East Timor.

You never, ever get a true dissident from a prominent Western country winning the award, despite the obvious appropriateness such a choice would represent. Our Western society quite openly embraces war as a means of solving problems and for quite some time now has fashioned its entire social and economic structure around the preparation for war ...

Therein lies the problem - and bolsters the question of whether the Nobel Committee is to be seriously considered or just another version of Dancing with the Stars.

Taibbi brings out the most obvious contradiction: we are a culture that has succeeded because it has, for the most part, made war (although, starting with Viet Nam, not so much lately). Thus, the Nobel "aspirations" seem to me very disingenuous. For the paradigm change needed in order to contribute fully to a culture of peace must be just that: fundamental and total.

In a recent piece at Common Dreams ("If We Want Peace, We're Going to Have to Learn to Say No"), Daphne Bramham notes ...

Ending war means a massive societal shift.

"We must create the idea that to even think of war is horrific," says [Irish Nobel laureate Mairead] Maguire, whose own peace prize was awarded for her work in ending the fighting in Northern Ireland.

It means transforming millennia of solving problems by fighting with solving conflicts through talking. It will be hard, but perhaps not impossible, says Maguire, who cites the mind-shift about smoking. In a very short time, smokers went from being cool to being pariahs.

As with smoking, it starts with children and education. Kids are already taught at home and at school that violence is bad. But as a number of University of B.C. researchers are finding, using programs that emphasize empathy and compassion can reduce children's aggression.

But much of what children learn doesn't come from either parents or teachers. It comes from television, movies and video games. All of which are becoming increasingly violent.

A decade ago, UNESCO research found that 93 per cent of children in 93 countries with access to television watched for three hours a day and saw five to 10 violent acts every hour ...

It is not, unfortunately, just the surface violence that we must reject. We must root out and replace all the sources of and justifications for violence, even in its seemingly subtle forms.

Capitalism, for example, is a very violent sport. Profit at any cost seems to be the only rule, competitive greed the object in play, destroying the competition the only goal. The field is covered with dead and dying players, while the owners are building castles with uncrossable moats. Many of their owners have turned war into a profit center - some even supplying all sides with the means of ~~production~~ destruction. Religion and nationalism are not far behind in undermining our deep desire for peace.

I am sorely tempted to call the honor bestowed on Obama the "Nobel Peace Pipe Dream". As noted by Taibbi, Obama is no dissident. His philosophy and his policies are fully rooted in the same garden that has grown war for centuries and he will continue to strive to "win". His message to Muslims and others is clearly, "We must have peace, but on Western terms - or else!"

Some commentary on the prize has suggested that it represented a hope that America would rise to world leadership in a grand journey to world peace. Sigh. I, for one, think we need to look elsewhere. I don't think we're up to it, judging by the actions of late at town meetings and the words of threat from a familiar "news" channel. It just doesn't seem to me that a country moving so quickly toward civil war is a likely beacon of peace on a troubled planet.

Others have said that Obama was not so pleased to receive the prize - that it challenged his true imperialist, bellicose agenda. It undoubtedly presents a conundrum, seeing as how making peace by making wars has been thoroughly discredited. We can hope as we might, but Obama will have his wars.

Categories: Americanism, Nobel, peace, war

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It's the Culture, Stupid!

2009-10-08T16:42:00.009-04:00

I'm a pretty tolerant fellow. I was taught by my elders to appreciate the fact that there is usually a good reason for someone to believe, think, and act as s/he does. But I never thought I'd say this ...

I can understand why the Rockefellers and their rich, cultured, educated friends are so terrified of the common person and propose that the discipline of a centralized, fascist world order is the only thing that will save mankind. Or, at least, save their own asses from eradication by the great, rude, selfish unwashed.

After witnessing the spectacle of tea parties and town meetings, children being beaten to death by other children in urban streets, and political and other celebrities dusting themselves off after public acts of adultery, I get it, Mr Rockefeller. We just have failed to prove we can handle the responsibilities of democracy, open society, and popular liberty. We can't govern our individual behaviors, much less govern ourselves as a "civilization". It just seems as if the percentage of our icons and citizens whose motto is "fuck you very much" grows exponentially every time I look around.

I'd like to blame it on Ronald Reagan, but I really can't. He was just an opportunist who jumped on the lead horse of the "I, me, mine", "All for One and All for One" movements of the late 1970s and the 1980s. He merely articulated what most Americans were already screaming: "I paid for this microphone, pay for your own."

Reagan - and his counterpart Meg Thrasher in Britain - declared that there was no society, only individuals and families. By that time, they were only stating what they observed, the crumbling ghetto of Anglo-American civilization. The Left likes to think of Reagan/Thatcher as arch-conservatives, but in reality they were quintessential liberals, valuing individual rights above the need for responsible membership in the community in order for that community to survive.

It didn't take me very much effort to find this nugget at Mithmëoi the other day:

I read things like this or this everyday, I see teens that brag about how and when they lost their virginity, I see how lewd jokes are just shrugged off, kids can just back talk their parents and other adults and suffer no consequences at all. I keep hearing how we are the most advanced society of all time, yet we cannot treat each other with respect, most people lack any common sense, and things that were incredibly unacceptable fifty years ago are now just brushed off. I wonder if we’re so advanced, why do simple things like respect and common sense escape us? The more we start to push away from morals and a belief in God and the more we rely on ourselves and our creations, ie machines etc, the worse we seem to get. We have become arrogant and rebellious and we pay the price. We pay it with loss of freedoms, a generation of people that cannot think for themselves, a generation that cannot function unless someone tells them what they should or should not do by listening to not their elders, but the mass media. This is an apathetic generation. A generation that goes with the flow, do what feels good and do it now. There is no patience, there is no conscience. There is no value of life among them.

If you’ll look through history across the world you’ll see something interesting. The more a culture strays from their moral values they were founded on, reject God or just decide that they don’t need archaic rules anymore the more it degrades and eventually collapses. A nation cannot survive without moral values, without respect and a value on life. Once you lose those you are on a path to destruction. Everywhere I look I see this happening in every nation of the world, save for maybe the isolated tribes, but I’m referring to the major influences of this time. Every single one is suffering from the same thing, reliance on self and machine, crumbling morals, life losing its value and people who will not stand up for themselves, sheep.

Recently, at least one network news show (and I chose that word specifically) did a feature piece on the denigration of civil discourse. Plenty of talk about angry adolescent types shouting and pumping their fists in the faces of elected officials and other angry adolescents, carrying their assault rifles on their shoulders, just itchin' for a fight. The Silent Majority finally empowered to screeching by the spectre of "socialism". The programs failed because they treated the behavior as the illness, rather than more accurately as symptoms of something fundamental - the grinding narcissism I have spoken about in these pages so often.

From a strictly personal perspective, what absolutely devastates me is that there's a hefty percentage of my Woodstock Generation among these people. The generation that sang about and demonstrated for Peace and Love. Sheesh. It seems that a bunch of my brothers and sisters replaced their need to protect their stashes of marijuana and magic mushrooms with the need to protect their iPods and HDTVs. I now see most Americans as cave-dwellers, surrounded by appliances and guns to protect them.

If we have rejected society, what now? If our culture is demanding that government simply disappear, where does law come from. I think those who say that it will just naturally occur once the bureaucrats and regulators and cops disappear are terminally naive.

As a culture, we have descended into chaos. It's not just about money. The same folks who are screaming so loud for unrestricted personal liberty and rights are about to lose it all, for all of us. I'm not going to yell at you or point a gun. But I am going to tell you that that ticks me off.

Categories: new+world+order, Americanism, communitarian, community, post-society, principles, responsibilities

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Firing Up the Fear Factory

2009-10-03T18:13:00.001-04:00

Does anyone else find it more than a coincidence that lately the fear factory in Washington has stoked the fires up pretty close to a meltdown? The last time there was as much collective dread, I believe, was during the 1962 'Cuban Missile Crisis', a few days in October forty-seven years ago when the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction was challenged and stretched to a literal snapping point. We could hear the Nuke War Clock ticking down in our sleep. At that time, our national fear was shared and focused on just one thing. Now it is much different. Now there are a hundred fears and, it seems, as many factions.

After the September 2001 'attacks' on Washington and New York, I was not particularly afraid of terrorists. I was, however, terrified of what I knew would be the government's opportunistic response. After eight years, there is no doubt that my assumptions were totally justified. The US government - and I don't mean the Bush or Obama administrations, per se - now rules in an atmosphere of terror, mainly self-generated.

We are bombarded often by the specter of "another 911". That event is unlikely, unless there is further fore-knowledge, complicity, or even participation. And frankly, such an occurance is not needed. Whoever pulled it off accomplished the intended purpose.

When a goverment claimed to be democratic functions independently of its people, making laws, policies, and procedures in its own interest and that of a both domestic and foreign alliance of ruling elites, it can do so only behind a shield of implied or overt threat.

Since we all feel them, the threats - manufactured or not - are easily enumerated: economic collapse with attendant poverty, crime, and general destitution; military or paramilitary attack; loss of security; loss of freedom and rights, perhaps taking the form of martial law; fear of socialism, communism, fascism, anarchy, and rascism. And these fears are factionalized in such a way that we a now afraid of each other. During the Cuban Missile Crisis we were afraid of a common enemy. Now we are all afraid of each other and our government; our government is afraid of us. In short, the nation is afraid of itself. It's no way to live.

In a recent interview with the TimesOnline, Gore Vidal remarked:

America has “no intellectual class” and is “rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush.”

Vidal adds menacingly: “Don’t ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren’t any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I’m never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.”...

The implication here is that Obama is no hero, and I agree. But I'll bet he's as afraid as the next guy. As an aside, aren't we taking free speech just a little too far when we allow people, even ordained ministers, to pray openly for the president's death?

Fear is normally a healthy reaction to both perceived and actual threat. It is a survival mechanism. But when the threats, real or not, are seemingly uncountable, consistent, and long-lived, the fear turns into a state of rage alternating with catatonic numbness, followed by systemic breakdown. This happens to large, complex systems like governments, as well as to small systems like people.

I believe that the government's intentions are clear - to engender a dark fog of fear with which to cow and confuse the people - because it has done nothing to defuse either the fear or the anger. At times, in town halls, teaparties, and demonstrations it has stoked the fires, notwithstanding the occasional pronouncement that the economy is on the mend. Instead of directly confronting the flames with cooling water, Obama makes grand speeches about more war; lies about the economic non-recovery; flies off to Copenhagen to advocate for a scheme that would probably bankrupt Chicago. Meanwhile, the fires rage up the hills through the dried thorny brush of hate and terror. It is difficult to believe the result will not be a meltdown.

Washington, in fact, is purposefully making things worse. Although the "intelligence" community apparently knew about the alleged nuke lab at Qom for many years, it chose to reveal it during a few weeks in which several alleged domestic terrorists and their heinous plots were uncovered.

Added to that, just yesterday the FBI director added to the fuel supply:

They could strike the United States. That grim assessment is the first time the FBI director or any other senior law enforcement or intelligence official has stated on the record that the Al Qaeda-linked group al-Shabaab is no longer content to strike within the East African nation of Somalia.

During a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller was asked if members of al-Shabaab, which translates as "mujahideen youth," would send American recruits back to the U.S. to launch attacks.

"I would think that we have seen some information that the leaders would like to undertake operations outside of Somalia," Mueller told the Senate Homeland Security Committee ...

I must admit, I'm not immune. Although I'm still not afraid of "terrorists" (there still are elements of the FBI, CIA, and NSA who do a good job if they are tasked correctly and can operate without political interference), I am afraid of my government and a growing slice of the American citizenry. Lack of mutual respect and self-discipline, a sense of personal responsibility, and ignorance are not new. I've now been around for over sixty years and I've watched American culture dissolve steadily. We've long lost our moral edge. Fear will do that to you.

At CounterPunch, David Michael Green echoes my own feelings to a great degree ...

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which proposing a new and better version of corporate-plunder masquerading as national healthcare gets you burned in effigy for being a socialist stooge by gun-toting angry mobs.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which the same people who hate you for being a socialist simultaneously hate you for being a fascist.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which angry mobs of supposed anti-socialist demonstrators scream at their congressional representatives to “keep your government hands off my Medicare”.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which claims that the government is going to start killing off seniors are taken seriously by tens of millions of people.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which people are all worked up about government czars, but sat silently while the Bush administration destroyed the Bill of Rights and used a thousand signing statements to write Congress out of the Constitution.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which deficits have all of a sudden become the source of enormous anger among people who said nothing about them previously, as the tax cuts for the wealthy, off-budget wars based on lies, and unfunded prescription drug Big Pharma giveaway transmogrified the biggest surplus in American history into the biggest deficit ever.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which politicians can rant incessantly about other peoples’ sexual morality, get caught screwing prostitutes, and then still be reelected to the highest ranks of government by trashing the president.

I could go on and on, but what would be the point? ...

Indeed. Sigh.

Categories: new+world+order, 911, black+hole, democracy, fear, hopelessness, post-politics

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The Silence of Freedom

2009-09-21T20:10:00.001-04:00

I know I'm not the only one, but I have to ask ...

Who's watching the store? Who is leading the Cabinet? Who is corralling the Democrats? Where does the buck stop? Instead of a presidency, we've bought into nothing more than a traveling wild west variety show, complete with gunslingers and the Snake Oil Salesman-in-Chief. The deluge of words over the weekend was simply over the top. For once, Faux Noose had the right idea in snubbing the guy.

Maybe it just ain't so great that we got ourselves a president that can string a few intelligible words together. At least Dubbleduh tended to be hilarious on the podium from time to time and we really didn't have to listen to him very much. This Obama cat just won't shut up. Nothing more than a cheerleader, but it remains to be seen just where the team is and where the game plan is supposed to get us.

It's not just the volume of words in his grand speechification tour. It's that the content still means no more than "hope" and "change". This man brings nothing to the table but thousands of vague generalities.

John McCain remarked that it might not be a good idea to put such an inexperienced man in the Oval Office. He was onto something. The problem, however, was not much Obama's lack of experience, as his total lack of any real political power to forward what may have been a "progressive agenda". He has no political capital to wield, no deals to cut, no long-term alliances with powerful Senators and Congresspersons. As a result of continuing the previous administration's policies of self-defeating wars, indefensible war crimes, obeisance to criminal banksters, and ignoring the now non-working poor, he has lost the support of all but the most hypnotised so-called progressives who swung the election for him.

A quick reminder here that he has betrayed no one. He promised nothing of substance. The people who insisted on endowing him with qualities he does not possess are culpable. They voted for their dreams, they elected an illusion - an arrogant, self-worshipping one, but an illusion nonetheless.

Witness John Pilger ...

The clever young man who recently made it to the White House is a very fine hypnotist, partly because it is so extraordinary to see an African-American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery. However, this is the 21st century, and race — together with gender and even class — can be very seductive tools of propaganda. For what matters, above race and gender, is the class one serves ...

During his brief period in the Senate, Obama voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He voted for the Patriot Act. He refused to support a bill for single-payer health care. He supported the death penalty. As a presidential candidate, he received more corporate backing than John McCain ...

In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obama refers to the job he took after he graduated from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as “a consulting house to multinational corporations.” For some reason, he does not say who his employer was or what he did there. The employer was Business International Corporation, which has a long history of providing cover for the CIA with covert action, and infiltrating unions and the left. I know this because it was especially active in my own country, Australia.

Obama does not say what he did at Business International; and there may be nothing sinister, but it seems worthy of enquiry, and debate, surely, as a clue to whom the man is.

During his brief period in the Senate, Obama voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He voted for the Patriot Act. He refused to support a bill for single-payer health care. He supported the death penalty. As a presidential candidate, he received more corporate backing than John McCain. He promised to close Guantanamo as a priority and has not. Instead, he has excused the perpetrators of torture, reinstated the infamous military commissions, kept the Bush gulag intact and opposed habeus corpus ...

The horrible truth, therefore, is that Barack Obama was not elected ... he was elevated, as a shining symbol to mesmerize the population, by the elite class, to be their spokesperson. Nothing more than a cheerleader, but it remains to be seen just where the team is and where the gameplan is supposed to get us, although a great many more folks now have an inkling.

It is clear that Obama loves the spotlight. He loves it when all eyes are on him, enraptured by his rhetoric. But that's the problem, isn't it? If he stays in our face, pouring out his fine ideals with empty, vague "promises", we forget to look at all the Machievellis behind all the curtains. We forget about the Kissingers, Brzezinskis, Emmanuels, and Geithners who continue to connive and pull the puppets' strings. Obama, I'm afraid, is a shill. A front man. Just another political con artist.

So what do we do? A good first action is to stop listening. Just turn him off.

An old and dear friend of mine wisely counseled me once to listen very little but watch very carefully. He said, "Don't tell me you love me. Show me." I admit Obama's very good at what he does - but all that is is talking. He has already proven that he's a bit thin in the integrity category and thick with contradictions.

Next, we can try to overcome our deep ideological differences and learn something from the rabid right. In my opinion, they are better organized and significantly more motivated than the majority of liberals, progressives, and moderate Democrats. Although I loathe their values, laugh at their political poverty, and reject much of their methodology, they were able to put a noticeable few thousand in the streets of DC. They were heard. They had an impact. Ridicule them if you must, but give them credit for at least some measure of concerted action.

The best the Left seems able to do is organize yet another fruitless - and perhaps violent - anti-globalization rally for the up-coming G20. Borrrring.

At any rate, if we can't silence Obama, we can turn our silence against him. We can turn a deaf ear. We can find no more joy in listening to him than listening to talking barracudas and silly sock puppets on Fox and MSNBC. Turn them off. Let them fight it out with words with each other.

I have a small daydream. In it, I am walking up Pennsylvania Avenue in the midst of two million people. There are no speeches, no slogans, no shouting. Except for the echo of four million feet on the pavement, there is utter silence. A silence of protest. A silence of sadness. The silence of true freedom. A few people carry signs. But they all just say one thing ...

"NO MORE".

Categories: change, conscience, democracy, post-democracy, post-politics, presidency

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Blind Staggers

2009-09-07T13:56:00.002-04:00

The bluesman Chris Smither, an old friend of mine, in our mutual drinking days would sometimes disappear after a coffeehouse appearance. The following morning, when questioned where he'd gone off to, would only say that he'd had the "blind staggers".

Medical dictionaries claim that the condition effects only horses and cattle. Its primary symptoms are an unsteady gait and the appearance of blindness. I beg to differ. From what I observe, there is a human pandemic of that same disease in the United States that makes the swine flu look like a match dying in a birdbath. And there's no vaccination; there's no foreseeable remedy ...

If there ever was a need for calmness and truly rational thinking, for measured discourse, and for intellectual contribution, this is it. But I see them appearing over no hill in shining armor to rescue us from the quicksand of this putrid swamp we've entered. Chaos reigns.

Here's a great example: Charles Bouley, writing at HuffPo, with "America is Losing Its Collective Mind" ...

I am leaving the Democratic party. It is with heavy heart that I change my affiliation to Independent. I'm 46, have been a registered Democrat since I was 18. My parents were from the East Coast, and proud Democrats. But it took the Democrats taking over, being in power, for me to see that Democrats talk a good talk but do not have the spine to walk the walk. They buckle under pressure, even ridiculous, obtuse pressure.

But it's not just the Democrats. I'm going to ask my country soon the horrible question, "them, or me." Truly; either we start listening to, following and promoting educated, sane, individuals and doctrines or I will seriously consider leaving the country. Because after all, what kind of country is it now, or will it be if this discourse and noncourse of action keeps up? ...

I certainly don't disagree, but my question is, "leave the Democratic Party for what?" Presently, there is no where to go. Period. Libertarians? Greens? They can't even get on the damned ballot in most states. The hard campaigning for the 2010 mid-terms is right around the corner. And if you think the non-existent leadership of either of those parties has a chance, I can connect you with your next crack dealer.

The fact is that we're at a point where there are no parties. There is no real leadership in any one, no party discipline, no discernible platforms. All that's left of the two "major" parties are a bunch of very pissed-off people calling each other names and accusing each other of everything from pedophilia to high treason. Instead of paying attention to real issues and concerns, we're now subject to rumors about whether Glenn Beck raped someone a few years ago and a controversy over whether our children should watch a presidential speech about education. Frankly, the "Left" is no better than the "Right". If this is not a massive national mental breakdown, it'll do until one comes along. But, no matter where you are on the post-political "spectrum" (or kaleidoscope?), the other guy is not the problem. We all are.

We have all clearly lost our way, stumbling blindly through a morass of our own making. You would think that eight years of The Dubbleduh-Chainey Gang would teach us some clear lessons about electoral politics and who really runs this country. It's not as if the information isn't out here. But we failed. We took the easy way out. Instead of rejecting a failed system and building our own, we embraced it once again and allowed ourselves to entrust our lives to the slick concoction of professional snake oil salesmen. Now everyone is shocked and dismayed that we got snake oil. Go figure.

Let me take a bit of a side road here. Government is the problem. But the solution is not the elimination of government, as the anarchists and libertarians propose. The solution is in taking the government back from the powers to whom we gave it and in making it work again as a tool of the citizens.

Edward Jayne, writing at Dissident Voice, in "Running on Empty", explains ...

Nor can much help be expected toward an effective solution from our government in Washington, D.C. Congressmen, for example, are almost entirely in the pockets of industries opposed to economic reform that might bear a negative impact on their profits. These elected officials are amazingly unprincipled in their acceptance of hefty campaign contributions in exchange for services rendered, and indeed big business, big banks, big agriculture, big labor, and inclusively anything “big” engages in the practice of paying them off. The amount of these contributions might seem large, but it turns out to be nominal compared to the yield, often more than 100-1 in federal subsidies obtained through earmark legislation and comparable services provided by these congressmen. The few Congressmen unwilling to go along with this arrangement quickly disappear from politics because of inadequate campaign funding. When others more willing to depend on corporate donations finally retire, most find the means to transfer their remaining campaign funds to their own bank accounts and often join the ranks of lobbyists who, like themselves, had first learned the ropes as congressmen. The situation is strictly plutocratic verging on klepto-plutocracy when the law is broken to make it happen. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens have little if any influence except to the extent that they belong to issues-related public constituencies represented by their own variety of lobbyists.

Not only are the government and the governed divorced, but the government increasingly does its business in the shadows, thumbing its nose at any remaining curiosity on the part of people. In The Nation recently, in the article "The Secret Government", Christopher Hayes details the struggle to rein in the forces of the burgeoning security state, beginning with the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s. He writes:

In 1976 the Senate created the Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House followed suit with its own Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence a year later. Also in 1976 President Ford signed Executive Order 11905, which flatly stated, "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination." Two years later, Congress passed and President Carter signed FISA, which provided clear procedures for covert action, surveillance and oversight. The law created the special FISA court, which grants warrants for wiretapping and surveillance of anyone on American soil as well as Americans abroad. The Church Committee's revelations also had a profound effect on the bureaucratic culture of the CIA, NSA and FBI. At all three agencies, internal legal controls were put in place requiring layers of attorneys to sign off on any possibly questionable activities.

But for all these needed reforms, it's impossible to look at the past eight years and conclude they were sufficient. If cold war presidents were surreptitious and/or cavalier about the lawlessness of their actions, the Bush administration perfected a kind of perverse legalism, using sympathetic lawyers to decree legal that which was manifestly illegal. It was an ingeniously devious approach. By relying on John Yoo, a loyal ideologue inside the OLC, Cheney et al. were able to perform an end run around the extensive legal checks and restraints created precisely as a response to the Church Committee's findings. Indeed, the reason the infamous OLC memos are so garishly specific is that CIA lawyers, still operating with a memory of the Church Committee, were insistent on obtaining explicit sign-off for every action and technique that they (quite rightly) believed to be of dubious legality.

Similarly, Congressional oversight proved no match for a determined executive. Many critics from across the ideological spectrum, from Clarke to Scheuer, note that this is at least partly because Congress often would rather not know what is going on behind the curtain. But the controversy over just what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about the CIA's use of torture, and when she knew it, underscores how dysfunctional the notification system has become. Created as part of the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980, the so-called Gang of Eight system allows a president, under emergency circumstances, to restrict briefings on covert activities to the leader of each party in both houses and the top member of each party of the House and Senate intelligence committees. What was intended as a limited briefing to be given only temporarily during crises has emerged, instead, as the standard.

Clarke explained its shortcomings to me this way: "Essentially what happens, you're a member of the Gang of Eight. You get a phone call: 'We have to come and brief you.' They ask you to go to the vault. They brief you. You can't take notes, you can't have your staff there and you can't tell anybody." In addition, each member is briefed separately and individually, so they can't even discuss the briefing and ask questions in a group setting. "That's oversight?" Clarke asks. "That's a pretense at oversight. That's a box check. The law required us to do that, and we did this."

I must repeat here that the solutions to these problems do not lie in simply eliminating the government. The fact is that even if the United States of America ceases to exist - is broken up into several sovereign entities - government(s) of some order will remain. The solution, therefore, must be based in the people once again taking personal responsibility for that government. And that, indeed, is hard work.

Our downfall, it seems, is the degree to which we actively participate in self-government. What can we expect when that participation is limited to waiting until all we can do is vote for the choices that international finance and corporate media give us? It is insufficient to simply growl and howl that there is no difference between the major parties without committing to put viable alternatives on the ballot, while actively working to bar corporate campaign contributions. We will, in this instance, continue to get what someone else is paying for.

Of late (and perhaps too late), many Obama supporters have awakened from self-hypnosis and begun to abandon this new, young administration. As I have noted at length in the past few months, the cry is that "we were lied to". But we were not - we didn't do the work to examine Obama's true political character. So we lied to ourselves and got caught. What now?

David Michael Green, in "After Obama" at Common Dreams, writes:

Eight months into it, it now seems pretty clear that the Obama administration is finished.

There were some of us -- indeed, many of us, myself included -- who thought there was a possibility that Barack Obama might seize this moment of American crisis, twinned with the complete failure for all to see of the regressive agenda, to become the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt ...

Right now, the question is what comes next? The Obama presidency is probably already toast, though of course anything can happen in three or seven years. But he is on a crash course for a major clock cleaning and, what's worse, he doesn't seem to have it remotely within him to seize history by the horns and steer that bull in his preferred direction. Indeed, near as I can tell, he doesn't even have a preferred direction.

Obama was complete fool if he ever believed for a moment that his campfire kumbaya act was going to bring the right along behind him. Even s'mores wouldn't have helped. These foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics have completely lost all sense and proportion, and were bound to viscerally hate any president left of Cheney, let alone some black guy in their white house. Meanwhile, centrist voters in this country seem pretty much only to care about taxes and spending, and so he's lost them, too, without the slightest rhetorical fight in his own defense. And he's blown off a solid progressive base by spitting in their eyes at every imaginable opportunity, beginning with the formation of his cabinet, ranging through every policy decision from civil rights to civil liberties to foreign policy to healthcare, and culminating with his choice not to even mobilize his email database in support of his policies ...

Put it all together and it's pretty hard to see how Obama gets a second term. Which can mean only one thing: We're looking at a Romney or a Palin or some sort of similar monster as the next president, despite the fact that their party was absolutely loathed only a year ago, and actually still is today. It won't matter. People will be voting against the incumbent, not for any candidate, and that will leave only one viable choice, especially for centrist and right-wing voters. Whoever wins the Republican nomination will be the next president, crushing Obama in the general election (assuming he survives the Democratic primaries). And that's a particularly scary notion, since the party's voting base who will make that choice in the Republican primaries is the same crowd you've seen featured all this summer at town hall meetings. Olympia Snowe is not going to be the Republican nominee in 2012. Know what I mean? ...

Let me finish this in a somewhat more concrete way, because at this point we must have solidarity with a solid foundation. Cindy Sheehan, at her Soapbox blog, just wrote an impassioned piece, "If McCain Were President". It is not very kind to the sitting president. In it, she offers some specific suggestions ...

There will be two major opportunities to put our bodies on the gears of the Machine this fall….

The anti-globalization movement will be out in full-force during the G20 nations’ meeting in Pittsburgh September 23-27 despite the jackbooted thuggery planned by the organizers of the G20 summit. Not only will there be 4000 riot police, but there will be 2000 Pa. National Guard there to suppress opposition. This is merely a bullying tactic designed to scare us away from the global “elite” while they plan more economic devastation for the world.

On October 5th, we will be gathering in front of the White House to protest Democratic wars of aggression (especially Af-Pak, since the 8th is the anniversary of the US invasion) and there will be opportunity for civil disobedience that is not just symbolic. We will also be reading the International People's Declaration of Peace (IPDoP) in front of the White House that day and kicking off the campaign to build an effective grassroots movement against all violence, but particularly, state-sanctioned violence.

The face has changed in DC, but the odious policies of the Machine remain the same.

Remember, if you don’t actively oppose the policies of this government, then you are passively supporting them and you are responsible for helping to oil the Machine and keep it running.

If you can't physically attend the protests, please consider making a contribution, even if it is tiny, to help defray expenses.

It may be a small one, but it's a steady step. Will it lead to a series of such purposeful steps, eyes open and clear? Or are we doomed to just stumble around in the dark of the Blind Staggers?

Categories: change, corporatism, democracy, elections

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Elegy

2009-08-29T17:43:00.003-04:00

I was "introduced", you might say, to the Kennedys when I was thirteen, in 1960.

My father, who had supported Eisenhower in 1952 and Stevenson in 1956, was supporting Kennedy in the 1960 election. JFK and my dad both graduated in the Class of 1940 from Harvard. Although I was born in California, to where my father had escaped his Bostonian parents after World War II, there was a little Kennedy in both of us. I inherited mine from my dad, of course. As for him, it was impossible to grow up a middle-class Catholic in Boston without being touched by the politics - Honey Fitz, the Saltonstalls, the McCormacks, James Curley, the Cabot Lodges, the O'Neills.

My dad died in November of 1960, just days before Kennedy became president. Three years and 11 days later, Kennedy was dead. By then, Teddy Kennedy had been elected to John's Senate seat and I had been taken to Boston with my grandparents - the same people from whom my dad had fled after the war.

My father, Paul, and the Kennedys had something deep and abiding in both their souls and hearts: a sense that one's purpose was to be of service to others. Paul did that in the only way available to him, as a high school teacher (and just before he died, a college professor) dedicated to the highest level of education for all his students. He was always on the edge of trouble with his employers, because he saw and fought the evils of educational institutions' morphing into corporate training camps and statistically tracking children into segments destined to be marched into predestined careers. My dad, you see, was not a "go along, get along" sort of guy. He died, I think, of a broken heart.

My father's sudden death of a heart attack triggered a depression in me that I carry a bit even to this day. I miss him. The violence and unearthly suddenness of John Kennedy's death, when I was sixteen, in turn, triggered a month-long psychic break that nearly hospitalized me with fear and grief. It was impossible, but shattering, that two men so young and with such depth of value could just cease to exist without reason or warning.

My father and JFK did share other similarities, but dedication to helping others be the best they could be was key. My dad did that is his way, Kennedy in his. I think they both died because of that dedication. The ruling class did not much appreciate an up-start Irish Catholic rich boy challenging their power and agenda ...

I have had much in common with Ted Kennedy. I guard my anonymity carefully in these pages, but it seems appropriate to reveal that, in "real" life, I share his nickname. We also share a history of debilitating struggles with alcohol, as well as late-in-life resolution of those struggles; failed marriages ('though Kennedy's second turned out a lot better than mine); and some serious life mistakes.

But most of all, we shared a common vision - that a society which works for the happiness, safety, justice, and health of all is a society which will endure and flourish. One which does not, one which nurtures divisions, competitiveness over cooperation and consensus in social matters, and hatred, will wither and die.

Let me share one of my personal experiences with Ted Kennedy, for having worked in Massachusetts and national political settings, I had the opportunity to meet him several times:

In the late seventies, I served as a program director with a community action agency in the "war on poverty" effort, as it was being strangled by the Nixon and Carter administrations. In this position, I traveled several times to Washington in lobbying efforts to attempt to restore funds that had been stripped from pending federal budgets.

On the first trip, we were scheduled to meet with Senator Kennedy at about eleven a.m., just after he finished with a senate judiciary committee hearing.

We went to the committee room about ten o'clock to listen and wait. We noticed that Kennedy seemed saggy and pale. Sure enough, after ten minutes, two very large men approached Kennedy from the aisle and, obviously physically supporting him, escorted him from the room. A minute later, an aide informed us our meeting would be on the senate office building steps later that afternoon.

We had some lunch and kept our other appointments with George McGovern, Jacob Javitz, and others, then gathered in the appointed spot at quarter after three. At exactly three-thirty, three men, the senator and his two "assistants" strode toward us at a lively pace, Kennedy at least ten yards in the lead. He bounded up the steps with that massive grin of his and greeted us, all twenty, with a hearty "Great tuh seeyuh!". Then he shook each of our hands with a personal quip to each (mine was about our nickname) and talked to us for a solid half hour about our concerns for the budget and strategy to restore funds. He knew the issues thoroughly and pledged support. He later followed through with masterful floor moves.

During the meeting, I looked in his eyes several times. He was thoroughly stoned, undoubtedly on painkillers he took for a back injury sustained in a small plane crash several years earlier. Although I had several years of sobriety under my belt then, I felt a kinship. He was a very human individual who took his job very seriously. He carried a heavy burden with a zest that seems to have been lost to the public servants we see now in those rooms on the Hill.

Because of the myopia of the media, Ted Kennedy may be narrowly remembered: Chappaquiddick, drinking problems, womanizing and ... health care. But, know it personally or not, Kennedy was involved in every aspect of American politics. I might be dead if it were not for public funding for jobs programs, social and mental health services programs, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and other programs that help people who need it, all championed by Ted Kennedy.

I do not agree with every stand he took. He voted to become involved in Afghanistan; he initially support No Child Left Behind; he was a strong friend of Zionism. So be it. There's not one woman or man on this planet with whom I totally agree. And Ted Kennedy, better than most people, knew instinctively how to deal with that.

I will miss Ted Kennedy - for his dedication and commitment; his integrity; and for all the joy and sadness that he, as a human, presented to so many millions.

Good night, Senator

Categories: Kennedy

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Antiestablishmentarianism

2009-08-23T19:00:00.003-04:00

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their father's conquered. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. ~ Dwight Eisenhower

We're back to school. This semester is going to be a long one. The mid-terms are in fourteen months, on November 2, 2010; the finals are in thirty-eight months. The mid-term exam counts for 70% of the final grade. If you ain't got it by then, you don't have a chance with the final exam in the Fall of 2012 ...

In 2010, all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives are up for sale; the Senate is raffling off 38 desks. I would imagine that most of those seats, however, are already spoken for, in spite of the rantings and ravings of disaffected "progressives", libertarians, and frothing remnants of the repugnant party. The Greens? Well, you know. For what it's worth, my bet is that Republicans, if only by default, are gonna gain some seats. Apostate dumbocrats just don't have anywhere to go.

The last semester was short, but all of us, I hope, studied hard and learned a lot. We learned that presidents are appointed, not elected, by corporate media propagandists funded by elitist power brokers. We learned that "hope" and "change" don't feed the bulldog. We learned that we have to ask very specific questions, then doubt the veracity of the responses. We learned to follow the money - because we've been fleeced of most all of it, then it was laundered, and reinvested in programs and policies designed to suck every last vestige of freedom, independence, and dignity from us.

We learned that people don't change systems - systems change them. The case study on this one was imagining that Wowie Howie Dean would "transform" the Democratic Party into a responsive, populist champion of the politically disenfranchised that would get us out of useless wars, engender government transparency, turn the economy around, restore the Constitution, and, in short, stop lying. Thanks for playing. Next?

Let me tell you exactly what the mid-term exams will be about. There's just one question: "Will the American people continue to play ring-around-the-party, splashing in the fouled waters of Denial River, hoping to effectively replace a few fornicators and con artists with new souls clean as the driven snow or will they rise up to create a populist movement to completely overhaul a failed system? Discuss."

Here is what the mid-term will not be about: gay rights, women's rights, animal rights; legalizing marijuana; taxes; health care "reform"; guns; swine flu; climate change.

The mid-term won't be about war, as Stephen Sniegoski, writing for infowars, points out:

It appears that most liberal opponents of the wars in the Middle East/ Central Asia have ceased their opposition with the Obama presidency. The liberal Democrats who abhorred Bush’s war policy (and most grass roots liberal Democrats did vehemently oppose the Bush war policy although this was not always the case with liberal politicians and media figures) apparently were simply opposed to wars led by Republicans ...

... Obama can say such things as the war in Afghanistan is “fundamental to the defense of our people” and not be savaged by the former critics of the war. This is not to say that the former anti-war people have become cheerleaders for war. Rather, they have become largely indifferent to it. Their attention has been largely diverted to the health care issue, the economy, the environment, or some other liberal cause ...

The mid-term won't even be about the economy as such. All of these issues are important, of course. But what most folks seem still unable to grasp is that the mid-term will be about all these issues as mere subsets of the bigger issue of whether we will take back control of our very lives.

In a way, the mid-term will be about the "new world order". Not about whether it will occur - because it already is here - but about who will be in charge of it and us. It will be about democracy and capitalism, about society and anarchy, about freedom and slavery.

Of all people, Larry Flynt, writing at HuffPo, has it right:

The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment's hesitation, they took our money -- yours and mine -- to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don't care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger refers to us as "useless eaters." ...

The reason Wall Street was able to game the system the way it did -- knowing that they would become rich at the expense of the American people (oh, yes, they most certainly knew that) -- was because the financial elite had bribed our legislators to roll back the protections enacted after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Congress gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial lending banks from investment banks, and passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed for self-regulation with no oversight. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently revised its rules to allow for even less oversight -- and we've all seen how well that worked out. To date, no serious legislation has been offered by the Obama administration to correct these problems ...

I'm calling for a national strike, one designed to close the country down for a day. The intent? Real campaign-finance reform and strong restrictions on lobbying. Because nothing will change until we take corporate money out of politics. Nothing will improve until our politicians are once again answerable to their constituents, not the rich and powerful.

Let's set a date. No one goes to work. No one buys anything. And if that isn't effective -- if the politicians ignore us -- we do it again. And again. And again.

The real war is not between the left and the right. It is between the average American and the ruling class. If we come together on this single issue, everything else will resolve itself. It's time we took back our government from those who would make us their slaves.

I must admit that Mr Flynt is the last person I ever imagined I would quote in these pages. Heh.

I like the notion of a general strike. But it would be just a start. The changes we need - in order to simply survive - will certainly not be won with assault rifles, or mobs, or street demos. It will take more than that to reclaim our bodies and souls from the rich and powerful ruling class. We cannot beat them on their turf.

We have to stake out our own battlefield and make up our own rules. We have to frame the debate. We have to decide the issues. We have to control the game. We cannot beat them with money or violence or anarchy. We can't beat them with better propaganda or political savvy.

We can win, though ... if we drop the factional posturing and rhetoric of "left" and "right", "socialism" and "fascism", "Democrat" and "Republican". It's all a carefully and cynically orchestrated shell game. We must fully reject politics as usual and find a way to meet on common ground and throw out the establishment - completely.

Study for the mid-term, please. Vow to actually learn something. Flunk the mid-term and the finals won't matter.

Categories: new+world+order, Americanism, change, post-democracy, post-politics, principles, values

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Dear Mr President - A Report Card

2009-08-13T19:57:00.005-04:00

In January of this year, just a short time after the inauguration, I posted the letter contained in this post. I repost it here, not to crow about my powers of prognostication, but to simply offer a reality check.

You may have noticed that I'm finding it difficult to write lately. I am disgusted and discouraged at the level of division and violence that seems to be feeding on the very tattered fabric now barely holding our society together. Civil discourse has been thrown in the landfill, along with any sense that anybody cares about anyone else.

It is particularly disheartening that there is a rising chorus of threats and calls for violence and an open display of guns - not relative to the class war being fought over the economy or a civil war pitting those who want peace against those who value war - but involving false ideologies of "socialism", "communism", and "libertarianism" and centered on whether we'll be able to chose our doctor. It is clear to me that no one will win in this ridiculous battle except insurance companies; that we are all being manipulated by cynical elitists who would like nothing better than to create a perfect storm of anarchy as an excuse to lower an unfathomable hammer on elements, "right" and "left", who are being driven to psychotic misbehavior. It's a mess.

So, I'm republishing my January open letter to the President as a reminder to all that events are out of control, circumstances have significantly deteriorated, and we are now a leaderless nation in danger of real civil war ...

Dear Mr President (An Open Letter) 1/31/2009

Dear President Obama:

I am a citizen of the United States. I am one of your constituents. Since you have billed yourself as a public servant, one who is honored and even grateful for the chance to be "Leader of the Free World", you owe me. Yes, that's exactly what I said - "You." "Owe." "Me." That might seem a bit, well, cheeky, I guess, but I stand by my demand.

First, I want you to know right up front that I did not vote for you. I did not vote for your opponent(s) either. I proudly withheld my vote because there was no presidential candidate on the ballot in my state whom I believed represented my best interests as a citizen of this country or the best interests of the nation as a whole. My vote is a valuable commodity. I wasn't about to waste it by casting it against someone or for a "lesser of two evils". Evil is evil. I won't vote for it.

I didn't vote for you, sir, because, with all due respect, I didn't buy the hype. I experienced your campaign as a finely-tuned, extremely well-run exercise in creative vagueness and media manipulation. You were too disingenuous for me: "hope" doesn't feed the bulldog; "change" happens, like it or not - try to stop it. In fact, did you not declare finally that the "change" was you? I find that insulting. In a democracy, sir, the change is the people. You represent us, you do not rule us. Governing and ruling are not the same thing.

So, here, Mr President, is what you owe me - owe all of us in America and the world: truth and justice. Simple.

Here is the truth . . .

The United States of America and its "democratic" government have been stolen from us. We will not get it back. It will now be melded into a Western Bloc seeking a centralized "new world order";
Capitalism as we have known it has entered its final phase and has neither the means nor the intention of benefiting humanity. It will be all you can do to keep order as millions become poor, desperate , and scared out of their wits;
Militarism will increase, in spite of your stated intentions, abroad and at home; as unemployment soars, the military and the draft (billed as 'mandatory public service') will become the employer of first, not last, resort. The military-industrial-academic complex will burgeon, developing efficient and horrific weapons of societal control and international imperialism;
The national debt will soar, as your administration borrows unconscionable amounts of money to hide the awful economic truth from the people;
Techno-fascism will proceed at alarming speed, as science develops capabilities of changing the very essence of what it means to be a human being or even of life itself; subtle and increasingly mandatory "eugenic" technologies and policies will be put in place to limit populations and change humanity;
The chasm between the super-rich and -powerful and the rest of us will continue to grow, as human rights and true freedoms decline. The rich and powerful will devise and develop more ingenious and desperate means to control dwindling resources, including the people of the earth;
The rule of law, already tattered and torn, will continue to disintegrate into the rules of greed and fear;
Global ecological (not just "environmental") balance will tremble and crumble, overwhelmed by the catastrophic weight of human selfishness, blindness, and desperation.

These are fearsome, terrifying, even loathsome truths, Mr President, but they must be told; delineated in such a way that the public cannot hide in consumerist denial and unsupported "hope" and "faith".

And you must stop saying that you and the "leaders" in Washington, the military, the Congress, and business are the answer to the situation. You have agendas and ideologies. You have your own creeks, canoes, and paddles. You're in your own world. You're on one page, the rest of us are on another. You live in the circles of the Feinsteins, Reids, and Pelosis; the Gateses, Geithners, and Clintons; the Brzezinskis and the Kissingers; the AIPACs and the acronyms. Your administration is made up of the problems, not the solutions.

So justice, sir, must start with truth. You must acknowledge the truth, out loud.

Then you must tell us what we did wrong and how we can make amends to ourselves and our country and the world.

Tell us that we let democracy slip out of our hands as we were taken in by Madison Avenue and their fantasy that if we bought enough "stuff" we'd be OK. Tell us that we diverted our attention from what really was going on and watched cartoons on TVs, movie screens, and DVD players in houses that we bought on credit we couldn't afford. Tell us how we screamed about "rights" and "freedoms" and forgot about "responsibilities" to community and country and the world. Show us that we just lost track of the first part of "give and take".

We've been robbed, Mr President, of more than money. It's true, we left a lot of that get into the wrong hands and they mugged us. They're off counting the proceeds, while we're left here with empty wallets, cupboards, and bank accounts. The uproarious part of it, though, is that our government let these thieves make the rules and laws so that what they did often wasn't illegal! Big joke.

As they say, though, "You ain't seen nuthin' yet!" In reality, the nation's high point occurred somewhere in late 1944. Since then we've allowed our greed and ignorance to erode our national character and international relations to a point considerably lower than it was when the Vietnamese drove us out of their country. The acts and policies of the US government and its financier and corporate cronies have painted every American with a brown and sticky mess. No one trusts us. Not even our "allies". We haven't just damaged ourselves, we've hurt the whole world through incalculable neglect at best, abuse at worst.

So I ask you, sir, how you could stand before the American public and the whole world on Inauguration Day and preach hope, and victory, and change, and national strength and character.

Personally, I've lost trust completely in the Presidency, the whole Executive Branch with its secrecy, its unreliability, its deal-making and corruption, its disregard for all but the richest and most powerful. And the same goes for the Senate and the leaders of the House of Representatives. Finally, the Supreme Court has fallen almost totally from enforcing the rule of law and has betrayed the Constitution and the American people.

So start with the truth. Believe it nor not, we can handle it. Most of us know it, because we live it. We're not as numb, dumb, and cowed as you might like to think or hope. The final truth - the bottom line - for you and your presidency is that if you try to protect the lies and liars, crimes and criminals, and cons, neo-cons, and con artists of the recent past, your presidency will have failed right out of the starting gate.

What will you do if the euphoric glow wears off and people realize we're in danger of four more years of the last eight years? Lock us all up in REX84s and shoot all the folks who won't go quietly? And don't give us that stuff about national security and national image. It's. Too. Late. It's gone. We blew it.

Here are a few musts:

Bring the military home, not just from Iraq and Afghanistan, but from everywhere; from all 800 some-odd bases around the globe. Most of the folks in all those countries hate us anyway. And put a total stop to arms sales and other military aid. Make our claims that we are a peaceful nation true through our actions. Oh, and just make sure that when the military gets home, they're fully taken care of and their guns point out against our enemies, not in toward our people. This includes our covert forces, too.
Repeal the USA Patriot Acts and their related mechanisms and start over from scratch. Period.
Work to overturn the laws that legally endow corporations with conceptual humanity. They're the most inhuman, rapacious entities on the planet. Regulate them, tax the hell out of them, or throw them out of the country. Give the means of production back to the producers and let us make a go of what they've ruined and robbed us of.
Reinforce our constitutional rights and freedoms, but remind us constantly of our civic responsibilities.
Make us once again the most well-educated people on earth. And the most artistically gifted. And the healthiest. And the most responsible and of the highest character. Give us the example to follow. Treat all of our children the way you treat your own children. Think about the country and world you want your daughters to grow up in.
Finally, let us know how to be true democrats. Tell us how each of us must act as if s/he is responsible for the whole country and its people. Give us back the power and show us how to use it. Then listen to us. Maybe we will have learned our lesson. Maybe its not too late.

As far as I'm concerned, Mr President, if you're willing to do even half of that, I'll buy you a carton of whatever you smoke.

Sincerely,

ddjango

Be about peace.

Categories: new+world+order, Americanism, change, community, corporatism, democracy, ecology, essay, eugenics, FEMA, hopelessness, martial+law, military, peace, post-democracy, post-politics, principles, responsibilities, rights, techno-fascism, values, war, war+crimes, weapons

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Reclaiming the Vote

2009-08-06T11:13:00.003-04:00

In my previous post (Oblahma: Time for a Moratorium on Talk), I asked, "If there is no really discernible difference between the real agendas of the Democratic and Republican parties, what do we do about the prospect of elections in 2010 and 2012?" Let me suggest a partial response to the question ...

There is strong evidence at present that, in spite of the anger in the electorate, our choices are more limited than ever before and it will take an enormous amount of work on the part of the disenfranchised to create the necessary movement that will create cohesion around specific principles, goals, and strategies, that will result in breaking the status quo stranglehold. Such a movement is as critical as it is nearly impossible.

As one who has several times over the past decade directly agitated for a coalition of the various "parties of the Left" under a negotiated consensus platform, I find that that same Left and its parties have been further marginalized. In some cases that marginalization even takes the form of vilification, as the tide of the radical liberalism called "libertarianism" has gained momentum in reaction to the increased unveiling of the one world government and economic system agenda. The core of the traditional American Left - democratic socialism - has been all but crushed by the call for small government and the insistence of the supremacy of individual rights.

Please do not assume that I advocate the further suppression of the right to choose how to live or what to study or what to believe or whom to love. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just happen to believe that there is such a thing as truly democratic socialism and that, under such an umbrella, freedom, rights, and community can co-exist - thus generating a societal equanimity that is vibrant and inclusive.

My rejection of liberal radicalism/libertarianism and anarchism as solutions is based on my impression that in the United States, the Land of Selfish Narcissism, embracing the fundamental libertarian program (if there really is such a thing) can only lead to an irreparable and destructive breakdown of society and the rise of chaos and violence as individual rights clash with common community values that would strengthen us as a people and as a nation. I must simply refer you to the Einstein quote invoked in the title banner of this humble blog.

To further clarify: a sense of common purpose should tolerate, celebrate, and encourage a diversity of ideologies and beliefs, while insisting on a consensus in melding and molding that diversity into a system of laws and other socio-economic practices and limitations. Unfortunately, at present, we seem incapable of such an attitude, as each ideological group seems bent on crushing different views and attaining total rule and power based only on its own ideals and agenda. A balanced ecology is impossible under such conditions - even a forest of giant sequoias would die if it did not include a great myriad of other species in symbiosis.

In short, just because an idea is old it is not necessarily invalid. So I remind you that your freedom to shoot a gun ends at the border of my body, my family's, my friends', and my possessions.

Now to the vote. I have not voted for a candidate for national office - president, senator, or congressperson, for many years. I did work on Kucinich's 2004 campaign until it obviously was hopeless. I have not voted for a simple reason: The candidates eligible to receive my vote in those elections did not in any way represent my values. Period.

For still far too many Americans, voting is the only direct opportunity to practice popular democracy of which they take advantage. The vote, however, should not be the goal. For by the time a vote is cast, at least in national office elections, the winner is usually already decided by the forces of finance and corporate media, the Coleman-Franken "race" notwithstanding. I refuse to vote in a rigged beauty contest. I'd rather vote for a drooling, inarticulate hunchback if she represented my values, than for a well-dressed, well-spoken, handsome man who can read a script without giving the finger to the audience.

Voting, at best, should be the last step in a process that demands many steps. To vote based on a pre-selection by elitist forces of two foes whose agenda is much the same, after "campaigns" that are cynical spectacles of circus and infotainment is a crime against democracy and society. Campaigns should be a discussion of values and goals, not arguments about cosmetics.

We currently have two chances, in 2010 and 2012, the latter of which I fear may be the final election we experience for a very long time, to regain our democracy and our self-rule. We have two chances - no more - to bring down the entrenched Establishment of the "two-party" corporate monopoly over our nation. I urge those who still cling to the dominant parties to simply abandon them, rejecting any further attempt to "reform" them. It will not happen, especially in the Democratic Party, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group coalition of the ruling elite. We must at least recognize that in the post-political, fascist national environment, "bi-partisan" does not really define a discussion between two opposing forces, but an unruly bar fight among people who are really pretty much on the same side.

I also maintain that attempting to energize existing third parties, such as the Libertarians and the Greens, is futile - although I suspect that both may gain some congressional seats in 2010. Perhaps that would be a good start, but would not be enough. A party will not create a movement; movements, however, can create parties and those parties can attract a plurality of candidates and voters if they embrace a consensus of value and purpose. Such a convergence, by the way, can only be successful within a framework of complete freedom of expression and tolerance of divergent viewpoints, rather than intolerant restrictions of ideology.

We have to figure out where we want to go as a nation (or even if we want to be a nation) before we can decide anew what common values we have and how we want to pursue them.

Above all, we must be at and about peace.

Categories: new+world+order, Americanism, peace, post-democracy, post-society, post-politics

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Oblahma: Time for a Moratorium on Talk

2009-08-03T18:10:00.006-04:00

Did I read somewhere that the Obama administration just passed the 200 day mark? Hmph. I'm more interested in knowing whether someone has been keeping track of how many words he's thrown at us and the rest of the universe since he took office. A million? Two?

But it's not just him. A few minutes ago, I ran screaming from Twitter, stuffing in earplugs and tying a bandanna over my eyes. To do what? Write words about words. Blah blah blah ...

I want a moratorium. I want some verbal silence, replaced with careful, non-reactive thought and then, effective action. We really need to stop and really need to think. In Twitter parlance, I'd be very happy if Oblahma, his handlers, Congress, and the media (including the "alternative", "social" media) would just STFU for at least a week, better, for a month. What if we all just went for a walk in the woods - some place where the dozers and backhoes aren't parked because the developers lost their funding?

Yeah, yeah: it's really kinda refreshing that we now have a president with a working knowledge of the English language. I do, however, have to say that it grates on my nerves every time he says "tuh" instead of "to". Nobody's perfect, though, even the anointed world spokesman for "hope" and "change". But "refreshing" is not what we need. We don't need to be refreshing the same web page, because the content hasn't changed since Obama's picture replaced Bush's.

The Bush administration's job was clear and they did it well: destroying the United States of America as a national entity. Mainly, it succeeded in nullifying the Constitution, implementing the framework of a security state, and bankrupting the country fiscally, mentally, and emotionally.

There really weren't many words spoken by the President during his administrations. He kept embarrassing himself and everybody else. As Dick Cheney knew, the trick was to act, to just keep moving, and keep giving everyone the finger when they caught on and complained. Lie. Avoid. Obfuscate. Ignore. It worked. All those words from us, claiming that The Dubbleduh-Chainey Gang was "stupid" or "crazy" were just plain wrong. Most of us just couldn't fathom the fact that they had the strategy, tactics, and balls to pull it off.

The Obama administration is no different - not one bit. The agenda is the same. A product of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg Group (as have been the past several administration - see Daniel Estulin's "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group"), it continues to look the other way while international bankers suck the core out of country. It blatantly refuses to prosecute The Gang for treason and crimes against humanity. It keeps clamps on the secrets that might free us all from perfidy if only they were revealed. And it keeps us divided, at war with each other and the Middle East and Asia, fighting about the nuances of health care and race and even what constitutes torture (see the July issue of Harper's Magazine, "We Still Torture").

Even though I'm fairly immune vis-a-vis Oblahma's siren call, I don't listen to his pressers and speeches, because I won't subject myself to mass hypnosis. Although I see some promise that a person of mixed race now sits in the Oval Office, I also see that his selection was an empty victory when it comes to effective and lasting victory for the poor and disenfranchised. All it has done is to fully include all races in the category of the unneeded and unemployed and ignored - a culture of desperation ...

The words will not stop, of course. It has been "the great communicators" (Reagan, Clinton, and now Obama) who have wreaked the greatest havoc on the nation and its people. For me, "charisma" is a a four-letter word. Hitler was charismatic. Look what happened to Germany and the rest of Europe as the result of his speeches.

So the words won't stop - but we need to stop listening to our "leaders", whether they be Obama or Palin, McCain or Paul, Beck or Couric. We need to stop asking them questions and stop believing their words. We need to realize that they talk so much because they're all salespeople and they want something from us - our power, our support, our acquiescence, our silence, or complicity. If they get that, we will surely get nothing back except the sorrow of the status quo.

We need to tune out the words and listen to the urgent beat of our hearts. We must ask ourselves what we truly want and how we can get it. After all, it's supposed to be our country. I'm truly not interested in those "leaders" telling me what I should want. I learned a long time ago that anybody who talks as much as they do just isn't listening.

We must, just for example, ask ourselves questions like these: How can I get back the money the bankers and speculators have stolen from me? If there is no really discernible difference between the real agendas of the Democratic and Republican parties, what do we do about the prospect of elections in 2010 and 2012? If 911 was an "inside job", how do we bring the criminals to justice? Just what the hell are the real stakes in Afghanistan, Gaza, Iran and how do we want them to turn out.

I have a strong feeling that if we really listen to ourselves, rather than the speechmakers, we will have just a three-word answer: "No. More. Blah."

Please don't tell us you love us, Oblahma. Show us.

Categories: post-politics

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Military-"Medical" Madpractice

2009-07-26T17:15:00.007-04:00

Physicians at Guantanamo violate medical ethics: study
(AFP) – July 24, 2009

WASHINGTON — The use of physicians at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay has forced medical professionals to violate their ethics codes, according to findings published Thursday in the UK journal Lancet.

The roles that medical professionals have been called on to play at the controversial detention facility "has damaged the integrity of the physicians working for the military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)," the study said.

"These physicians had a conflict of loyalty because of their ethical obligations to their imprisoned patients and the Bush administration's demands to further the goals and interests of military commanders and intelligence officials." [...]

Most Americans, I imagine, remain under the impression that torture of prisoners and their use as subjects of human experimentation was the province of evil Japanese and Nazi military scientists and doctors during WWII. Many may also assume that such practices have occurred within the extended Soviet Union and, perhaps, by the governments of China, North Korea, and the like. But the "It Can't Happen Here" syndrome is widespread. Never would this happen in and by the United States. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

We all now know that our military and "intelligence" forces have used scientific techniques, monitored and/or administered by doctors to torture captives in the "war on terror" since 9/11/2001. They did this in the name of "national security", that malodorous phrase which they use to justify any and all conceivable war crimes and other crimes against humanity perpetrated by themselves and their operatives. It is likely that these techniques are still used.

What is not widely known is that the military-medical-scientific complex has been and still is guilty of these crimes, not just against perceived "enemies", but indeed against our own citizens and members of our military forces.

Let me make it clear that I do not condone such experimentation, conducted with any goal in mind on any humans, foe or friend. The fact that they have been and continue to be foisted on Americans by Americans is simply testament to the arrogant and cynical disregard for human safety and life that are supposed to be the very basis of our society. Further, their ubiquitous occurances belie any attempt to characterize such experiments as isolated instances of unethical behavior on the part of a few rogue scientists.

After WWII, as the result of the unveiling of Nazi atrocities, the Nuremberg Code was put in place. The rules governing human experimentation are clear:

Informed consent is essential.
Research should be based on prior animal work.
The risks should be justified by the anticipated benefits.
Research must be conducted by qualified scientists.
Physical and mental suffering must be avoided.
Research in which death or disabling injury is expected should not be conducted.

I've just finished reading two books on the subject of human experimentation conducted in the United States since WWII and the present. The first is In the Name of Science: A History of Secret Programs, Medical Research, and Human Experimentation by Andrew Goliszek (St Martin's Press, New York: 2003); the second, by Jonathan D. Moreno, is Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans (Routledge, New York: 2001). Together, these two volumes catalog hundreds of experiments since the late 1940s conducted on both military personnel and civilians. All of the experiments documented in the books were conducted either in secret and/or under a cover of disception, exposing unwitting subjects to radiation, biochemicals, and other agents. Few, if any, of these experiments fulfilled the rules set out by the Nuremberg Code and, in many cases, subjects have been made critically and chronically ill or have died from the effects of these experiments.

I have neither the resources nor the wish to recount these betrayals here - they are too numerous - but one personal perspective is in order . . .

Richard Perlman is a founder of Healthy Citizens, an organization of indispensable value to citizens who have been victimized by such experiments. He has spent many years researching these crimes and has himself also been victimized. He currently lives outside of the United States. He continues to fight for the exposition and, in recent communications with this writer, reports ongoing injury and threats to his health and safety. His blog is here.

He describes his situation . . .

I approach these issues wearing two hats: guinea pig and researcher. In the mid 1970s while being vaccinated by an immunologist I developed symptoms similar to the Gulf War Illness. In the 1980s a physician placed a powder in the back of my throat and it seemed as if my brain imploded. Soon my waist distended 15 inches and I was told by another physician I had six years to live. He refused me treatment. It was not the first time nor would it be the last time I would be refused treatment. Both my 1975 and 1980 health experiences could be attributed to the vagus nerve. In 1992 I visited Washington and naively thought there would be interest in my medical history and the research conducted by physicians who had treated me.

I came to Washington not to start an organization but to get my life in order. In 2000, for the first time in 30 years, my health returned. Perhaps I should be satisfied but I believe the true evil of these programs is the inability to rehabilitate and make amends to the victims. At 57, I believe I still have a future, possibly a career, possibly a family or both. These programs affect every aspect of a victim's life: ability to retain a lawyer, visit the physician of his choice, and freedom to live where he wants (safehouses). In fact, for the victim the United States becomes one large laboratory maze. One of my Hill advertisements discussed my inability to retain an attorney, even when hit by a car crossing the street or addressing irregularities in my father's will, which was issued the day before he died with his name signed by a third party. Suspected terrorists are not the only ones who can't retain attorneys. At least journalists have made the public conscious of their plight.

Since 9/11, it has been more difficult addressing these programs. Many of my symptoms are returning and increasingly it looks like my return to health was another experiment. My pleas for assistance have been ignored. I have sought toxicologists and physicians and have been refused. During this time some journalists, attorneys and legislative aides have scheduled meetings, which they never appeared or later cancelled and never rescheduled. Four months of intensive attempts at networking and I have had little success. Blacklisting an individual while conducting biological and chemical programs against him is an indescribably evil crime. With assistance, I will prove the existence of these biological and chemical programs ...

In his piece "American Guinea Pig", Perlman concludes:

Americans as well as all other peoples must recognize the importance of protecting each other when confronting natural disaster, terrorism, or crimes against humanity. Governments cover-up for their survival. Citizens for their survival must never blindly aid and abet cover-ups. Yet, this has been the guinea pig's experience. Little has changed in the past thirty years except governments have become emboldened by their citizens' increasing passivity. "Turn on, Tune in, Drop out" is one of the vilest phrases that ever became a mantra for a generation. As long as we think our government will not wire tap and invade privacy in an age of terrorism, when they have invaded privacy for decades constructing these programs, to paraphrase Thomas Wolfe, we cannot go home again.

Yet, human nature, as demonstrated by Stanley Milgram's and Phillp Zimbardo's obedience research at Yale and Stanford Universities, is all too eager to follow orders with a large percentage enjoying being told to torture. How much government programs have consciously taken advantage of our flaws needs also to be researched to determine how intentionally deleterious are government programs to the fabric of the society. The medical researchers who benefit from the Pentagon and C.I.A monitoring should not be naive to think that someday these programs will not be used against them or their relatives and friends. The buck stopped with them. They also can't go home again. They should have spoken out decades ago. When asked to participate in an unethical medical program why wasn't their response, "get out of my office." These programs would not exist in the United States if there were not intimidation and fear.

My happiness will come with the exposure of these programs. My sadness is the effect they have had on American society and as a consequence, much of the world. My sadness is also that I may never enjoy the pleasures that most individuals throughout the world take for granted. There is no way an individual can protect himself from the weapons and technologies governments have at their disposal. In the early years of MKULTRA, there was an interest in utilizing magician tricks to drug their victims. Today the "knockout" technologies have achieved what was only a dream in 1950. (Read here and here.) It doesn't matter if you are in a taxi on Rockville Pike or Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok, Thailand, your apartment in Washington DC or your hotel in London, England, an internet cafe in Hong Kong or a library in Washington DC. As an old time taxi cab driver in 1970 said to me, describing the violence to cabbies in Boston, Massachusetts, "if they're going to get you, they're going to get you." Neither Gandhi nor Dr. King would have succeeded if the climate had been as repressive. The threat of an unchanging sterile society is very real ...

As Richard has reminded me, it takes years of fighting against government secrecy and deception to expose the very existence, not to mention the details of these programs. And by the time the veil is lifted, science and technology have "progressed" exponentially.

Just as the American government has thumbed its nose at the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights, there is no reason to believe that such practices have stopped. As elites consolidate their wealth and power, the mechanisms to control the actions and lives of "common" mankind become even more critical to their aims. You may dismiss and ridicule these thoughts as "conspiracy theory" if you wish, but you do so at your peril.

I will leave you with two things to ponder ...

First, I encourage you to read "Curbing Social Protest in America: Microwave "Non-lethal" Weapons to be used for "Crowd Control": Just in Time for the Capitalist Meltdown: Army, Justice Department to Field 'Pain Ray'", by Tom Burghardt at Global Research.

This other one is a 2 1/4 hour video, "The New Phoenix Program". It's a "must watch", I think, so if you can't view it now, you can bookmark it here and watch it at your leisure.

Please be careful, OK?

Categories: new+world+order, mental+health, military, military-medical+complex, Nuremberg+Code, police+state, post-democracy, survival, war, crimes, weapons

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Journalwasm?

2009-07-18T17:30:00.002-04:00

There are three men who have set the standard for mass media journalism - Murrow, Cronkite, and Moyers. Unlike many of my readers, I am sure, I am old enough to have been influenced directly and personally by all three.

My memories of Edward R. Murrow are fleeting and vague. I heard him on the radio and saw him on TV in the early days. He was a man my father said he trusted, so I never doubted that what he reported was accurate and honest.

Bill Moyers is still around. I trust him so much that in early 2007, I jumped on the "Draft Moyers for President" bandwagon. You knew that Bill had integrity when he refused to compromise himself and his values by answering the call. Part of me, I must admit, is still sorry that he didn't run, but I respect him for it. He can do more damage to the culture of lies right where he is. I'm certain that his stint as LBJ's press secretary soured him on DC politics for good. He has continuously worked hard to redeem himself in the grand church of honest journalism ever since his White House days. And now, Moyers is the last man standing (notwithstanding Andy Rooney).

I gladly confess that I have not shed one tear over the celebrity deaths over the past two months. People live, people die, and famous people are no different. Television does not, for me, define human greatness. Sometimes, however, there are people who can define the potential for media's role in our lives. Walter Cronkite is one of those people. I have cried at his passing. I miss him terribly.

Through WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Moon, JFK, Watergate, and so much else, we, the world's people, were there, because Walter was there. Yes - the most "trustable" man around. There were others of the same cloth. I trusted Eric Severeid, David Brinkley, and Peter Jennings, among others. But no one seemed to match Cronkite. I despair that either his integrity or his journalistic humanity will ever be challenged. CBS News was Walter Cronkite. He owned it, he ran it. He reported the truth to the people. Now, the "truth" is just a wholly-owned subsidiary of the corporate interests who make up propaganda to look like the truth. Cronkite was Reality TV. Without him, it's not even reality.

Some have said, in the midst of the popular uprisings in Iran, Honduras, and elsewhere, that blogs, social media such as Twitter, and alternative news mavens like Alex Jones have the potential to carry on Cronkite's legacy. Maybe. If so, we've got a long, long way to go before we can stand in Uncle Walter's shoes. That's the way it is.

Categories: journalism, reality, truth, values

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Crimes of Conscience

2009-07-12T14:30:00.003-04:00

Somewhere, somehow, during the past few months, we passed a final "point of no return".

If there truly was hope in the certain prospect of regime change, from the Bush/Neocon travesty to the Obama/Neoprogressive administration, it lay in the promise of confession, reconciliation, and redemption. It lay in the chance that the new presidency and a changed Congress would fully repudiate the self-destructive sins of at least two thirds of a century of dishonor, disinformation, and dissolution committed in the name and for the purposes of empire, capitalism, consumerism, and questionable "national security".

The mantra of "Change", repeated mercilessly during the presidential campaign, but in the absence of any concrete examples of what form that change would take, was no less Rovian than The Dubbleduh-Chainey Gang's invocation of "weapons of mass destruction" and "terrorism". The endless repetition had its desired effect. It played not to the head, but to the gut; was not about thought, but about emotions. It was, in fact, more religious than it was political; more about fantasy than reality. It was a prayer, nothing more, nothing less.

The majority of the American citizenry (not to mention the rest of the human ecology)knew that "something" was wrong. Many of us even knew what was wrong, even if most were still the Mr Jones in the Bob Dylan song, who had walked into the room, pencil in hand, only to remain fundamentally clueless.

Barack Obama was to be our savior. What we we needed to be saved from, however, was left to the individual imagination. The change that we got was inevitable, certain - Obama even said it himself: the change was Obama himself. "I am the change." The Newest Testament. No. More. Bush. Simple, eh?

The mistake, of course, is ... wait for it ... Bush was not the problem. Obama is not the problem now. Bush did, and Obama is doing now, exactly what we are paying him to do: run the country for the powers that got them elected, albeit "in our name", and with our votes.

If you've been here before, you probably know that I didn't vote in 2008. I didn't vote because my vote would be cast not for a candidate with a solution, but for a corrupt and destructive system, a system that continues to be based on war, lies, secrecy, murder, grand larceny, and general perfidy and mayhem.

In short, regime change did not occur - could not occur - as the result of the selection of 2008. Bush simply retired, he and his administration's goals, strategies, and tactics were not defeated and replaced. The regime continues.

The regime, you see, is not in Washington, DC. The regime is really in places where lurk corporate monstrosities and Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, and Trilateral Commission operatives. In Obama and his own gang members, the regime has just found a new PR firm, a new management team, a new bunch (mostly) of front men, slicker, stealthier, and whole lot more familiar with the English language and matters of etiquette and style. Same play, new actors.

Ticket sales for the show had fallen way off; it was simply time for new blood, a new director and assistant director, new production staff, new costumes, and some critical changes in the script. But the backers are the same moguls. At least in the early part of the run, ticket sales have skyrocketed. It's SRO in the theater and the critics (most of them paid off) are being very kind.

So I hate to break it to those of you who still hope for the change you imagined. It ain't gonna happen; Obama is not our savior. It's not his job. We were, at best, a bit naive in our expectations. After all, we did not bankroll Obama's victory. The banks did. Obama rejected public money, remember? He doesn't work for us. He works for the banks and corporations. Deal with it. Our shocked indignation and cries of betrayal are falling on deaf (and cynical) ears. We must save ourselves ... from ourselves.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines "conscience" as, "the part of you that judges the morality of your own actions and makes you feel guilty about bad things that you have done or things you feel responsible for".

I think a collective examination of conscience is in order.

I'm not off the hook. In fact, the only conscience I can examine is my own. And I have plenty of my own brand of guilt and regret. For example, I'm still kicking myself for watching about three or four hours (total) of the Michael Jackson spectacle on TV, resulting in this post being overdue. I feel guilty about that because I knew it was a useless diversion from more important things I should be doing.

What if, for example, I had volunteered those hours at the homeless shelter that that housed me and fed me for a year, then told you about that experience? What if I had simply pushed my way through a bad case of blogger block and fulfilled my responsibility to you, my readers - especially those of you who have been so generous in donating to my fundraiser? It's not just that I would feel better about myself right now, but I might have helped you, helped society somehow.

I decidedly do not feel guilty about not voting in the past election. In fact, in a way, I did vote - I voted against a system that has systematically lost its conscience. I voted against presidential, congressional, and bureaucratic immorality and corruption. Frankly, I think voting would have been taking the easy way out: "I voted, so I have the right to complain if this new guy lets me down". Sigh.

In a democracy, individually and collectively, we are this country's conscience. We are responsible. "It's not my fault, it's (fill in the blank)'s fault" is really a criminal cop out.

Please, let's listen to that tiny voice that makes us feel guilty - before it just gives up and falls silent.

Be at and about peace.

Categories: Americanism, Bilderberg, change, community, conscience, corporatism, democracy, reality, responsibilities, values

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Fundraiser Update 070509

2009-07-05T11:43:00.000-04:00

I am so grateful . . .

As some of you know, from April of 2007 until April of 2008, I was penniless, jobless, and homeless, living in a homeless shelter. I was fortunate enough to find work at a local university, where I had worked and then been laid off in the past.

With the help of a local government grant and some kind and generous friends, I left the shelter and moved into my own apartment. During this time, I have slowly been able to make significant progress against clinical depression, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder, supported by amazing therapists and those same dear friends.

In November of last year, I was laid off again and have been living on unemployment, foodstamps, and subsidies. I found out three weeks ago that my employment compensation would run out - it has now done so.

Without income, I can survive, but just barely. I would not, however, be able to maintain my utility service, internet connection, or telephone service. This blog was about to become a casualty.

Two weeks ago, I began a fundraiser here. I want to sincerely thank, with all of my gratitude, all of you who have so kindly and generously donated. You have given P! and me another month of time to, I hope, find work.

In donating, several of you have indicated a wish, for one reason or another, to remain anonymous and, of course, I respect that. As for you others: John, Richard, Leslie, Carlos, Shahid, Ernie, Jay, Judy, SA, and Michael: I want you to know that you have filled my heart and helped me (and P!) survive for at least another month.

I am determined to find work. But with the job market being how it is, I'm keeping the fundraiser open. Any donation, even five or ten dollars, will help keep my telephone and electricity on and P! "on the air". You may donate either through the PayPal service on the sidebar or by mailed check or cash (my email address is also on the sidebar).

As before, there are still some premiums:

a donation of $30 will receive guest blogging privileges here at P! for one month, or...
a donation of $30 will receive free advertising, as a P! sponsor, for your website, blog, or private business for six months; $50 dollars receives one year
a donation of $50 will receive a complete Infowar Bookpack (a $100 value), mailed anywhere

Finally - even if you cannot donate, please continue to visit P!, its sponsors, and the many linked blogs, sites, and other resources. Comment on posts. Let me know what you think and what you want. Email, if you want to be on the P! mailing list. Follow and visit me at Twitter and/or at the news feed, ddjango@Google. I value you greatly, and I thank you.

Be at and about peace.

Categories: fundraiser, P!

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Between Culture and Nature on Planet Earth (Guest Post)

2009-07-02T16:03:00.000-04:00

(Editor's note: this essay is by my philosopher friend John Merryman. John is a 49 year old farmer and horse trainer who grew up and lives in Baltimore County Maryland. Since he is not as obsessed with horses as most of the people he knows, he has tried to give some thought to how the rest of the world works. This is a distillation of some of his observations over the years. If you Google him, you will mostly be reading about a great, great grandfather who had a legal run in with Lincoln at the beginning of the Civil War.)

Between Culture and Nature on Planet Earth

One of life's lessons is that those in charge are the ones who write the rules. Usually this just means that might makes right and the powerful set the standards. Often to their own benefit. On a more fundamental level though, it means the opposite. Those who figure out what the rules are, set the standards by which society functions. Rather than spend my life trying win according to rules which often seem incomprehensible, contradictory and tilted towards those already possessing advantages, I set out to figure what really is going on. I did not seek answers to give me comfort, but truths to which I must answer. The following essay revolves around three interconnected observations about physical reality, spirituality and economics. It is not about how to win, because in life the finish line is death. It is simply about understanding how life works and how it might work better. The conceptual foundation is the cycle of expansion and contraction and the infinite number of interactions.

In trying to make sense of life, there is a constant tension between moving forward and reviewing the past. We neither want to be stuck in the past nor miss any lessons it might have to teach us. There is no one guide to the future, so it is a constant process of adaptation. Often the corrections are so natural, we make them subconsciously, while other times they are the source of endless agonizing. The larger society goes through this process and political coalitions form to advocate for various propensities, such as conservatism looking to the presumed order of the past, or liberalism leaning to the formless energy of the future. That is the cycle of social expansion and civil consolidation.

What is time itself? Is it a narrative path along which we travel from the past to the future? That is the common assumption on which thought, knowledge and the concept of history is based. It is Newton's absolute flow of time and Einstein's relative fourth dimension. There is a problem though. The past is a generally agreed upon series of events, while the future is an infinite number of possibilities, fanning out from the present. According to Relativity there is no absolute measure of time and since Quantum Mechanics says circumstance is not entirely deterministic, many physicists propose that multiple realities emerge whenever the laws governing the progression of events are not deterministic. Schrodinger's Cat is both dead and alive.

Is nature really this inefficient? What if some basic logical error exists in our thinking? There are natives of South America who think of the past as being in front of and the future behind the observer. That is because their frame is the event, not the observer. Something happens, is observed and then is past. We, on the other hand, are a few degrees removed from this basic reality. For us, time is that series of events recorded in our minds and history books, so the future is in front of us and the past is behind.

Consider that if two physical entities collide, it creates an event. While the material proceeds from past events to future ones, those events go the other way, from being in the future to being past. What is the real direction of time? Are we traveling this path from the past into the future, or does the activity of what is present create a series of events which go from being future potential to past circumstance? Does the earth travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, or does tomorrow become yesterday because the earth rotates? Is time really the basis of motion, or simply an effect of it? If it is an effect, then time has more in common with temperature than with space. Energy creates and replaces events. Time is the measurement, not what is being measured and that is why it is relative to the circumstances of the measurement.

There is no such thing as a dimensionless point in time, as that would require a cessation of the very motion being measured. Such a state would have a temperature of absolute zero. The reason light is described as timeless is because it has no internal motion, since that would have to exceed the speed of light in order to happen.

The past is information. The future is where the energy goes.

Reality is composed of energy manifesting structure and information. While the energy is neither created or destroyed, its constant activity is creating and consuming the information. The timeline of energy is from past events to future ones, while the timeline for information and structure, being created and consumed, is from future possibility to past circumstance. While this structure is constantly evolving, it does so at varying rates, so that change can be rapid or slow. As long as structures can absorb as much or more energy as they lose, they continue to exist, but this requires adapting to the information which the consumed energy manifests, whether it is an organism eating food, or an institution adjusting to changes in the larger culture. As institutions become more powerful, they tend to become less adaptive and insular, while provoking external reaction. As long as structures grow and adapt, the future is an evolving continuation of the past. When they can no longer adapt, the future becomes a reaction to the past. Evolution and revolution.

While our brains are of the physical reality that goes from past to future, our minds are the record of events which scroll away into the past. Eventually though, our lives are units of time that begin in the future and ultimately recede into the past, as the larger process of life moves onto the next generation.

This dichotomy is analogous to the top down order, vs. bottom up process of Complexity Theory. Order is the linear information receding into the past, while process is the non-linear energy expanding into the future. As with cosmology, where the gravitational structure of matter is contracting, while the various forms of energy expand.

Space, on the other hand, isn't simply three dimensions. Dimensions are really just linear projections. Lines. Three dimensions are simply the coordinate system of the center point. While relativity tried to model time as an additional dimension, based on the narrative series, it did succeed in showing that space cannot be considered an absolute three dimensional grid, as the perspective is distorted from one point of reference to another. This is evident in basic political terms, since everyone has their own view of reality and they often clash, yet both points of view are serially coherent. You could say the Arabs and Israelis use different coordinate systems to define the same space. There is no universal perspective, as the more universal a concept, perspective, or point of reference is, the more generalized and inconsequential it is to any particular situation. It's the infinite dimensionality which makes life dynamic, since there is no ultimate pattern into which it can settle. The mind feeds on chaos and turns it into order. Without that constant stimulation, it stagnates. Than again the opposite effect is that if we cannot discern order in the chaos, we would fall to pieces, intellectually and emotionally. That's why we constantly make up stories and other explanations to piece together what we do not understand, rather than just accept that we do not understand. We have to move forward, or we will fall apart.

When you have large numbers of points moving about, the one concept which does define the overall situation is temperature. The scalar level of activity. In fact the same logic which uses the speed of light to say time is a fourth dimension of space, could use a given amount of energy to say temperature is an additional parameter of volume, since a change in the volume of this energy would have a proportional effect on its temperature. Volume and dimension are the scalar and vector of the vacuum, while temperature and time are the scalar and vector of the fluctuation.

So time and temperature are actually quite similar, as emergent effects of motion. They describe the conceptual dichotomy of narrative and the larger network of activity from which we distill the narrative. This relationship between temperature and time manifests in the two halves of the brain, with the parallel processor of the right brain functioning as a thermostat, that perceives the multiplicity of the present moment, while the serial processor of the left side records the linear cause and effect of time, from which rationality emerges.

Physics is trying to solve a problem arising from our intellectual distance from reality, not a problem with reality. Other disciplines, such as biology, neurology, computer sciences, etc. are working around this conundrum in their own fashion.

Since thinking is conceptual reductionism, we tend to be focused on the contrasts, rather than the connected medium. With morality, this is the conflict between good and bad. The popular assumption is of a conflict between two extremes, but the attraction to the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental is the primordial biological binary code, of which we are complex manifestations. It evolves from the bottom up, rather than proscribed from the top down. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken, yet there is no clear point where the chicken ends and the fox begins. Life is a bootstrapping process
of creation and consumption, just as time needs to consume information in order to create new information. Success is being the foundation of what comes next, while failure is being fodder for it. Both are necessary and all are part of the larger organic process. While we like clear and easy answers, rather than hard and painful truths, it should be remembered that between black and white are not just shades of grey, but all the colors of the spectrum.

We think of God as an all-knowing absolute, but the universal state of the absolute has no division and therefore is both everything and nothing, while anything not absolute is relative to everything else so defined. The distinctions of knowledge are relativistic feedback loops of information and judgement. It is a process, not an object. The essence of interpersonal morality, to treat others as you would have them treat you, is moral relativism. A spiritual absolute would be the raw essence of consciousness from which complex organisms rise, not an all-knowing moral ideal from which humanity fell. When society does prescribe moral absolutes, it is often contradictory, since the linear presumption is that if a little is good, than a lot must be much better and if anything is at all bad, than it must be all bad. There is no conceptual regard for reciprocity, reaction, balance, laws of unintended consequences, silver linings, etc. Ambiguity is derided and people are expected to line up with the good and against the bad. The result is endless chaos as masses of people are herded around complex situations by simple minded assertions of good and bad. The irony is that relativism provides a much more comprehensive moral code, since one's actions are weighed against the rest of the universe, as opposed to whatever definition of God you happen to abide by. Karma means that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What goes around, comes around.

Monotheism began as an idealization of social hierarchy and the wisdom of elders, but it overlooks the more fundamental process by which society regenerates this order, as each generation dies off and is replaced by the next. The top down order is periodically replaced by bottom up processes. Those higher up the evolutionary and social ladder are emergent layers of evolution that depend on those below them, far more than those below depend on those above. In fact, in nature, emergent levels tend to be predatory for the purpose of controlling the growth of those they depend on, just as emergent layers of society control those from which they rise. If they succeed in destroying the health of those below them, then these higher levels are no longer necessary.

It was polytheists who developed democracy, as tribes and cults interacted and had to compromise, while monotheism gave us the divine right of kings. It is necessary to have a common set of goals and standards for any group to coexist, but it is more effective to have one built on a sensible foundation of common goals, than one chasing after abstract ideals. That is because the perfect is often the enemy of the good.

Polytheism weaves a tapestry out of individual threads, while monotheism braids a rope out of individual strands. Each have a purpose.

Even though our religions remain monotheistic, our political institutions are largely democratic because they need the ability to regenerate from the bottom up, as old ways and leaders get stagnant and rigid. Now our social hierarchies are not so much a matter of political power, but economic weight, as wealth accumulates to those most adept at controlling the flow of it. It is becoming increasingly obvious this situation is both unstable and destructive to both society and the environment. The question is how to institute a system which combines healthy bottom up growth, with effective top down leadership and the ability to adjust both to changing circumstances. The old system of adolescent greed and fear, constrained by government regulation and protection, becomes less effective as the level of economic and social complexity increases.

A potential solution might lay in a reconsideration of money, that institution of collective trust on which our mass society is based.

Money functions as both a store of value and a medium of exchange. These work at cross purposes, because as a store of value it is a form of private property, while as a medium of exchange it is a form of public utility, similar to a road system. Most people focus on their own wealth in comparison to others and thus think of it as private property. The reality is that the system belongs to whomever guarantees its value. We do possess the money we hold, in the same way we possess the section of road we are driving on. You own your car, house, business, etc, but not the roads connecting them. Money is a similar medium. It was one thing when money signified some commodity you had stored or traded and its value was entirely based on that underlaying commodity, but now the money supply far exceeds the underlaying value of the real economy and so its value is maintained by the ability of the government to support it through taxation. This means it has become an illusionary bubble of value into which ever more resources are needed to support and so is only functional as a medium of exchange. While this is potentially catastrophic, it presents an opportunity to change the basic economic equation.

Believing money is private property encourages people to hoard it. The problem is that capital is subject to the laws of supply and demand, with the lender as supply and the borrower as demand. Since the supply of capital must be balanced by demand for it, there must be sufficient borrowers for this notational wealth, or its value will collapse. The problem is that political power is on the side of those with money, rather than those borrowing it and this lack of balance regularly creates situations which swell the supply of money, while depleting the abilities of those borrowing it. This results in periodic credit collapse, as masses of borrowers default. We are at an extreme state of this particular situation, since the government has borrowed massive amounts of its own money back, loan standards were left in the dust and enormous bubbles of excess circulation were blown up by the financial services industry to hold this surplus notational wealth. Now that the bubble is collapsing and its value evaporating, the powers that be are engaged in more destructive behavior by issuing ever more debt and currency to keep the bubble from imploding. Since the only way to prevent this additional money from being seriously inflationary is to monetize ever more value out of society and the environment in order to support and pay interest on it, to the increasing detriment of world health. The situation is analogous to high blood pressure. As bad debt clogs the arteries, increasing pressure doesn't clear the clots, but damages healthy tissue and causes it to harden and burst in weak points. When that happens, a person dies, but an economy flooded with loose credit is distorted. In a Ponzi scheme, the money from later investors is used to pay off earlier investors. When an asset bubble builds up, due to easy credit, rather than improved earnings, the same thing happens, as later investors pay earlier investors, then loose their investment when the well of credulous investors dries up.

Paul Volcker is credited with curing inflation in the early 1980's, by raising interest rates and reducing the flow of fresh credit into the economy. While inflation may be caused by loose monetary policy, the effect of higher rates is to reward those with money to lend, while punishing those wishing to borrow it. So how did he cure an oversupply of money already in the system, when his method of choice also significantly reduced demand for it? The difference between the Federal Reserve selling debt it is holding and the Treasury issuing fresh debt, is that while the Fed retires the money it collects, the Treasury uses the money it gets to fund public spending. Public spending doesn't compete with the private sector and generally funds projects that enable increased private investment. So not only does this deficit spending directly provide demand for credit, but has a multiplier effect in the private sector, by increasing both its size and profitability. Suffice to say, the rapidly increasing deficits of the early 1980's had a significant effect on bringing the supply of credit in line with demand for it. The reason a surplus of money increases the expense of borrowing it is because the tendency is to spend it, rather than lend it, so there is actually a shortage of money to borrow and the cost goes up. At the time, economists were concerned that increased government deficits would further raise interest rates for the private sector, but the opposite happened and rates came down. The supply of money is potentially infinite. The issue is keeping it in line with demand, so that its value is stable and people are willing to lend it at nominal interest rates. Or spend it chasing asset values upward, which is often just another form of inflation.

Government debt is in fact one of the primary sources of demand for capital. Just think for a moment where all the money that all the governments of the world borrow would be invested otherwise? The stock market? Real estate? Derivatives? Emerging markets? Now that the economy is distressed and many are buying government debt as a safe investment, rather than houses or pets.com, this public debt has become the biggest bubble of all. Will it pop, like the dot com and housing bubbles? Can the government pay it back? Well, that depends on how its tax receipts do. Need I say more?

Consider how it would change public perception of monetary wealth, if we were to come to the realization that the monetary system really is now entirely a form of public commons? The practice of hoarding excessive amounts would lack logical justification, so savings would be taxed progressively. This is not to discourage individual effort, but a necessary recognition of the effect of excess savings on a functioning monetary system. Too much of a good thing isn't always good. If people understood monetary value constituted public property, than they would be far more reluctant to drain value out of their social networks and environment to put in a bank in the first place. We all like having roads, but there is little inclination to pave more than we need. In this situation, the same would apply to monetizing our lives. Other avenues of trust and reciprocation would have the space to develop, which would strengthen communities and their relationship to the environment.

Political power started as private initiative and eventually grew into monarchy. Monarchists railed against mob rule, but we eventually learned how to make it a public trust by allocating power where it was most responsive. Why not do the same with the banking industry? As the currency is a public utility, so profits from its administration could be public income. A public banking system would not be one huge behemoth, but consist of institutions incorporated at every level of governance, so that individuals could bank with the ones which funded the services they are most likely to use. Different communities would seek to provide the best services with these funds, otherwise they would lose business and citizens to other communities. As it is, banking doesn't need the inventiveness for which private enterprise is most suited, but the stability that is the strength of the public sector. Those running this financial system seem to think they have the right to drain off as much as they can, with other business leaders feeling the need to follow. What if the police, military, courts, etc. felt they had the same rights to exploit their responsibilities? When that happens, it's not a pretty picture.

The lack of extreme amounts of monetized wealth might also reduce the potential for bloated regimes to develop. There will always be economic and political convection cycles of rising influence and power, which eventually cool off and settle back down after a few generations and in many ways that is healthy and normal, but what we have now is an economic hurricane that is sucking wealth out of the entire world as monetary abstraction has metastasized into this enormous bubble of illusionary value. Given the state of the world, it is a crisis we can't afford to waste.

The only unit which fully defines humanity and life is the earth. Possibly humanity is the embryonic central nervous system of a planetary organism. Otherwise we are just top predator of a collapsing ecosystem.

Regards,

John B. Merryman
Sparks, Maryland

Categories: time, space, money, life, society

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The Quality of Murky

2009-06-26T21:47:00.012-04:00

For the first time, I'm actually quite afraid at having Barack Obama occupying the office of President of the United States. I hate to say it, but McCain was right - Obama doesn't have the experience needed for the job under the present circumstances.

At some not too distant point, this man is going to have to stand alone, break away from the chains of all his controllers and sycophants, agonize as he has never done before, and make a decision which will have incalculable consequences.

It really won't matter whether the decision will be about direct intervention in Iran or calling North Korea's bluff or calling out the Army and FEMA mercenaries to squash riots in Los Angeles, Gary, Des Moines, or wherever. If he really wants his job, he'll have to make the decision himself and order that it be carried out.

Watching the President's performance so far, I have no faith that he is ready for that ...

Under Bush, and now under Obama, the presidency is really not the President. It is, in fact, a group of very powerful people, most of whom have been in and around the corridors, lobbies, and back rooms of Washington and its tentacles for a very long time. Whereas The Dubbleduh-Chainey Gang was run by operatives from the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I regimes, Obama's syndicate, of which he is only the mouthpiece, is crawling with denizens of the Carter and Clinton administrations with grand geopolitical agendas, Cold War mindsets, and incredible, conflicting egos.

It is very difficult for "progressives" to see that, in some ways, The Gang was extremely successful in accomplishing its goals. The primary reasons for that were one-mindedness and lock-step discipline. If you didn't walk like the other ducks, you ditched the pond or were driven out. There was no discussion. The goals were clear. You were with 'em or agin 'em, no matter who you were. And essentially, there was one guy in charge (although it obviously wasn't George).

Obama has a distinct disadvantage here. He has gathered into the Executive branch a motley crew of old hands who have enormous experience, but who are certainly not of one mind. And Obama is not in the center, he's on the periphery.

Such a group would work fantastically well if it had a strong, well-seasoned, very knowledgeable leader; one who could say, "OK, guys, thanks for the input. Now get the hell out of my office. I'll let you know in two hours what we're going to do." Barack Obama is not that man.

President Obama is not in control. He's being told what to do,then being trotted out before the cameras nearly every day to read from the prepared script and follow Rahm's direction. This became crystal clear these past two weeks, monitoring the burgeoning social media report both on Iran's post-election firestorm and on Washington's, Langley's, and Foggy Bottom's vertiginous antics in response. What. A. Mess. If Barack ain't careful, he'll be run the hell over by a loose cannon.

Witness:

1. The CIA is not really one organization acting with clear agendas and goals. It is several, There are factions tied to diverse ideologies, sometimes working at dangerously crossed purposes. I'd imagine Panetta has a constant migraine. To think that such a man, reporting to a weak president, will get the intelligence community on the same page is a fantasy.

2. There are also factions and their political manifestations in the rest of the "intelligence community": NSA, USAID, the State Department, the military branches. There are not just "some rogues" - they are all rogues. There are obviously even parties, we know now, who consider our own citizens a threat to them. These are all powerful forces over which the President has little control, in great part due to his lack of experience. I would imagine, furthermore, that his selection as president continues to rankle and foment resentment, especially on the part of many old guards sucked into his administration. I am sorry to say it, because I loathe the Clintonites, but HillBillary might have had a better chance of controlling all these various parts, because she's familiar with them.

3. The Iranian miasma is the current showcase. Over a time, intelligence agencies and their affiliations (I hesitate to call them "think tanks" - an oxymoron if I ever heard one) have apparently funneled nearly a half billion bucks into machinations against the Iranian regime. Mousavi may have been the recipient of much largesse in the process. And just the other day, after denying and warning against US involvement in Iran's "internal matter", the administration announced it was going ahead with a Bush initiative to give USAID $20M to aid the opposition in Iran.

A couple of weeks ago, in a recorded broadcast, Henry Kissinger opined that an external try at Iranian regime change might be in order if the protests fail to produce it. This was at the same time that Zbiggy Brzezinski was warning against US interference because it would "backfire". This is the same cat who has admitted to screwing with Iran for decades. He was, of course, being disingenuous.

I'm not above thinking there is the possibility that all these forces are coordinated at some high level and that what we are seeing is a massive disinfo operation aimed at both the Iranian and American people. But I'm not betting on it. My money leans toward the Department of Chinese Fire Drills (no intended racial offense.

One salient point is that this is not really about Iraq or Pakistan or Somalia or Iran. It is about Russia, China, and the entire Muslim world. Barack Obama is in over his head, I think. He certainly isn't making policy, running the country, or commanding American forces overseas. That's being handled by The Heavy Hitters.

Our new president has set his ass down in a very murky swamp. I hope he survives it. But mostly, I hope we do.

Categories: new+world+order, Brzezinski, CIA, Iran, Iraq, post-politics, presidency, war

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Fundraiser: Please Help!

2009-06-19T18:05:00.003-04:00

Yours truly has been looking for work since November, after having been laid off. Many of you know what that's like.

On July 2, I will receive my final unemployment benefit check and thereafter will have no income. Although I will still have my small apartment and food stamps, I won't be able to pay my utility and web connection costs, nor my telephone costs.

Under those circumstances, P! will go down.

If you enjoy and value P! and it's contribution to quality commentary and news, as well as the resources for knowledge and information available here, I hope you will donate to this fundraiser. Even as little as five or ten dollars will help immensely to keep P! "on the air".

There is a PayPal donate button - with a secure connection - at the very top of the sidebar. If you want to donate by another method, feel free to email me at p.ddjango@gmail.com.

Thank you so much and ... be at peace and about peace.

UPDATE - June 25

1. The first donation of $50 will win a complete Infowar Bookpack, a $100 value, sent postpaid to anywhere;

2. The first donation of $30 by a blogger or writer will win guest posting privilege here at P! for one month.

Please help keep P! alive. Thank you.

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A Letter from Megan: Just Making Sense

2009-06-18T18:38:00.004-04:00

I just got this missive from Megan Iorio of Just Foreign Policy. Frankly, it makes more sense than 99% of what I've seen (including some of my own stuff) on Twitter and elsewhere during the past week, so I'm just going to post it, verbatim, in its entirety ...

Dear ddjango,

President Obama has faced pressure from some members of Congress and voices in the media to take sides in the dispute in Iran over the recent Presidential election. Senator John McCain said that "[the President] should speak out that this was a corrupt, flawed sham of an election." [1] Senator Lindsey Graham has been reported as saying that the situation in Iran "clearly deserves a more forceful response" from the President. [2]

However, taking sides in Iran's internal election dispute would be dangerously counterproductive. As President Obama said Tuesday, "... it's not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling -- the U.S. President meddling in Iranian elections." [3] Moreover, any appearance of meddling in Iran's election dispute could undermine the President's commitment to pursue sustained diplomatic engagement with the government of Iran, which he has pledged to continue regardless of the election result.

Would you tell President Obama that you support his cautious response by signing our petition below?

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/election

Contrary to the popular argument, it is unlikely that taking the side of the opposition would be helpful to the demonstrators. The Iranian government is already attempting to tie the political unrest in Iran to Western influences. [4] Given our countries' fraught history, taking the side of the opposition would most likely not serve the interests of the Iranian people, but would instead be used by hard-liners in Iran to paint the demonstrators as American proxies.

As Senator Richard Lugar wisely stated Tuesday, "When popular revolutions occur, they come really from the people. They are generated from people power within the country. For us to become heavily involved in the election at this point is to give the clergy an opportunity to have an enemy and to use us, really, to retain their power."[5]

You can encourage President Obama to continue his careful assessment of Iran by following the link below:

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/election

Thank you for all you do for a just foreign policy,

Megan Iorio
Just Foreign Policy

Help us build for a Just Foreign Policy
Your financial contributions to Just Foreign Policy help us create opportunities for Americans to advocate for a just foreign policy.
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References:

1. McCain on NBC's Today show, video, June 16, 2009. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/18424808#31383483

2. "GOP tries to find its pitch on Iran," Manu Raju, POLITICO, June 17, 2009. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23827.html

3. "Remarks by President Obama and the President Lee Myung-Bak of the Republic of Korea in Joint Press Availability", Transcript, June 16, 2009. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-President-Obama-and-President-Lee-of-the-Republic-of-Korea-in-Joint-Press-Availability/

4. "Iran accuses US of interference in election feud", Associated Press, June 17, 2009. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/world/6484606.html

5. "Lugar: hands off Iran, for now," CBS Video, June 16, 2009. http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/06/16/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5091165.shtml

Although I'm all for a genuine peoples' revolution, that isn't what I think we're looking at in Iran. And I think those who have participated in the flash mob mentality of the so-called "social media" this past week (again, including myself for a bit) have been naive and have been cynically manipulated by forces which we don't completely understand. Furthermore, many, I think, have lost their heads and, as a result, will lose their lives.

P! has always and will always stand for non-violence and peace. I stand for and with the people of Iran who share that commitment.

Categories: democracy, elections, flashmob, Iran, peace

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Postcard from TwitIran Square

2009-06-16T10:24:00.007-04:00

My introduction to the power of Twitter was the Israeli rape of Gaza a few months ago. I was asked by a long-time blogger friend (who has risen to lofty heights on most of the Twitter rating charts) to help retweet on-the-ground news coming from the war zone. The adrenaline rush was incredible. Addiction. Yes. Physical, emotional, mental. It took me a couple of days (or in Twitter parlance, "daze") to see and accept it for what it was. But for this, like all addictions, recognition of the sickness is not resolution. I know that total abstinence is the only solution to addiction of any sort, and I'm still not ready for that. The negative consequences do not yet outpace the goodies, if you understand that.

One reason I got immediately hooked was that it seemed like a cut and dried fight between good and evil. Palestinian good; Isreali bad. On the third day of the Gaza genocide, I was lucky that some clear thinking broke through enough that I could see that Hamas was far from squeaky clean in the conflict. Yes, Zionist Israel sucks big time, but Hamas continued to provoke and, I steadfastly maintain, was at least partially responsible for many of the civilian deaths in the Strip. You can delete me from your ideological blogroll for that, but there it is. I just can't support any violence perpetrated for political tactics and strategies.

At any rate, I learned some lessons about flash mobs and disinfo from the experience. Toward the end of the Gaza invasion, I concentrated on verifiable news and the plight of civilians, rather than taking sides. It didn't seem there were a lot of good guys balancing the bad guys. And a lot of the tweets from the ground were, in a word, shit.

Although I wish it wasn't true, I can't really shake the fact that I'm a white American male. I'm subject to schadenfreude just like the next guy, especially if there's blood, and running crowds, and tear gas flying, and riot sticks. Brings back memories of the Boston and Cambridge Commons in the sixties, I guess. At the very base, riots are a spectator sport, whether you're part of the melée or reporting the blow-by-blow from the grandstand. Sad, but true.

It wasn't that I didn't see this Iran thingy coming. When the water broke on Friday, I had almost finished reading Obama: The Postmodern Coup - Making of a Manchurian Candidate by Webster Tarpley. In it, the author documents the connection between Obama and Zbiggy Brzezinski (starting in about 1983) and explains the latter's involvement with sectors of the US "intelligence community" and geopolitical obsession with Russia and China.

Admittedly, Tarpley's book is terribly written, especially considering the fact that he was a Rhodes scholar. It seems a sort of slap-dash paste-up of articles, blog entries, pamphlets, and napkin notes. But there's enough history and corroborating evidence to substantiate a strong suspicion that there was Brzezinski/CIA involvement in last Friday's Iranian presidential election. In fact, given our history, how could there not be? This, for example, is a very interesting and timely report from almost exactly two years ago, "The CIA’s Iranian Plan?" from Information Clearing House. (I strongly recommend this report.)

Now the confession. When Iran broke, I watched some of the Twitter traffic and jumped into the breach. Suckered. Mousavi good, Ahmadenijad bad. Election stolen, just like USA 2000! No doubt about it! Green Revolution!! D'Oh! That self-righteous, "plain as the nose on your face", up-the-underdog rush of flashmob adrenaline. I was off and running (my, and everybody else's, mouth off). Power to the people!

Then it started to occur to me: who the hell is this Mousavi and where did he come from? Is he any better than Ahmadi? What's really going on here? Some stuff didn't add up.

My first clue was when one of Mousavi's self-proclaimed mouthpieces (@Stop_Ahmadi) started to push for a DOS attack against Ayatollah Khamanei's website. Hmmm. An attack on free speech, I thought. What about principle? What about democracy? Does this dude just want an alternative dictatorship? Who does Mousavi work for? What does he stand for?

To the point: Brzezinski's fingerprints are all over this one. As I write, Russia and China, Zbiggy's bêtes noires, have congratulated Ahmadenijad on his victory, while the BBC, MI6's propaganda mouthpiece, has painted their website in the sickly green of Mousavi's attempted coup. It cannot be any more obvious. Geopolitics 101.

The environs of Teheran, Qom, yes, all of Iran, are dangerous places right now. Although I join the courageous Iranians in their cries for freedom and worry about their safety, I fear they are being cynically used and led in a direction which will result in only one dictatorship substituted for another, mere pawns in the game of superpower meta-manipulation.

I need to end this with an apology. At the beginning of the flash mob on Friday, I may have contributed to the movement toward violence, by tweeting anything "Mousavi". Some of what I retweeted may well have been disinfo. I should know instinctively that anyone in TwitIran Square may be a provocateur.

I'm sorry. I'm still tweeting Iran, but I'm trying to be a bit more cautious. Lives are at stake.

Be at and about peace, please.

Categories: blogging, Brzezinski, democracy, elections, flashmob, Iran, principles, Twitter

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Deathics

2009-06-06T13:38:00.009-04:00

Sometimes I want to just hug my Google feed reader and give it a big kiss. With no specific skill, just through trial and error, I've been able to put together a set of blog- and search-based feeds that constantly surprise and delight me.

This morning, my reader faithfully delivered "How I Met the Superman" by John C. Wright. It's a piece about the transhumanist movement, ethics, and morality.

Before I look into Wright's piece with you, let me digress a bit. It's important that I first let you in on my frame of mind as I write this ...

Also this morning, I read Les Visible's "The Madness at the World's End", in which he ruminates ...

Here’s what I see. I see a hard core minority of power mad reptiles who will stop at nothing to get what they want and who care less for human life than a boa constrictor cares about the comfort of the rat in its jaws or a psychotic pimp cares about the emotional state of an underperforming hooker. It’s probably less than that. It’s not personal with the snake and the pimp just sees himself as a business man. These other creatures enjoy evil for the sheer joy of doing it. You can’t take someone like a ruling member of The Rothschild family, David Rockefeller or his protégé, Henry Kissinger and attribute human qualities to them. They don’t have any. You may find this hard to believe or visualize but it is so.

On the other hand, you have a general public which, by dint of poor education, less curiosity and the endless assault of the Madison Avenue spin machine, has been reduced to a clueless automaton not far above the beasts of the field whose sole concern is the satisfaction of their appetites. Then there’s the people who get things done; heard, interpret experience, speak out in the available venues and who are awake by various degrees to what is going on. There are two groups here, those who serve the psychopaths and those who do not. The first group is the larger one ...

I commented on Les' post that I did not entirely agree with him. My own take is that the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Brzezinskis, and the rest of the meta-elite are all very human, but with a frame of reference so different than ours as to seem alien.

In my own frame of reference these days, I must admit to feeling extremely fearful and depressed. I've spent the past two years battling my way from self-induced poverty and homelessness back to a semblance of responsible self-sufficiency, only to get laid off in November. Jobless since then, but looking faithfully for even part-time work, I face possible homelessness again in a few short weeks, when my unemployment runs out.

I try to imagine sometimes what I would do with a couple of million bucks. And I know that I'd give most of it away in a manner that would help the most people. I couldn't manage that kind of money. It would probably kill me. But let me work for a couple hundred a week and I'd be content. That I can manage.

As the powerful continue to rob all of us of our means of survival, making sure the broken financial system remains on life support and ensuring that they are secure, I cannot help but reflect on (1) how scared and, indeed, depressed they must also feel and on (2) what they are willing and able to do to maintain their own definition of survival. Remember, there is nothing more dangerous than a scared, wounded tiger ...

We can moralize all we want. From our standpoint, the elite may be evil. They certainly cannot imagine living from day to day, struggling to keep their familiar lives together. They are, in truth, weaker than we are, in spirit, at least. They not only fear us, but yes, despise us. They truly think they're smarter than we are and it is their destiny to control our lives for the common good. They see little value in our lives. If that is evil, so be it. It just makes me sad and scared.

Just remember this: whether we or the meta-rich deny it or not, we are all on the same spaceship, all being sucked into the same black hole of human devastation and horror. The elite think they can stop the vortex, or at least protect themselves from it; but they can't, any more than we can. We are going through, and will continue to go through, cataclysmic change ...

What has all this to do, you ask, with my starting point for this piece? It has to do with nothing less than moral responsibility for life and death. The fact is that whether the "elite" are monsters or simply scared little humanoids, they pretty much own the means to control and/or destroy millions of people with their technology. As I've said before: knowledge is not really power; ownership is power. It is within that context that we can turn back to Wright's piece. He starts by plunging directly into the transhumanist ethics problem ...

My own brief brush with transhumanists was an eye-opening affair. It was my first encounter with people who try to deck out scientists and engineers with the hairy coats of prophets or the canonical vestments of archbishops, and end up merely embarrassing the engineers as much as the archbishops. I do not see why an engineer would be any better at the an archbishop's job than visa versa. Listening to the metaphysical musings of physicists (who have never read of word of Aristotle or Kant) is embarrassing enough: you should listen to computer programming speculating about the moral evolution of the human soul. It is knee-slappingly funny, if it were not so sad.

For example, I once shocked a list-full of extropian transhumanists by suggesting that, once you design a self-aware computer, you have to teach it a moral code, or otherwise it will not know right from wrong. The extropians thundered at me that machines, by pure empirical deduction, will be able, by trial and error, determine how to measure, weigh, and assess moral entities like right and wrong, just and unjust, more accurately than merely human beings.

Turn about is fair play. They shocked me when they explained that, as clear-eyed and completely rational advocates of science, they took it as an article of faith that science would one day discover that the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy, is wrong, and that infinite energy can be produced from nothingness via perpetual motion machine. There must be a perpetual motion machine possible on the grounds that science has not yet proved it to be impossible. Hm ...

Now, I'm a layperson with this stuff and probably you are, too. My impression is that this humble blog is not very high on the "must read" list of scientists and engineers developing artificial general intelligence. As for me, the science is too dense for me to understand at the source. I must, therefore, encourage you to learn some of this, because it has much to do with how (and even if) you will live through an emerging "future" which is already here. Or, you can wait 'til an AI-powered bot knocks on your door with a set of instructions for you.

The gist of the above, however, is this: the technology and machines developed by robotist transhumanists will be smart enough to figure out a set of ethics far superior to existing human ethics and morality (so say the scientists). So why bother with humans teaching the machines an inferior code?

"Maybe," they think, "human ethics and morality have been the problem all along. Look at the millions and millions of hapless human minions, thinking they're free and smart enough to make decisions for themselves; having babies when there isn't enough food; fouling the environment with their various excrements; demanding sustenance and comfort when there's really only enough to take care of us super-smart rulers. We can't use them; they're in the way; they're killing us and themselves, too." Yeah: scary.

And this is not the worst of it. The real problem lies in who would teach these machines human-based ethics. For even if we decide that this is the best course, teaching means programming AI algorithms into machine brains. I don't think the programming would be handled by Dennis Kucinich or Cynthia McKinney or George Carlin. It would be handled by scientists working "for the man" and thus beholden to that man for the desired outcome.

Wright describes the problem nicely ...

The idea that the posthuman supercomputers should be instructed not to kill us, or, better yet, taught to honor their father and the mothers that their days might be long on the earth, was rejected not merely with disagreement, but with scorn and contempt. [There] was something really wrong and twisted about these people at a deep psychological level I could not comprehend. It was as if they yearned not just for personal death, but for extinction.

Again, they reminded me of ancient Cathars, or Gnostics, religious cultists who sought to escape from the universe and the human condition, not into Eden, but instead into some indifferent outside void.

Why, if they yearned for death, they also daydreamed about a technology that would grant endless life, that, I cannot say. I don't know if the ones I talked to were typical or were a few cracked pots on the far fringe. I am limiting my comments only to the specific individuals with whom I corresponded, and they cannot be assumed to be spokesmen for the whole.

Some of them, it was clear, wanted to be little tin gods, not to worship the little tin gods. They wanted to download their brain information into the Overframe, and I think they were imagining something the size of the Solid State Entity from NEVERNESS by David Zindell: a collection of larger-than-Dyson-Sphere electronic brains scattered throughout some convenient nebula, or lining the interior of a Dyson shell constructed around the mega black whole at the core of the galaxy.

Now, exactly how they [would] deal with the various lusts, hungers, ambitions, hatred and sheer bloody-mindedness involved in being a disembodied god with a nine-figure I.Q., that was part of the conversation I missed. Logically, however, if the machine gods were to be built without human moral codes or human religion, this (in theory) was what they were imagining as their ultimate destiny as well.

This is very troublesome stuff, don't you agree? You can hide, but you cannot run.

Add to the mix the fact that as I am writing this, Lord Bernanke has announced a demand that the US government drastically cut social programs or significantly raise taxes in the face of protracted unemployment, or the Fed will not monetize the debt. Bernanke. One of the elite's chancellors of the exchequer. Bilderberg has spoken.

If you're not terrified, you're not paying attention.

Categories: new+world+order, Bilderberg, hopelessness, techno-fascism, post-society, transhumanism

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On Rivers of Rage

2009-06-01T14:35:00.003-04:00

It seems that in every bend and corner of the nation, spring torrents have left us running on rivers of rage.

One of the few lessons I have actually learned indelibly (in a life just chock full of opportunities for learning), is that my own rage is harmful - certainly to the object of that rage, but more so to myself. Especially if that rage is borne on the leather wings of self-righteousness and self-justification. At the very least, blind anger is corrosive and utterly destabilizing, and I can't tolerate it and survive. If I tell you, however, I can let it go and hopefully be effective.

This post is brief, because I do not wish to further feed the rage, in either myself or you, stimulated by the Tiller assassination. I do, however, need to raise my voice in a cry for justice - justice that will be wholly underserved if only the assassin is tried, convicted, and punished.

Yesterday's assassination was not the action of another "crazed lone gunman." There is undeniable evidence that none of the major assassination attempts/successes have been such. One cannot help but wonder how many lone gunmen it takes to make a conspiracy. That's just another Virginia swamp hound that won't hunt.

The fact is that the rabid religious right is fairly stocked with very sick people. Clinically paranoid delusionals who truly believe the lord has anointed them in the sacrament of justice bwo hollow-point slugs. It is their duty, they believe, to rid the earth of their gods' enemies, by whatever means necessary. These good ole boys could show them raghead terr-rists a thang or two, I think.

O'Reilly and Company know this. Himself will spin his vituperative denials of responsibility and complicity tonight on Fox. He'll say something like, "It wuz a terrible tragedy." And he knows we know he's lying. He had as much to do with the body in the pool of blood on the church floor as did the wretch that pulled the trigger.

I will not predict it, but I will not be surprised if the assassin is never brought to trial. Chances are he will be evaluated for psychiatric illness and be whisked away to a secure looney bin to wither in silence.

A trial will implicate O'Reilly and his wide circle of fellow hate-mongers in the media, in churches, and in institutions, all riding on rivers of rage and the lava of lies.

The justice system in our country is moribund. The biggest sin is the Obama regime's failure to prosecute war crimes. The rest of the system limps along on that example. But O'Reilly and others must be indicted for the crime of incitement. Not only have they cried "fire" in a crowded theater, they have set that very fire.

It also must be said that that biggest institutional failure of recent times, the Department of Homeland Security, must step up. We have lost more American citizens at home at the hands of domestic terrorists since 911 than by foreign terrorists. This assassin has a history of terrorist activity - why was he free?

Tiller's assassination was just another rock in the rapids on the river of rage. It's fast and angry water. It needs to be dammed.

Categories: assassination, mental, health, post-society, responsibilities, values

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American Samizdat

2009-05-29T17:35:00.001-04:00

In the post-Stalin Soviet Union, "samizdat" was the practice of dissident activists, artists, and writers literally mimeographing their works and handing them around hand-to-hand to avoid arrest, suppression, and prosecution. If anything could be termed "underground", this was it. For dissenters, samizdat was life and the community blood of truth. It took courage. Over the long run, samizdat was the true reason for at least the spiritual collapse of centralized communism and totalitarianism in the USSR - certainly not Reagan, probably not even Gorbachev or Yelstin. Under the crush of totalitarianism, samizdat was freedom.

Totalitarianism is become a thinly guised reality in America. We think we have freedom of speech, but its suppression is subtle. Personally, every time I post, I know that the post is scanned by security programs and wonder if I'll get a knock on the door some black morning for expressing my thoughts and dreams, for exposing the truth, or for postulating conspiracies that may or may not exist.

American Samizdat has been around since early in the millenium. Created by the inimitable Dr Menlo, for a decade it has for me been like the dark, smoky coffeehouses in Cambridge, Boston, New York, and San Francisco that nurtured my radicalism. I feel safe there, even though contentious conversations sometimes erupt in post comments or even among the group that writes there. It is a stimulating place, where ideas and challenges to the putrid status quo are thrown like sparkling gauntlets.

Lately, it's gotten a bit lonely at AmSam. In the ever-morphing blogoswamp, writers come and writers go. Uncle $cam, a mainstay there, moved on. Although some venerable attendees such as Philip Shropshire, Mad Kane, Cicero, and Jim Benjamin are still around, we're looking for some new blood and more energy.

So . . .

If you write, whether you have a blog or not, and you're articulate, thoughtful, intelligent, and fairly left-of-center, and can take the heat in the kitchen, we might welcome your presence on our pages.

If you're interested, send me an email, and you might just get an invitation.

Be at peace.

Oh, almost forgot: you can also visit Dr Menlo here.

Categories: blogging, survival

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Evilution

2009-05-24T21:47:00.003-04:00

All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward. ~ Ellen Glasgow

I really couldn't help but chuckle, listening to Weekend Edition, when Daniel Schorr declared that Obama had "disappointed progressives". He cited the president's re-deal of military tribunals. Heh. If that's the only thing that's upsetting the proggies, they're still under the sedative-hypnotic spell of Oxybama, a drug that wipes memory, causes hallucinations, and distorts reality into some twisted remake of The Wizard of Oz. Sigh and sigh again.

As Andrew Hughes points out at Global Research:

After 8 years of the Bush-Cheney nightmare during which we saw the wanton destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the cynical negation of centuries of Law designed to protect the most basic human rights and a foreign policy worthy of Genghis Khan, there came along the "Great Black Hope" in the persona of Barack Obama. The collective world consciousness turned uncritically to what was presented as a new era for peace, change and trust in Government.

Never before had one witnessed such an accomplished use of manipulation, propaganda, imagery and public relations wizardry to sell the public a man who was to take the baton from Bush and run with it in the race to destroy the economy, the rights of the people and help birth a nation totally controlled by those who have always lurked in the shadows of power. "Change" was promised and was delivered in the form of a deepening of the already Dystopic nightmare.

Promises were broken with no apology, the same creative legalese that infested the Bush administration, in the form of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez, was again used to deny justice to the inmates of Guantanamo, It was used to justify more torture, more destruction of the Constitution and more illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.

The President that extended the hand of peace to the Muslim world has murdered hundreds of Pakistani men, women and children. The President who promised accountability in Government has filled his staff with lobbyists, banksters and warmongers. His Attorney General refuses to prosecute some of the worst war crimes committed in modern history and continues to give legal cover to criminals who tortured with impunity.

The country has been further bankrupted by the continuing theft of taxpayer money as the Wall St. campaign donors receive their quid pro quo. Obama has stood by idly as Bernancke states that the private Federal Reserve is not answerable to either Congress of the American public. The U.S. taxpayer is now on the hook for $14.3 Trillion and rising. Foreclosures and unemployment are rising with no meaningful efforts by the administration to alleviate the symptoms, never mind the cause. The new image of America is one of tent cities, lengthening soup kitchen lines, sheriffs evicting countless thousands of young and old from their homes, once prosperous towns descending in to an eerie stillness and an increasingly disillusioned populace.

The "War on terrorism" has mutated into a control grid for an increasingly aware population. The foundation for this had already been put in place by Bush with the Patriot Act, Patriot Act 2, Military commissions act and numerous executive orders that strangled what was left of Posse Comitatus and the Constitution ...

If there's anyone left on the Left encouraging us to "give him time", I say to them "for what?".

Lest the friendly feds knock on my door before you've finished reading this, let me take pains to reiterate that I do not advocate overthrowing the US government, either violently or non-violently. I do not call for revolution. The fact is that the government has already done a fine job in overthrowing itself - and us in the bargain. The revolution was televised, in 3D, HiDef, and Dolby Surround Sound. It was, many thought, just the latest Spielberg release of "Father Knows Best/Judgment Day". And Dick Cheney as The Beaver. As I said a few days ago, the new world order is already here; it'll just take a few more months for the collective unconscious to explode.

Just like many of you, money's THE issue right now. It's hard for me to worry about The Bill of Rights, three big wars and a lot of "interventions" by spooks and "special forces rapid-response teams", gay marriage, green energy, Miss California, Rush Limbaugh or even who will be the next Injustice on the SCOTUS, when I know my unemployment is running out in about six weeks and I'm facing homeless again if I can't find a job.

I'm not above hoping that maybe everything will be OK if I can just find work. But reality trumps hope for me . . . I know better. William Gibson (Mona Lisa Overdrive, etc.) once said something like "the future is here, it's just not widely distributed". The Bilderberg Group met last weekend to decide on distribution. Anyone who still thinks that there is the time and ability to organize against their plans needs an extra bowl or two of Reality Flakes tomorrow morning.

Behind the curtain of economic metachange, the technology supporting the rulers' agenda is being perfected. A lot of it is already in place. Here are some of the issues to which that technology, with the narrowest of distributions, will be applied ...

The world is severely overpopulated with humans; not just the environment, but the entire ecology is in a critical spiral. Islam is fighting for its existence against the Judeo-Christian world as other national and regional powers strive for hegemony. True democracy is a fallacy; fascism/corporatism is gaining ground. The peoples of the entire world are restless, hungry, angry, and tired; many are just itching for a fight - anything to return hope and justice to their lives.

And the western oligarchic rulers are afraid. The middle eastern and western Asian tribes are not just going to roll over. Democratic socialism has gained purchase in South and Central America, Africa has turned mad with sado-masochism, China stumbles under its own sheer weight. Russia cannot let go of its massive, mafia-controlled ego. And on and on.

I have come to see the economic monster as a front man, a kind of King Kong on the stage in front of a thick curtain. Even though it is a terrifying reality, it serves as a momentous distraction from a more terrifying reality going on behind the curtain. That is the reality of techno-fascism.

This reality is not really a secret. We are being constantly bombarded with and indoctrinated into this reality through the mainstream media (print, tv, movies, and internet). Information is readily available; but it is absorbed constantly as entertainment, progress, wondrous science, exciting and liberating technology. Don't be fooled. The science and technology is real, but its applications are sinister. Yes, there is the potential of unprecedented benefit to humankind. But that benefit will only be achieved through a process of democratization, the likelihood of which is smaller than the chances of capitalism miraculously returning to the rising tide which floats, rather than sinks, all boats. The knowledge indeed is vaguely democratized; but here, knowledge is opium, not power. Ownership is power - not knowledge.

Some of these ideas were presented recently in "Transhumanism and the Limits of Democracy", a paper presented at the Workshop on Transhumanism and Democracy by Ronald Bailey . . .

The workshop addressed such questions as how does the enhancement of human beings through biotechnology, information technology, and applied cognitive sciences affect our understandings of autonomy, personhood, responsibility and free will? And how much and what type of societal control should be exercised over the use of enhancement technologies?

What is transhumanism? A pretty good definition is offered by bioethicist and transhumanist James Hughes who states that transhumanism is "the idea that humans can use reason to transcend the limitation of the human condition."[i] Specifically, transhumanists welcome the development of intimate technologies that will enable people to boost their life spans, enhance their intellectual capacities, augment their athletic abilities, and choose their preferred emotional states. What's particularly noteworthy is that Hughes argues that democratic decision-making is central to the task of guiding humanity into the transhuman future.

I will argue that where Hughes and others go wrong is in fetishizing democratic decision-making over the protection of minority rights. Second, I will argue that transhumanism should be accepted as a reasonable comprehensive doctrine and, as such, that it should be tolerated in liberal societies by those who disagree with its goals. Third, I will illustrate the problems of democratic authoritarianism by detailing some of the history of legal interference with reproductive rights. And then, I will briefly outline and analyze various arguments used by opponents of human enhancement which they hope will sway a majority into essentially outlawing the transhumanist enterprise ...

Since I don't usually subject my readers to this sort of stuff, I ask you to read it again. Because what Bailey is saying is, "We made this stuff, we control this stuff, we own this stuff, the hoi polloi don't get it, we know more, we know best, so bugger off."

Did you understand the dismissal of "democratic authoritarianism" in this context?? It means, "people, get outta my effing way." It is the claim of the master to justify slavery, oppression, and the central control of physical and spiritual wealth. It is the motto of Evilution. Bailey's article deserves a thorough, patient, and critical read, because it exactly expresses the views of a small, but extremely powerful cadre of scientist, technicians, corporatists, and ruling elitists determined to gain even more power at humanity's expense.

One of the best examples of the sought-after "human enhancement" movement is the development of the "Super Warrior". Rather than attempt to explain this in words, I simply direct your attention to this image. You'll get the picture. And if you think this being is being developed to defend freedom and democracy, you need an injection of Get Your Head Out of Your ...

In fact, Bailey goes on to say ...

It is an unfortunate historical fact that plenty of unenhanced humans have been quite capable of believing that millions of their fellow unenhanced humans were inferiors who needed to be eradicated.[xxxv] However, as liberal political institutions, with their limits on the power of the state, have spread and strengthened, they have increasingly restrained technologically superior groups from automatically wiping out less advanced peoples (which was usual throughout most of history). There is no a priori reason to believe that this dynamic will not continue in the future as biotechnologies, nanotechnologies, and computational technologies progressively increase people's capabilities and widen their choices.

Opponents of human enhancement focus on the alleged social harms that might result, while overlooking the huge social costs that foregoing the benefits of enhancement technologies would entail. Allen Buchanan posits "that some enhancements will increase human productivity very broadly conceived and thereby create the potential for large-scale increases in human well-being, and that the enhancements that are most likely to attract sufficient resources to become widespread will be those that promise increased productivity and will often exhibit what economists call network effects; the benefit to the individual of being enhanced will depend upon, or at least be greatly augmented by others having the enhancement as well ..."

Frankly, this crap exhausts me. I fear that this evil is the final stake in the heart of democracy, of self-determination, and frankly, of humanity as we know it.

Is the only way to save humanity based in it's virtual specicide? Are we doomed to die at the hands of mad scientists or be enslaved by them? If not, please show us a non-violent way.

Be at and about peace.

Categories: new+world+order, Bilderberg, post-democracy, post-society, techno-fascism, transhumanism,

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An Open Letter to Germany

2009-05-21T08:05:00.002-04:00

(Note: this is a guest post by my friend Mitchel Cohen. Mitchel is a poet and activist, currently traveling through Germany doing poetry readings and anti-war talks. He is a member of the Brooklyn Greens/Green Party in New York and is host of Steal This Radio on New York Talk Radio.)

Dear Germany,

I am worried and need your help.  

With elections in a few weeks, there is little talk about Germany's troops in Afghanistan nor of the current leadership's support for the terrible U.S. war, which threatens only to expand under the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama.  

We in the Peace Movement in the United States once again find ourselves unable to influence the policies of our own government. But you, dear Germany, are in a key position to do so.

Even if it is true that Germany's soldiers are not engaged in combat in Afghanistan (and I strongly doubt that official story), their presence there bolsters the Bush regime's belligerent policies, many of which are being expanded, not reduced, by President Obama. The recent accidental killing of 150 civilians by the U.S. military is just the tip of the iceberg that Germany, by being part of Bush's and now Obama's "Coalition of the Willing," offers for our future.

By continuing to remain a part of the U.S. war coalition, Germany is being complict in President Obama's recent decisions against prosecuting torturers, releasing torture photos, expanding the war in Afghanistan, delaying the pullout of troops in Iraq and so on.

Although there are specific antiwar planks in the platforms of various political parties in Germany including The Greens and Die Linke, they are barely visible in this election campaign. The U.S. must be forced to pull all troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan NOW. Germany is in a key position to make that happen by speaking up clearly and strongly for an end to these wars and to its participation in them. Bring the troops home NOW!

Mitchel Cohen

Categories: elections,, military,, third+parties,, war

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