The reaction to Julian Assange and Wikileaks by the American Empire and its cowardly minions may say more about the true nature of the Empire than what will be revealed in the leaked cables. They have managed to succeed in conveniently arresting Aassange on spurious allegations. They are calling for censorship and they are literally calling for Assange’s head. They are showing their hidden fascistic nature.
The problem with Assange from the point of view of the Empire is that he isn’t controlled. And worse, he is disobedient. Assange however hasn’t done anything that the Guardian and scores of other news outlets have done. They have reported what Assange has gathered and reported to them. The actions of Assange and the Guardian et al are essentially the same.
The reaction to Assange’s willingness to act without permission or approval is more telling than the leaks themselves. For some unknown reason, the Swedish state, Pay Pal, Amazon and many entities including governments, private companies, and individuals, have acted to strangle Assange and Wikileaks. It would be perfect irony if somebody managed to leak the communications between the American state and these servile organizations.
The psychological, social, and financial stranglehold on Assange is not only abusive to Assange and Wikileaks but it is a message to everybody else. It is the same message that is conveyed through acts of collective punishment against Palestinian, Iraqi, and Afghan populations. And that message is; don’t disobey the Empire.
The Real Crime
Assange has been derided in media all over the planet as a rapist. This is a charge that will taint his character for the rest of his days. And what is his alleged crime? He is alleged to have had sex without a condom. And for that INTERPOL has placed Assange on its list of ‘Most Wanted’. This is clearly a matter of abusing legal frameworks for political purposes. The incident has diminished INTERPOL and the Swedish state.
According to Melbourne barrister James D. Catlin, who acted for Julian Assange in London in October, over three quarters of media articles about Assange are about rape. Today, that percentage is likely higher. And according to Catlin, "There is no suggestion of drugs nor identity concealment. Far from it. Both women boasted of their celebrity connection to Assange after the events that they would now see him destroyed for."
And according to Catlin, "Apparently having consensual sex in Sweden without a condom is punishable by a term of imprisonment of a minimum of two years for rape. That is the basis for a reinstitution of rape charges against WikiLeaks figurehead Julian Assange that is destined to make Sweden and its justice system the laughing stock of the world and dramatically damage its reputation as a model of modernity."
The Swedish state took aim at Assange first for his publication of the Collateral Murder video in April. They are undoubtedly talking direction from the angry Americans that are salivating for his blood.
Assange is being harassed and defamed for his Wikileaks activity. Nobody doubts this. Even the most naive apologist for the American state knows it. There are those on the political right that openly opine that this brutal behaviour by the state is a positive development. In the heat of the moment they are in a panic. They are attacking free speech and freedom of the press. When the dust settles on this fiasco, those calling for Assange's head will be ridiculed and diminished. They will know how Assange is feeling today; or maybe that is too generous an assessment of the political and psychological health of the Empire's servants.
The Quislings
If there was any doubt that mainstream media operate as propaganda tools for the Empire, their reactions to this episode should put them to rest. And this episode informs us who does and who does not believe in governments being accountable. Many have shown that they believe the state should have the freedom to act arbitrarily and with impunity. These are very dangerous sentiments and they go against the principles of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.
The fact that the legal process of any country is used as a convenient political tool by the Empire should ring alarm bells. And the spectacle of mainstream media panicking because somebody has the courage to do the job they should be doing (exposing the crimes of a murderous Empire) is a more significant story that the leaks. The servile marching to the Empire's beat we witness from the Swedish state, Amazon, PayPal, and many others may tell us more about the Empire than the leaks themselves. These bizarre and surreal reactions to Wikileaks and Assange have exposed the cowards of the Empire for what they are.
What the state deems secret or classified are very often actions that either border on criminality or actions that are criminal. There is no doubt as to why they want, for instance, the Collateral Murder video kept under wraps.
As many of us cringe, the cheerleaders for the state behave no differently that the quislings that have supported fascistic types of state rule throughout history. These people and the state are clearly our enemies.
What is truly frightening is the obvious power the American state has in controlling nations, companies, and individuals.
The cloak of rational law, free speech, freedom of the press, and democracy has fallen to the ground.
This blog is an archive of articles I've published in MWC News, Indymedia, and on Newsgroups.
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Collateral Damage: The Children of Iraq
We are generally cognizant of the impact that war has on soldiers. We know of old veterans of World War 2, the Korean war, the war in Vietnam and so on. They used to be 'shell shocked', now they suffer the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Veterans deal with the horrors of war in many cases until the day they die. War is hell!
But what about the children that have been invaded? They lived through the horror. If soldiers are traumatized for the rest of their lives from taking part in the initiative to wage war, what about those that have war come to them, inside their town, neighbourhood, and home? Children, utterly helpless and trembling in fear; What about them?
According to a Washington Post article by Sudarsan Raghavan, "Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes, half of them children, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. Many are being killed inside their sanctuaries -- at playgrounds, on soccer fields and in schools. Criminals are routinely kidnapping children for ransom as lawlessness goes unchecked. Violence has orphaned tens of thousands."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/25/AR2007062501952.html
"UNICEF officials estimate that tens of thousands children lost one or both parents to the conflict in the past year. If trends continue, they expect the numbers to rise this year, said Claire Hajaj, a UNICEF spokesperson in Amman, Jordan."
This is one of a myriad of the consequences of war. Children suffering the agony of losing parents may not gather a lot of sympathy, especially in the West. But, like many of the effects of violence, they do not bleed and they do not explode; they may not be salient to us. The effects of war on children however, are not only crippling to the children, the legacy may come home to roost for generations to come.
Consider for a moment, the psychological impact that the war/occupation has and will continue to have on the children of Iraq.
Attachment Theory
As the Raghaven article states, many thousands of Iraqi children have been orphaned by war.
In the 1950s, John Bowlby developed the study into the subject of human attachment. Bowlby found that the quality of attachment to a primary caregiver to be a profound element in healthy human development. His studies and the groundbreaking work of Mary Ainsworth, who developed the famous "strange situation" studies have enlightened our understanding of the importance of attachment. Previous to this, many professional and learned doctors held beliefs that would suggest that coddling babies may be detrimental to them. We now know this to be not only erroneous, but that loving contact is vital to healthy development.
Since Bowlby's time, attachment research has been key in our understanding of human needs. Attachment research has focused on healthy parenting practices, on the pathological aspects of poor attachment including the connection between profoundly disrupted attachment and psychopathology. Attachment research has also shed light on adult relationship patterns, spousal violence dynamics, and many other related areas. Perhaps the most enlightening aspect of attachment research is the effects of attachment on brain development.
According to DJ Seigel in an article entitled "The Developing Mind: How relationships and the Brain interact to shape who we are" (New York: Guilford Press): "In childhood, particularly the first two years of life, attachment relationships help the immature brain use the mature functions of the parent’s brain to develop important capacities related to interpersonal functioning. The infant’s relationship with his/her attachment figures facilitates experience-dependent neural pathways to develop, particularly in the frontal lobes where the aforementioned capacities are wired into the developing brain."
Optimal development of these neural pathways is crucial. Children that are affected by insecure attachment may suffer from poor affect regulation, poor capacity for empathy, control issues, a propensity to violence, abnormal speech patterns, cognitive dysfunction, poor impulse control, a low capacity for future attachment, poor social skills, lack of conscience, inadequate verbal intelligence development, and a general incapacity to develop anything but superficial relations with others. Attachment disordered individuals may be more prone to developing addiction problems, mental health problems, and they may be more prone to deviant behaviour and consequently, criminal behaviour.
The outcomes for children that are taken into the protective services of the state in developed countries are not good in many cases. Attachment disorders and other social and psychological problems may have a lasting and undesirable result for many of the children in this unfortunate situation. Children in foster homes do normally have a primary attachment figure they can bond with however and in many cases the outcomes are positive. Their plight pales in comparison to children that are taken into orphanages where the logistics and practicality of attaching to a primary caregiver are remote. Most of these children that have been orphaned in Iraq, do not have a bright future.
The reality of having no adult to care for them is only part of their story. What may be even more significant is the effects of growing up in constant and sporadic violence.
Effects of War on the Brain
Violence has a profound impact on the human brain and particularly, the developing human brain. Brain development runs sequentially, from primitive regulation at the brainstem (which develop first) to highly complex functions in the frontal cortex.
Within the context of this ongoing development, the more a general neural system is activated, the more the brain develops a neural representation to the environment. Through this process, the well developed higher functions of the cortical system increases capacity to moderate frustration, impulsivity, and aggressive urges. Loss of function of higher brain activity of cortical function from an accident or a stroke may result in the victim being unable to regulate frustration, impulsivity, and aggression.
As the brain grows, poor development of lower area brain functions in the brain stem and the mid-brain areas will compromise optimal development of the higher functions of the cortex. Without this internalized adult (cortical functions) achieving full development, the victim will be at the mercy of his or her primitive urges. The ratio of activity between the lower functioning part of the brain and the, impulse mediating higher part, dictates the brains ability to curb anti-social impulses.
In a research article entitled "Incubated in terror: Neurodevelopmental Factors in the Cycle of Violence"
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0FEdy77QtvwJ:www.batteredmotherscustodyconference.org/INCUBATED_IN_TERROR.doc+perry+%2Bincubated+in+terror&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca
Bruce Perry states, "In the developing brain, undifferentiated neural systems are critically dependent upon sets of environmental and micro-environmental cues (eg. neurotransmitters, cellular adhesion molecules, neurohormones, amino acids, ions) in order for them to appropriately organize from their undifferentiated, immature forms. Lack, or disruption of these critical cues can result in abnormal neuronal division...". These molecular cues depend on the experiences of the developing child. If that child happens to be growing up in a war, that will obviously impact this development.
Some stages of this development of the growing brain are more critical than others. According to Perry, "Disruptions of experience dependent neurochemical signals during these periods may lead to major abnormalities or deficits in neurodevelopment, some of which may not be reversible. " Disruptions of critical cues may result from "extremes of experience". Experiences that affect the development of the lower areas (brainstem and mid-brain) "...necessarily alter the development of limbic and cortical areas because critical signals these areas depend on for normal organization originate in these lower brain areas."
Early childhood development is key to a healthy and promising future. Children's vulnerabilities need to be protected and events that disrupt this development (domestic violence, war) need to be removed from the child or the child needs to be removed from the violence. The age of the child is a key consideration. For instance, a 12 year old can easily go several weeks without a hug. For an infant, this would have a profound and lasting impact. The developmental needs of children need to be considered when we assess the impact of war and violence on its victims.
Overdevelopment of the stress response apparatus in the brain, as a result of continual state of hyper-vigilance, "will result in an altered cortical modulation ratio and a predisposition to act in an aggressive, impulsive, behavioural reactive fashion." (Perry)
Children growing in an environment like this will develop a consistent focus on non verbal cues. In all cases, children take cues from their primary caregiver. In Iraq and Afghanistan, parents are often enduring horror as well. Their fear penetrates the psyche of their children. Moreover, their children know that this means that they cannot be protected; that death may come at any moment. They live with the reality of bombs exploding, gun shots, screams and so on. A child born into this situation will be affected one way or another.
Children born into violence "are characterized by persistent physiological hyper arousal and hyperactivity. They are observed to have increased muscle tone, frequently a low-grade increase in temperature, an increase startle response, profound sleep disturbances, affect regulation problems, and generalized anxiety." (Perry)
Children exposed to chronic neuro-developmental trauma are often diagnosed to have ADHD due to their constant state of hyper-vigilance. The effects may be mitigated when the episodes of violence are predictable. When that condition is in place, the children do not have to be constantly hyper-vigilant. For instance, if they know the bombs will drop every Friday afternoon and no other time, they can relax to some extent on the other days. But if the violence is sporadic, then they are in a constant state of hyper-arousal. And in that state, their brain is affected by the constant release of cortisol, a hormone that will calm you or I in a stressful situation. Cortisol on an ongoing basis however, in a developing brain, may contribute to further poor development.
A study led by Dr. Michael DeBellis, Director of the Developmental Traumatology Labratory at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center of children with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (part 1 in the May 15, 1999, issue of Biological Psychiatry) suggests that chemical changes in the brain of hyper-vigilant children disrupt or alter developmental processes.
Eighteen abused children with PTSD were compared with 10 children with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and 24 controls. Fifteen of the PTSD group had been sexually abused, and 11 of those children had also witnessed domestic violence. The average age of onset for sexual abuse was 4 years, with an average duration of two years. The average onset for witnessing domestic violence was 2 years, with an average duration of five years before disclosure, according to DeBellis.
The PTSD group had higher levels of the catecholamine neurotransmitters norepinephrine, dopamine, and epinephrine than the group with GAD and higher levels of cortisol than healthy controls.
The longer duration of abuse corresponded with increased levels of the catecholamine neurotransmitters and cortisol in the PTSD group and severity of PTSD symptoms, according to DeBellis. "Symptoms of hyperarousal, intrusive thoughts, and avoidance were associated with increased levels of norepinephrine, dopamine, and cortisol, according to the study."
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/37/1/23.full
“Results of animal studies suggested that higher levels of catecholamines and cortisol may adversely affect brain development through accelerated loss of neurons, delays in myelination, or abnormalities in developmentally appropriate pruning of neurons,” said DeBellis.
Mission Accomplished
Iraq has been destroyed and continues to be destroyed in America's efforts to secure control of the sea of oil that lies beneath the ground. One of the many pretexts to sell the war was that getting rid of Saddam was worth it. Another sales pitch was that bringing the Iraqi people into the warm bosom of democracy and Western life makes war worth the effort. Not even the most naive war hawk makes these arguments any more. It was about oil and the geo chessboard that America needs to control.
Iraq is a destroyed nation. The people of Iraq have endured eight years of war and ten years of crippling sanctions before that. Sanctions that did not touch Saddam Hussein but killed and injured many thousands of Iraqis. During the war the people have endured terror by American forces. They have also endured the terror of sectarian violence that have swept Iraq since the American invasion. They continue to endure massive social upheaval and unemployment, the crippling of utilities and sources of vital needs such as water, electricity, and medicine. Families have experienced night raids, unpredictable and frequent explosions of violence, arbitrary imprisonment and torture of Iraqis.
The infrastructure is destroyed. It can be fixed, replaced, and rebuilt. America however, has destroyed the people of Iraq. That cannot be fixed or replaced. There is nothing America can do to fix what they have broken. And the effects of this war will live on for years, decades, and generations. There will be ongoing violence and Iraqis will be the perpetrators. They will be blamed for their violence as individuals who are violent. Nobody will trace a line back to the war. Children will do poorly in school. The child will be deemed 'slow' and nobody will trace it back to the war. Young men will strap suicide vests on their bodies and blow Westerners to bits. They will be called terrorists.
How much of the vast oil wealth of that nation will be utilized to help the people that continue to suffer from this terror unleashed on them by the United States of America?
And in the USA, tears flow on the anniversary of 9 11. It is presented as the most devastating act of terror or war in living memory. Families have lost loved ones and those loved ones cannot be replaced. However, the people of New York and Washington can recover. Most of their daily reality is unaffected by the attacks. The attacks came and they ended.
How much attention do we place on Iraq's 9 11? An ongoing terrorist attack that lasted eight years and continues to kill, maim, and terrorize. An attack that killed many thousands of Iraqis and has adversely affected the lives of millions. An attack that will be endured by the people of Iraq for generations.
A thorough analysis of the impact war has had on the people of Iraq needs to be carried out. It will only be then when the American government can make reparations to that country. The people of the United States of America, and specifically, the American government owe the people of Iraq far more than they can ever pay, but one way or another, they will pay. These things have a way of coming home to roost.
But what about the children that have been invaded? They lived through the horror. If soldiers are traumatized for the rest of their lives from taking part in the initiative to wage war, what about those that have war come to them, inside their town, neighbourhood, and home? Children, utterly helpless and trembling in fear; What about them?
According to a Washington Post article by Sudarsan Raghavan, "Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes, half of them children, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. Many are being killed inside their sanctuaries -- at playgrounds, on soccer fields and in schools. Criminals are routinely kidnapping children for ransom as lawlessness goes unchecked. Violence has orphaned tens of thousands."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/25/AR2007062501952.html
"UNICEF officials estimate that tens of thousands children lost one or both parents to the conflict in the past year. If trends continue, they expect the numbers to rise this year, said Claire Hajaj, a UNICEF spokesperson in Amman, Jordan."
This is one of a myriad of the consequences of war. Children suffering the agony of losing parents may not gather a lot of sympathy, especially in the West. But, like many of the effects of violence, they do not bleed and they do not explode; they may not be salient to us. The effects of war on children however, are not only crippling to the children, the legacy may come home to roost for generations to come.
Consider for a moment, the psychological impact that the war/occupation has and will continue to have on the children of Iraq.
Attachment Theory
As the Raghaven article states, many thousands of Iraqi children have been orphaned by war.
In the 1950s, John Bowlby developed the study into the subject of human attachment. Bowlby found that the quality of attachment to a primary caregiver to be a profound element in healthy human development. His studies and the groundbreaking work of Mary Ainsworth, who developed the famous "strange situation" studies have enlightened our understanding of the importance of attachment. Previous to this, many professional and learned doctors held beliefs that would suggest that coddling babies may be detrimental to them. We now know this to be not only erroneous, but that loving contact is vital to healthy development.
Since Bowlby's time, attachment research has been key in our understanding of human needs. Attachment research has focused on healthy parenting practices, on the pathological aspects of poor attachment including the connection between profoundly disrupted attachment and psychopathology. Attachment research has also shed light on adult relationship patterns, spousal violence dynamics, and many other related areas. Perhaps the most enlightening aspect of attachment research is the effects of attachment on brain development.
According to DJ Seigel in an article entitled "The Developing Mind: How relationships and the Brain interact to shape who we are" (New York: Guilford Press): "In childhood, particularly the first two years of life, attachment relationships help the immature brain use the mature functions of the parent’s brain to develop important capacities related to interpersonal functioning. The infant’s relationship with his/her attachment figures facilitates experience-dependent neural pathways to develop, particularly in the frontal lobes where the aforementioned capacities are wired into the developing brain."
Optimal development of these neural pathways is crucial. Children that are affected by insecure attachment may suffer from poor affect regulation, poor capacity for empathy, control issues, a propensity to violence, abnormal speech patterns, cognitive dysfunction, poor impulse control, a low capacity for future attachment, poor social skills, lack of conscience, inadequate verbal intelligence development, and a general incapacity to develop anything but superficial relations with others. Attachment disordered individuals may be more prone to developing addiction problems, mental health problems, and they may be more prone to deviant behaviour and consequently, criminal behaviour.
The outcomes for children that are taken into the protective services of the state in developed countries are not good in many cases. Attachment disorders and other social and psychological problems may have a lasting and undesirable result for many of the children in this unfortunate situation. Children in foster homes do normally have a primary attachment figure they can bond with however and in many cases the outcomes are positive. Their plight pales in comparison to children that are taken into orphanages where the logistics and practicality of attaching to a primary caregiver are remote. Most of these children that have been orphaned in Iraq, do not have a bright future.
The reality of having no adult to care for them is only part of their story. What may be even more significant is the effects of growing up in constant and sporadic violence.
Effects of War on the Brain
Violence has a profound impact on the human brain and particularly, the developing human brain. Brain development runs sequentially, from primitive regulation at the brainstem (which develop first) to highly complex functions in the frontal cortex.
Within the context of this ongoing development, the more a general neural system is activated, the more the brain develops a neural representation to the environment. Through this process, the well developed higher functions of the cortical system increases capacity to moderate frustration, impulsivity, and aggressive urges. Loss of function of higher brain activity of cortical function from an accident or a stroke may result in the victim being unable to regulate frustration, impulsivity, and aggression.
As the brain grows, poor development of lower area brain functions in the brain stem and the mid-brain areas will compromise optimal development of the higher functions of the cortex. Without this internalized adult (cortical functions) achieving full development, the victim will be at the mercy of his or her primitive urges. The ratio of activity between the lower functioning part of the brain and the, impulse mediating higher part, dictates the brains ability to curb anti-social impulses.
In a research article entitled "Incubated in terror: Neurodevelopmental Factors in the Cycle of Violence"
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0FEdy77QtvwJ:www.batteredmotherscustodyconference.org/INCUBATED_IN_TERROR.doc+perry+%2Bincubated+in+terror&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca
Bruce Perry states, "In the developing brain, undifferentiated neural systems are critically dependent upon sets of environmental and micro-environmental cues (eg. neurotransmitters, cellular adhesion molecules, neurohormones, amino acids, ions) in order for them to appropriately organize from their undifferentiated, immature forms. Lack, or disruption of these critical cues can result in abnormal neuronal division...". These molecular cues depend on the experiences of the developing child. If that child happens to be growing up in a war, that will obviously impact this development.
Some stages of this development of the growing brain are more critical than others. According to Perry, "Disruptions of experience dependent neurochemical signals during these periods may lead to major abnormalities or deficits in neurodevelopment, some of which may not be reversible. " Disruptions of critical cues may result from "extremes of experience". Experiences that affect the development of the lower areas (brainstem and mid-brain) "...necessarily alter the development of limbic and cortical areas because critical signals these areas depend on for normal organization originate in these lower brain areas."
Early childhood development is key to a healthy and promising future. Children's vulnerabilities need to be protected and events that disrupt this development (domestic violence, war) need to be removed from the child or the child needs to be removed from the violence. The age of the child is a key consideration. For instance, a 12 year old can easily go several weeks without a hug. For an infant, this would have a profound and lasting impact. The developmental needs of children need to be considered when we assess the impact of war and violence on its victims.
Overdevelopment of the stress response apparatus in the brain, as a result of continual state of hyper-vigilance, "will result in an altered cortical modulation ratio and a predisposition to act in an aggressive, impulsive, behavioural reactive fashion." (Perry)
Children growing in an environment like this will develop a consistent focus on non verbal cues. In all cases, children take cues from their primary caregiver. In Iraq and Afghanistan, parents are often enduring horror as well. Their fear penetrates the psyche of their children. Moreover, their children know that this means that they cannot be protected; that death may come at any moment. They live with the reality of bombs exploding, gun shots, screams and so on. A child born into this situation will be affected one way or another.
Children born into violence "are characterized by persistent physiological hyper arousal and hyperactivity. They are observed to have increased muscle tone, frequently a low-grade increase in temperature, an increase startle response, profound sleep disturbances, affect regulation problems, and generalized anxiety." (Perry)
Children exposed to chronic neuro-developmental trauma are often diagnosed to have ADHD due to their constant state of hyper-vigilance. The effects may be mitigated when the episodes of violence are predictable. When that condition is in place, the children do not have to be constantly hyper-vigilant. For instance, if they know the bombs will drop every Friday afternoon and no other time, they can relax to some extent on the other days. But if the violence is sporadic, then they are in a constant state of hyper-arousal. And in that state, their brain is affected by the constant release of cortisol, a hormone that will calm you or I in a stressful situation. Cortisol on an ongoing basis however, in a developing brain, may contribute to further poor development.
A study led by Dr. Michael DeBellis, Director of the Developmental Traumatology Labratory at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center of children with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (part 1 in the May 15, 1999, issue of Biological Psychiatry) suggests that chemical changes in the brain of hyper-vigilant children disrupt or alter developmental processes.
Eighteen abused children with PTSD were compared with 10 children with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and 24 controls. Fifteen of the PTSD group had been sexually abused, and 11 of those children had also witnessed domestic violence. The average age of onset for sexual abuse was 4 years, with an average duration of two years. The average onset for witnessing domestic violence was 2 years, with an average duration of five years before disclosure, according to DeBellis.
The PTSD group had higher levels of the catecholamine neurotransmitters norepinephrine, dopamine, and epinephrine than the group with GAD and higher levels of cortisol than healthy controls.
The longer duration of abuse corresponded with increased levels of the catecholamine neurotransmitters and cortisol in the PTSD group and severity of PTSD symptoms, according to DeBellis. "Symptoms of hyperarousal, intrusive thoughts, and avoidance were associated with increased levels of norepinephrine, dopamine, and cortisol, according to the study."
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/37/1/23.full
“Results of animal studies suggested that higher levels of catecholamines and cortisol may adversely affect brain development through accelerated loss of neurons, delays in myelination, or abnormalities in developmentally appropriate pruning of neurons,” said DeBellis.
Mission Accomplished
Iraq has been destroyed and continues to be destroyed in America's efforts to secure control of the sea of oil that lies beneath the ground. One of the many pretexts to sell the war was that getting rid of Saddam was worth it. Another sales pitch was that bringing the Iraqi people into the warm bosom of democracy and Western life makes war worth the effort. Not even the most naive war hawk makes these arguments any more. It was about oil and the geo chessboard that America needs to control.
Iraq is a destroyed nation. The people of Iraq have endured eight years of war and ten years of crippling sanctions before that. Sanctions that did not touch Saddam Hussein but killed and injured many thousands of Iraqis. During the war the people have endured terror by American forces. They have also endured the terror of sectarian violence that have swept Iraq since the American invasion. They continue to endure massive social upheaval and unemployment, the crippling of utilities and sources of vital needs such as water, electricity, and medicine. Families have experienced night raids, unpredictable and frequent explosions of violence, arbitrary imprisonment and torture of Iraqis.
The infrastructure is destroyed. It can be fixed, replaced, and rebuilt. America however, has destroyed the people of Iraq. That cannot be fixed or replaced. There is nothing America can do to fix what they have broken. And the effects of this war will live on for years, decades, and generations. There will be ongoing violence and Iraqis will be the perpetrators. They will be blamed for their violence as individuals who are violent. Nobody will trace a line back to the war. Children will do poorly in school. The child will be deemed 'slow' and nobody will trace it back to the war. Young men will strap suicide vests on their bodies and blow Westerners to bits. They will be called terrorists.
How much of the vast oil wealth of that nation will be utilized to help the people that continue to suffer from this terror unleashed on them by the United States of America?
And in the USA, tears flow on the anniversary of 9 11. It is presented as the most devastating act of terror or war in living memory. Families have lost loved ones and those loved ones cannot be replaced. However, the people of New York and Washington can recover. Most of their daily reality is unaffected by the attacks. The attacks came and they ended.
How much attention do we place on Iraq's 9 11? An ongoing terrorist attack that lasted eight years and continues to kill, maim, and terrorize. An attack that killed many thousands of Iraqis and has adversely affected the lives of millions. An attack that will be endured by the people of Iraq for generations.
A thorough analysis of the impact war has had on the people of Iraq needs to be carried out. It will only be then when the American government can make reparations to that country. The people of the United States of America, and specifically, the American government owe the people of Iraq far more than they can ever pay, but one way or another, they will pay. These things have a way of coming home to roost.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Mainstream Bullshit
The media have a responsibility and that responsibility is to inform us of what’s going on. If a nuclear power plant is at risk of spreading nuclear death two miles from our town, it is the responsibility of the media to let us know that the danger exists and why it exists. To a certain extent, we put our trust in them. It is a social contract. They are there to informs us, to warn us, to let us know what's going on. Who, what, where, when, and why; all the information we need regarding the forces that impact us in our daily lives is delivered on our doorsteps, it comes in through the cable. We sleep well knowing that no midnight asteroid is about to send us back to the stone age.
But can we? At this point, trusting mainstream media is not a rational or intelligent choice to make. You may have noticed. They are not always honest. They have lied by saying things that are not true, by not saying things that are true, and very often through spinning bullshit, which is slightly different than lying. Sometimes bullshit is worse than lies. It’s not that they have done so several times, or even often. It’s that they do it all the time and they do it consistently.
Economic Lies
Economists have been lying and continue to lie through a critical time as the world economy becomes increasingly volatile and we become vulnerable to financial devastation. At this point in time the media and countless so-called economists have lulled faithful believers with a pack of lies. They have done it in 2008 and 2009 and they continue with the same lies and backward analysis in 2010. The same economists, experts, and corporate shills that have led us to the doors of the economic slaughterhouse are portrayed as gurus that have the holy grail of economic wisdom and direction. They are the same shysters, criminals, and corporate shills that have orchestrated the biggest sell out in history.
When Wall street falters, they get excited. When Main Street slides into the Third World, they barely notice. While America shivers over burning barrels, Obama fiddles in blissful ignorance; he seems a sort of 'let them eat cake' monarch. A reporter recently asked Obama about his efforts to curb poverty in America. Obama's reply could have come from the mouth of any imbecile or stooge that just walked out of any neo-liberal seminar. Obama said, " the most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy… It’s more important than any program we could set up. It’s more important than any transfer payment we could have.” Which is code for saying that the ruling class is the filter through which all spending must pass through. And it is implied, in all this, that wealth emanates from the ruling class to the working classes and not the other way around. Will mainstream media even mention this or anything close? The short answer is 'no'.
They are defining and will increasingly define poverty as 'the New Normal'. And as America swirls down the toilet of depression, mainstream media bubbles along with cautious optimism that the stock market will continue to score enormous profits for the ruling class. Not once will they notice that what is good for Wall Street is bad for Main Street. To mention this class dichotomy is incorrect, politically.
War Lies
Even the most serious proponent of the substance and integrity of mainstream media would have to admit, when it comes to war, that the Pentagon, the President of the United States, and mainstream media make Orwell's 1948 imagination seem prophetic. In 2010, doublespeak is expected and as you will read below, the infrastructure for constant surveillance is under construction. War is peace. What's good is bad and what's bad is good. The Iraq war ended but today, alternative media are reporting that American and Iraqi troops killed at least eight civilians in Fallujah, Iraq. American has no intention of leaving. It is just one more pack of lies. There is no end to the examples of doublespeak and outright lies that fill today's media.
If you maintain a watch with war news stories collectors, like Anti War.com, you will see that atrocities happen in Afghanistan with sickening regularity. Civilians are killed by unmanned robots (drones) or NATO forces but mainstream media doesn't report it or, if they do, they present it as just one more 'whoops' moment. American gangsters are running loose in uniform in Afghanistan and kill with impunity. A band of GI Joes has recently been found to have been cutting body parts off Afghan civilians they had killed for sport and had been keeping them for trophies. It was barely mentioned in mainstream media but you'd have to look for it. Imagine, for a moment, how the story would play if this was done by Cubans or Iranians. Do you think they'd notice?
The Americans have been bombing civilian populations in Pakistan with increasing regularity. In the past two days, according to Jason Ditz reporting for Anti-war.com, American drones have killed 37 people, one of which may belong to the Haqqani Network, yet another group on that long list of enemies. The other victims are reported to be civilians or, people that have not conclusively been linked to the group.
In another very disturbing development, the American state is carrying out the extrajudicial execution of an American named Anwar al Awlaki who they allege is a terrorist. The individual case itself is alarming enough. The fact that it re-defines the scope of power of the American state however, is the real issue. Have mainstream media noticed? Currently, for mainstream media, the issue is about how to fight the legal battle against this bizarre development in American law. If they can kill their own citizens above the rule of law, we have entered a horrific new reality.
Then there is the sheer danger consequential to slaughtering, terrorizing and destroying whole nations. Media have the responsibility to let us know how badly the USA, the UK, Canada and all the other NATO participants have destroyed the cultures, livelihoods, and lives of the people they so routinely and mindlessly murder and maim. It is the same as the nuclear plant analogy. There will be consequences for us all. There will be future 9 11s and worse. And it will happen because of what we are doing now. If our tax dollars are in the service of whipping up hate around the world against us, we should know.
The media have been portraying the ongoing atrocities as an aberration; maybe it was rogue soldiers, maybe it was poor communication, maybe the victims were human shields. Victims are dismissed as 'collateral damage'. What will not be discussed is the ugly and likely possibility that these victims are victims of collective punishment.
A dark and sinister reality had emerged within the American dream. Mainstream media isn't reporting it; they are the maestros. The only objective views of this 'new normal/World Order' will be here in alternative media and if you indulge in reading or watching what you are reading at the moment (MWC News), chances are you have not swallowed the kool aid.
The State
Mainstream media is not just a simple money pig. It is much more than that. With the marriage of the corporation and the state fully consummated, it is natural for the corporate media to mouth the interests of both. Mainstream media has become a tool employed by those that want to tell you that the Western world needs to, more than anything else, shore up its security. In a similar vein to Hitler’s fire in the Reichstag, the billionaires that run the White House want us to be terrified. They want a to funnel billions of tax dollars into their own pockets through the sale of weapons systems. As a result we have seen nine years of talking heads discuss, in very serious tones, the need for security. We are in a new age, we are told. We are threatened by Muslim extremists. If you can remember the 60s, 70s or even well before then, you will know that terrorism or guerrilla warfare has been around a long, long time and there is nothing new or more sinister today than there was in 1970. Terrorism is another word for guerrilla warfare which is naturally adopted by those with little or no power.
This thrust is more threatening to freedom than we may notice at first. In a free society, the threat of danger is always present. It's part of the social contract. Criminals run free until they have actually committed the crime; that's the price of living in a free society.
Hyping ubiquitous threats has muted opposition to the construction of a massive, although unseen, state apparatus in the United States that would shame the USSR in its heyday. The Washington Post, to its credit, has recently reported vague parameters on the growing American state apparatus. In an article entitled "Top Secret America" Dana Priest and William Arkin report that the American government has created a massive underworld that "has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."
Here is an excerpt from the article: "These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.
The investigation's other findings include:
* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space."
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/
Kudos to the Washington Post. Given the magnitude of the story however, it is almost hidden from view. Where are the talking heads? The hyped up concern about a Soviet style neighbour watching neighbour reality emerging in the USA?
The common narrative is not aimed to challenge this kind of ominous development. Instead, it is to continue to cry for the need for more security and less freedom. The story line shouts the need for an iron state apparatus.
Corporate media is becoming synonymous with state media, much like Pravda of the old USSR. Corporate media don't just make money and parrot the wishes and plans of the ruling class. They also strive to indoctrinate and shape the rabble into a uniform and docile mass of petty chauvinism.
Ruling Class Media
The term, 'ruling class' has not been in common usage except for that band of serious Marxists selling papers at the university. However, there is no better description for the class that run government. They rule and they rule because they belong to those that are wealthy enough to tell politicians what to do. They are, properly, the ruling class.
They have their own specific interests and those interests happen to be against the interests of the rest of us. These interests include selling weapons, controlling resources, and dominating each and every corner of the world. Those munitions/oil billionaires that set the tone, the content, and the agenda for the media they also own and control. A small-town newspaper does not have the resources to hire investigative journalists and they pick up the main stories from the newswire. Those newswire stories are fed through the filters of the corporate media. Here, Noam Chomsky explains who sets the content and the agenda for the mainstream:
“The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controlled from above. If you don't like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.”
Chomsky also makes the point that the media has a specific motive and that motive is the audience itself. That is why news stories are very short and their patterns are quite simplistic. Short attention grabbing sound bites or pleasing optics are important. Content is also important but not in the way it should be. The main thrust of the business is not to inform, the business is about grabbing an audience and people are the product. Chomsky continues:
"Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses."
(Lifted from: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9710-mainstream-media.html)
But there is more to this than selling audiences. You will notice that the media will make certain issues relevant and important. They will spin them out in a seamless drum beat to the corporate party line and with each other, sometimes word for word. For example, in the 90s the ruling class wanted to cut social programs in the USA and in Canada. The deficit was the 'terrorist threat' of the time. Right wing think tanks and bond rating agencies like Moody’s of New York suddenly had a lot to say about how societies are governed and how tax money is spent. You may argue; but the deficit was a real problem at the time and it has returned. Notice however that when tax dollars are spent on weapons systems, the media does not make an issue of the deficit. It is rarely mentioned, if at all. That is because those that control the media are the same people that profit from building weapons systems.
According to Peter Phillips, “The eleven largest or most influential media corporations in the United States are General Electric Company (NBC), Viacom Inc. (cable), The Walt Disney Company (ABC), Time Warner Inc.(CNN), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (CBS), The News Corporation Ltd. (Fox), Gannett Co. Inc., Knight-Ridder Inc., New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., and the Times Mirror Co. These eleven major broadcast and print media corporations now represent a major portion of the news information systems in the United states. For many people their entire source of news and information comes from these eleven corporations."
(Source:http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Media%20Censor_ProjCensor.html)
General Electric is in the business of making battlefield computer systems. Their director, former senator Sam Nunn (who also directs Chevron/Texaco) isn’t likely to promote journalists that research his connections or to report any stories that work against the interests of NBC. He is not likely to be happy about his reporters making anti war statements either.
Steve Mizrach points out, “Opinion in our society must be carefully shaped and molded within certain careful boundaries: those who transgress those boundaries are libel to wind up "extremists," "ideologues," "fanatics," or "agitators. Now that dissidents in the U.S. can no longer be labelled 'fellow travellers' of the Moscow-run Commie conspiracy, the task has become more urgent. And how is it that consent, that most valuable of social products, is manufactured?”
(Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Consent_AmerStyle.html)
Mizrach points out that the following tactics are employed by what we may regard, realistically, as the enemy; that is, mainstream media. They mould opinion particularly on Sunday talk shows by parading the opinions of sycophants that are the mouthpieces that have been schooled within the hallowed halls of the university of corporate indoctrination.
These are bolstered by spin doctors, or, PR devils. “PR managers, known as "spin doctors" when working in government, are able to carefully craft speeches and advertisements which evoke powerful images in the American psyche, frequently using "power words" such as freedom, fairness, liberty, justice, and peacekeeping for policies which dominate, discriminate, imprison, exploit, and terrorize much of the rest of the world.” (Mizrach)
Mizrach also points out the real purpose of public opinion polls is not so much to measure public opinion as it is to shape it. They also employ academics and think tanks to shape and mould public opinion.
Together, these tools are used against us. They are more threatening an enemy to the citizens of Western nations than an army of bin Ladens. They are used not only to shape public opinion. They are used to lie to us and to indoctrinate the impressionable and the young.
Class War
Non Americans look upon our American brothers and sisters and what they have served up on a daily basis under a disguise called 'news'. We watched in incredulity as the American health care debate raged. The word socialist, we discovered, is a dirty word in America. Ignorant to a fault, the politicians and the media spun lies and distortions with wide eyed enthusiasm as if the rest of the world wasn't watching. It looked like a Jerry Springer show, a pitiful crowd of beaten down as angry victims proudly showing their own ignorance to the world, utterly oblivious. But that is not America, it is a fraction of America and we find the same backward and angry lumpen attitudes everywhere. The difference is, in the USA, it is cultivated.
It should be obvious by now that we are on the losing side of a very aggressive class war. The ruling elites have the clear advantage. They are waging war on the rest of us and we, as a collective, are only dimly aware that its happening. CNN, Fox, and CTV are not telling. A large part of that ignorance is a result of their slick packaging and their endless supply of Presidents, Prime Ministers, and sexy stories. They are very good at slick visuals and clever sound bites. Their whole focus is on the packaging, the face. They have their reputation and influence. They have paid reporters that are on the scene. They have very little in terms of substance. For that, you turn to us; to alternative media.
It is hard for us to actually recognize them as our enemy. They have such pretty smiles and they tell such human and touching stories. But don't ever forget; these useful idiots are aiming to impoverish you, to strip away your rights. It's happening. They callously disregard the suffering of 'collaterals'. They tell you that they are ensuring that you are 'secure' by whipping up hate all over the planet. The stunned mouthpieces don't even know they are doing it. Some of the worst war crimes in living memory are enabled by these treacherous talking heads. They are taking part in the ultimate economic betrayal of America and the rest of the post-industrial world. They protect the ruling class and work for the benefit of that class against you and me. They are certainly our enemy. What is vital is that you and I recognize this. We can't fight back as long as we allow ourselves to be lulled by the likes of Jerry Springer and CNN.
For our part, we have MWC News, Counterpunch, Democracy Now, and a large choice of alternative media outlets to seek out pertinent news, honest opinions, and insightful analysis. The internet is a genie let out of a bottle. This fluid and democratic flow of information is the blessing of this uncontrolled machine that sits before you. The corporations do not own or control this. They certainly have an advantage but on this front, our fight has just begun. We need to expand, to develop better tools and a wider audience. We need to fight back. Together we stand on the front lines. Recognize it.
But can we? At this point, trusting mainstream media is not a rational or intelligent choice to make. You may have noticed. They are not always honest. They have lied by saying things that are not true, by not saying things that are true, and very often through spinning bullshit, which is slightly different than lying. Sometimes bullshit is worse than lies. It’s not that they have done so several times, or even often. It’s that they do it all the time and they do it consistently.
Economic Lies
Economists have been lying and continue to lie through a critical time as the world economy becomes increasingly volatile and we become vulnerable to financial devastation. At this point in time the media and countless so-called economists have lulled faithful believers with a pack of lies. They have done it in 2008 and 2009 and they continue with the same lies and backward analysis in 2010. The same economists, experts, and corporate shills that have led us to the doors of the economic slaughterhouse are portrayed as gurus that have the holy grail of economic wisdom and direction. They are the same shysters, criminals, and corporate shills that have orchestrated the biggest sell out in history.
When Wall street falters, they get excited. When Main Street slides into the Third World, they barely notice. While America shivers over burning barrels, Obama fiddles in blissful ignorance; he seems a sort of 'let them eat cake' monarch. A reporter recently asked Obama about his efforts to curb poverty in America. Obama's reply could have come from the mouth of any imbecile or stooge that just walked out of any neo-liberal seminar. Obama said, " the most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy… It’s more important than any program we could set up. It’s more important than any transfer payment we could have.” Which is code for saying that the ruling class is the filter through which all spending must pass through. And it is implied, in all this, that wealth emanates from the ruling class to the working classes and not the other way around. Will mainstream media even mention this or anything close? The short answer is 'no'.
They are defining and will increasingly define poverty as 'the New Normal'. And as America swirls down the toilet of depression, mainstream media bubbles along with cautious optimism that the stock market will continue to score enormous profits for the ruling class. Not once will they notice that what is good for Wall Street is bad for Main Street. To mention this class dichotomy is incorrect, politically.
War Lies
Even the most serious proponent of the substance and integrity of mainstream media would have to admit, when it comes to war, that the Pentagon, the President of the United States, and mainstream media make Orwell's 1948 imagination seem prophetic. In 2010, doublespeak is expected and as you will read below, the infrastructure for constant surveillance is under construction. War is peace. What's good is bad and what's bad is good. The Iraq war ended but today, alternative media are reporting that American and Iraqi troops killed at least eight civilians in Fallujah, Iraq. American has no intention of leaving. It is just one more pack of lies. There is no end to the examples of doublespeak and outright lies that fill today's media.
If you maintain a watch with war news stories collectors, like Anti War.com, you will see that atrocities happen in Afghanistan with sickening regularity. Civilians are killed by unmanned robots (drones) or NATO forces but mainstream media doesn't report it or, if they do, they present it as just one more 'whoops' moment. American gangsters are running loose in uniform in Afghanistan and kill with impunity. A band of GI Joes has recently been found to have been cutting body parts off Afghan civilians they had killed for sport and had been keeping them for trophies. It was barely mentioned in mainstream media but you'd have to look for it. Imagine, for a moment, how the story would play if this was done by Cubans or Iranians. Do you think they'd notice?
The Americans have been bombing civilian populations in Pakistan with increasing regularity. In the past two days, according to Jason Ditz reporting for Anti-war.com, American drones have killed 37 people, one of which may belong to the Haqqani Network, yet another group on that long list of enemies. The other victims are reported to be civilians or, people that have not conclusively been linked to the group.
In another very disturbing development, the American state is carrying out the extrajudicial execution of an American named Anwar al Awlaki who they allege is a terrorist. The individual case itself is alarming enough. The fact that it re-defines the scope of power of the American state however, is the real issue. Have mainstream media noticed? Currently, for mainstream media, the issue is about how to fight the legal battle against this bizarre development in American law. If they can kill their own citizens above the rule of law, we have entered a horrific new reality.
Then there is the sheer danger consequential to slaughtering, terrorizing and destroying whole nations. Media have the responsibility to let us know how badly the USA, the UK, Canada and all the other NATO participants have destroyed the cultures, livelihoods, and lives of the people they so routinely and mindlessly murder and maim. It is the same as the nuclear plant analogy. There will be consequences for us all. There will be future 9 11s and worse. And it will happen because of what we are doing now. If our tax dollars are in the service of whipping up hate around the world against us, we should know.
The media have been portraying the ongoing atrocities as an aberration; maybe it was rogue soldiers, maybe it was poor communication, maybe the victims were human shields. Victims are dismissed as 'collateral damage'. What will not be discussed is the ugly and likely possibility that these victims are victims of collective punishment.
A dark and sinister reality had emerged within the American dream. Mainstream media isn't reporting it; they are the maestros. The only objective views of this 'new normal/World Order' will be here in alternative media and if you indulge in reading or watching what you are reading at the moment (MWC News), chances are you have not swallowed the kool aid.
The State
Mainstream media is not just a simple money pig. It is much more than that. With the marriage of the corporation and the state fully consummated, it is natural for the corporate media to mouth the interests of both. Mainstream media has become a tool employed by those that want to tell you that the Western world needs to, more than anything else, shore up its security. In a similar vein to Hitler’s fire in the Reichstag, the billionaires that run the White House want us to be terrified. They want a to funnel billions of tax dollars into their own pockets through the sale of weapons systems. As a result we have seen nine years of talking heads discuss, in very serious tones, the need for security. We are in a new age, we are told. We are threatened by Muslim extremists. If you can remember the 60s, 70s or even well before then, you will know that terrorism or guerrilla warfare has been around a long, long time and there is nothing new or more sinister today than there was in 1970. Terrorism is another word for guerrilla warfare which is naturally adopted by those with little or no power.
This thrust is more threatening to freedom than we may notice at first. In a free society, the threat of danger is always present. It's part of the social contract. Criminals run free until they have actually committed the crime; that's the price of living in a free society.
Hyping ubiquitous threats has muted opposition to the construction of a massive, although unseen, state apparatus in the United States that would shame the USSR in its heyday. The Washington Post, to its credit, has recently reported vague parameters on the growing American state apparatus. In an article entitled "Top Secret America" Dana Priest and William Arkin report that the American government has created a massive underworld that "has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."
Here is an excerpt from the article: "These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.
The investigation's other findings include:
* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space."
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/
Kudos to the Washington Post. Given the magnitude of the story however, it is almost hidden from view. Where are the talking heads? The hyped up concern about a Soviet style neighbour watching neighbour reality emerging in the USA?
The common narrative is not aimed to challenge this kind of ominous development. Instead, it is to continue to cry for the need for more security and less freedom. The story line shouts the need for an iron state apparatus.
Corporate media is becoming synonymous with state media, much like Pravda of the old USSR. Corporate media don't just make money and parrot the wishes and plans of the ruling class. They also strive to indoctrinate and shape the rabble into a uniform and docile mass of petty chauvinism.
Ruling Class Media
The term, 'ruling class' has not been in common usage except for that band of serious Marxists selling papers at the university. However, there is no better description for the class that run government. They rule and they rule because they belong to those that are wealthy enough to tell politicians what to do. They are, properly, the ruling class.
They have their own specific interests and those interests happen to be against the interests of the rest of us. These interests include selling weapons, controlling resources, and dominating each and every corner of the world. Those munitions/oil billionaires that set the tone, the content, and the agenda for the media they also own and control. A small-town newspaper does not have the resources to hire investigative journalists and they pick up the main stories from the newswire. Those newswire stories are fed through the filters of the corporate media. Here, Noam Chomsky explains who sets the content and the agenda for the mainstream:
“The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controlled from above. If you don't like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.”
Chomsky also makes the point that the media has a specific motive and that motive is the audience itself. That is why news stories are very short and their patterns are quite simplistic. Short attention grabbing sound bites or pleasing optics are important. Content is also important but not in the way it should be. The main thrust of the business is not to inform, the business is about grabbing an audience and people are the product. Chomsky continues:
"Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses."
(Lifted from: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9710-mainstream-media.html)
But there is more to this than selling audiences. You will notice that the media will make certain issues relevant and important. They will spin them out in a seamless drum beat to the corporate party line and with each other, sometimes word for word. For example, in the 90s the ruling class wanted to cut social programs in the USA and in Canada. The deficit was the 'terrorist threat' of the time. Right wing think tanks and bond rating agencies like Moody’s of New York suddenly had a lot to say about how societies are governed and how tax money is spent. You may argue; but the deficit was a real problem at the time and it has returned. Notice however that when tax dollars are spent on weapons systems, the media does not make an issue of the deficit. It is rarely mentioned, if at all. That is because those that control the media are the same people that profit from building weapons systems.
According to Peter Phillips, “The eleven largest or most influential media corporations in the United States are General Electric Company (NBC), Viacom Inc. (cable), The Walt Disney Company (ABC), Time Warner Inc.(CNN), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (CBS), The News Corporation Ltd. (Fox), Gannett Co. Inc., Knight-Ridder Inc., New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., and the Times Mirror Co. These eleven major broadcast and print media corporations now represent a major portion of the news information systems in the United states. For many people their entire source of news and information comes from these eleven corporations."
(Source:http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Media%20Censor_ProjCensor.html)
General Electric is in the business of making battlefield computer systems. Their director, former senator Sam Nunn (who also directs Chevron/Texaco) isn’t likely to promote journalists that research his connections or to report any stories that work against the interests of NBC. He is not likely to be happy about his reporters making anti war statements either.
Steve Mizrach points out, “Opinion in our society must be carefully shaped and molded within certain careful boundaries: those who transgress those boundaries are libel to wind up "extremists," "ideologues," "fanatics," or "agitators. Now that dissidents in the U.S. can no longer be labelled 'fellow travellers' of the Moscow-run Commie conspiracy, the task has become more urgent. And how is it that consent, that most valuable of social products, is manufactured?”
(Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Consent_AmerStyle.html)
Mizrach points out that the following tactics are employed by what we may regard, realistically, as the enemy; that is, mainstream media. They mould opinion particularly on Sunday talk shows by parading the opinions of sycophants that are the mouthpieces that have been schooled within the hallowed halls of the university of corporate indoctrination.
These are bolstered by spin doctors, or, PR devils. “PR managers, known as "spin doctors" when working in government, are able to carefully craft speeches and advertisements which evoke powerful images in the American psyche, frequently using "power words" such as freedom, fairness, liberty, justice, and peacekeeping for policies which dominate, discriminate, imprison, exploit, and terrorize much of the rest of the world.” (Mizrach)
Mizrach also points out the real purpose of public opinion polls is not so much to measure public opinion as it is to shape it. They also employ academics and think tanks to shape and mould public opinion.
Together, these tools are used against us. They are more threatening an enemy to the citizens of Western nations than an army of bin Ladens. They are used not only to shape public opinion. They are used to lie to us and to indoctrinate the impressionable and the young.
Class War
Non Americans look upon our American brothers and sisters and what they have served up on a daily basis under a disguise called 'news'. We watched in incredulity as the American health care debate raged. The word socialist, we discovered, is a dirty word in America. Ignorant to a fault, the politicians and the media spun lies and distortions with wide eyed enthusiasm as if the rest of the world wasn't watching. It looked like a Jerry Springer show, a pitiful crowd of beaten down as angry victims proudly showing their own ignorance to the world, utterly oblivious. But that is not America, it is a fraction of America and we find the same backward and angry lumpen attitudes everywhere. The difference is, in the USA, it is cultivated.
It should be obvious by now that we are on the losing side of a very aggressive class war. The ruling elites have the clear advantage. They are waging war on the rest of us and we, as a collective, are only dimly aware that its happening. CNN, Fox, and CTV are not telling. A large part of that ignorance is a result of their slick packaging and their endless supply of Presidents, Prime Ministers, and sexy stories. They are very good at slick visuals and clever sound bites. Their whole focus is on the packaging, the face. They have their reputation and influence. They have paid reporters that are on the scene. They have very little in terms of substance. For that, you turn to us; to alternative media.
It is hard for us to actually recognize them as our enemy. They have such pretty smiles and they tell such human and touching stories. But don't ever forget; these useful idiots are aiming to impoverish you, to strip away your rights. It's happening. They callously disregard the suffering of 'collaterals'. They tell you that they are ensuring that you are 'secure' by whipping up hate all over the planet. The stunned mouthpieces don't even know they are doing it. Some of the worst war crimes in living memory are enabled by these treacherous talking heads. They are taking part in the ultimate economic betrayal of America and the rest of the post-industrial world. They protect the ruling class and work for the benefit of that class against you and me. They are certainly our enemy. What is vital is that you and I recognize this. We can't fight back as long as we allow ourselves to be lulled by the likes of Jerry Springer and CNN.
For our part, we have MWC News, Counterpunch, Democracy Now, and a large choice of alternative media outlets to seek out pertinent news, honest opinions, and insightful analysis. The internet is a genie let out of a bottle. This fluid and democratic flow of information is the blessing of this uncontrolled machine that sits before you. The corporations do not own or control this. They certainly have an advantage but on this front, our fight has just begun. We need to expand, to develop better tools and a wider audience. We need to fight back. Together we stand on the front lines. Recognize it.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Uncle Sam Wants You
I ran oligarchic British rule from America. I replaced it with rule "of, by, and for" the people.
I am not a man. I am the soul of America. I am the spirit of 'We the People'.
I want you, the good people of America, to recognize me. I am dying.
I want you to demand freedom of speech; all speech.
I want you to demand freedom of religion; all religions.
I want you to demand the end of wars for plunder and profit.
I want you to never invade or dominate the people of foreign lands. I want you to never stoop to the level of cowardly and aggressive tyrant; to not defend yourself unless you are actually under attack.
I want you to recognize that the greatest threat to freedom is the timid and cowardly need to wrap our nation within a bubble of security. I want you to burn the Patriot Act and anything that looks like it.
I want you to demand and use freedom of assembly; to protest and organize.
I want you to demand that the state not arrest or detain or harass anybody unless they are involved in an identified crime.
I want you to demand that no person is deprived of life, liberty, or property, without fair opportunity to defend himself.
I want you to demand that all people are granted their natural liberty unless a fair trial deems them a threat to others.
We are no longer a bastion of justice; a standard other nations aim to be. The State is raising itself above rule of law. We are losing governance by rule of law and giving way to a state of arbitrary lawlessness and laws of convenience. The Spirit of America has not only been corrupted. It is being been savagely ripped to shreds. America is its own nemesis.
I want you, the people of America, to be under full volitional control of your labour and your resources. This is where prosperity is born and this is where it flourishes. To be prosperous again, 'we the people' must resume control of our wealth. Our nation has been commandeered by privateers; privateers that have sold our wealth and our birthright for fast profit. Our wealth and prosperity, our work ethic, has been replaced by an ethos that worships scheming and manipulating for individual gain.
Don't despair. My Spirit is not dead. It is immortal. And it is not limited to or owned by America. It is fundamental to human beings everywhere and always has been. It is the spirit of humanity. It is as unstoppable as life itself.
It is here: " True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
It is there: "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky
It is everywhere: " When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom there will be no state. -Vladimir Lenin
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The $1,000,000,000.00 Photo Op
The G 20 and G8 meetings in Toronto and Huntsville, Ontario, scheduled for late June will cost Canadian taxpayers one billion dollars.
These meetings happen regularly and one thing they have in common is that nothing ever comes out of them. They are completely useless. Real Politik happens behind closed doors with lawyers and lobbyists. It does not happen at G 20 meetings. This is all aimed to spoon feed innocent bystanders enough pabulum to keep us docile.
And what of the Bay Street neighbourhood where the representatives of the ruling class will meet? It is, naturally, at the centre of where our twit masters do their business. The fact that it is our masters that have multiple financial crisis mounting on top of an archaic economic system might suggest their quisling political clowns and puppets should just hide. But no, they are paid good money to take it on the chin and take it on the chin they will.
The bourgeoisie have screwed us all and they are putting the iron state apparatus in place to ensure we learn out humble station. Working classes in the represented eight and twenty countries are not happy and those in economic hinterlands are starting to mix Molotov cocktails. There are hints of class warfare as one class batters and rapes the other.
As it is American workers can't find jobs while car manufacturing plants rust away. Scores are homeless while families have no place to sleep.
The twit class have sold the jobs away to squeeze that extra bit of profit for themselves. Jobs that North Americans and Europeans used to believe to be their rightful inheritance; a legacy of hard work and vision. All that is now dust and the 'leaders' will spell out the belt tightening measures that we must endure to ensure those that are too big to fall, don't. The large Bay Street banks at the centre of the G 20 meeting area may be more then tempting targets for anarchists and fed up citizens.
But One Billion dollars?
Just because billion sounds something like million, they are nowhere close. A billion is astronomical. A million seconds would take about 11 or 12 days to pass. A billion seconds would take 32 years.
A trillion, which is a number we hear regarding bailouts to the rich, would take 32,000 years.
So, in the case of numbers, don't let your intuition inform you. Let energetic logic inform you if you want to understand the nature of the situation we are all in at the moment.
Conveniently, a bank was recently fire bombed in Ottawa providing ammunition for the state to spare no expense for security. In 2007, police dressed as protesters were filmed trying to whip demonstrators into a violent frenzy during a North American leaders summit in Quebec.
Increasingly, since 2001, Western democratic states have incrementally notched their fascistic posture to the point they think nothing of arresting people with no charges, putting a bounty on the head of undesirables, and generally raising themselves (the state) above the rule of law. Corporations and the state have consummated their marriage in the most disgusting public porn display in history.
Prior to 2001 anti-capitalist protests were becoming common and no doubt, concerning. The state did react with brutality; as states naturally do. But nowadays we are sailing uncharted waters. Anything can happen.
These meetings happen regularly and one thing they have in common is that nothing ever comes out of them. They are completely useless. Real Politik happens behind closed doors with lawyers and lobbyists. It does not happen at G 20 meetings. This is all aimed to spoon feed innocent bystanders enough pabulum to keep us docile.
And what of the Bay Street neighbourhood where the representatives of the ruling class will meet? It is, naturally, at the centre of where our twit masters do their business. The fact that it is our masters that have multiple financial crisis mounting on top of an archaic economic system might suggest their quisling political clowns and puppets should just hide. But no, they are paid good money to take it on the chin and take it on the chin they will.
The bourgeoisie have screwed us all and they are putting the iron state apparatus in place to ensure we learn out humble station. Working classes in the represented eight and twenty countries are not happy and those in economic hinterlands are starting to mix Molotov cocktails. There are hints of class warfare as one class batters and rapes the other.
As it is American workers can't find jobs while car manufacturing plants rust away. Scores are homeless while families have no place to sleep.
The twit class have sold the jobs away to squeeze that extra bit of profit for themselves. Jobs that North Americans and Europeans used to believe to be their rightful inheritance; a legacy of hard work and vision. All that is now dust and the 'leaders' will spell out the belt tightening measures that we must endure to ensure those that are too big to fall, don't. The large Bay Street banks at the centre of the G 20 meeting area may be more then tempting targets for anarchists and fed up citizens.
But One Billion dollars?
Just because billion sounds something like million, they are nowhere close. A billion is astronomical. A million seconds would take about 11 or 12 days to pass. A billion seconds would take 32 years.
A trillion, which is a number we hear regarding bailouts to the rich, would take 32,000 years.
So, in the case of numbers, don't let your intuition inform you. Let energetic logic inform you if you want to understand the nature of the situation we are all in at the moment.
Conveniently, a bank was recently fire bombed in Ottawa providing ammunition for the state to spare no expense for security. In 2007, police dressed as protesters were filmed trying to whip demonstrators into a violent frenzy during a North American leaders summit in Quebec.
Increasingly, since 2001, Western democratic states have incrementally notched their fascistic posture to the point they think nothing of arresting people with no charges, putting a bounty on the head of undesirables, and generally raising themselves (the state) above the rule of law. Corporations and the state have consummated their marriage in the most disgusting public porn display in history.
Prior to 2001 anti-capitalist protests were becoming common and no doubt, concerning. The state did react with brutality; as states naturally do. But nowadays we are sailing uncharted waters. Anything can happen.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Don't Do That Voo Doo that You Do Do
World financial systems were devastated in 2008 and 2009. Now, in 2010, nobody is sure where we're headed. There seems to be general agreement that we will not get back to where we were. Wall Street is doing okay apparently. Profits are soaring. Main Street continues to suffer and ominous clouds remain on the horizon. They seem to have dumped their financial fiasco on the lot of us. We can look forward to gutted social programs and decaying public infrastructure throughout the once thriving capitalist world. Main Street appears to be in a long term downward spiral. An economic nightmare.
As ordinary citizens we appear to be at the mercy of politicians and capitalists. Economists and mainstream media appear devoid of courage and savvy. We cannot continue to rely on them as if they can provide sound and critical analysis about what is happening with the economy. They are like schooling fish following bait. Stunned to a fault.
We need to examine the totality of the system we are at the mercy of without prejudice or emotion. We need to look at the good and the bad. We can no longer rely on paid whores and their glib superficial analysis. They are wrong over and over and over again. The people that go to work day in and day out are getting screwed, directly or indirectly, by capitalists and their paid shills.
The absurdity of closed and rusting manufacturing plants rotting as millions look for work; of millions homeless while homes are empty and boarded up is a sign. These are signs that speak far louder and with much more authority than the politicians, the shysters, and their pitiful talking heads. These signs are telling us that something is seriously wrong.
We need to revolutionize our thinking and our sense of responsibility. The days of being responsible for only ourselves and our families are over. We can no longer afford to let the self professed financial wizards hold the reigns. They turned out to be self serving criminals and they got all of us where it hurts. The time to fight back is here.
The Bottom Line
Capitalism tends to certain outcomes and contradictions. This doesn't mean that capitalism has or will necessarily get to its preferred outcomes, but it does mean there will be constant pressure to fulfill these tendencies. For example, steam tends to rise but many factors may retard that tendency. Given the pervasiveness and power of capitalism in the modern world, it is important to understand and debate the tendencies of this force that impacts upon all our lives.
Without abandoning Marx entirely, we will consider a less scholarly and more user friendly look at the tendencies of capitalism.
The most obvious starting point is to name the bottom line. The goal and reason for its existence is profit; benefits to human beings are beside the point - it doesn’t care. It tends to benefit humans in meeting wants more-so than needs. It has no inherent compulsion or mandate to meet them. It is nothing like a personal or human force. Playstations, colourful wrappers and advertizing are important; curing leprosy and aids and providing medicine to the sick are also important, but only if there is profit in it. Capitalism has no responsibility whatsoever to cure the sick or feed the hungry. To make this assumption, as both apologists and detractors sometimes do, isn't constructive or fair. It simply isn't the case. The extent to which the capitalist system has been beneficial to human beings is a matter of auspicious coincidence on the part of both capitalists and consumers.
Tendencies of Capitalism
- The tendency to sell cheap: Otherwise, somebody else will sell cheaper; this is the fundamental tendency to competition.
- The tendency to buy low and sell high: This tendency includes wages; that is, to pay as little in wages as possible and to sell the produced item for as high a price as possible. The potential for competition from other capitalists tends to keep the margin between the output for wages and the price of the commodity at a small and ever decreasing margin.
- The tendency to reduce or eliminate overhead costs: This tendency requires capitalists to use the most efficient and cost effective technology possible resulting in the technological revolution that has occurred over the past century. Ironically, if the process is devoid of labour input, the value of the product decreases. The general labour theory of value (Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Marx) addresses this tendency. That is, the general value of a commodity depends, in part, on the labour that has gone into it.
- The tendency of the rate of profit to fall: As production becomes more efficient and more is produced with less effort, the rate of profit falls. The result is the need for capitalists to find new ways of making a profit and to squeeze a dime out of a worker. There is also an increased need to acquire public services and infrastructure, to plunder, and to expand markets where no market existed before and to profit from public utilities and human needs.
- The tendency to reduce real wages: And to reduce the workforce. As the rate of profit diminishes, the most obvious place to gain extra profit is exactly where the wealth was created in the first place, from the producer (the worker) by paying him or her less in real terms.
- The tendency for big firms to consume smaller firms: This process not only builds the assets of the capitalist, it reduces competition.
- The tendency to pit the consumer against the worker: It is the dual life of the average citizen; we are both. We want service to be efficient and products to be of high quality but we resent bosses cracking the whip.
- Tendency to co-opt and control the state: This is not a conspiracy theory; it is the grandest conspiracy of all. The marriage of modern capitalist states and capital is almost complete. Real decisions are made behind closed doors with lobbyists, lawyers and politicians.
- The tendency to reduce regulations and safety standards: These are costly and inefficient.
- The tendency to aim for short term profit: Investing, especially with the advent of computer technology is as easy as pushing a button or implementing a program. However, this does not erase the tendency for large capitalists to work and invest in fertilizing the overall context for investing in the long term.
- The tendency to privatize everything: Including natural resources such as water, land, and the air we breathe; the latter is difficult to control.
- The tendency to value human beings in terms of exchange value: Correspondingly, there is a tendency to de-value or ignore human beings that do not play a part and a true tendency to de-value human beings that are an obstacle to profit. These tendencies have many psychological and other ramifications depending on the extent to which capitalist ideology has been introjected by the local population or the particular individual.
- The tendency to invest in and develop profitable commodities: While human needs may demand medicine, housing, and food, the concentration of capitalism will be medicine, housing and food only if these items can fetch profit. If not, more tasty hamburgers or better game boy graphics will be the areas of research and development.
- The tendency to laterally acquire all aspects of production: Large firms aim to control all aspects that go into production from owning and controlling primary industries to shipping and advertizing.
- The tendency to contract out: Rather than pay union wages or maintain a workforce, it may be more cost efficient to buy services or goods.
- The tendency to force the state (taxpayer) to absorb costs: Paying for necessary roads, railways, general infrastructure tend to be offloaded to taxpayers as much as possible.
- The tendency to shape shift: Capitalism's tendencies and appearance changes through time. For example, the logic of Fordism has been lost to the tendency to expand markets to poor countries. The domestic market, once vital, is now forgotten. There is more profit to be made elsewhere. The logic of Keynesianism has also been lost to globalization. The general political wisdom had stated, however reluctantly, that the more wages/money locals have, the more they demand goods and services, requiring more employees to provide commodities to demand of consumers. This domestic economic stimulation tends toward inflation, an accepted necessary evil.
Another change has been the increased focus on capitalists to invest in capital as opposed to produced commodities. Although capital is devoid of value without labour and manufactured commodities to back them up, modern capitalists have been living off and getting wealthy from false financial bubbles; they have been living off a credit card without a real job. This has resulted in enormous pain for many millions over the past several years.
Voodoo
The logical extensions of capitalist ideology appear to be most closely articulated by the ideological formulations of the Austrian and Chicago Schools of Economics and by such individuals as Milton Freidman, Ludwig von Mises, and right wing politicians like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and fascists like Augusto Pinochet. The ideas have gained tremendous currency and even current liberals have come to accept neo-liberal perspectives. Liberals like Obama pay lip service to leftist policies but concede important economic matters to voodoo. This strain is more consistent with advanced capitalism in the sense that it articulates and aims to satisfy its global needs. One such need is to usurp what they see as interference from the state which tends to put limits on the need for excess and unbridled theft. In the USA, Tea Party protesters are demanding the reduction/end of government. They advocate for pure capitalism and challenge and attack government based redistribution mechanisms. The end result for most of the tea-partiers would be utter devastation.
The logical conclusion to such an environment would be that wealthy classes would own and control not only market based commodities but public utilities as well. It is a system of capitalist anarchy.
So far their performance has been dismal. Their free trade and globalization initiatives from the 80s have devastated manufacturing; the heart of the economy. Their unfettered and unregulated voodoo have magically blown financial bubbles resulting in financial disasters as these bubbles (false economies) collapsed.
As painful as these voodooistic machinations have been on the middle and lower strata of society, they have created delirious glee on Wall Street. They are diametrically and unapologetically opposed to social responsibility.
From a rational point of view, wealth begins with production. From the marginalist point of view the genesis of wealth is a fuzzy concept but generally, they believe that wealth emanates from the wealthy and down to the middle classes (the workers that produce). This view would suggest that the best way to stimulate the economy would be to give wealth to the wealthy and they will be in a position to "trickle" money all the way down to the rest of us. With the billions granted to the ultra wealthy these past few years, Bush and Obama could have paid off mortgages and put money in people's pockets to buy cars and other goods and services. They are children of the high priests of magical thinking.
The logical extension of the mess we find ourselves in today is similar to the social and economic configuration of feudal Europe several hundred years ago. Kings and Lords are replaced by the most powerful of the capitalist class. Ironically, our social and economic configuration could conceivably return to something reminiscent of the social configuration that capitalism pulled us out of.
We have been subdued through Keynsian policies and Keynes was explicit in his intend to curb working class revolutionary sentiments. The deal worked quite well. Those days are over. Massive unemployment and massive cuts to social programs are here to stay.
As a result we are in for a period of social upheaval. The ugly past has returned and we are in it.
The Nature of Capitalism
We may ask ourselves how capitalism, the -ism we associate with democracy and freedom, with social and technological progress and with justice, could be turning on us. This is why we need to examine the true nature of the beast. The nature of capitalism is multifaceted. While it has potent liberating potential it also has the potential to turn on us with a vengeance.
When we examine it we find that capital does not provide anything but compulsion. It is completely ethereal. Illusory. Unlike commodities, it doesn’t exist in the tangible world. Money has little or no use value, it is all exchange value. Capital exists as an abstract compulsion. What is not so abstract is the real impact it has on each and every one of us. It has radically changed the way we behave and the way we live. It has changed the way we value and see ourselves.
Ultimately capitalism isn't an ideology. It isn't right wing or left wing. It is a sleight of hand, a trick to gain profit from any given unit of exchange. It is a sleight of hand that comes dangerously close to theft. But that is a human judgment. Capitalism on its own is amoral, apolitical, it is devoid of substance or ethics. Paradoxically, it is also the most potent political, immoral, and ruthless force the world has known. It is fully intent on taking over the world and its mission is almost accomplished. We are slaves to it and there is no good reason to believe that we will not continue to be slaves to it. As a tool it has been enormously useful and inadvertently, it has propelled us well into the future of human development. But the time has come that it is no longer a tool. It appears to have become a malevolent spirit that has turned the tables and has taken control of humanity.
Magical Thinking to Critical Thinking
As a subject and an area of study we may find the whole thing too unwieldy and difficult to understand. As a subject it is loaded. We either love it or we loathe it. To criticize it is to be risk being labeled a communist and a Marxist. To point out its strength, its ability to improve the lives of individuals and nations, and its power to develop and enrich us all, we run the risk of being criticized as a tool of the rich and powerful. As a subject it appears to be off the radar for most; it has traditionally been a subject area only intellectuals and economists dared to probe.
The time has come to examine the true nature of this phenomena and what it is. We need to examine the very basics from the ground up; literally. It is the single most relevant context of our lives. Everything we see are commodities or potential commodities. Cars, computers, cups, and tables are modified rock. Everything around us is all extracted from rock or water. This are base of all things, even our bodies. Workers and nature modify rock and water and turn them into commodities. We need to start from there and to not be afraid to look at the whole process. It is all our own inheritance. We are part of it. It is our world.
Capitalism has been and is the most powerful social force in history and it directly impacts you. It will impact you until the day you die. It will impact your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It is nothing to shy away from.
As long as it is only the intellectuals, the economists, and the capitalists that examine and understand it, we will remain utterly at its mercy. The problem with that is, it has none.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
His Master's Voice
The Province of Ontario is having a fire sale.
Act now and get in on these amazing deals. It looks too good to be true but - it be true. The very profitable Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, Ontario Power Generation, Hydro One and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario will soon be up for grabs. Each one is a cash cow - they are very profitable enterprises owned by the people of Ontario.
If it walks like a duck...
The Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, has been advised by his masters at Goldman Sachs as well as other private financial wizards to sell these lucrative assets off. While plans being discussed will see that no private shareholder will be able to buy into a majority position, there is nothing to suggest that further privatization will see that eventuality. If this thin edge of the wedge is granted the rest will be easier.
The problem is this: If the enterprises are profitable and they are owned by the taxpayers; Why should the taxpayers sell them off to private investors who will collect large sums of profit for themselves? Why not use that money to either reduce the burden on the taxpayer or use it to shore up strained infrastructure?
McGuinty is taking advice from the same people that have plunged the Western world in economic crisis through short term scheming. Millions of American workers and homeowners have been devastated by their slippery manoeuvres. These are people that operate with one thing in mind and that one thing is short term profit. They are using politicians and media to continue to convince us that Wall Street is our friend; a benevolent money wizard that knows what is best for Main Street. At this point it is insulting.
A Politician is a Politician is a Politician
McGuinty is facing an election in 2011. Potential initial investment sums on his books just prior to an election will make the McGuinty Liberals look good. And maybe that is it. Maybe that is the reason why McGuinty is selling these lucrative assets to wealthy investors. However, a move like this does raise suspicion. After all, he would not be the first politician on the take. For instance, in June 2007 it was reported here (MWC News) that BAE (weapons sellers in the UK) kicked one billion British pounds back to Saudi Prince Bandar to secure a 43 billion pound sale of weapons systems. At the time Tony Blair said that he will block an inquiry by the Serious Fraud Office to the affair because he did not want to offend the Saudis; he did not want to "damage relations" with them.
http://leftlite.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html
As a result of this and many other offences against the public by politicians and corporations we need to be suspicious. While we do not allege that Ontario politicians are on the take like Prince Bandar, we need to raise the possibility. It would explain a lot.
The previous Ontario Conservatives sold the lucrative Highway 407 system to private investors and the investors continue to get wealthy while Joe Main Street is paying more to drive on the private highways; as you would expect. The Conservatives also contemplated selling Hydro One but their scheme fell through.
McGuinty, like all liberals, understands that screwing the population through incremental policy decisions is far easier than exposing themselves in one fell swoop (as conservatives tend to do). In that spirit McGuinty's scheme is all about portions and complexity. Private investors will not be allowed to own majority shares and there will be limits on foreign investment - for the time being.
And it naturally follows that McGuinty believes the majority of Ontario taxpayers are morons.
The Soft Sell
According to the Toronto Star, Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan admitted he was "doing what the spinmeisters call preconditioning" and said "The upcoming throne speech and budget will not announce the sale of any asset we currently own." He further stated, "We will, however, continue to examine whether our government businesses could be unleashed to provide new jobs and economic opportunity for Ontario families," and he said that there would be widespread public consultation on any such move.
Look for a careful and calculating approach to the multi-billion dollar handoff to the same people that have been advising McGuinty. Look for increases in prices for electricity, booze, and lottery tickets. Look for a substantial increase in Ontarians tax bills in the coming years.
A Time to be Cynical
As citizens we need to become more aware of the connections between politicians and private investors, especially the likes of Goldman Sachs. We have traditionally deferred to them assuming that they know best and that they will work in societies best interests. We elect politicians that are accustomed to the backrooms and lobbyists and lawyers. The idea being that if we have the best shyster representing our constituency, we will get a better deal. The bitter truth is it doesn't work that way and it never did.
We need to look inside the backroom deals between privateers and politicians and at the moment the citizens of Ontario can make a good start. We need to demand McGuinty and Goldman Sachs meetings and all meetings between our elected representatives and large scale thieves be transparent.
Considering all that has happened over the past decade, now is the time to be cynical. In fact, it always was.
Act now and get in on these amazing deals. It looks too good to be true but - it be true. The very profitable Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, Ontario Power Generation, Hydro One and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario will soon be up for grabs. Each one is a cash cow - they are very profitable enterprises owned by the people of Ontario.
If it walks like a duck...
The Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, has been advised by his masters at Goldman Sachs as well as other private financial wizards to sell these lucrative assets off. While plans being discussed will see that no private shareholder will be able to buy into a majority position, there is nothing to suggest that further privatization will see that eventuality. If this thin edge of the wedge is granted the rest will be easier.
The problem is this: If the enterprises are profitable and they are owned by the taxpayers; Why should the taxpayers sell them off to private investors who will collect large sums of profit for themselves? Why not use that money to either reduce the burden on the taxpayer or use it to shore up strained infrastructure?
McGuinty is taking advice from the same people that have plunged the Western world in economic crisis through short term scheming. Millions of American workers and homeowners have been devastated by their slippery manoeuvres. These are people that operate with one thing in mind and that one thing is short term profit. They are using politicians and media to continue to convince us that Wall Street is our friend; a benevolent money wizard that knows what is best for Main Street. At this point it is insulting.
A Politician is a Politician is a Politician
McGuinty is facing an election in 2011. Potential initial investment sums on his books just prior to an election will make the McGuinty Liberals look good. And maybe that is it. Maybe that is the reason why McGuinty is selling these lucrative assets to wealthy investors. However, a move like this does raise suspicion. After all, he would not be the first politician on the take. For instance, in June 2007 it was reported here (MWC News) that BAE (weapons sellers in the UK) kicked one billion British pounds back to Saudi Prince Bandar to secure a 43 billion pound sale of weapons systems. At the time Tony Blair said that he will block an inquiry by the Serious Fraud Office to the affair because he did not want to offend the Saudis; he did not want to "damage relations" with them.
http://leftlite.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html
As a result of this and many other offences against the public by politicians and corporations we need to be suspicious. While we do not allege that Ontario politicians are on the take like Prince Bandar, we need to raise the possibility. It would explain a lot.
The previous Ontario Conservatives sold the lucrative Highway 407 system to private investors and the investors continue to get wealthy while Joe Main Street is paying more to drive on the private highways; as you would expect. The Conservatives also contemplated selling Hydro One but their scheme fell through.
McGuinty, like all liberals, understands that screwing the population through incremental policy decisions is far easier than exposing themselves in one fell swoop (as conservatives tend to do). In that spirit McGuinty's scheme is all about portions and complexity. Private investors will not be allowed to own majority shares and there will be limits on foreign investment - for the time being.
And it naturally follows that McGuinty believes the majority of Ontario taxpayers are morons.
The Soft Sell
According to the Toronto Star, Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan admitted he was "doing what the spinmeisters call preconditioning" and said "The upcoming throne speech and budget will not announce the sale of any asset we currently own." He further stated, "We will, however, continue to examine whether our government businesses could be unleashed to provide new jobs and economic opportunity for Ontario families," and he said that there would be widespread public consultation on any such move.
Look for a careful and calculating approach to the multi-billion dollar handoff to the same people that have been advising McGuinty. Look for increases in prices for electricity, booze, and lottery tickets. Look for a substantial increase in Ontarians tax bills in the coming years.
A Time to be Cynical
As citizens we need to become more aware of the connections between politicians and private investors, especially the likes of Goldman Sachs. We have traditionally deferred to them assuming that they know best and that they will work in societies best interests. We elect politicians that are accustomed to the backrooms and lobbyists and lawyers. The idea being that if we have the best shyster representing our constituency, we will get a better deal. The bitter truth is it doesn't work that way and it never did.
We need to look inside the backroom deals between privateers and politicians and at the moment the citizens of Ontario can make a good start. We need to demand McGuinty and Goldman Sachs meetings and all meetings between our elected representatives and large scale thieves be transparent.
Considering all that has happened over the past decade, now is the time to be cynical. In fact, it always was.
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