I totally agree with this!
9 Holiday Gifts Every American Should Go Without
By Luanne Bradley, EcoSalon
December 15, 2009
http://www.ecosalon.com/
I’m so over the annual mandatory retail blitz which prompts us to purchase scads of presents no one needs (and few can afford).
Enough is enough. Necessity is one thing; waste is another. Be an angel and give material items only to the needy. Give kisses, homemade jam and DIY potpourri to your family, teachers, bosses, employees and friends. Stick to eco for everything else.
Here is my festive round up of gifts both you and Santa can live without:
A new cell phone
The cynical perspective is that these communication devices are made not to last. From batteries that die prematurely to signals that crash to the uncool technology factor, we are inclined to trade in our models for new bells and whistles. Instead of tossing out (remember, there is no out), research ways to make your battery last through a few more seasons.
Uggs
AOL Shopping wants you to buy Uggs for the holidays because "they are getting better and better, having evolved from a boho chic trend to an integral part of many people’s wardrobe." The so-called sheepskin baked potatoes grew 57% in sales last year because of the desire to own newer pairs. Shouldn’t a pair of $200 boots (and I don’t mean the knock-offs) last several winters? I say keep the ones you have lovingly broken in and get them resoled and patched or whatever is needed to endure the city and slopes.
Toys
Dear Syd and Lolo: You have been more nice than naughty this year but that doesn’t mean I will buy you toxic plastic entertainment to junk up your rooms, or virtual computer games or board games, DVD’s or learning gadgets. You hardly use the ones you have and your life won’t be improved by having more under the tree. Let’s take a hike, instead. Love, Santa.
Calendars
How much paper is wasted on these obligatory annual date keepers that are becoming obsolete? I was at Borders the other day and couldn’t believe the variety, from New Moon to 365 Cats to Nuns Having Fun. The ones that don’t sell are virtually useless, having no shelf life in 2011. Sure, some of them are green, but there are greener ways to schedule your days.
Diamonds
They aren’t a girl’s best friend. Everyone knows chocolate is. Or her Pug dog. Or maybe her laptop. The U.S. is the largest consumer of the rocks, purchasing over $33.7 billion dollars’ worth in 2005. If you must become engaged and do it with diamonds on Dec. 25, buy the conflict-free variety. Otherwise, say it with a handwritten letter or poem.
Ornaments
There are enough existing tree ornaments out there to deck all the halls of the North Pole and then some. If you’ve busted your balls, buy used or eco tree decor that will last, or trade with friends and loved ones. Make your own DIY felt ornaments with your kids, string some corn, nix the lights or go solar. The more the demand, the more the production, the more the waste. When the old objects get thrown out, remember, there is no "out."
Personalized Coffee Mugs
They’re far better than throwaway paper cups, but still tacky, and usually are made in China from toxic materials. Sure, Nana might enjoy getting her morning jolt looking at renderings of her precious babies with reindeer ears, but an eco-friendly commuter cup made from corn, stainless steel or recycled post consumer materials is a better way to go, plus, you won’t need a refill of that Joe.
Holiday Gift Baskets
Stores like Costco are make shopping for that boss or neighbors a no-brainer with a pre-packaged $130 junk food basket disguised as a gourmet food orgie. If you must give a basket, why not go with quality, healthy goods, such as fair trade dark chocolate and coffees? I’m sorry, but Jalapeno-blend cheese spread is not organic and summer sausages have Food Inc. written all over them.
Dalmatian Puppies
Rascal, one of the stars of the new 101 Dalmatians Musical was one of dozens of rescue dogs discovered at animal shelters for the stage show. Rescue was found with a broken leg at the side of the road. Like many Dalmatians, he was abandoned when he grew from an adorable Christmas puppy into a energetic teen. Resist buying puppies for Christmas unless they are from a shelter and you plan to see them through adulthood, just as you would a child.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Obama's Af-Pak is as Whack as Bush's Iraq
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=print/content/obamas-af-pak-whack-bushs-iraq
Obama's Af-Pak is as Whack as Bush's Iraq
By Glen Ford
Created 12/02/2009 - 02:57
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
President Obama has reached a watershed in his presidency: he has devolved to the intellectual level of George Bush, while retaining his world class powers of speech. History may remember Obama as just another vapid but predatory imperialist president who happens to be…superficially eloquent. Unfortunately, the clarity of Obama’s diction is not matched by coherence of policy. Af-Pak is at least as whack as Bush’s Iraq.
“More occupation means less occupation.”
Barack Obama’s oratorical skills have turned on him, revealing, as George Bush’s low-grade delivery never could, the perfect incoherence of the current American imperial project in South Asia. Bush’s verbal eccentricities served to muddy his entire message, leaving the observer wondering what was more ridiculous, the speechmaker or the speech. There is no such confusion when Obama is on the mic. His flawless delivery of superbly structured sentences provides no distractions, requiring the brain to examine the content – the policy in question – on its actual merits. The conclusion comes quickly: the U.S. imperial enterprise in Afghanistan and Pakistan is doomed, as well as evil.
The president’s speech to West Point cadets was a stream of non sequiturs so devoid of logic as to cast doubt on the sanity of the authors. “[T]hese additional American and international troops,” said the president, “will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.”
Obama claims that, the faster an additional 30,000 Americans pour into Afghanistan, the quicker will come the time when they will leave. More occupation means less occupation, you see? This breakneck intensification of the U.S. occupation is necessary, Obama explains, because “We have no interest in occupying your country.”
“The U.S. imperial enterprise in Afghanistan and Pakistan is doomed, as well as evil.”
If the Americans were truly interested in occupying Afghanistan, the logic goes, they would slow down and stretch out the process over many years, rather than mount an 18-month surge of Taliban-hunting. The Afghans are advised to hold still – the pulsating surge will be over before they know it.
At present, of course, the Americans have assumed all “responsibility” for Afghanistan – so much so that President Hamid Karzai only learned about Obama’s plans earlier on Tuesday during a one-hour tele-briefing. This is consistent with Obama’s detailed plans for Afghan liberation, under U.S. tutelage. The president is as wedded to high stakes testing of occupied peoples as he is for American public school children. “This effort must be based on performance. The days of providing a blank check are over,” said the Occupier-in-Chief. He continued:
“And going forward, we will be clear about what we expect from those who receive our assistance. We will support Afghan Ministries, Governors, and local leaders that combat corruption and deliver for the people. We expect those who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable.”
Such rigorous oversight of their country’s affairs should keep Afghan minds off the fact that they have been fighting to remain independent of foreign rule for centuries, if not millennia. If Obama is right, Afghans might also be distracted from dwelling on the question of who their “Ministries, Governors, and local leaders” are answerable to – the Afghan people or the Americans?
“Obama advises Afghans to be patient and trusting regarding their sovereignty.”
Although President Obama is anxious to bring U.S. troop levels above 100,000 as quickly as possible, he advises Afghans to be patient and trusting regarding their sovereignty. “It will be clear to the Afghan government, and, more importantly, to the Afghan people, that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country." That is, it will become clear in the fullness of time, but hopefully no later than 18 months after the planned surge begins. If all goes well, the Taliban will be dead or nearly so, and the non-Taliban Afghans will be prepared to begin assuming “responsibility for their own country.” If not, then the Americans will be forced to continue as occupiers – reluctantly, of course, since, as the whole world and the more intelligent class of Afghans know, the Americans “have no interest in occupying your country” – unless they have to.
Should the Afghans become confused about American intentions, they might consult with their Pakistani neighbors, for whom President Obama also has plans.
“[We] have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe-haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear,” the president declared. “America is also providing substantial resources to support Pakistan's democracy and development. We are the largest international supporter for those Pakistanis displaced by the fighting.”
Obama did not mention that it was the Americans that coerced and bribed the Pakistani military into launching the attacks that displaced over a million people in the Swat region and hundreds of thousands more in border areas. How nice of them to join in humanitarian assistance to the homeless.
The Pakistanis, like the Afghans, were assured the Americans will not abandon them to their own, independent devices. Said Obama: “And going forward, the Pakistani people must know: America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan's security and prosperity long after the guns have fallen silent, so that the great potential of its people can be unleashed.”
Some Pakistanis might consider that a threat. According to polling by the Pew Global Attitudes Project [1], only 16 percent of Pakistanis held a favorable view of the United States in 2009. Actually, that’s a point or two higher than U.S. popularity in Occupied Palestine (15 percent) and Turkey (14 percent), the only other Muslim countries on the Pew list.
Not to worry. Obama knows things that escape the rest of us. For example, the fact that “we have forged a new beginning between America and the Muslim World - one that recognizes our mutual interest in breaking a cycle of conflict, and that promises a future in which those who kill innocents are isolated by those who stand up for peace and prosperity and human dignity.”
Which means, we can expect those polling numbers to start going up, soon.
“Only 16 percent of Pakistanis held a favorable view of the United States in 2009.”
When Obama isn’t launching bold initiatives and “new beginnings,” he’s busy taking care of U.S. imperial business as usual. Obama is most proud that the U.S. spends more on its military than all the rest of the nations of the planet, combined.
“[T]he United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades,” he told the cadets, “a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and advancing frontiers of human liberty.” Others might not view the rise of U.S. hegemony in such a positive light. But they are wrong, said the president. “For unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation's resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours.”
In Obama’s worldview, it’s the thought that counts. Americans don’t seek world domination; it just comes to them. “We do not seek to occupy other nations,” they leave us no choice. If it were not for American concern for the welfare of all the world’s people, the U.S. would not maintain 780 military bases in other people's countries.
Obama has certainly matured as an American-style statesman in his nine and a half months in office. As a TV Native American might say, “Black man in white house speak like forked tongued white man.” Only better.
Obama's Af-Pak is as Whack as Bush's Iraq
By Glen Ford
Created 12/02/2009 - 02:57
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
President Obama has reached a watershed in his presidency: he has devolved to the intellectual level of George Bush, while retaining his world class powers of speech. History may remember Obama as just another vapid but predatory imperialist president who happens to be…superficially eloquent. Unfortunately, the clarity of Obama’s diction is not matched by coherence of policy. Af-Pak is at least as whack as Bush’s Iraq.
“More occupation means less occupation.”
Barack Obama’s oratorical skills have turned on him, revealing, as George Bush’s low-grade delivery never could, the perfect incoherence of the current American imperial project in South Asia. Bush’s verbal eccentricities served to muddy his entire message, leaving the observer wondering what was more ridiculous, the speechmaker or the speech. There is no such confusion when Obama is on the mic. His flawless delivery of superbly structured sentences provides no distractions, requiring the brain to examine the content – the policy in question – on its actual merits. The conclusion comes quickly: the U.S. imperial enterprise in Afghanistan and Pakistan is doomed, as well as evil.
The president’s speech to West Point cadets was a stream of non sequiturs so devoid of logic as to cast doubt on the sanity of the authors. “[T]hese additional American and international troops,” said the president, “will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.”
Obama claims that, the faster an additional 30,000 Americans pour into Afghanistan, the quicker will come the time when they will leave. More occupation means less occupation, you see? This breakneck intensification of the U.S. occupation is necessary, Obama explains, because “We have no interest in occupying your country.”
“The U.S. imperial enterprise in Afghanistan and Pakistan is doomed, as well as evil.”
If the Americans were truly interested in occupying Afghanistan, the logic goes, they would slow down and stretch out the process over many years, rather than mount an 18-month surge of Taliban-hunting. The Afghans are advised to hold still – the pulsating surge will be over before they know it.
At present, of course, the Americans have assumed all “responsibility” for Afghanistan – so much so that President Hamid Karzai only learned about Obama’s plans earlier on Tuesday during a one-hour tele-briefing. This is consistent with Obama’s detailed plans for Afghan liberation, under U.S. tutelage. The president is as wedded to high stakes testing of occupied peoples as he is for American public school children. “This effort must be based on performance. The days of providing a blank check are over,” said the Occupier-in-Chief. He continued:
“And going forward, we will be clear about what we expect from those who receive our assistance. We will support Afghan Ministries, Governors, and local leaders that combat corruption and deliver for the people. We expect those who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable.”
Such rigorous oversight of their country’s affairs should keep Afghan minds off the fact that they have been fighting to remain independent of foreign rule for centuries, if not millennia. If Obama is right, Afghans might also be distracted from dwelling on the question of who their “Ministries, Governors, and local leaders” are answerable to – the Afghan people or the Americans?
“Obama advises Afghans to be patient and trusting regarding their sovereignty.”
Although President Obama is anxious to bring U.S. troop levels above 100,000 as quickly as possible, he advises Afghans to be patient and trusting regarding their sovereignty. “It will be clear to the Afghan government, and, more importantly, to the Afghan people, that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country." That is, it will become clear in the fullness of time, but hopefully no later than 18 months after the planned surge begins. If all goes well, the Taliban will be dead or nearly so, and the non-Taliban Afghans will be prepared to begin assuming “responsibility for their own country.” If not, then the Americans will be forced to continue as occupiers – reluctantly, of course, since, as the whole world and the more intelligent class of Afghans know, the Americans “have no interest in occupying your country” – unless they have to.
Should the Afghans become confused about American intentions, they might consult with their Pakistani neighbors, for whom President Obama also has plans.
“[We] have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe-haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear,” the president declared. “America is also providing substantial resources to support Pakistan's democracy and development. We are the largest international supporter for those Pakistanis displaced by the fighting.”
Obama did not mention that it was the Americans that coerced and bribed the Pakistani military into launching the attacks that displaced over a million people in the Swat region and hundreds of thousands more in border areas. How nice of them to join in humanitarian assistance to the homeless.
The Pakistanis, like the Afghans, were assured the Americans will not abandon them to their own, independent devices. Said Obama: “And going forward, the Pakistani people must know: America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan's security and prosperity long after the guns have fallen silent, so that the great potential of its people can be unleashed.”
Some Pakistanis might consider that a threat. According to polling by the Pew Global Attitudes Project [1], only 16 percent of Pakistanis held a favorable view of the United States in 2009. Actually, that’s a point or two higher than U.S. popularity in Occupied Palestine (15 percent) and Turkey (14 percent), the only other Muslim countries on the Pew list.
Not to worry. Obama knows things that escape the rest of us. For example, the fact that “we have forged a new beginning between America and the Muslim World - one that recognizes our mutual interest in breaking a cycle of conflict, and that promises a future in which those who kill innocents are isolated by those who stand up for peace and prosperity and human dignity.”
Which means, we can expect those polling numbers to start going up, soon.
“Only 16 percent of Pakistanis held a favorable view of the United States in 2009.”
When Obama isn’t launching bold initiatives and “new beginnings,” he’s busy taking care of U.S. imperial business as usual. Obama is most proud that the U.S. spends more on its military than all the rest of the nations of the planet, combined.
“[T]he United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades,” he told the cadets, “a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and advancing frontiers of human liberty.” Others might not view the rise of U.S. hegemony in such a positive light. But they are wrong, said the president. “For unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation's resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours.”
In Obama’s worldview, it’s the thought that counts. Americans don’t seek world domination; it just comes to them. “We do not seek to occupy other nations,” they leave us no choice. If it were not for American concern for the welfare of all the world’s people, the U.S. would not maintain 780 military bases in other people's countries.
Obama has certainly matured as an American-style statesman in his nine and a half months in office. As a TV Native American might say, “Black man in white house speak like forked tongued white man.” Only better.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
American Doki (Devil of War): Y2005-2009
http://www.opednews.com/articles/American-Doki-Y2005-2009-by-Mark-Sashine-091202-583.html
December 2, 2009
American Doki (Devil of War): Y2005-2009
By Mark Sashine
In the old and brilliant Japanese movie ‘The Banners Of Samurai', the ruler of a kingdom hires a gruesome War Captain to extend his domain. When asked about the name of his new minister, the ruler replies, ‘His name is Yamamoto Kanske, Doki which means The Devil of War.'
The Devil of War. He was roaming around for a while until he settled here, in the comfortable place of the US got nuts. That is we got nuts. We opened the gates for Doki and he came in . War is everywhere. It's stench is on every corner. You drive your car every morning and you see all those magnetic nooses on the cars, 'Support our troops'. What troops? Whom to support? Most of those people had never seen war. They don't understand what it means. They plug their guilty conscience into the magnetic jar, pull out the noose and think their work is done. But Doki knows better.
Doki kills people. He kills our kids. Go the website gsfp.com of the families of those who were KIA ( killed in action), the Gold Star Families for Peace, see for yourself the faces of the children killed. See those American kids in their bedrooms, in their toddlership, see their faces. They are dead. We invited Doki and Doki killed them.
We killed innocent people. Hundreds of thousands. We added those innocent to the 3000 who died on 9/11. Up there they are together, those Americans killed in New York and those Iraqis and Afghanis we have killed. They look at us in horror and they weep. But we don't see. The smoke of Dok i makes us blind. We openly proclaimed our intention to kill everyone and everywhere. We declared war on Humanity.
War is in the language. There's always speculation about where we will strike again.. And then we go to the polls and come up with about 75% of the polled happy with the idea of ‘nuking the terrorists'
Nuke. The sum of all fears. That's how we nuked Hiroshima, right? Is that what we have learned? Before Hiroshima it was only us. Now at least eight countries have nuclear weapons. They can nuke us. The possibility is not remote at all. We can't nuke anyone, you, stupid. One such move and we will be eliminated from the face of the Earth.
Oh, but Doki will protect us. He will help us to develop new weapons. Such as the one using plasma for pain. What a concept! Somewhere in Florida some mad hatter is developing a generator of pain using science. Doki's science that is. Everything becomes Doki's in our country. Our security is Doki's because it is directed against us. Our economy is Doki's because it only feeds the War. More and more billions are spent on war. Our defense budget is an abomination. We have more and more unproductive workforce; special forces, prison guards, baggage handlers, screeners, snitches, spies, assassins, you name it. No one produces anything anymore: it is much easier to get money on the false premises of security. Money is bred on fear.
Our entertainment is Doki's indeed. Violence is flourishing. More and more secret agents, torturers, special operations, CIA, MI-5, whatever are killing maiming, torturing families on the screen. There are more and more deaths. Death is so common that we hear of it every day between Oprah and Glenn Beck. We kill and we die.
Doki likes chicks. War is delivered, sold by women. Broads with chromium smiles come out in big numbers. They say that war rocks. Female magazines are hectic in promoting an image of the sexy woman- soldier. Boobs forward, butt high. Keep yourself sexy even when the grenade tears out your guts. Remember, no child is left behind. Keep your cool even when you are dead. DEAD! DEAD! DEAD! Damn it, you are DEAD!
There is no Heaven, people. There is only Doki's Hell and we are right in it. He laughs his horns off. He has plenty to eat. We are his food. He keeps us fat, so that we don't get scared the same we keep pigs fat before slaughter. And then he eats us, one by one. Those coffins are us. Those crosses are us. Those skulls in the deserts are us. There is no blessing, only curse. Open your eyes, you, pieces of meat in the Matrix. It is Doki having his fun. The Devil of War.
December 2, 2009
American Doki (Devil of War): Y2005-2009
By Mark Sashine
In the old and brilliant Japanese movie ‘The Banners Of Samurai', the ruler of a kingdom hires a gruesome War Captain to extend his domain. When asked about the name of his new minister, the ruler replies, ‘His name is Yamamoto Kanske, Doki which means The Devil of War.'
The Devil of War. He was roaming around for a while until he settled here, in the comfortable place of the US got nuts. That is we got nuts. We opened the gates for Doki and he came in . War is everywhere. It's stench is on every corner. You drive your car every morning and you see all those magnetic nooses on the cars, 'Support our troops'. What troops? Whom to support? Most of those people had never seen war. They don't understand what it means. They plug their guilty conscience into the magnetic jar, pull out the noose and think their work is done. But Doki knows better.
Doki kills people. He kills our kids. Go the website gsfp.com of the families of those who were KIA ( killed in action), the Gold Star Families for Peace, see for yourself the faces of the children killed. See those American kids in their bedrooms, in their toddlership, see their faces. They are dead. We invited Doki and Doki killed them.
We killed innocent people. Hundreds of thousands. We added those innocent to the 3000 who died on 9/11. Up there they are together, those Americans killed in New York and those Iraqis and Afghanis we have killed. They look at us in horror and they weep. But we don't see. The smoke of Dok i makes us blind. We openly proclaimed our intention to kill everyone and everywhere. We declared war on Humanity.
War is in the language. There's always speculation about where we will strike again.. And then we go to the polls and come up with about 75% of the polled happy with the idea of ‘nuking the terrorists'
Nuke. The sum of all fears. That's how we nuked Hiroshima, right? Is that what we have learned? Before Hiroshima it was only us. Now at least eight countries have nuclear weapons. They can nuke us. The possibility is not remote at all. We can't nuke anyone, you, stupid. One such move and we will be eliminated from the face of the Earth.
Oh, but Doki will protect us. He will help us to develop new weapons. Such as the one using plasma for pain. What a concept! Somewhere in Florida some mad hatter is developing a generator of pain using science. Doki's science that is. Everything becomes Doki's in our country. Our security is Doki's because it is directed against us. Our economy is Doki's because it only feeds the War. More and more billions are spent on war. Our defense budget is an abomination. We have more and more unproductive workforce; special forces, prison guards, baggage handlers, screeners, snitches, spies, assassins, you name it. No one produces anything anymore: it is much easier to get money on the false premises of security. Money is bred on fear.
Our entertainment is Doki's indeed. Violence is flourishing. More and more secret agents, torturers, special operations, CIA, MI-5, whatever are killing maiming, torturing families on the screen. There are more and more deaths. Death is so common that we hear of it every day between Oprah and Glenn Beck. We kill and we die.
Doki likes chicks. War is delivered, sold by women. Broads with chromium smiles come out in big numbers. They say that war rocks. Female magazines are hectic in promoting an image of the sexy woman- soldier. Boobs forward, butt high. Keep yourself sexy even when the grenade tears out your guts. Remember, no child is left behind. Keep your cool even when you are dead. DEAD! DEAD! DEAD! Damn it, you are DEAD!
There is no Heaven, people. There is only Doki's Hell and we are right in it. He laughs his horns off. He has plenty to eat. We are his food. He keeps us fat, so that we don't get scared the same we keep pigs fat before slaughter. And then he eats us, one by one. Those coffins are us. Those crosses are us. Those skulls in the deserts are us. There is no blessing, only curse. Open your eyes, you, pieces of meat in the Matrix. It is Doki having his fun. The Devil of War.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Wickedness Abides
http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/11/wickedness-abides.html#more
Wickedness Abides
By James Howard Kunstler
on November 30, 2009 7:12 AM
"While Dubai is not big enough to set off financial repercussions outside the Middle East, the main fear is that investors could flee risky markets all at once in search of safer havens for their money." -- THE NYT, VIKAS BAJAJ AND GRAHAM BOWLEY, REPORTING.
Apart from the stark self-contradiction in this quote from The New York Times, you have to love the fatuous 'it's all good' self-assurance where global banking is concerned. No problemo y'all! A mere overdraft incident, a cash-flow hiccup... and yet "the main fear" [among whom?] is that investors [where and in what? Like, everywhere?] could flee risky markets all at once in search of safer havens for their money [WTF?]. Gosh, well, as long as they don't flee the New York Stock Exchange, the Hang Seng, the FTSE.... And, hey, do you suppose anybody bought any credit default swap "insurance" on the deals that financed scores and scores of super-giant condominium skyscrapers and hotels amounting to the greatest spec construction folly in the history of the world?
Snapshots of the stupid fucking work-in-progress have been circulating around the Internet for five years, the disbelief was so monumental. I confess, when I first saw the Palm Island I was impressed at what a superb air-strike target it presented. And then, when the real estate assemblage of artificial islands arranged like a map-of-the-world came along, I could only imagine the megalomanical glee rising in the throat of a jet bomber pilot (nationality unspecified) as he closed in on it.
Whom the gods would punish, they first make completely crazy. That includes us, here in the USA, by the way, but pound-for-pound Dubai is the current champeen. The monstrosity they built in their waterless convection-oven of a city-state makes Las Vegas look like a mere strip mall in comparison. Throw in a few other affronts to nature, such as an indoor ski "mountain," a beach cooled by an under-the-sand refrigerated pipe network, golf courses that have to be hosed down with acre-feet of desalinated sea-water, and forget about "the gods" -- one begins to see the monotheistic hand of "Old Scratch" himself working the levers of the construction cranes out there.
Frankly, I have no idea whether the Dubai fiasco will send seismic ripples thundering through a global banking establishment that is already crippled in more ways than you can count. But it does remind those in thrall to the dazzlement of "green shoots" that debt comes a'creeping, and runs so far, deep, and wide through the broken system of mutual assurances constituting international finance, that Ben Bernanke and his counterparts in central banks 'round the world could drop helicopter loads of paper cash on every rooftop, intersection, parking lot, field, forest, and camel raceway and never make a dent in the fatal web of false obligations we have woven for ourselves.
But you do wonder what was going through their minds as this ridiculous organism took shape on the horn of the Persian Gulf, just as one wonders at loathsome aspirations that Las Vegas presents in our own so-called culture -- essentially a wickedness that exceeds the wildest fantasies of the most demented clergymen, be they closeted sado-masochistic Southern Baptist teleministers, Vatican-approved child molesters, or mullahs dispatching suicide bombers to the marketplaces frequented by housewives and their children.
Lately, the much-repeated aphorism has circulated around the Web that civilizations build their most extreme monuments at the very moment of collapse. If this is true -- and it is hard to argue with the historical record -- then it's time to organize a new Third Party for the 2012 election with Jared Diamond and Cormac McCarthy heading the national ticket (and Roland Emmerich for EPA chief). By then, if we don't stop lying to ourselves about the destruction we have induced, every other suit-and-tie wearing authority figure in America, from the county clerk to Barack Obama, will take on the aura of the archetypal Evil Clown from a Stephen King yarn. Imagine living in a country where absolutely nobody in a leadership position is credible. This is the kind of country we're becoming and it will not keep running that way for long.
The markets will begin digesting the Dubai news in earnest today, making for a holiday season of possibly momentous thrills-and-chills. The big debate going into Thanksgiving was whether the dollar would continue its downward trajectory, leading to some kind of currency failure, hyper-inflation, take your pick... or turn briskly around as investors bailed out of risk vehicles for the conventional safe-haven paper parking lot of US Treasuries. This debate between the inflationists and deflationists has defied resolution all year. Personally, I side with the deflationistas these days, though I believe our ultimate destination, in a year or so, is destruction of the dollar.
In keeping with the wickedness theme, isn't it interesting that our society now vests all its hopes and wishes for thriving -- indeed survival! -- on a yearly ceremony we have come to call Black Friday. I was raised in a religion-free household, but I confess the signs are just everywhere that we've taken some turn to the Dark Side. I'm a little surprised that "consumers" were not caught on video wringing the necks of chickens in the WalMart parking lots the other day in the hopes of winning supernatural favor for that race down the aisle to the flat-screen TV loss leaders. The cinemas are full of blood-sucking teenagers. Grown men swarm in the unemployment offices wearing sideways hats and butt-crack trousers. Why not just tattoo a message on your forehead that says: "Moron For Hire"?
Wickedness Abides
By James Howard Kunstler
on November 30, 2009 7:12 AM
"While Dubai is not big enough to set off financial repercussions outside the Middle East, the main fear is that investors could flee risky markets all at once in search of safer havens for their money." -- THE NYT, VIKAS BAJAJ AND GRAHAM BOWLEY, REPORTING.
Apart from the stark self-contradiction in this quote from The New York Times, you have to love the fatuous 'it's all good' self-assurance where global banking is concerned. No problemo y'all! A mere overdraft incident, a cash-flow hiccup... and yet "the main fear" [among whom?] is that investors [where and in what? Like, everywhere?] could flee risky markets all at once in search of safer havens for their money [WTF?]. Gosh, well, as long as they don't flee the New York Stock Exchange, the Hang Seng, the FTSE.... And, hey, do you suppose anybody bought any credit default swap "insurance" on the deals that financed scores and scores of super-giant condominium skyscrapers and hotels amounting to the greatest spec construction folly in the history of the world?
Snapshots of the stupid fucking work-in-progress have been circulating around the Internet for five years, the disbelief was so monumental. I confess, when I first saw the Palm Island I was impressed at what a superb air-strike target it presented. And then, when the real estate assemblage of artificial islands arranged like a map-of-the-world came along, I could only imagine the megalomanical glee rising in the throat of a jet bomber pilot (nationality unspecified) as he closed in on it.
Whom the gods would punish, they first make completely crazy. That includes us, here in the USA, by the way, but pound-for-pound Dubai is the current champeen. The monstrosity they built in their waterless convection-oven of a city-state makes Las Vegas look like a mere strip mall in comparison. Throw in a few other affronts to nature, such as an indoor ski "mountain," a beach cooled by an under-the-sand refrigerated pipe network, golf courses that have to be hosed down with acre-feet of desalinated sea-water, and forget about "the gods" -- one begins to see the monotheistic hand of "Old Scratch" himself working the levers of the construction cranes out there.
Frankly, I have no idea whether the Dubai fiasco will send seismic ripples thundering through a global banking establishment that is already crippled in more ways than you can count. But it does remind those in thrall to the dazzlement of "green shoots" that debt comes a'creeping, and runs so far, deep, and wide through the broken system of mutual assurances constituting international finance, that Ben Bernanke and his counterparts in central banks 'round the world could drop helicopter loads of paper cash on every rooftop, intersection, parking lot, field, forest, and camel raceway and never make a dent in the fatal web of false obligations we have woven for ourselves.
But you do wonder what was going through their minds as this ridiculous organism took shape on the horn of the Persian Gulf, just as one wonders at loathsome aspirations that Las Vegas presents in our own so-called culture -- essentially a wickedness that exceeds the wildest fantasies of the most demented clergymen, be they closeted sado-masochistic Southern Baptist teleministers, Vatican-approved child molesters, or mullahs dispatching suicide bombers to the marketplaces frequented by housewives and their children.
Lately, the much-repeated aphorism has circulated around the Web that civilizations build their most extreme monuments at the very moment of collapse. If this is true -- and it is hard to argue with the historical record -- then it's time to organize a new Third Party for the 2012 election with Jared Diamond and Cormac McCarthy heading the national ticket (and Roland Emmerich for EPA chief). By then, if we don't stop lying to ourselves about the destruction we have induced, every other suit-and-tie wearing authority figure in America, from the county clerk to Barack Obama, will take on the aura of the archetypal Evil Clown from a Stephen King yarn. Imagine living in a country where absolutely nobody in a leadership position is credible. This is the kind of country we're becoming and it will not keep running that way for long.
The markets will begin digesting the Dubai news in earnest today, making for a holiday season of possibly momentous thrills-and-chills. The big debate going into Thanksgiving was whether the dollar would continue its downward trajectory, leading to some kind of currency failure, hyper-inflation, take your pick... or turn briskly around as investors bailed out of risk vehicles for the conventional safe-haven paper parking lot of US Treasuries. This debate between the inflationists and deflationists has defied resolution all year. Personally, I side with the deflationistas these days, though I believe our ultimate destination, in a year or so, is destruction of the dollar.
In keeping with the wickedness theme, isn't it interesting that our society now vests all its hopes and wishes for thriving -- indeed survival! -- on a yearly ceremony we have come to call Black Friday. I was raised in a religion-free household, but I confess the signs are just everywhere that we've taken some turn to the Dark Side. I'm a little surprised that "consumers" were not caught on video wringing the necks of chickens in the WalMart parking lots the other day in the hopes of winning supernatural favor for that race down the aisle to the flat-screen TV loss leaders. The cinemas are full of blood-sucking teenagers. Grown men swarm in the unemployment offices wearing sideways hats and butt-crack trousers. Why not just tattoo a message on your forehead that says: "Moron For Hire"?
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Psychic computer shows your thoughts on screen
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/living/article6898177.ece
November 1, 2009
Psychic computer shows your thoughts on screen
The telepathic abilities that feature in the film X2 are a step closer to reality
Chris Gourlay
Scientists have discovered how to “read” minds by scanning brain activity and reproducing images of what people are seeing — or even remembering.
Researchers have been able to convert into crude video footage the brain activity stimulated by what a person is watching or recalling.
The breakthrough raises the prospect of significant benefits, such as allowing people who are unable to move or speak to communicate via visualisation of their thoughts; recording people’s dreams; or allowing police to identify criminals by recalling the memories of a witness.
However, it could also herald a new Big Brother era, similar to that envisaged in the Hollywood film Minority Report, in which an individual’s private thoughts can be readily accessed by the authorities.
Earlier this year, Jack Gallant and Thomas Naselaris, two neurologists from the University of California, Berkeley, managed to 'decode' static images seen by the person from activity in the brain's visual cortex. Last week Gallant and Shinji Nishimoto - another neurologist - went one step further by revealing that it is possible to decode signals generated in the brain by moving scenes.
In an experiment which has yet to be peer reviewed, Gallant and Nishimoto, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, scanned the brains of two patients as they watched videos.
A computer programme was used to search for links between the configuration of shapes, colours and movements in the videos, and patterns of activity in the patients’ visual cortex.
It was later fed more than 200 days’ worth of YouTube internet clips and asked to predict which areas of the brain the clips would stimulate if people were watching them.
Finally, the software was used to monitor the two patients’ brains as they watched a new film and to reproduce what they were seeing based on their neural activity alone.
Remarkably, the computer programme was able to display continuous footage of the films they were watching — albeit with blurred images.
In one scene which featured the actor Steve Martin wearing a white shirt, the software recreated his rough shape and white torso but missed other details, such as his facial features.
Another scene, showing a plane flying towards the camera against a city skyline, was less successfully reproduced. The computer recreated the image of the skyline but omitted the plane altogether.
“Some scenes decode better than others,” said Gallant. “We can decode talking heads really well. But a camera panning quickly across a scene confuses the algorithm.
“You can use a device like this to do some pretty cool things. At the moment when you see something and want to describe it to someone you have to use words or draw it and it doesn’t work very well.
“You could use this technology to transmit the image to someone. It might be useful for artists or to allow you to recover an eyewitness’s memory of a crime.”
Such technology may not be confined to the here and now. Scientists at University College London have conducted separate tests that detect, with an accuracy of about 50%, memories recalled by patients.
The discoveries come amid a flurry of developments in the field of brain science. Researchers have also used scanning technology to measure academic ability, detect early signs of Alzheimer’s and other degenerative conditions, and even predict the decision a person is about to make before they are conscious of making it.
Such developments may have controversial ramifications. In Britain, fMRI scanning technology has been sold to multinational companies, such as Unilever and McDonald’s, enabling them to see how we subconsciously react to brands.
In America, security agencies are researching the use of brain scanners for interrogating prisoners, and Lockheed Martin, the US defence contractor, is reported to have studied the possibility of scanning brains at a distance.
This would allow an individual’s thoughts and anxieties to be examined without their knowledge in sensitive locations such as airports.
Russell Foster, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, said rapid advances in the field were throwing up ethical dilemmas.
“It’s absolutely critical for scientists to inform the public about what we are doing so they can engage in the debate about how this knowledge should be used,” he said.
“It’s the age-old problem: knowledge is power and it can be used for both good and evil.”
November 1, 2009
Psychic computer shows your thoughts on screen
The telepathic abilities that feature in the film X2 are a step closer to reality
Chris Gourlay
Scientists have discovered how to “read” minds by scanning brain activity and reproducing images of what people are seeing — or even remembering.
Researchers have been able to convert into crude video footage the brain activity stimulated by what a person is watching or recalling.
The breakthrough raises the prospect of significant benefits, such as allowing people who are unable to move or speak to communicate via visualisation of their thoughts; recording people’s dreams; or allowing police to identify criminals by recalling the memories of a witness.
However, it could also herald a new Big Brother era, similar to that envisaged in the Hollywood film Minority Report, in which an individual’s private thoughts can be readily accessed by the authorities.
Earlier this year, Jack Gallant and Thomas Naselaris, two neurologists from the University of California, Berkeley, managed to 'decode' static images seen by the person from activity in the brain's visual cortex. Last week Gallant and Shinji Nishimoto - another neurologist - went one step further by revealing that it is possible to decode signals generated in the brain by moving scenes.
In an experiment which has yet to be peer reviewed, Gallant and Nishimoto, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, scanned the brains of two patients as they watched videos.
A computer programme was used to search for links between the configuration of shapes, colours and movements in the videos, and patterns of activity in the patients’ visual cortex.
It was later fed more than 200 days’ worth of YouTube internet clips and asked to predict which areas of the brain the clips would stimulate if people were watching them.
Finally, the software was used to monitor the two patients’ brains as they watched a new film and to reproduce what they were seeing based on their neural activity alone.
Remarkably, the computer programme was able to display continuous footage of the films they were watching — albeit with blurred images.
In one scene which featured the actor Steve Martin wearing a white shirt, the software recreated his rough shape and white torso but missed other details, such as his facial features.
Another scene, showing a plane flying towards the camera against a city skyline, was less successfully reproduced. The computer recreated the image of the skyline but omitted the plane altogether.
“Some scenes decode better than others,” said Gallant. “We can decode talking heads really well. But a camera panning quickly across a scene confuses the algorithm.
“You can use a device like this to do some pretty cool things. At the moment when you see something and want to describe it to someone you have to use words or draw it and it doesn’t work very well.
“You could use this technology to transmit the image to someone. It might be useful for artists or to allow you to recover an eyewitness’s memory of a crime.”
Such technology may not be confined to the here and now. Scientists at University College London have conducted separate tests that detect, with an accuracy of about 50%, memories recalled by patients.
The discoveries come amid a flurry of developments in the field of brain science. Researchers have also used scanning technology to measure academic ability, detect early signs of Alzheimer’s and other degenerative conditions, and even predict the decision a person is about to make before they are conscious of making it.
Such developments may have controversial ramifications. In Britain, fMRI scanning technology has been sold to multinational companies, such as Unilever and McDonald’s, enabling them to see how we subconsciously react to brands.
In America, security agencies are researching the use of brain scanners for interrogating prisoners, and Lockheed Martin, the US defence contractor, is reported to have studied the possibility of scanning brains at a distance.
This would allow an individual’s thoughts and anxieties to be examined without their knowledge in sensitive locations such as airports.
Russell Foster, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, said rapid advances in the field were throwing up ethical dilemmas.
“It’s absolutely critical for scientists to inform the public about what we are doing so they can engage in the debate about how this knowledge should be used,” he said.
“It’s the age-old problem: knowledge is power and it can be used for both good and evil.”
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
How many people have ever lived?
http://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/how_many_people_have_ever_lived/
How many people have ever lived?
Michael Cook | 25 Nov 2009
How many people have ever lived upon earth? There is an urban legend from the 1970s that 75% of the world’s total population from the Year 0 to now is alive today. This, it turns out, is nonsense. Demographer Carl Haub, of the Population Reference Bureau, demolished this factoid a few years ago. His argument is one of the best-read articles on the PRB site, which republished it recently.
Haub stresses that estimating this number is a highly speculative undertaking and requires a number of assumptions. First, when did humanity begin? He assumes that there were 2 of us in the year 50,000BC. By 8,000BC, there were 8 million; by 1AD, 300,000,000; by 1800, 1 billion, and so on up to today’s population of 6.7 billion.
Second, how many people were alive at any one period? Early in our history, the population waxed and waned with famine, disease and natural catastrophes. And third, what was the birth rate? In the Stone Age, the birth rate then was probably double the highest country in the world today. However, the average life expectancy would have been as low as 10 or 12 years because as many as half of the children would have died.
Waving a mathematical wand over his assumptions, Haub comes up with the figure of 106 billion people ever born. “So, our estimate here is that about 5.8 percent of all people ever born are alive today,” he writes. “That's actually a fairly large percentage when you think about it.”
My Best Friend Judyth wrote me about this article and this is what she says:
FYI: the article below is statistically flawed. I've inserted comments to show you the problem.
How many people have ever lived?
Michael Cook | 25 Nov 2009
How many people have ever lived upon earth? There is an urban legend from the 1970s that 75% of the world’s total population from the Year 0 to now is alive today. This, it turns out, is nonsense. Demographer Carl Haub, of the Population Reference Bureau, demolished this factoid a few years ago. His argument is one of the best-read articles on the PRB site, which republished it recently.
Haub stresses that estimating this number is a highly speculative undertaking and requires a number of assumptions. First, when did humanity begin? He assumes that there were 2 of us in the year 50,000BC.
--ridiculous...the guy is way off!
Evolution of Modern Humans: Early Modern Human Culture
11 Sep 2009 ... However, by 90000-75000 years ago some modern humans began producing new kinds of ..... One is life size. The largest is 6 1/2 feet (2 m. ...)
anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_5.htm - Cached - Similar -
Ancient Rock Art Found in Australia; Engraved Indentations May Be ...
... tropical northwest challenge widely held theories about the history of human life. ... He added: "The rock art was originally found a few years ago when ... oldest rock art Archaeologists believe engravings are about 75000 years old ...
www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-793968.html - Cached -
Shell Beads From South African Cave Show Modern Human Behavior ...
Perforated shells found at South Africa's Blombos Cave appear to have been strung as beads about 75000 years ago-making them 30000 years older than any ...
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/04/040416014444.htm - Cached - Similar -
--- he also assumes a nice, even rise statistically, when populations, driven by amines and good years, actually vary widely...our best bet is that the human population, until certain iventions came along, stayed pretty steady until the (theoretical) Toba catstrophe, which reduced the population about 75,000 years ago to a mere 1,000-10,000....te survivors quickly bounced back, and I estimate there were probably 250,000 humans by 50,000 AD, when the Ice Age came and wrecked things for aout 6,000 years, ending about 14,000 years ago.
We therefore had probably a million humans by the end of the ice Age, as climate where we now have desert was really nice for people....I think by 8,000 BC, we probably had 15,000,000 people...a number that stayed fairly steady untol new inventions in medicine, etc. came along, with cyclic population rises and plunges due to famines.
By the time agriculture was firmly established, there were probably twice as many people as he estimates, and by 1800, probably 2 billion peolle--we just don;t have records of them all--we know millions upon millions died in the Americas due to the influz of European diseases, and the same thing happened in China--I speculate that European plague, andf the exchnage of syphilis to Europeans and Asians form the Americas, killed off perhaps 25% of the world's populations before things stablizedf again.
Presently, they say we have 6.7 billion people, but because of corruption, you can bet there's at least 10% more than that, as under-reporting creates more $$$ for tax collectors, etc.
===j===
By 8,000BC, there were 8 million; by 1AD, 300,000,000; by 1800, 1 billion, and so on up to today’s population of 6.7 billion.
Second, how many people were alive at any one period? Early in our history, the population waxed and waned with famine, disease and natural catastrophes. And third, what was the birth rate? In the Stone Age, the birth rate then was probably double the highest country in the world today. However, the average life expectancy would have been as low as 10 or 12 years because as many as half of the children would have died.
Waving a mathematical wand over his assumptions, Haub comes up with the figure of 106 billion people ever born. “So, our estimate here is that about 5.8 percent of all people ever born are alive today,” he writes. “That's actually a fairly large percentage when you think about it.”
How many people have ever lived?
Michael Cook | 25 Nov 2009
How many people have ever lived upon earth? There is an urban legend from the 1970s that 75% of the world’s total population from the Year 0 to now is alive today. This, it turns out, is nonsense. Demographer Carl Haub, of the Population Reference Bureau, demolished this factoid a few years ago. His argument is one of the best-read articles on the PRB site, which republished it recently.
Haub stresses that estimating this number is a highly speculative undertaking and requires a number of assumptions. First, when did humanity begin? He assumes that there were 2 of us in the year 50,000BC. By 8,000BC, there were 8 million; by 1AD, 300,000,000; by 1800, 1 billion, and so on up to today’s population of 6.7 billion.
Second, how many people were alive at any one period? Early in our history, the population waxed and waned with famine, disease and natural catastrophes. And third, what was the birth rate? In the Stone Age, the birth rate then was probably double the highest country in the world today. However, the average life expectancy would have been as low as 10 or 12 years because as many as half of the children would have died.
Waving a mathematical wand over his assumptions, Haub comes up with the figure of 106 billion people ever born. “So, our estimate here is that about 5.8 percent of all people ever born are alive today,” he writes. “That's actually a fairly large percentage when you think about it.”
My Best Friend Judyth wrote me about this article and this is what she says:
FYI: the article below is statistically flawed. I've inserted comments to show you the problem.
How many people have ever lived?
Michael Cook | 25 Nov 2009
How many people have ever lived upon earth? There is an urban legend from the 1970s that 75% of the world’s total population from the Year 0 to now is alive today. This, it turns out, is nonsense. Demographer Carl Haub, of the Population Reference Bureau, demolished this factoid a few years ago. His argument is one of the best-read articles on the PRB site, which republished it recently.
Haub stresses that estimating this number is a highly speculative undertaking and requires a number of assumptions. First, when did humanity begin? He assumes that there were 2 of us in the year 50,000BC.
--ridiculous...the guy is way off!
Evolution of Modern Humans: Early Modern Human Culture
11 Sep 2009 ... However, by 90000-75000 years ago some modern humans began producing new kinds of ..... One is life size. The largest is 6 1/2 feet (2 m. ...)
anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_5.htm - Cached - Similar -
Ancient Rock Art Found in Australia; Engraved Indentations May Be ...
... tropical northwest challenge widely held theories about the history of human life. ... He added: "The rock art was originally found a few years ago when ... oldest rock art Archaeologists believe engravings are about 75000 years old ...
www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-793968.html - Cached -
Shell Beads From South African Cave Show Modern Human Behavior ...
Perforated shells found at South Africa's Blombos Cave appear to have been strung as beads about 75000 years ago-making them 30000 years older than any ...
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/04/040416014444.htm - Cached - Similar -
--- he also assumes a nice, even rise statistically, when populations, driven by amines and good years, actually vary widely...our best bet is that the human population, until certain iventions came along, stayed pretty steady until the (theoretical) Toba catstrophe, which reduced the population about 75,000 years ago to a mere 1,000-10,000....te survivors quickly bounced back, and I estimate there were probably 250,000 humans by 50,000 AD, when the Ice Age came and wrecked things for aout 6,000 years, ending about 14,000 years ago.
We therefore had probably a million humans by the end of the ice Age, as climate where we now have desert was really nice for people....I think by 8,000 BC, we probably had 15,000,000 people...a number that stayed fairly steady untol new inventions in medicine, etc. came along, with cyclic population rises and plunges due to famines.
By the time agriculture was firmly established, there were probably twice as many people as he estimates, and by 1800, probably 2 billion peolle--we just don;t have records of them all--we know millions upon millions died in the Americas due to the influz of European diseases, and the same thing happened in China--I speculate that European plague, andf the exchnage of syphilis to Europeans and Asians form the Americas, killed off perhaps 25% of the world's populations before things stablizedf again.
Presently, they say we have 6.7 billion people, but because of corruption, you can bet there's at least 10% more than that, as under-reporting creates more $$$ for tax collectors, etc.
===j===
By 8,000BC, there were 8 million; by 1AD, 300,000,000; by 1800, 1 billion, and so on up to today’s population of 6.7 billion.
Second, how many people were alive at any one period? Early in our history, the population waxed and waned with famine, disease and natural catastrophes. And third, what was the birth rate? In the Stone Age, the birth rate then was probably double the highest country in the world today. However, the average life expectancy would have been as low as 10 or 12 years because as many as half of the children would have died.
Waving a mathematical wand over his assumptions, Haub comes up with the figure of 106 billion people ever born. “So, our estimate here is that about 5.8 percent of all people ever born are alive today,” he writes. “That's actually a fairly large percentage when you think about it.”
Friday, November 20, 2009
Zinc Dimes, Tungsten Gold & Lost Respect
Dear Media Friends and Friends: Five days ago, I sent you an article I wrote about how the evil elite of the world has supplanted real gold with fake gold. Although Op-Ed News (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Imaginary-Gold-Bullion-Ho-by-Martha-Rose-Crow-091115-914.html) and four other places picked it up, the article pretty much died on the vine. I kind of thought this would happen because news like this could sink the whole economic ship (and it will eventually) plus the secret serpent puppet masters will try to punish you. They certainly tried to punish me this week. Some of my blogs have been hit, my computer was hit, so forth. Some of the links I used in the article was rendered useless plus the main link cited suddenly had a 'malware' warning on it!
I'm sick of living in a world of psychopathic shit run by psychopaths! I try to live and lead by example! I'm the first person on the planet who connected PUT Options and the Missing Minot Nuke (http://www.sott.net/articles/show/143091-The-Bin-Laden-Option-and-the-Missing-Minot-Nuke). I'm the first person on the planet that told the world WHY Israel was sieging Palestine almost a year ago (http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Secret-Behind-Israel-s-S-by-Martha-Rose-Crow-090106-575.html)
Katherine Austin Fitts writes about how America is addicted to the narco dollars that are laundered through wal-street banks. When she confronted a 'spiritual' group she was speaking before in Philadelphia (http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/solariRising.html) and asked how many would push the 'Red Button' to stop this criminality? Only ONE PERSON IN A HUNDRED would push the Red Button! ONLY ONE!!! Why would the other 99% of 'spiritual' persons not push the button? Their mutual funds would go down and their government checks might stop.
So yeah, I know why most of you were afraid to publish my latest article. *Thank You* to those who did publish me!
Unfortunately, I THINK I'M RIGHT ABOUT THE DIRTY GOLD. Someone sent me the article below late last night and I had to think hard about what to do about it. Me, I just want JUSTICE and you can't have Justice without the TRUTH.
Putting off the day of reckoning is not going to stop the suffering. In fact, it's only going to escalate the suffering and entrench the evil elite's hold on the world as while they are making money on bogus money instruments, they are buying up the world. More, the longer the world waits to stop these criminals, the more chance they will get away with their crimes and the more chance it will be harder to claw back their ill-gotten gains!
Below is the article sent to me and I BElieve that is Probably True. The evidence keeps growing.
I imagine in a few hours, the site below will have a malware sign. WHY? Because this is to be the new bubble of the puppet masters and probably because a lot of the gold on the market is not genuine.
Thank you for your time, ~Martha Rose Crow
http://www.kitco.com/ind/willie/nov182009.html
Zinc Dimes, Tungsten Gold & Lost Respect
By Jim Willie CB
Nov 18 2009
www.GoldenJackass.com
Use the above link to subscribe to the paid research reports, which include coverage of several smallcap companies positioned to rise during the ongoing panicky attempt to sustain an unsustainable system burdened by numerous imbalances aggravated by global village forces. An historically unprecedented mess has been created by compromised central bankers and inept economic advisors, whose interference has irreversibly altered and damaged the world financial system, urgently pushed after the removed anchor of money to gold. Analysis features Gold, Crude Oil, USDollar, Treasury bonds, and inter-market dynamics with the US Economy and US Federal Reserve monetary policy.
In 1964 the USGovt introduced the zinc dimes clad with silver. They at least admitted the debauchery publicly. Now pre-1964 silver coins are all considered different, and valued differently too, higher. Rome committed the same coinage fraud 1900 years ago. Their Empire went bust as the city burned almost concurrently. Ayn Rand is a guiding light for Alan Greenspan, the enabling destroyer of the US banking system, destroyer of the US household archipelago, and dispatcher of the US industrial base to Asia. He is the hero icon worshipped by Wall Street. The irony is thick, that his career was spent following Old Europe orders that delivered the slow motion coup de grace to the American Empire. Ayn Rand wrote "If you want to know when a society is set to vanish, watch the money. Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owner a counterfeit pile of papers." The Chinese are learning this lesson the hard way, challenged to convert their USTreasury Bonds and USAgency Mortgage Bonds into true wealth before the paper becomes untradable. Actually, the bonds will eventually be redeemed by the USFed with newly printed money, when an avalanche occurs of foreigners seeking redemption en masse. For almost ten years they have been exchanging their finished products to the US & West for paper with ink on it, in questionable stored wealth. The Chinese are cashing in on their paper, trading it for new global power.
NEW TUNGSTEN MINE DISCOVERY
The tungsten deposits come in very high grade ore, located in shallow rectangular deposits dispersed widely across the world, segregated in unusual vault heap leach mineralizations. In October, the Hong Kong bankers discovered some gold bars shipped from the United States were actuallytungsten with gold plating. This is the exact same Modus Operandi as the silver clad zinc dimes from 45 years ago. History repeats itself. The parallels to mortgage bond fraud with either subprime borrowers or multiple property titles used in bond securitization is easy to spot. A consistent theme runs through the American management of finance and dissemination of fraudulent assets on a global basis. Tungsten gold bars is a feat difficult to surpass. Credit must be given for not leaving any potential for fraud untapped. Refer to insider flash trading, naked shorting of bank stocks, commodity trading on behalf of the USGovt, and much more. No disrespect is intended for the trillion$ counterfeits of superstar grade. Refer defense appropriations, USTreasury Bond sales beyond issuance, and missing Fannie Mae funds. These are legacy crimes.
The initial discovery was something like four gold bars, which the Hong Kong bankers drilled invasively to test the contents. Reminds me of drilling the earth and measuring how many grams of gold per tonne. The HK bankers hoped to have 99% gold yield in their drill program for the resident bars. They found something like 1% instead and 99% tungsten. By the way, tungsten sells for less than $70 per ton, which makes its swaps for gold to be 60x more profitable than silver bar swaps. Another handy usage for the Gold/Silver ratio in calculations. The hunt was on. Now not a single assayer on the planet is available, as all are tied up. They have been commissioned to test the gold bars shipped from the United States of Fraudulent Banker America in their own bullion vaults. They use basic methods of four drill holes with direct assay of shavings, but also less invasive methods like electro-magnetic waves to examine the metal lattice structure. When highest level methods are needed, they turn to mass spectrometry. NOW ALMOST NO GOLD BARS WILL LEAVE THE LONDON OR NEW YORK METALS EXCHANGES WITHOUT SOME AUTHENTICATION, AS DISTRUST IS WIDESPREAD.
The global bankers must deal with toxic bonds and phony gold bars. Talk circulates that the entire contents of Fort Knox might have swapped a decade ago. Evidence is being accumulated and compiled. The assayers have also been commissioned to assist in authentication of gold bar delivery the world over from the US exchanges. Current estimates among the gold trader community run well past a few hundred thousand 'salted' gold bars, maybe over a million. So the introduction to sophisticated Wall Street methods of currency management during the Decade of Prosperity had a side game running simultaneously. In an age where the lines between patriotism and treason are blurred, this tungsten episode brings new meaning to the word HEIST.
BREAKDOWN AT GOLD EXCHANGES
The bust cometh, and it will be spectacular. The stories told in the press will be peculiar, since not told objectively. The headlines might be a comedy, with phony reports of foreign subterfuge, when the perpetrators are home grown. The focal point for attacks is actually London at their metals exchange. The early October events included numerous offers by exchange officials to settle gold contract deliveries in cash with a 25% extra vig bonus. Much gold was drained from London on demanded delivery, thanks to a small army of lawyers, a small blizzard of contracts, and a few key judges at the courts. They were all Asians, the majority Chinese. Gold was taken, thus enforcing futures contracts, which happen to be binding contracts. The pressure at the end of November will be worse to make good on gold contract deliveries. Recall the stories back in April for a Deutsche Bank rescue by the Euro Central Bank with a very large (over one million oz gold position) provision made. DBank was in trouble. The pressures are mounting every couple months. Next March will be a climax of the breakdown, or else June.
Breakdowns come from extreme pressures. Each delivery month event includes more gold removed from the London exchange, more gold demanded from it, and more movement toward a breakdown. So the next events have even more pressure, with less gold supply and continued relentless demand. Recall also that the exchange, along with the COMEX in the Untied States, exempt certain parties from maintaining 80% collateral when they short gold & silver with paper contracts. Thus the name suppression, or better yet corruption. They are being caught in their naked shorting game. The December 1st events surrounding settlement delivery demands will be more contentious and stressful than October 1st. In sequential manner, the March event will be even more pressure packed, with precious little physical gold in store and more targeted Chinese delivery demanded. The June event will be even more pressure packed still, a backup date for a potential breakdown if it does not occur in March.
The common denominator for the parties demanding gold delivery in London is simple: they are all Asians, all, as in all, and the great majority are Chinese. One can safely conclude that the US and British banks will be broken with the nexus being their gold management, which underpins the USDollar. Other pressure is sure to mount. Not the kind of pressure you might imagine. Pressure is mounting for senior bank executives and politicians to start revealing the identities, deeds, locations, and dates of the gold tungsten swap, the mortgage bond firehose, and other pervasive frauds protected by the USGovt and British Govt.
GOLD & SILVER BREAKOUTS
The gold & silver prices are moving in lead fashion, and have done so among the currencies for at least the last three months. The major currencies fiddle and diddle, but gold & silver continue to rise. The Chinese, according to word from connected sources, intend to push the gold price and the silver price relentless upward without explosive parabolic moves and without painful huge selloff corrections. That way, the army of public investors will not lose heart, and will remain on the path, in full phalanx support of the Chinese Govt initiative. The Euro currency has hit the 150 level in mid-October and in mid-November, only to fall back a little. The Euro is not ready for a powerful move to 160 just yet. Such an advance would bring with it a painful effect to German exporters again, not desired. As a result, the gold price in Europe has made significant moves, and is in the process of challenging the 785 high from February. The key to a massive gold bull market is confirmation in terms of other currencies. The gold breakout is being led globally in US$ terms, since it is the weakest currency among the majors. GOLD IS TAKING ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE AS THE PREMIER GLOBAL CURRENCY, AFTER A BREAKDOWN IN THE MONETARY SYSTEM AND INSOLVENCY IN THE BANKING SYSTEM.
My 1130 midterm target for gold has been hit, stated at least three times this summer and autumn in public articles. One must wonder if a sizeable selloff in gold is coming. My view is that given the lack of sudden sharp upward thrusts in the gold price, the prospect of a sharp correction is lessened. Charts tend to show symmetry oftentimes. Besides, the Beijing Put is becoming well-known in the financial circles. The Chinese are using some reverse technical analysis, buying heavily when the gold chart indicates imminent weakness. That way the clueless Western gold sellers will be denied their cheaper re-entry, and will be forced to buy at higher levels. The Chinese are employing an unusual pattern. They are accumulating gold. The Chinese will continue to buy gold with both hands until the supply is exhausted of turkeys who fail to comprehend the Paradigm Shift, fail to comprehend the USDollar revolt, fail to comprehend the broken Western banks, fail to comprehend the endless stimulus, and fail to dismiss the mindless gold bubble argument that seems to be floating around in recent propaganda ploys. Its author overlooks the USTreasury bubble of gigantic proportions.
Whether or not a notable pullback correction comes for gold, who knows? who cares? This is not a time to go in & out, selling & buying back a gold position. It is a time to acknowledge a powerful global shift that will send the USDollar into the dungeon, and deliver gold to unheardof heights. The next target for gold is 1300. The targets for gold are dictated by the size of the jumps from the head and shoulder of the inverted Head & Shoulders pattern. The lost respect from the gold bullion bar fraud, the Weimar output of printed money, the monetization dependence from global isolation, and the lack of leadership all tend to pull the USDollar down. More accurately, these factors will push gold up into a dominant currency position fully recognized, as nations struggle to rebuild their banks after toxic US infection that does not end.
G-20 CONFIRMS PARADIGM SHIFT
The Scotland gathering of bankers had some key signals to report. Note the signal how they ignored the USDollar as a topic in the open chambers. Conclude they wish for benign neglect, where the US$ can find its true value much lower, and eventually depart as the global reserve currency. Note the signal how they urged continued global stimulus. Conclude they wish for the major governments to continue to debauch, undermine, and destroy the major currencies such as the USDollar, British Pound, European Union Euro, Swiss Franc, and Japanese Yen. Conclude they wish for the emerging market economies to be given massive assistance by the industrialized submerged market economies. The more the prominent older nations render harm to their banking systems, economies, and balance sheets, the easier it will be for Brazil, Russia, India, and China to conduct the business of walking the earth as new leaders. The new BRIC nations will build their dominant positions one brick at a time. The Paradigm Shift is away from the USDollar, with power shifting from West to East and in particular toward the BRIC nations. Their most recent visible victory is killing off the G-8 Meeting, which does not convene anymore. Not only does the G-20 serve as the global banker conference forum, but the Chinese have a lead voice, precisely as they demanded. Creditors win their way.
The commodity currencies are in a different earth zone. My analysis has stated that the prominent older nations, the so-called industrialized nations, will not raise their official interest rates. They will only talk, since their banks are insolvent and their government debt securities are caught in asset bubbles. The Euro Central Bank is the most likely to raise interest rates, but only as part of a more diverse strategy to split the EU iteself. The German nation has been drained by $40 billion per year for each of the last ten years, and resentment is strong. The Australians and Norwegians hiked their official interest rates in recent weeks. They have commodities to fortify their national economies, and do not concentrate on the sale of inked paper in tainted export.
The Paradigm Shift is toward a more legitimate group of currencies. It is toward currencies backed by hard assets. The currency basket from the Intl Monetary Fund seems like the temporary device. It is actually a Straw Man carrying a straw basket. Before the grand shift is complete to at least one hard asset currency, the doomed currencies will be bound together with IMF twine. The bankers believe the IMF straw basket will give them the power to control the decline of the USDollar, or protect themselves from that decline. The strategy might succeed. It will surely enable the gold price to climb versus all currencies. Gold will be like Moses in a basket as a baby, except moving upstream. The candidates for hard asset currencies are the New Russian Ruble, the Gulf Dinar, maybe even a New Nordic Euro. The process will take time, as some bumpy roads lie ahead, and military protection is required.
EXIT STRATEGY & WEIMAR DOLLARS
No exit strategy is available either to the Untied States or the British. The USFed conducted its helpless display to announce the USEconomy remains weak with slack capacity, and that an ultra-low official interest rate would be firmly fixed for a long time still. No surprise here! What they did not say is that, like with Japan, they have no possible exit plan. Now almost twenty years later, Japan is stuck with a near 0% rate. If the USFed raises interest rates, they pop the biggest financial bubble on the planet, USTreasury Bonds. The USFed is further hindered since Wall Street is playing the Dollar Carry Trade. They are borrowing 0% money in US$ and investing in commodities like crude oil and US stock indexes. Other players are using the free borrowed money to invest in gold. In fact, just today St Louis Fed President Bullard stated his expectation of no further USFed rate hike until year 2012.
The Exit Strategy will lead to a road paved by Weimar Dollars. The world's major financial centers outside the central bank accomplices are ditching their dollars. They are diversifying out of US$-based bonds of all types. They are accumulating gold. Some are investing in facilities that are vertically integrated with commodity production, transport, and trade. Like China! The USGovt is investing, by contrast, in clunker cars, still more houses, dead car industry, spoiled AIG insurer, a mortgage cesspool Fannie Mae, pork projects (see unused airport in Johnstown Pennsylvania), and a dubious war on terrorism. Quite a contrast! With the news spreading globally about tungsten-laced gold bars, or actually gold-plated tungsten bars, the reputation of the Untied States will grow more tarnished.
In time, the only friend of the USDept Treasury to finance its steady stream of Trillion$ in debt will be the Printing Pre$$. Without the printed money to pull off the auctions, they would be utter loud failures. Without the USDollar Swap Facility, foreign central banks would not have funds to use in Treasury auctions. Without the funds from foreign USAgency Mortgage Bonds sold to the USFed for freshly printed USDollars, the foreign central banks would not have funds to use in Treasury auctions. Without the Permanent Market Operations used to scoop up all the unsold bonds stuck with primary dealers, one week routinely after each auction, dealers would be unable to participate in the next Treasury auctions. They would suffer from bond constipation. The key event in the next few months, pushed by the foreign disgust at fraud more pervasive than ever conceived by ordinary man, is THE EXPOSURE OF MONETIZATION for support of the USTreasury Bond. The debt monetization remains a dirty secret, well concealed by the USGovt and the financial press. What comes is isolation, and to those isolated, their best friend will be a Printing Pre$$.
Exposure comes, with detrimental impact to the USDollar. The resulting tarnish to the USGovt image and Wall Street reputation will be reflected on the USDollar. In time it will fully resemble a Third World currency. The process will take time, but hyper-inflation is coming to US shores. Where are the Deflation Knuckleheads who tended to dominate the web journals last spring and summer, in incredible dense vapid clueless fashion??? What a tremendously misguided group. They follow religiously the deteriorating economies, miss the twin storm, ignore the power of the unprecedented monetary inflation, and somehow overlook the entire global movement if not revolt against the USDollar in a grand Paradigm Shift. They represent the worst economists in the alternative media on web journals. Their tunnel vision on the falling asset price effect left them vulnerable to missing a tsunami on their own doorstep, incredibly. They still do not offer an explanation of why crude is at the $80 price level again. Supplies of oil are nowhere as great as the false USGovt statistics indicate, but the entire world is hedging at the same time against the US$ with oil assets.
OBAMA VISITS THE LEAD US CREDITOR
During the president visit to Beijing, Obama has been reminded of who the master creditor is. It is China. In public no discussions are made of the Chinese concentrated pressure in London at the metal exchange. Taboo topic. The US President has slipped on three key topics, with mention of the human rights issue, currency manipulation, and the future of communism.
The US has no place to lecture any other nation. China is actually moving toward capitalism, while America has forgotten what capitalism is, and marches with right foot in fascist mud and left foot in communism mud.
The Chinese serve as the spearhead to displace the USDollar from its perch as the global reserve currency. They realize fully that the battle that must be won is over the Gold-Dollar fiery rod. The Chinese might be orchestrating a gold price move to 1150 and a silver price move to 19 just to slap the US face a little during the state visit. Creo que si!
I'm sick of living in a world of psychopathic shit run by psychopaths! I try to live and lead by example! I'm the first person on the planet who connected PUT Options and the Missing Minot Nuke (http://www.sott.net/articles/show/143091-The-Bin-Laden-Option-and-the-Missing-Minot-Nuke). I'm the first person on the planet that told the world WHY Israel was sieging Palestine almost a year ago (http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Secret-Behind-Israel-s-S-by-Martha-Rose-Crow-090106-575.html)
Katherine Austin Fitts writes about how America is addicted to the narco dollars that are laundered through wal-street banks. When she confronted a 'spiritual' group she was speaking before in Philadelphia (http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/solariRising.html) and asked how many would push the 'Red Button' to stop this criminality? Only ONE PERSON IN A HUNDRED would push the Red Button! ONLY ONE!!! Why would the other 99% of 'spiritual' persons not push the button? Their mutual funds would go down and their government checks might stop.
So yeah, I know why most of you were afraid to publish my latest article. *Thank You* to those who did publish me!
Unfortunately, I THINK I'M RIGHT ABOUT THE DIRTY GOLD. Someone sent me the article below late last night and I had to think hard about what to do about it. Me, I just want JUSTICE and you can't have Justice without the TRUTH.
Putting off the day of reckoning is not going to stop the suffering. In fact, it's only going to escalate the suffering and entrench the evil elite's hold on the world as while they are making money on bogus money instruments, they are buying up the world. More, the longer the world waits to stop these criminals, the more chance they will get away with their crimes and the more chance it will be harder to claw back their ill-gotten gains!
Below is the article sent to me and I BElieve that is Probably True. The evidence keeps growing.
I imagine in a few hours, the site below will have a malware sign. WHY? Because this is to be the new bubble of the puppet masters and probably because a lot of the gold on the market is not genuine.
Thank you for your time, ~Martha Rose Crow
http://www.kitco.com/ind/willie/nov182009.html
Zinc Dimes, Tungsten Gold & Lost Respect
By Jim Willie CB
Nov 18 2009
www.GoldenJackass.com
Use the above link to subscribe to the paid research reports, which include coverage of several smallcap companies positioned to rise during the ongoing panicky attempt to sustain an unsustainable system burdened by numerous imbalances aggravated by global village forces. An historically unprecedented mess has been created by compromised central bankers and inept economic advisors, whose interference has irreversibly altered and damaged the world financial system, urgently pushed after the removed anchor of money to gold. Analysis features Gold, Crude Oil, USDollar, Treasury bonds, and inter-market dynamics with the US Economy and US Federal Reserve monetary policy.
In 1964 the USGovt introduced the zinc dimes clad with silver. They at least admitted the debauchery publicly. Now pre-1964 silver coins are all considered different, and valued differently too, higher. Rome committed the same coinage fraud 1900 years ago. Their Empire went bust as the city burned almost concurrently. Ayn Rand is a guiding light for Alan Greenspan, the enabling destroyer of the US banking system, destroyer of the US household archipelago, and dispatcher of the US industrial base to Asia. He is the hero icon worshipped by Wall Street. The irony is thick, that his career was spent following Old Europe orders that delivered the slow motion coup de grace to the American Empire. Ayn Rand wrote "If you want to know when a society is set to vanish, watch the money. Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owner a counterfeit pile of papers." The Chinese are learning this lesson the hard way, challenged to convert their USTreasury Bonds and USAgency Mortgage Bonds into true wealth before the paper becomes untradable. Actually, the bonds will eventually be redeemed by the USFed with newly printed money, when an avalanche occurs of foreigners seeking redemption en masse. For almost ten years they have been exchanging their finished products to the US & West for paper with ink on it, in questionable stored wealth. The Chinese are cashing in on their paper, trading it for new global power.
NEW TUNGSTEN MINE DISCOVERY
The tungsten deposits come in very high grade ore, located in shallow rectangular deposits dispersed widely across the world, segregated in unusual vault heap leach mineralizations. In October, the Hong Kong bankers discovered some gold bars shipped from the United States were actuallytungsten with gold plating. This is the exact same Modus Operandi as the silver clad zinc dimes from 45 years ago. History repeats itself. The parallels to mortgage bond fraud with either subprime borrowers or multiple property titles used in bond securitization is easy to spot. A consistent theme runs through the American management of finance and dissemination of fraudulent assets on a global basis. Tungsten gold bars is a feat difficult to surpass. Credit must be given for not leaving any potential for fraud untapped. Refer to insider flash trading, naked shorting of bank stocks, commodity trading on behalf of the USGovt, and much more. No disrespect is intended for the trillion$ counterfeits of superstar grade. Refer defense appropriations, USTreasury Bond sales beyond issuance, and missing Fannie Mae funds. These are legacy crimes.
The initial discovery was something like four gold bars, which the Hong Kong bankers drilled invasively to test the contents. Reminds me of drilling the earth and measuring how many grams of gold per tonne. The HK bankers hoped to have 99% gold yield in their drill program for the resident bars. They found something like 1% instead and 99% tungsten. By the way, tungsten sells for less than $70 per ton, which makes its swaps for gold to be 60x more profitable than silver bar swaps. Another handy usage for the Gold/Silver ratio in calculations. The hunt was on. Now not a single assayer on the planet is available, as all are tied up. They have been commissioned to test the gold bars shipped from the United States of Fraudulent Banker America in their own bullion vaults. They use basic methods of four drill holes with direct assay of shavings, but also less invasive methods like electro-magnetic waves to examine the metal lattice structure. When highest level methods are needed, they turn to mass spectrometry. NOW ALMOST NO GOLD BARS WILL LEAVE THE LONDON OR NEW YORK METALS EXCHANGES WITHOUT SOME AUTHENTICATION, AS DISTRUST IS WIDESPREAD.
The global bankers must deal with toxic bonds and phony gold bars. Talk circulates that the entire contents of Fort Knox might have swapped a decade ago. Evidence is being accumulated and compiled. The assayers have also been commissioned to assist in authentication of gold bar delivery the world over from the US exchanges. Current estimates among the gold trader community run well past a few hundred thousand 'salted' gold bars, maybe over a million. So the introduction to sophisticated Wall Street methods of currency management during the Decade of Prosperity had a side game running simultaneously. In an age where the lines between patriotism and treason are blurred, this tungsten episode brings new meaning to the word HEIST.
BREAKDOWN AT GOLD EXCHANGES
The bust cometh, and it will be spectacular. The stories told in the press will be peculiar, since not told objectively. The headlines might be a comedy, with phony reports of foreign subterfuge, when the perpetrators are home grown. The focal point for attacks is actually London at their metals exchange. The early October events included numerous offers by exchange officials to settle gold contract deliveries in cash with a 25% extra vig bonus. Much gold was drained from London on demanded delivery, thanks to a small army of lawyers, a small blizzard of contracts, and a few key judges at the courts. They were all Asians, the majority Chinese. Gold was taken, thus enforcing futures contracts, which happen to be binding contracts. The pressure at the end of November will be worse to make good on gold contract deliveries. Recall the stories back in April for a Deutsche Bank rescue by the Euro Central Bank with a very large (over one million oz gold position) provision made. DBank was in trouble. The pressures are mounting every couple months. Next March will be a climax of the breakdown, or else June.
Breakdowns come from extreme pressures. Each delivery month event includes more gold removed from the London exchange, more gold demanded from it, and more movement toward a breakdown. So the next events have even more pressure, with less gold supply and continued relentless demand. Recall also that the exchange, along with the COMEX in the Untied States, exempt certain parties from maintaining 80% collateral when they short gold & silver with paper contracts. Thus the name suppression, or better yet corruption. They are being caught in their naked shorting game. The December 1st events surrounding settlement delivery demands will be more contentious and stressful than October 1st. In sequential manner, the March event will be even more pressure packed, with precious little physical gold in store and more targeted Chinese delivery demanded. The June event will be even more pressure packed still, a backup date for a potential breakdown if it does not occur in March.
The common denominator for the parties demanding gold delivery in London is simple: they are all Asians, all, as in all, and the great majority are Chinese. One can safely conclude that the US and British banks will be broken with the nexus being their gold management, which underpins the USDollar. Other pressure is sure to mount. Not the kind of pressure you might imagine. Pressure is mounting for senior bank executives and politicians to start revealing the identities, deeds, locations, and dates of the gold tungsten swap, the mortgage bond firehose, and other pervasive frauds protected by the USGovt and British Govt.
GOLD & SILVER BREAKOUTS
The gold & silver prices are moving in lead fashion, and have done so among the currencies for at least the last three months. The major currencies fiddle and diddle, but gold & silver continue to rise. The Chinese, according to word from connected sources, intend to push the gold price and the silver price relentless upward without explosive parabolic moves and without painful huge selloff corrections. That way, the army of public investors will not lose heart, and will remain on the path, in full phalanx support of the Chinese Govt initiative. The Euro currency has hit the 150 level in mid-October and in mid-November, only to fall back a little. The Euro is not ready for a powerful move to 160 just yet. Such an advance would bring with it a painful effect to German exporters again, not desired. As a result, the gold price in Europe has made significant moves, and is in the process of challenging the 785 high from February. The key to a massive gold bull market is confirmation in terms of other currencies. The gold breakout is being led globally in US$ terms, since it is the weakest currency among the majors. GOLD IS TAKING ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE AS THE PREMIER GLOBAL CURRENCY, AFTER A BREAKDOWN IN THE MONETARY SYSTEM AND INSOLVENCY IN THE BANKING SYSTEM.
My 1130 midterm target for gold has been hit, stated at least three times this summer and autumn in public articles. One must wonder if a sizeable selloff in gold is coming. My view is that given the lack of sudden sharp upward thrusts in the gold price, the prospect of a sharp correction is lessened. Charts tend to show symmetry oftentimes. Besides, the Beijing Put is becoming well-known in the financial circles. The Chinese are using some reverse technical analysis, buying heavily when the gold chart indicates imminent weakness. That way the clueless Western gold sellers will be denied their cheaper re-entry, and will be forced to buy at higher levels. The Chinese are employing an unusual pattern. They are accumulating gold. The Chinese will continue to buy gold with both hands until the supply is exhausted of turkeys who fail to comprehend the Paradigm Shift, fail to comprehend the USDollar revolt, fail to comprehend the broken Western banks, fail to comprehend the endless stimulus, and fail to dismiss the mindless gold bubble argument that seems to be floating around in recent propaganda ploys. Its author overlooks the USTreasury bubble of gigantic proportions.
Whether or not a notable pullback correction comes for gold, who knows? who cares? This is not a time to go in & out, selling & buying back a gold position. It is a time to acknowledge a powerful global shift that will send the USDollar into the dungeon, and deliver gold to unheardof heights. The next target for gold is 1300. The targets for gold are dictated by the size of the jumps from the head and shoulder of the inverted Head & Shoulders pattern. The lost respect from the gold bullion bar fraud, the Weimar output of printed money, the monetization dependence from global isolation, and the lack of leadership all tend to pull the USDollar down. More accurately, these factors will push gold up into a dominant currency position fully recognized, as nations struggle to rebuild their banks after toxic US infection that does not end.
G-20 CONFIRMS PARADIGM SHIFT
The Scotland gathering of bankers had some key signals to report. Note the signal how they ignored the USDollar as a topic in the open chambers. Conclude they wish for benign neglect, where the US$ can find its true value much lower, and eventually depart as the global reserve currency. Note the signal how they urged continued global stimulus. Conclude they wish for the major governments to continue to debauch, undermine, and destroy the major currencies such as the USDollar, British Pound, European Union Euro, Swiss Franc, and Japanese Yen. Conclude they wish for the emerging market economies to be given massive assistance by the industrialized submerged market economies. The more the prominent older nations render harm to their banking systems, economies, and balance sheets, the easier it will be for Brazil, Russia, India, and China to conduct the business of walking the earth as new leaders. The new BRIC nations will build their dominant positions one brick at a time. The Paradigm Shift is away from the USDollar, with power shifting from West to East and in particular toward the BRIC nations. Their most recent visible victory is killing off the G-8 Meeting, which does not convene anymore. Not only does the G-20 serve as the global banker conference forum, but the Chinese have a lead voice, precisely as they demanded. Creditors win their way.
The commodity currencies are in a different earth zone. My analysis has stated that the prominent older nations, the so-called industrialized nations, will not raise their official interest rates. They will only talk, since their banks are insolvent and their government debt securities are caught in asset bubbles. The Euro Central Bank is the most likely to raise interest rates, but only as part of a more diverse strategy to split the EU iteself. The German nation has been drained by $40 billion per year for each of the last ten years, and resentment is strong. The Australians and Norwegians hiked their official interest rates in recent weeks. They have commodities to fortify their national economies, and do not concentrate on the sale of inked paper in tainted export.
The Paradigm Shift is toward a more legitimate group of currencies. It is toward currencies backed by hard assets. The currency basket from the Intl Monetary Fund seems like the temporary device. It is actually a Straw Man carrying a straw basket. Before the grand shift is complete to at least one hard asset currency, the doomed currencies will be bound together with IMF twine. The bankers believe the IMF straw basket will give them the power to control the decline of the USDollar, or protect themselves from that decline. The strategy might succeed. It will surely enable the gold price to climb versus all currencies. Gold will be like Moses in a basket as a baby, except moving upstream. The candidates for hard asset currencies are the New Russian Ruble, the Gulf Dinar, maybe even a New Nordic Euro. The process will take time, as some bumpy roads lie ahead, and military protection is required.
EXIT STRATEGY & WEIMAR DOLLARS
No exit strategy is available either to the Untied States or the British. The USFed conducted its helpless display to announce the USEconomy remains weak with slack capacity, and that an ultra-low official interest rate would be firmly fixed for a long time still. No surprise here! What they did not say is that, like with Japan, they have no possible exit plan. Now almost twenty years later, Japan is stuck with a near 0% rate. If the USFed raises interest rates, they pop the biggest financial bubble on the planet, USTreasury Bonds. The USFed is further hindered since Wall Street is playing the Dollar Carry Trade. They are borrowing 0% money in US$ and investing in commodities like crude oil and US stock indexes. Other players are using the free borrowed money to invest in gold. In fact, just today St Louis Fed President Bullard stated his expectation of no further USFed rate hike until year 2012.
The Exit Strategy will lead to a road paved by Weimar Dollars. The world's major financial centers outside the central bank accomplices are ditching their dollars. They are diversifying out of US$-based bonds of all types. They are accumulating gold. Some are investing in facilities that are vertically integrated with commodity production, transport, and trade. Like China! The USGovt is investing, by contrast, in clunker cars, still more houses, dead car industry, spoiled AIG insurer, a mortgage cesspool Fannie Mae, pork projects (see unused airport in Johnstown Pennsylvania), and a dubious war on terrorism. Quite a contrast! With the news spreading globally about tungsten-laced gold bars, or actually gold-plated tungsten bars, the reputation of the Untied States will grow more tarnished.
In time, the only friend of the USDept Treasury to finance its steady stream of Trillion$ in debt will be the Printing Pre$$. Without the printed money to pull off the auctions, they would be utter loud failures. Without the USDollar Swap Facility, foreign central banks would not have funds to use in Treasury auctions. Without the funds from foreign USAgency Mortgage Bonds sold to the USFed for freshly printed USDollars, the foreign central banks would not have funds to use in Treasury auctions. Without the Permanent Market Operations used to scoop up all the unsold bonds stuck with primary dealers, one week routinely after each auction, dealers would be unable to participate in the next Treasury auctions. They would suffer from bond constipation. The key event in the next few months, pushed by the foreign disgust at fraud more pervasive than ever conceived by ordinary man, is THE EXPOSURE OF MONETIZATION for support of the USTreasury Bond. The debt monetization remains a dirty secret, well concealed by the USGovt and the financial press. What comes is isolation, and to those isolated, their best friend will be a Printing Pre$$.
Exposure comes, with detrimental impact to the USDollar. The resulting tarnish to the USGovt image and Wall Street reputation will be reflected on the USDollar. In time it will fully resemble a Third World currency. The process will take time, but hyper-inflation is coming to US shores. Where are the Deflation Knuckleheads who tended to dominate the web journals last spring and summer, in incredible dense vapid clueless fashion??? What a tremendously misguided group. They follow religiously the deteriorating economies, miss the twin storm, ignore the power of the unprecedented monetary inflation, and somehow overlook the entire global movement if not revolt against the USDollar in a grand Paradigm Shift. They represent the worst economists in the alternative media on web journals. Their tunnel vision on the falling asset price effect left them vulnerable to missing a tsunami on their own doorstep, incredibly. They still do not offer an explanation of why crude is at the $80 price level again. Supplies of oil are nowhere as great as the false USGovt statistics indicate, but the entire world is hedging at the same time against the US$ with oil assets.
OBAMA VISITS THE LEAD US CREDITOR
During the president visit to Beijing, Obama has been reminded of who the master creditor is. It is China. In public no discussions are made of the Chinese concentrated pressure in London at the metal exchange. Taboo topic. The US President has slipped on three key topics, with mention of the human rights issue, currency manipulation, and the future of communism.
The US has no place to lecture any other nation. China is actually moving toward capitalism, while America has forgotten what capitalism is, and marches with right foot in fascist mud and left foot in communism mud.
The Chinese serve as the spearhead to displace the USDollar from its perch as the global reserve currency. They realize fully that the battle that must be won is over the Gold-Dollar fiery rod. The Chinese might be orchestrating a gold price move to 1150 and a silver price move to 19 just to slap the US face a little during the state visit. Creo que si!
Hiding the Salted Gold of This World
Dear Media Friends: Five days ago, I sent you an article I wrote about how the evil elite of the world has supplanted real gold with fake gold. Although Op-Ed News (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Imaginary-Gold-Bullion-Ho-by-Martha-Rose-Crow-091115-914.html) and four other places picked it up, the article pretty much died on the vine. I kind of thought this would happen because news like this could sink the whole economic ship (and it will eventually) plus the secret serpent puppet masters will try to punish you. They certainly tried to punish me this week. Some of my blogs have been hit, my computer was hit, so forth. Some of the links I used in the article was rendered useless plus the main link cited suddenly had a 'malware' warning on it!
I'm sick of living in a world of psychopathic shit run by psychopaths! I try to live and lead by example! I'm the first person on the planet who connected PUT Options and the Missing Minot Nuke (http://www.sott.net/articles/show/143091-The-Bin-Laden-Option-and-the-Missing-Minot-Nuke). I'm the first person on the planet that told the world WHY Israel was sieging Palestine almost a year ago (http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Secret-Behind-Israel-s-S-by-Martha-Rose-Crow-090106-575.html)
Katherine Austin Fitts writes about how America is addicted to the narco dollars that are laundered through wal-street banks. When she confronted a 'spiritual' group she was speaking before in Philadelphia (http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/solariRising.html) and asked how many would push the 'Red Button' to stop this criminality? Only ONE PERSON IN A HUNDRED would push the Red Button! ONLY ONE!!! Why would the other 99% of 'spiritual' persons not push the button? Their mutual funds would go down and their government checks might stop.
So yeah, I know why most of you were afraid to publish my latest article. *Thank You* to those who did publish me!
Unfortunately, I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE DIRTY GOLD. Someone sent me this late last night and I had to think hard about what to do about it. Me, I just want JUSTICE and you can't have Justice without the TRUTH.
Putting off the day of reckoning is not going to stop the suffering. In fact, it's only going to escalate the suffering and entrench the evil elite's hold on the world as while they are making money on bogus money instruments, they are buying up the world. Below is the article sent to me and I BElieve that is Probably True. The evidence keeps growing.
I imagine in a few hours, this site will have a malware site. Thank you for your time, ~Martha Rose Crow
http://www.kitco.com/ind/willie/nov182009.html
Zinc Dimes, Tungsten Gold & Lost Respect
By Jim Willie CB
Nov 18 2009
www.GoldenJackass.com
Use the above link to subscribe to the paid research reports, which include coverage of several smallcap companies positioned to rise during the ongoing panicky attempt to sustain an unsustainable system burdened by numerous imbalances aggravated by global village forces. An historically unprecedented mess has been created by compromised central bankers and inept economic advisors, whose interference has irreversibly altered and damaged the world financial system, urgently pushed after the removed anchor of money to gold. Analysis features Gold, Crude Oil, USDollar, Treasury bonds, and inter-market dynamics with the US Economy and US Federal Reserve monetary policy.
In 1964 the USGovt introduced the zinc dimes clad with silver. They at least admitted the debauchery publicly. Now pre-1964 silver coins are all considered different, and valued differently too, higher. Rome committed the same coinage fraud 1900 years ago. Their Empire went bust as the city burned almost concurrently. Ayn Rand is a guiding light for Alan Greenspan, the enabling destroyer of the US banking system, destroyer of the US household archipelago, and dispatcher of the US industrial base to Asia. He is the hero icon worshipped by Wall Street. The irony is thick, that his career was spent following Old Europe orders that delivered the slow motion coup de grace to the American Empire. Ayn Rand wrote "If you want to know when a society is set to vanish, watch the money. Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owner a counterfeit pile of papers." The Chinese are learning this lesson the hard way, challenged to convert their USTreasury Bonds and USAgency Mortgage Bonds into true wealth before the paper becomes untradable. Actually, the bonds will eventually be redeemed by the USFed with newly printed money, when an avalanche occurs of foreigners seeking redemption en masse. For almost ten years they have been exchanging their finished products to the US & West for paper with ink on it, in questionable stored wealth. The Chinese are cashing in on their paper, trading it for new global power.
NEW TUNGSTEN MINE DISCOVERY
The tungsten deposits come in very high grade ore, located in shallow rectangular deposits dispersed widely across the world, segregated in unusual vault heap leach mineralizations. In October, the Hong Kong bankers discovered some gold bars shipped from the United States were actuallytungsten with gold plating. This is the exact same Modus Operandi as the silver clad zinc dimes from 45 years ago. History repeats itself. The parallels to mortgage bond fraud with either subprime borrowers or multiple property titles used in bond securitization is easy to spot. A consistent theme runs through the American management of finance and dissemination of fraudulent assets on a global basis. Tungsten gold bars is a feat difficult to surpass. Credit must be given for not leaving any potential for fraud untapped. Refer to insider flash trading, naked shorting of bank stocks, commodity trading on behalf of the USGovt, and much more. No disrespect is intended for the trillion$ counterfeits of superstar grade. Refer defense appropriations, USTreasury Bond sales beyond issuance, and missing Fannie Mae funds. These are legacy crimes.
The initial discovery was something like four gold bars, which the Hong Kong bankers drilled invasively to test the contents. Reminds me of drilling the earth and measuring how many grams of gold per tonne. The HK bankers hoped to have 99% gold yield in their drill program for the resident bars. They found something like 1% instead and 99% tungsten. By the way, tungsten sells for less than $70 per ton, which makes its swaps for gold to be 60x more profitable than silver bar swaps. Another handy usage for the Gold/Silver ratio in calculations. The hunt was on. Now not a single assayer on the planet is available, as all are tied up. They have been commissioned to test the gold bars shipped from the United States of Fraudulent Banker America in their own bullion vaults. They use basic methods of four drill holes with direct assay of shavings, but also less invasive methods like electro-magnetic waves to examine the metal lattice structure. When highest level methods are needed, they turn to mass spectrometry. NOW ALMOST NO GOLD BARS WILL LEAVE THE LONDON OR NEW YORK METALS EXCHANGES WITHOUT SOME AUTHENTICATION, AS DISTRUST IS WIDESPREAD.
The global bankers must deal with toxic bonds and phony gold bars. Talk circulates that the entire contents of Fort Knox might have swapped a decade ago. Evidence is being accumulated and compiled. The assayers have also been commissioned to assist in authentication of gold bar delivery the world over from the US exchanges. Current estimates among the gold trader community run well past a few hundred thousand 'salted' gold bars, maybe over a million. So the introduction to sophisticated Wall Street methods of currency management during the Decade of Prosperity had a side game running simultaneously. In an age where the lines between patriotism and treason are blurred, this tungsten episode brings new meaning to the word HEIST.
BREAKDOWN AT GOLD EXCHANGES
The bust cometh, and it will be spectacular. The stories told in the press will be peculiar, since not told objectively. The headlines might be a comedy, with phony reports of foreign subterfuge, when the perpetrators are home grown. The focal point for attacks is actually London at their metals exchange. The early October events included numerous offers by exchange officials to settle gold contract deliveries in cash with a 25% extra vig bonus. Much gold was drained from London on demanded delivery, thanks to a small army of lawyers, a small blizzard of contracts, and a few key judges at the courts. They were all Asians, the majority Chinese. Gold was taken, thus enforcing futures contracts, which happen to be binding contracts. The pressure at the end of November will be worse to make good on gold contract deliveries. Recall the stories back in April for a Deutsche Bank rescue by the Euro Central Bank with a very large (over one million oz gold position) provision made. DBank was in trouble. The pressures are mounting every couple months. Next March will be a climax of the breakdown, or else June.
Breakdowns come from extreme pressures. Each delivery month event includes more gold removed from the London exchange, more gold demanded from it, and more movement toward a breakdown. So the next events have even more pressure, with less gold supply and continued relentless demand. Recall also that the exchange, along with the COMEX in the Untied States, exempt certain parties from maintaining 80% collateral when they short gold & silver with paper contracts. Thus the name suppression, or better yet corruption. They are being caught in their naked shorting game. The December 1st events surrounding settlement delivery demands will be more contentious and stressful than October 1st. In sequential manner, the March event will be even more pressure packed, with precious little physical gold in store and more targeted Chinese delivery demanded. The June event will be even more pressure packed still, a backup date for a potential breakdown if it does not occur in March.
The common denominator for the parties demanding gold delivery in London is simple: they are all Asians, all, as in all, and the great majority are Chinese. One can safely conclude that the US and British banks will be broken with the nexus being their gold management, which underpins the USDollar. Other pressure is sure to mount. Not the kind of pressure you might imagine. Pressure is mounting for senior bank executives and politicians to start revealing the identities, deeds, locations, and dates of the gold tungsten swap, the mortgage bond firehose, and other pervasive frauds protected by the USGovt and British Govt.
GOLD & SILVER BREAKOUTS
The gold & silver prices are moving in lead fashion, and have done so among the currencies for at least the last three months. The major currencies fiddle and diddle, but gold & silver continue to rise. The Chinese, according to word from connected sources, intend to push the gold price and the silver price relentless upward without explosive parabolic moves and without painful huge selloff corrections. That way, the army of public investors will not lose heart, and will remain on the path, in full phalanx support of the Chinese Govt initiative. The Euro currency has hit the 150 level in mid-October and in mid-November, only to fall back a little. The Euro is not ready for a powerful move to 160 just yet. Such an advance would bring with it a painful effect to German exporters again, not desired. As a result, the gold price in Europe has made significant moves, and is in the process of challenging the 785 high from February. The key to a massive gold bull market is confirmation in terms of other currencies. The gold breakout is being led globally in US$ terms, since it is the weakest currency among the majors. GOLD IS TAKING ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE AS THE PREMIER GLOBAL CURRENCY, AFTER A BREAKDOWN IN THE MONETARY SYSTEM AND INSOLVENCY IN THE BANKING SYSTEM.
My 1130 midterm target for gold has been hit, stated at least three times this summer and autumn in public articles. One must wonder if a sizeable selloff in gold is coming. My view is that given the lack of sudden sharp upward thrusts in the gold price, the prospect of a sharp correction is lessened. Charts tend to show symmetry oftentimes. Besides, the Beijing Put is becoming well-known in the financial circles. The Chinese are using some reverse technical analysis, buying heavily when the gold chart indicates imminent weakness. That way the clueless Western gold sellers will be denied their cheaper re-entry, and will be forced to buy at higher levels. The Chinese are employing an unusual pattern. They are accumulating gold. The Chinese will continue to buy gold with both hands until the supply is exhausted of turkeys who fail to comprehend the Paradigm Shift, fail to comprehend the USDollar revolt, fail to comprehend the broken Western banks, fail to comprehend the endless stimulus, and fail to dismiss the mindless gold bubble argument that seems to be floating around in recent propaganda ploys. Its author overlooks the USTreasury bubble of gigantic proportions.
Whether or not a notable pullback correction comes for gold, who knows? who cares? This is not a time to go in & out, selling & buying back a gold position. It is a time to acknowledge a powerful global shift that will send the USDollar into the dungeon, and deliver gold to unheardof heights. The next target for gold is 1300. The targets for gold are dictated by the size of the jumps from the head and shoulder of the inverted Head & Shoulders pattern. The lost respect from the gold bullion bar fraud, the Weimar output of printed money, the monetization dependence from global isolation, and the lack of leadership all tend to pull the USDollar down. More accurately, these factors will push gold up into a dominant currency position fully recognized, as nations struggle to rebuild their banks after toxic US infection that does not end.
G-20 CONFIRMS PARADIGM SHIFT
The Scotland gathering of bankers had some key signals to report. Note the signal how they ignored the USDollar as a topic in the open chambers. Conclude they wish for benign neglect, where the US$ can find its true value much lower, and eventually depart as the global reserve currency. Note the signal how they urged continued global stimulus. Conclude they wish for the major governments to continue to debauch, undermine, and destroy the major currencies such as the USDollar, British Pound, European Union Euro, Swiss Franc, and Japanese Yen. Conclude they wish for the emerging market economies to be given massive assistance by the industrialized submerged market economies. The more the prominent older nations render harm to their banking systems, economies, and balance sheets, the easier it will be for Brazil, Russia, India, and China to conduct the business of walking the earth as new leaders. The new BRIC nations will build their dominant positions one brick at a time. The Paradigm Shift is away from the USDollar, with power shifting from West to East and in particular toward the BRIC nations. Their most recent visible victory is killing off the G-8 Meeting, which does not convene anymore. Not only does the G-20 serve as the global banker conference forum, but the Chinese have a lead voice, precisely as they demanded. Creditors win their way.
The commodity currencies are in a different earth zone. My analysis has stated that the prominent older nations, the so-called industrialized nations, will not raise their official interest rates. They will only talk, since their banks are insolvent and their government debt securities are caught in asset bubbles. The Euro Central Bank is the most likely to raise interest rates, but only as part of a more diverse strategy to split the EU iteself. The German nation has been drained by $40 billion per year for each of the last ten years, and resentment is strong. The Australians and Norwegians hiked their official interest rates in recent weeks. They have commodities to fortify their national economies, and do not concentrate on the sale of inked paper in tainted export.
The Paradigm Shift is toward a more legitimate group of currencies. It is toward currencies backed by hard assets. The currency basket from the Intl Monetary Fund seems like the temporary device. It is actually a Straw Man carrying a straw basket. Before the grand shift is complete to at least one hard asset currency, the doomed currencies will be bound together with IMF twine. The bankers believe the IMF straw basket will give them the power to control the decline of the USDollar, or protect themselves from that decline. The strategy might succeed. It will surely enable the gold price to climb versus all currencies. Gold will be like Moses in a basket as a baby, except moving upstream. The candidates for hard asset currencies are the New Russian Ruble, the Gulf Dinar, maybe even a New Nordic Euro. The process will take time, as some bumpy roads lie ahead, and military protection is required.
EXIT STRATEGY & WEIMAR DOLLARS
No exit strategy is available either to the Untied States or the British. The USFed conducted its helpless display to announce the USEconomy remains weak with slack capacity, and that an ultra-low official interest rate would be firmly fixed for a long time still. No surprise here! What they did not say is that, like with Japan, they have no possible exit plan. Now almost twenty years later, Japan is stuck with a near 0% rate. If the USFed raises interest rates, they pop the biggest financial bubble on the planet, USTreasury Bonds. The USFed is further hindered since Wall Street is playing the Dollar Carry Trade. They are borrowing 0% money in US$ and investing in commodities like crude oil and US stock indexes. Other players are using the free borrowed money to invest in gold. In fact, just today St Louis Fed President Bullard stated his expectation of no further USFed rate hike until year 2012.
The Exit Strategy will lead to a road paved by Weimar Dollars. The world's major financial centers outside the central bank accomplices are ditching their dollars. They are diversifying out of US$-based bonds of all types. They are accumulating gold. Some are investing in facilities that are vertically integrated with commodity production, transport, and trade. Like China! The USGovt is investing, by contrast, in clunker cars, still more houses, dead car industry, spoiled AIG insurer, a mortgage cesspool Fannie Mae, pork projects (see unused airport in Johnstown Pennsylvania), and a dubious war on terrorism. Quite a contrast! With the news spreading globally about tungsten-laced gold bars, or actually gold-plated tungsten bars, the reputation of the Untied States will grow more tarnished.
In time, the only friend of the USDept Treasury to finance its steady stream of Trillion$ in debt will be the Printing Pre$$. Without the printed money to pull off the auctions, they would be utter loud failures. Without the USDollar Swap Facility, foreign central banks would not have funds to use in Treasury auctions. Without the funds from foreign USAgency Mortgage Bonds sold to the USFed for freshly printed USDollars, the foreign central banks would not have funds to use in Treasury auctions. Without the Permanent Market Operations used to scoop up all the unsold bonds stuck with primary dealers, one week routinely after each auction, dealers would be unable to participate in the next Treasury auctions. They would suffer from bond constipation. The key event in the next few months, pushed by the foreign disgust at fraud more pervasive than ever conceived by ordinary man, is THE EXPOSURE OF MONETIZATION for support of the USTreasury Bond. The debt monetization remains a dirty secret, well concealed by the USGovt and the financial press. What comes is isolation, and to those isolated, their best friend will be a Printing Pre$$.
Exposure comes, with detrimental impact to the USDollar. The resulting tarnish to the USGovt image and Wall Street reputation will be reflected on the USDollar. In time it will fully resemble a Third World currency. The process will take time, but hyper-inflation is coming to US shores. Where are the Deflation Knuckleheads who tended to dominate the web journals last spring and summer, in incredible dense vapid clueless fashion??? What a tremendously misguided group. They follow religiously the deteriorating economies, miss the twin storm, ignore the power of the unprecedented monetary inflation, and somehow overlook the entire global movement if not revolt against the USDollar in a grand Paradigm Shift. They represent the worst economists in the alternative media on web journals. Their tunnel vision on the falling asset price effect left them vulnerable to missing a tsunami on their own doorstep, incredibly. They still do not offer an explanation of why crude is at the $80 price level again. Supplies of oil are nowhere as great as the false USGovt statistics indicate, but the entire world is hedging at the same time against the US$ with oil assets.
OBAMA VISITS THE LEAD US CREDITOR
During the president visit to Beijing, Obama has been reminded of who the master creditor is. It is China. In public no discussions are made of the Chinese concentrated pressure in London at the metal exchange. Taboo topic. The US President has slipped on three key topics, with mention of the human rights issue, currency manipulation, and the future of communism.
The US has no place to lecture any other nation. China is actually moving toward capitalism, while America has forgotten what capitalism is, and marches with right foot in fascist mud and left foot in communism mud.
The Chinese serve as the spearhead to displace the USDollar from its perch as the global reserve currency. They realize fully that the battle that must be won is over the Gold-Dollar fiery rod. The Chinese might be orchestrating a gold price move to 1150 and a silver price move to 19 just to slap the US face a little during the state visit. Creo que si!
I'm sick of living in a world of psychopathic shit run by psychopaths! I try to live and lead by example! I'm the first person on the planet who connected PUT Options and the Missing Minot Nuke (http://www.sott.net/articles/show/143091-The-Bin-Laden-Option-and-the-Missing-Minot-Nuke). I'm the first person on the planet that told the world WHY Israel was sieging Palestine almost a year ago (http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Secret-Behind-Israel-s-S-by-Martha-Rose-Crow-090106-575.html)
Katherine Austin Fitts writes about how America is addicted to the narco dollars that are laundered through wal-street banks. When she confronted a 'spiritual' group she was speaking before in Philadelphia (http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/solariRising.html) and asked how many would push the 'Red Button' to stop this criminality? Only ONE PERSON IN A HUNDRED would push the Red Button! ONLY ONE!!! Why would the other 99% of 'spiritual' persons not push the button? Their mutual funds would go down and their government checks might stop.
So yeah, I know why most of you were afraid to publish my latest article. *Thank You* to those who did publish me!
Unfortunately, I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE DIRTY GOLD. Someone sent me this late last night and I had to think hard about what to do about it. Me, I just want JUSTICE and you can't have Justice without the TRUTH.
Putting off the day of reckoning is not going to stop the suffering. In fact, it's only going to escalate the suffering and entrench the evil elite's hold on the world as while they are making money on bogus money instruments, they are buying up the world. Below is the article sent to me and I BElieve that is Probably True. The evidence keeps growing.
I imagine in a few hours, this site will have a malware site. Thank you for your time, ~Martha Rose Crow
http://www.kitco.com/ind/willie/nov182009.html
Zinc Dimes, Tungsten Gold & Lost Respect
By Jim Willie CB
Nov 18 2009
www.GoldenJackass.com
Use the above link to subscribe to the paid research reports, which include coverage of several smallcap companies positioned to rise during the ongoing panicky attempt to sustain an unsustainable system burdened by numerous imbalances aggravated by global village forces. An historically unprecedented mess has been created by compromised central bankers and inept economic advisors, whose interference has irreversibly altered and damaged the world financial system, urgently pushed after the removed anchor of money to gold. Analysis features Gold, Crude Oil, USDollar, Treasury bonds, and inter-market dynamics with the US Economy and US Federal Reserve monetary policy.
In 1964 the USGovt introduced the zinc dimes clad with silver. They at least admitted the debauchery publicly. Now pre-1964 silver coins are all considered different, and valued differently too, higher. Rome committed the same coinage fraud 1900 years ago. Their Empire went bust as the city burned almost concurrently. Ayn Rand is a guiding light for Alan Greenspan, the enabling destroyer of the US banking system, destroyer of the US household archipelago, and dispatcher of the US industrial base to Asia. He is the hero icon worshipped by Wall Street. The irony is thick, that his career was spent following Old Europe orders that delivered the slow motion coup de grace to the American Empire. Ayn Rand wrote "If you want to know when a society is set to vanish, watch the money. Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owner a counterfeit pile of papers." The Chinese are learning this lesson the hard way, challenged to convert their USTreasury Bonds and USAgency Mortgage Bonds into true wealth before the paper becomes untradable. Actually, the bonds will eventually be redeemed by the USFed with newly printed money, when an avalanche occurs of foreigners seeking redemption en masse. For almost ten years they have been exchanging their finished products to the US & West for paper with ink on it, in questionable stored wealth. The Chinese are cashing in on their paper, trading it for new global power.
NEW TUNGSTEN MINE DISCOVERY
The tungsten deposits come in very high grade ore, located in shallow rectangular deposits dispersed widely across the world, segregated in unusual vault heap leach mineralizations. In October, the Hong Kong bankers discovered some gold bars shipped from the United States were actuallytungsten with gold plating. This is the exact same Modus Operandi as the silver clad zinc dimes from 45 years ago. History repeats itself. The parallels to mortgage bond fraud with either subprime borrowers or multiple property titles used in bond securitization is easy to spot. A consistent theme runs through the American management of finance and dissemination of fraudulent assets on a global basis. Tungsten gold bars is a feat difficult to surpass. Credit must be given for not leaving any potential for fraud untapped. Refer to insider flash trading, naked shorting of bank stocks, commodity trading on behalf of the USGovt, and much more. No disrespect is intended for the trillion$ counterfeits of superstar grade. Refer defense appropriations, USTreasury Bond sales beyond issuance, and missing Fannie Mae funds. These are legacy crimes.
The initial discovery was something like four gold bars, which the Hong Kong bankers drilled invasively to test the contents. Reminds me of drilling the earth and measuring how many grams of gold per tonne. The HK bankers hoped to have 99% gold yield in their drill program for the resident bars. They found something like 1% instead and 99% tungsten. By the way, tungsten sells for less than $70 per ton, which makes its swaps for gold to be 60x more profitable than silver bar swaps. Another handy usage for the Gold/Silver ratio in calculations. The hunt was on. Now not a single assayer on the planet is available, as all are tied up. They have been commissioned to test the gold bars shipped from the United States of Fraudulent Banker America in their own bullion vaults. They use basic methods of four drill holes with direct assay of shavings, but also less invasive methods like electro-magnetic waves to examine the metal lattice structure. When highest level methods are needed, they turn to mass spectrometry. NOW ALMOST NO GOLD BARS WILL LEAVE THE LONDON OR NEW YORK METALS EXCHANGES WITHOUT SOME AUTHENTICATION, AS DISTRUST IS WIDESPREAD.
The global bankers must deal with toxic bonds and phony gold bars. Talk circulates that the entire contents of Fort Knox might have swapped a decade ago. Evidence is being accumulated and compiled. The assayers have also been commissioned to assist in authentication of gold bar delivery the world over from the US exchanges. Current estimates among the gold trader community run well past a few hundred thousand 'salted' gold bars, maybe over a million. So the introduction to sophisticated Wall Street methods of currency management during the Decade of Prosperity had a side game running simultaneously. In an age where the lines between patriotism and treason are blurred, this tungsten episode brings new meaning to the word HEIST.
BREAKDOWN AT GOLD EXCHANGES
The bust cometh, and it will be spectacular. The stories told in the press will be peculiar, since not told objectively. The headlines might be a comedy, with phony reports of foreign subterfuge, when the perpetrators are home grown. The focal point for attacks is actually London at their metals exchange. The early October events included numerous offers by exchange officials to settle gold contract deliveries in cash with a 25% extra vig bonus. Much gold was drained from London on demanded delivery, thanks to a small army of lawyers, a small blizzard of contracts, and a few key judges at the courts. They were all Asians, the majority Chinese. Gold was taken, thus enforcing futures contracts, which happen to be binding contracts. The pressure at the end of November will be worse to make good on gold contract deliveries. Recall the stories back in April for a Deutsche Bank rescue by the Euro Central Bank with a very large (over one million oz gold position) provision made. DBank was in trouble. The pressures are mounting every couple months. Next March will be a climax of the breakdown, or else June.
Breakdowns come from extreme pressures. Each delivery month event includes more gold removed from the London exchange, more gold demanded from it, and more movement toward a breakdown. So the next events have even more pressure, with less gold supply and continued relentless demand. Recall also that the exchange, along with the COMEX in the Untied States, exempt certain parties from maintaining 80% collateral when they short gold & silver with paper contracts. Thus the name suppression, or better yet corruption. They are being caught in their naked shorting game. The December 1st events surrounding settlement delivery demands will be more contentious and stressful than October 1st. In sequential manner, the March event will be even more pressure packed, with precious little physical gold in store and more targeted Chinese delivery demanded. The June event will be even more pressure packed still, a backup date for a potential breakdown if it does not occur in March.
The common denominator for the parties demanding gold delivery in London is simple: they are all Asians, all, as in all, and the great majority are Chinese. One can safely conclude that the US and British banks will be broken with the nexus being their gold management, which underpins the USDollar. Other pressure is sure to mount. Not the kind of pressure you might imagine. Pressure is mounting for senior bank executives and politicians to start revealing the identities, deeds, locations, and dates of the gold tungsten swap, the mortgage bond firehose, and other pervasive frauds protected by the USGovt and British Govt.
GOLD & SILVER BREAKOUTS
The gold & silver prices are moving in lead fashion, and have done so among the currencies for at least the last three months. The major currencies fiddle and diddle, but gold & silver continue to rise. The Chinese, according to word from connected sources, intend to push the gold price and the silver price relentless upward without explosive parabolic moves and without painful huge selloff corrections. That way, the army of public investors will not lose heart, and will remain on the path, in full phalanx support of the Chinese Govt initiative. The Euro currency has hit the 150 level in mid-October and in mid-November, only to fall back a little. The Euro is not ready for a powerful move to 160 just yet. Such an advance would bring with it a painful effect to German exporters again, not desired. As a result, the gold price in Europe has made significant moves, and is in the process of challenging the 785 high from February. The key to a massive gold bull market is confirmation in terms of other currencies. The gold breakout is being led globally in US$ terms, since it is the weakest currency among the majors. GOLD IS TAKING ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE AS THE PREMIER GLOBAL CURRENCY, AFTER A BREAKDOWN IN THE MONETARY SYSTEM AND INSOLVENCY IN THE BANKING SYSTEM.
My 1130 midterm target for gold has been hit, stated at least three times this summer and autumn in public articles. One must wonder if a sizeable selloff in gold is coming. My view is that given the lack of sudden sharp upward thrusts in the gold price, the prospect of a sharp correction is lessened. Charts tend to show symmetry oftentimes. Besides, the Beijing Put is becoming well-known in the financial circles. The Chinese are using some reverse technical analysis, buying heavily when the gold chart indicates imminent weakness. That way the clueless Western gold sellers will be denied their cheaper re-entry, and will be forced to buy at higher levels. The Chinese are employing an unusual pattern. They are accumulating gold. The Chinese will continue to buy gold with both hands until the supply is exhausted of turkeys who fail to comprehend the Paradigm Shift, fail to comprehend the USDollar revolt, fail to comprehend the broken Western banks, fail to comprehend the endless stimulus, and fail to dismiss the mindless gold bubble argument that seems to be floating around in recent propaganda ploys. Its author overlooks the USTreasury bubble of gigantic proportions.
Whether or not a notable pullback correction comes for gold, who knows? who cares? This is not a time to go in & out, selling & buying back a gold position. It is a time to acknowledge a powerful global shift that will send the USDollar into the dungeon, and deliver gold to unheardof heights. The next target for gold is 1300. The targets for gold are dictated by the size of the jumps from the head and shoulder of the inverted Head & Shoulders pattern. The lost respect from the gold bullion bar fraud, the Weimar output of printed money, the monetization dependence from global isolation, and the lack of leadership all tend to pull the USDollar down. More accurately, these factors will push gold up into a dominant currency position fully recognized, as nations struggle to rebuild their banks after toxic US infection that does not end.
G-20 CONFIRMS PARADIGM SHIFT
The Scotland gathering of bankers had some key signals to report. Note the signal how they ignored the USDollar as a topic in the open chambers. Conclude they wish for benign neglect, where the US$ can find its true value much lower, and eventually depart as the global reserve currency. Note the signal how they urged continued global stimulus. Conclude they wish for the major governments to continue to debauch, undermine, and destroy the major currencies such as the USDollar, British Pound, European Union Euro, Swiss Franc, and Japanese Yen. Conclude they wish for the emerging market economies to be given massive assistance by the industrialized submerged market economies. The more the prominent older nations render harm to their banking systems, economies, and balance sheets, the easier it will be for Brazil, Russia, India, and China to conduct the business of walking the earth as new leaders. The new BRIC nations will build their dominant positions one brick at a time. The Paradigm Shift is away from the USDollar, with power shifting from West to East and in particular toward the BRIC nations. Their most recent visible victory is killing off the G-8 Meeting, which does not convene anymore. Not only does the G-20 serve as the global banker conference forum, but the Chinese have a lead voice, precisely as they demanded. Creditors win their way.
The commodity currencies are in a different earth zone. My analysis has stated that the prominent older nations, the so-called industrialized nations, will not raise their official interest rates. They will only talk, since their banks are insolvent and their government debt securities are caught in asset bubbles. The Euro Central Bank is the most likely to raise interest rates, but only as part of a more diverse strategy to split the EU iteself. The German nation has been drained by $40 billion per year for each of the last ten years, and resentment is strong. The Australians and Norwegians hiked their official interest rates in recent weeks. They have commodities to fortify their national economies, and do not concentrate on the sale of inked paper in tainted export.
The Paradigm Shift is toward a more legitimate group of currencies. It is toward currencies backed by hard assets. The currency basket from the Intl Monetary Fund seems like the temporary device. It is actually a Straw Man carrying a straw basket. Before the grand shift is complete to at least one hard asset currency, the doomed currencies will be bound together with IMF twine. The bankers believe the IMF straw basket will give them the power to control the decline of the USDollar, or protect themselves from that decline. The strategy might succeed. It will surely enable the gold price to climb versus all currencies. Gold will be like Moses in a basket as a baby, except moving upstream. The candidates for hard asset currencies are the New Russian Ruble, the Gulf Dinar, maybe even a New Nordic Euro. The process will take time, as some bumpy roads lie ahead, and military protection is required.
EXIT STRATEGY & WEIMAR DOLLARS
No exit strategy is available either to the Untied States or the British. The USFed conducted its helpless display to announce the USEconomy remains weak with slack capacity, and that an ultra-low official interest rate would be firmly fixed for a long time still. No surprise here! What they did not say is that, like with Japan, they have no possible exit plan. Now almost twenty years later, Japan is stuck with a near 0% rate. If the USFed raises interest rates, they pop the biggest financial bubble on the planet, USTreasury Bonds. The USFed is further hindered since Wall Street is playing the Dollar Carry Trade. They are borrowing 0% money in US$ and investing in commodities like crude oil and US stock indexes. Other players are using the free borrowed money to invest in gold. In fact, just today St Louis Fed President Bullard stated his expectation of no further USFed rate hike until year 2012.
The Exit Strategy will lead to a road paved by Weimar Dollars. The world's major financial centers outside the central bank accomplices are ditching their dollars. They are diversifying out of US$-based bonds of all types. They are accumulating gold. Some are investing in facilities that are vertically integrated with commodity production, transport, and trade. Like China! The USGovt is investing, by contrast, in clunker cars, still more houses, dead car industry, spoiled AIG insurer, a mortgage cesspool Fannie Mae, pork projects (see unused airport in Johnstown Pennsylvania), and a dubious war on terrorism. Quite a contrast! With the news spreading globally about tungsten-laced gold bars, or actually gold-plated tungsten bars, the reputation of the Untied States will grow more tarnished.
In time, the only friend of the USDept Treasury to finance its steady stream of Trillion$ in debt will be the Printing Pre$$. Without the printed money to pull off the auctions, they would be utter loud failures. Without the USDollar Swap Facility, foreign central banks would not have funds to use in Treasury auctions. Without the funds from foreign USAgency Mortgage Bonds sold to the USFed for freshly printed USDollars, the foreign central banks would not have funds to use in Treasury auctions. Without the Permanent Market Operations used to scoop up all the unsold bonds stuck with primary dealers, one week routinely after each auction, dealers would be unable to participate in the next Treasury auctions. They would suffer from bond constipation. The key event in the next few months, pushed by the foreign disgust at fraud more pervasive than ever conceived by ordinary man, is THE EXPOSURE OF MONETIZATION for support of the USTreasury Bond. The debt monetization remains a dirty secret, well concealed by the USGovt and the financial press. What comes is isolation, and to those isolated, their best friend will be a Printing Pre$$.
Exposure comes, with detrimental impact to the USDollar. The resulting tarnish to the USGovt image and Wall Street reputation will be reflected on the USDollar. In time it will fully resemble a Third World currency. The process will take time, but hyper-inflation is coming to US shores. Where are the Deflation Knuckleheads who tended to dominate the web journals last spring and summer, in incredible dense vapid clueless fashion??? What a tremendously misguided group. They follow religiously the deteriorating economies, miss the twin storm, ignore the power of the unprecedented monetary inflation, and somehow overlook the entire global movement if not revolt against the USDollar in a grand Paradigm Shift. They represent the worst economists in the alternative media on web journals. Their tunnel vision on the falling asset price effect left them vulnerable to missing a tsunami on their own doorstep, incredibly. They still do not offer an explanation of why crude is at the $80 price level again. Supplies of oil are nowhere as great as the false USGovt statistics indicate, but the entire world is hedging at the same time against the US$ with oil assets.
OBAMA VISITS THE LEAD US CREDITOR
During the president visit to Beijing, Obama has been reminded of who the master creditor is. It is China. In public no discussions are made of the Chinese concentrated pressure in London at the metal exchange. Taboo topic. The US President has slipped on three key topics, with mention of the human rights issue, currency manipulation, and the future of communism.
The US has no place to lecture any other nation. China is actually moving toward capitalism, while America has forgotten what capitalism is, and marches with right foot in fascist mud and left foot in communism mud.
The Chinese serve as the spearhead to displace the USDollar from its perch as the global reserve currency. They realize fully that the battle that must be won is over the Gold-Dollar fiery rod. The Chinese might be orchestrating a gold price move to 1150 and a silver price move to 19 just to slap the US face a little during the state visit. Creo que si!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The time of reckoning is now
My Friend Roland has written the *Most Marvelous* poem about my Best Friend Judyth Vary Baker. She is the Mistress of Lee Harvey Oswald and struggles every November with her memories and losses. To *Honor* Roland and Judyth, I'm posting his *Excellent Poem* Below. Cheers, Roland and Judyth! (SMILE) I LOVE YOU BOTH!!!!
The time of reckoning is now
by Roland Michel Tremblay
You have no idea
Who I am
They still have no idea
Who I am
And what I am capable of
Telling
This is the time
When you will pay
For such corruption
For such extraordinary ways
Of reaching your ultimate goals
Through such grand deceptions
Designed to change a whole world
I am the first and last
Whistleblower of this world
The lid is about to explode!
I was part of it
I did not want to
Please don’t blame me!
You have no idea
How much I was against it
I was threatened
With my life
The life of the ones I love
I had no choice
And only now
Do I find it
In my heart
For all posterity
To set the record straight
Now that I am living in exile
Having requested political asylum
Not an easy matter
I tell you
Having fled from the Land of the Free
It was finally denied
But they gave me enough time
For friends to hide me
In secret places
And from those secret places
I cry out
To you
Only now
I am ready
To tell the world!
Please hear me!
As I am telling the truth
All the truth
Before God
The only truth
You will ever need to hear
Upon such things
That went on to become
Conspiracy theories
Of the first kind
I’m the only survivor
All others have died
In mysterious ways
And others died
In not such mysterious ways
It is all over the news
I have always been
The next target
I was threatened with my life
So many times!
So many attempts on my life
Have been made
It is a miracle I’m still here
It is a miracle I’m here
To finally tell it all
For posterity
And I will
Before I die
I can assure you
Because nothing else matters
The world will know the truth
One way or another
I can tell you that much
You!
Do not fall victim
To any propaganda
To all the lies of all authorities
In this world
You are being manipulated!
You are being lied to
On a daily basis!
Your government
Is evil
Your leaders
Are evil
Never should you ever
Trust any of them
Never!
They inherited evil
For they let evil men take over my country
They hid the sins of the killers
Looked away and lied
And many now suffer
For the evil
That taints them!
I was asked
I was deceived
Into developing biological weapons
I was asked
I was deceived
Into killing
I would not have anything to do with it
I had no choice
All was at stake
Myself, my lover, my family
I had to kill
And I did
But you don’t understand
Always at heart
I had peace in mind
I had to prevent World War III
As I was led to believe I was doing
As I love everyone
As I love the world I live in
And so much I feel I could contribute
To salvage it
To save it!
It is all I always wanted to do
Before a time when
I never even knew I could have
Such an impact upon the world
And let’s see how much of an impact
I can have on my own now
As I do believe I can
Have such an impact upon the world
You want to know
How central I was
To such history?
I was so central
I could have changed the world
Still, I might have done
Who knows
And now
I will set the record straight
For history
There’s no turning back now
Not after all those
Death threats
Not after all those
Death attempts
I will tell it all
And perhaps
Change the world
In the process
In a positive way for a change
Through peace!
All I ever wished for
The time of reckoning
Is now
***
“Without irony, this life would hardly be worth living.”
Roland Michel Tremblay
http://www.themarginal.com/destructivism.pdf
The time of reckoning is now
by Roland Michel Tremblay
You have no idea
Who I am
They still have no idea
Who I am
And what I am capable of
Telling
This is the time
When you will pay
For such corruption
For such extraordinary ways
Of reaching your ultimate goals
Through such grand deceptions
Designed to change a whole world
I am the first and last
Whistleblower of this world
The lid is about to explode!
I was part of it
I did not want to
Please don’t blame me!
You have no idea
How much I was against it
I was threatened
With my life
The life of the ones I love
I had no choice
And only now
Do I find it
In my heart
For all posterity
To set the record straight
Now that I am living in exile
Having requested political asylum
Not an easy matter
I tell you
Having fled from the Land of the Free
It was finally denied
But they gave me enough time
For friends to hide me
In secret places
And from those secret places
I cry out
To you
Only now
I am ready
To tell the world!
Please hear me!
As I am telling the truth
All the truth
Before God
The only truth
You will ever need to hear
Upon such things
That went on to become
Conspiracy theories
Of the first kind
I’m the only survivor
All others have died
In mysterious ways
And others died
In not such mysterious ways
It is all over the news
I have always been
The next target
I was threatened with my life
So many times!
So many attempts on my life
Have been made
It is a miracle I’m still here
It is a miracle I’m here
To finally tell it all
For posterity
And I will
Before I die
I can assure you
Because nothing else matters
The world will know the truth
One way or another
I can tell you that much
You!
Do not fall victim
To any propaganda
To all the lies of all authorities
In this world
You are being manipulated!
You are being lied to
On a daily basis!
Your government
Is evil
Your leaders
Are evil
Never should you ever
Trust any of them
Never!
They inherited evil
For they let evil men take over my country
They hid the sins of the killers
Looked away and lied
And many now suffer
For the evil
That taints them!
I was asked
I was deceived
Into developing biological weapons
I was asked
I was deceived
Into killing
I would not have anything to do with it
I had no choice
All was at stake
Myself, my lover, my family
I had to kill
And I did
But you don’t understand
Always at heart
I had peace in mind
I had to prevent World War III
As I was led to believe I was doing
As I love everyone
As I love the world I live in
And so much I feel I could contribute
To salvage it
To save it!
It is all I always wanted to do
Before a time when
I never even knew I could have
Such an impact upon the world
And let’s see how much of an impact
I can have on my own now
As I do believe I can
Have such an impact upon the world
You want to know
How central I was
To such history?
I was so central
I could have changed the world
Still, I might have done
Who knows
And now
I will set the record straight
For history
There’s no turning back now
Not after all those
Death threats
Not after all those
Death attempts
I will tell it all
And perhaps
Change the world
In the process
In a positive way for a change
Through peace!
All I ever wished for
The time of reckoning
Is now
***
“Without irony, this life would hardly be worth living.”
Roland Michel Tremblay
http://www.themarginal.com/destructivism.pdf
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman Sachs are doing 'Satan's work'
http://www.examiner.com/x-9341-Manhattan-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m11d9-Lloyd-Blankfein-and-Goldman-Sachs-are-doing-Satans-work
Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman Sachs are doing 'Satan's work'
November 9, 3:16 PMM
Tim Barello
“And let him that is instructed in the word, communicate to him that instructeth him, in all good things. Be not deceived, God is not mocked. For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting. And in doing good, let us not fail. For in due time we shall reap, not failing. Therefore, whilst we have time, let us work good to all men, but especially to those who are of the household of the faith.” – The Epistle of St. Paul to The Galatians, Chapter 6, verses 6-10. (As transcribed in the Douay-Rheims Bible; this non-traditional citation is intentional.)
[IMPORTANT NOTICE: Pursuant to Title 17, Section 107 of US Code, “the fair use of a copyrighted work…for purposes such as criticism, comment [and] news reporting” is “not an infringement of copyright” and, moreover, under the authority of case law established by Folsom v. Marsh (1841) “no one can doubt that a reviewer may fairly cite largely from [an] original work, if his design be really and truly to use the passages for the purposes of fair and reasonable criticism.” Therefore, any copyrighted works referenced herein are cited purely in an act of good faith on behalf of the whole of humanity, and for no other reason.]
In a revelation of ironically biblical proportions, Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, has told The Sunday Times that he believes he is doing “God’s work”. Others may disagree, but I find that John Arlidge, the credited author of this expose, spells out many tell-tale signs of what we are actually dealing with – pure evil, or Satan’s work, if you will – whether or not he ever intended to. Within that article, there are many examples which, when viewed in the full context of this report, demonstrate undeniable wickedness:
The sub-headline reads “The Sunday Times gains unprecedented access to the world's most powerful, and most secretive, investment bank.” This outrageous statement validates the fact that God-given freedoms cannot thrive when there are unelected global powers operating with an undeserved cloak of secrecy.
Arlidge identifies Blankfein as “Wall Street’s Sun God” – a pagan title that, even jokingly, should never be used to describe any powerful man, or woman.
Blankfein admits he “understands that ‘people are pissed off, mad, and bent out of shape’ at bankers’ actions.” This quote is particularly important in relation to the forthcoming Catholic definition of evil.
Anger-inducing sentences that will infuriate readers: “Bankers brought the world to the brink of bankruptcy and instead of doing the decent thing and jumping out of the nearest window, they turned up cap in hand to governments to hoover up taxpayers’ money to save their skin. Now, just one year on, they are carrying on as if nothing has happened, gambling, and winning, handsomely, with our cash.”
Blankfein denies that Goldman Sachs “needed to be” bailed out by US taxpayers, but Arlidge notes, “sure, he took $10 billion from Washington’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp). But the bank has since repaid the cash, with healthy interest — 23%.” That’s nice, but how much has Goldman Sachs taken from the Federal Reserve, which is an absolute liability of US taxpayers? The Fed, a deceitfully sadistic organization, has ultimately refused to say, which is entirely unacceptable.
Blankfein “insists we should be celebrating his bank’s success, not condemning it. ‘Everybody should be, frankly, happy,’ he says. Can he be serious? Deadly.” Interesting choice of words, Arlidge; are we foreshadowing anything at all?
Arrogant exploitations of outright greed that will cause distress and backlash amongst financially-strapped readers: “Goldman Sachs isn’t nicknamed ‘Goldmine Sachs’ for nothing. There’s so much [money] sloshing around that in an average year a good investment banking partner will make $3.5 [million], a good trading partner $7-10 [million] and a management committee member $15-25 [million]. Some 953 employees got bonuses of at least $1 [million] in 2008. Blankfein may insist he is still a blue-collar guy, but he manages to have a $30 [million] apartment on Central Park West and a 6,500-square-foot home in the Hamptons, the summer playground of New York’s elite.”
Outright blasphemy against Jesus Christ: “There may be arrogance at 85 Broad Street — behind closed doors, Blankfein likes to joke (but not really) that he has ‘attained perfection’”. This reference is utterly repulsive and its use here is categorically sadistic.
Outright blasphemy against God Almighty: “Taking type-A people, making them feel like type-B people and moulding them into kick-ass teams that work every hour God — sorry, Goldman — sends, is important, no doubt.” This reference is utterly repulsive and its use here is categorically sadistic.
In-your-face validation of this firm’s control over the US government, which by the power of the US Constitution (a living document that is, no doubt, inspired by God) belongs to the People: “Small wonder that another of Goldman’s nicknames is ‘Government Sachs’”.
“Whatever alchemy it uses, one thing is certain: Goldman has dodged the credit-crunch bullet and is emerging from the crisis stronger than ever. To the victor, the spoils. But the patient might find cheating death easier than pacifying the public.” Foreshadowing, are we?
Arlidge notes that Blankfein has “almost religious devotion to the dogma of finance.” You do the math.
Finally, the most appalling act of outrageous blasphemy I have ever witnessed in my 26 short years on this planet: “Goldman Sachs, this pillar of the free market, breeder of super-citizens, object of envy and awe will go on raking it in, getting richer than God? An impish grin spreads across Blankfein’s face. Call him a fat cat who mocks the public. Call him wicked. Call him what you will. He is, he says, just a banker ‘doing God’s work’”.
My sincere hope is that as we witness horrid reactions to this nauseating filth – which, when coupled with other recent events, is very likely to produce great anger and hatred towards Jewish people – everyone realizes that certain writings are clearly on the wall for all to see.
More importantly though, before anybody even thinks about getting their knickers in a twist, you need to understand that, although I am a Christian, I am very proud of my Jewish heritage, and that fact will be further elaborated upon below.
As an unprecedented firestorm approaches, spiritually-prudent observers will note that, indeed, Mr. Blankfein has stated an absolute fact about his “God”; however, he knowingly fails to elucidate that his “God” is actually the Devil, a being that is also identified as Satan and/or Lucifer. Although there are many names for this truly dark and deceptive spirit, for whatever reason, I’m inclined to believe that Wikipedia nevertheless accurately portrays its existence:
The Devil is believed in certain religions and folklore to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The Devil is commonly associated with heretics, infidels, and other unbelievers. The Abrahamic religions have variously regarded the Devil as a rebellious fallen angel or demon that tempts humans to sin or commit evil deeds. Others regard the Devil as an allegory that represents a crisis of faith, individualism, free will, wisdom and enlightenment.
At the most primitive level then, the key argument here is that Blankfein and his organization are facilitating acts of evil upon the world; as the definition of evil remains unfortunately subjective, workers of darkness have been freely able to advance their demonic hindrances on all of humanity – that is, until now.
The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia – which is, unsurprisingly, associated with a year that also established organizational malevolence – offers a straightforward connotation for the tenets of evil:
Evil, in a large sense, may be described as the sum of the opposition, which experience shows to exist in the universe, to the desires and needs of individuals; whence arises, among humans beings at least, the sufferings in which life abounds. Thus evil, from the point of view of human welfare, is what ought not to exist. Nevertheless, there is no department of human life in which its presence is not felt; and the discrepancy between what is and what ought to be has always called for explanation in the account which mankind has sought to give of itself and its surroundings.
Continuing, this narrative finds three embodiments of universal evil – physical, moral and metaphysical – of which two will be used to further validate the arguments brought forth by yours truly:
Physical evil
Includes all that causes harm to man, whether by bodily injury, by thwarting his natural desires, or by preventing the full development of his powers, either in the order of nature directly, or through the various social conditions under which mankind naturally exists…Poverty, oppression, and some forms of disease are instances of evil arising from imperfect social organization. Mental suffering, such as anxiety, disappointment, and remorse, and the limitation of intelligence which prevents humans [sic] beings from attaining to the full comprehension of their environment, are congenital forms of evil each vary in character and degree according to natural disposition and social circumstances.
Moral evil
The deviation of human volition from the prescriptions of the moral order and the action which results from that deviation. Such action, when it proceeds solely from ignorance, is not to be classed as moral evil, which is properly restricted to the motions of will towards ends of which the conscience disapproves. The extent of moral evil is not limited to the circumstances of life in the natural order, but includes also the sphere of religion, by which man's welfare is affected in the supernatural order, and the precepts of which, as depending ultimately upon the will of God, are of the strictest possible obligation (see SIN). The obligation to moral action in the natural order is, moreover, generally believed to depend on the motives supplied by religion; and it is at least doubtful whether it is possible for moral obligation to exist at all apart from a supernatural sanction.
The Catholic Encyclopedia also concludes that “it is evident again that all evil is essentially negative and not positive.”
In light of the aforementioned descriptions, and in order to properly – and fairly – condemn both Blankfein and Goldman Sachs, we must focus on direct actions that have caused undue suffering and negativity for all of humanity.
So, what “evil” acts – to name a select few – has Goldman Sachs committed?
Goldman Sachs “secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash” and “peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.” This is also known as fraudulent deception.
Goldman Sachs, through its actions, has “left foreign investors holding the subprime bag.” The most frank assessment will demonstrate that a world war could ensue if these crimes are not properly rectified to the satisfaction of said foreigners and their respective governments.
Goldman Sachs is “taking away people’s homes” and in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Tony Becker, “Goldman declined for three years to confirm their suspicions that it had bought their mortgages from a subprime lender, even after they wrote to Goldman's then-Chief Executive Henry Paulson — later U.S. Treasury secretary — in 2003. Unable to identify a lender, the couple could neither capitalize on a mortgage hardship provision that would allow them to defer some payments, nor on a state law enabling them to offset their debt against separate, investment-related claims against Goldman.”
Goldman Sachs has “engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression” and as a result, it has caused undue harm and suffering to millions of people that have lost their jobs, their homes, and in some cases, their lives.
Goldman Sachs has willfully deceived and misled the public about its role as a partial beneficiary of $93 billion in backdoor bailout funds from AIG, which has caused “rage”.
Goldman Sachs continues to funnel billions in bonuses, as unemployment and economic indicators continue to suffer, thus causing massive outrage among workers. Blankfein has previously been reported to be “scared to death about what might happen when the bonus numbers hit.”
Goldman Sachs has committed blasphemy against the honor of Jesus Christ by allowing one employee to publicly suggest that Jesus would have “embraced greed”. The original report from which this sadism emerges has since been removed from the Internet.
Blankfein has committed atrocious blasphemies against all Jewish people –particularly the descendants of those that suffered during the Holocaust – by allowing Goldman Sachs executives to claim that “anti-Semitism” is driving public anger over his firm’s actions. These actions represent pure and unmitigated sadism.
As it now must emerge, the last point is very important because innocent Jews are being collectively grouped with devious swine – people that, regardless of their religious affiliation, are dreadfully troublesome to humanity-at-large. Furthermore, as any fair observer will note, the aforementioned, evil acts, have surely been perpetrated by people of all creeds, and thus, it is entirely unfair to chalk this up to some “Jewish conspiracy”.
To wit, this is also a very personal matter: my great-grandparents, Samuel David Lichtenstein and Bessie Swieback Lichtenstein, were of Russian descent, and thankfully, escaped the horrors of persecution by immigrating to the US in the early 1900’s. They gave birth to my grandmother, Annette Leonora Lichtenstein (now deceased) in 1933, when innocent Jews across Germany – and later, all of Europe – faced unimaginable suffering because of their religion.
History also dictates that many other creeds suffered persecution during the Holocaust, so let me openly acknowledge this fact before any divisive scoundrels swoop in to further exploit unnecessary tensions.
I am a lifelong New Yorker, meaning that I have many friends – and close relatives – that are Jewish. I am very proud of this because they are good people with pure values that complement my Christian beliefs; furthermore, my Lord and Savior, Jesus, was himself a Jew, and this fact can never be forgotten.
If the Christian Messiah was Jewish, that means the Jewish religion is indeed pure at its core: I believe, in my heart, that this is true, regardless of what The Protocols of the Elders of Zion claims to suggest.
Now, before any critics emerge to state that I am merely functioning as a “Jewish apologist”, they had better get the facts straight: all actions are committed by individuals. Every nation, every creed, every ethnicity has suffered at the hands of – for the lack of a better term – “bad apples”. It is a sad reality, indeed, but we need to advance beyond childish, schoolyard tactics, if mankind is to survive.
In that regard, one shining example of a sadistic manipulation recently emerged from Ruth Madoff, a woman whose own lifestyle was doubtlessly funded by the pillaging of her own people – Jews. Please remember to keep that in perspective at all times.
Good Morning America recently broadcast that Ruth Madoff maintains “the gentiles are responsible” for the prosecution of her disgraced husband, Bernard, a truly abominable man that will spend the rest of his life behind bars. This outrageously misleading remark has since sparked a frenzy of outrage on the Internet, and if left unchecked, it will ultimately contribute to unwarranted anti-Semitic attitudes.
Ruth Madoff does not speak for the Jews. She, like her husband, is disgraced among the Jewish community; therefore, it is categorically deceitful to represent that her beliefs somehow shed light on the prevailing attitudes of all Jews. That ridiculous assumption is not, and shall not be true, ever.
Therefore, against the backdrop of all this, we are literally witnessing a final battle of sorts: good vs. evil, and the dissemination of truth, with the revelation of universal deceits.
Matters that were long considered too sensitive to “come out” – you understand – are now being aired in front of all of humanity.
Although this is somewhat painful, it will allow for the mass enlightenment of mankind in biblical proportions – which, in turn, will generate the resurgence of the Spirit of purity, honesty, goodwill and righteousness – a resurrection that is so desperately needed right now.
Most importantly, people must always remember that the mindset and actions of individuals are of far more importance than the respective methodologies that are employed to connect with the True Great Spirit.
Fear not, for humans have come way too far to allow for the ultimate destruction of His creations – the Lord is not mocked – this will not, and shall not happen. Good shall prevail. It is written. It is God’s will. His Kingdom shall be established, here on earth, and it need not result from unprecedented destructions.
Miracles happen. Divine interventions occur. All you have to do is believe and have steadfast faith in God. He will protect all that call upon His protection; do not allow fear to cloud your better judgment.
In light of these facts, many individuals are strongly encouraged to come forth and repent for their atrocities; seek forgiveness from God – so that mankind may serve you justice in a humane fashion – in lieu of the expected atrocities that many assume follow certain revelations.
Each of you will and shall be held to account for your actions; the final Judgment spares no one.
Therefore, the choice is ultimately yours: renounce your demonic behaviors or you may very well spend the rest of eternity in a pit of burning fire, glass and never-ending torture.
The Lord is not mocked; do not test His will.
Finally, before anyone even thinks about inflicting any sort of destruction upon the respective author of this piece, you would be very wise to read between the lines; those of you being called out now tend to trust in superstitions and other belief systems of some sort, even though you would never publicly admit to such.
Read between the lines. The Lord is not mocked; do not test His will. His protection is guaranteed for all those that call upon Him.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – for the future of the whole of humanity – let His reign begin, whether it begin in three days, three weeks or three years, it shall be, once and for all.
[Note: this Editorial solely reflects the independent views and opinions of its author. In accordance with Section 8 of the Examiner.com Terms of Use Agreement, this commentary “is the sole responsibility of the person who made such User Content available on the Site. Under no circumstances will Examiner.com be liable in any way for any User Content made available through this Site by you or any third party.” Therefore, all ensuing communications are to be exclusively addressed to Mr. Timothy Michael Barello, or his lawfully-designated agents.]
Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman Sachs are doing 'Satan's work'
November 9, 3:16 PMM
Tim Barello
“And let him that is instructed in the word, communicate to him that instructeth him, in all good things. Be not deceived, God is not mocked. For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting. And in doing good, let us not fail. For in due time we shall reap, not failing. Therefore, whilst we have time, let us work good to all men, but especially to those who are of the household of the faith.” – The Epistle of St. Paul to The Galatians, Chapter 6, verses 6-10. (As transcribed in the Douay-Rheims Bible; this non-traditional citation is intentional.)
[IMPORTANT NOTICE: Pursuant to Title 17, Section 107 of US Code, “the fair use of a copyrighted work…for purposes such as criticism, comment [and] news reporting” is “not an infringement of copyright” and, moreover, under the authority of case law established by Folsom v. Marsh (1841) “no one can doubt that a reviewer may fairly cite largely from [an] original work, if his design be really and truly to use the passages for the purposes of fair and reasonable criticism.” Therefore, any copyrighted works referenced herein are cited purely in an act of good faith on behalf of the whole of humanity, and for no other reason.]
In a revelation of ironically biblical proportions, Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, has told The Sunday Times that he believes he is doing “God’s work”. Others may disagree, but I find that John Arlidge, the credited author of this expose, spells out many tell-tale signs of what we are actually dealing with – pure evil, or Satan’s work, if you will – whether or not he ever intended to. Within that article, there are many examples which, when viewed in the full context of this report, demonstrate undeniable wickedness:
The sub-headline reads “The Sunday Times gains unprecedented access to the world's most powerful, and most secretive, investment bank.” This outrageous statement validates the fact that God-given freedoms cannot thrive when there are unelected global powers operating with an undeserved cloak of secrecy.
Arlidge identifies Blankfein as “Wall Street’s Sun God” – a pagan title that, even jokingly, should never be used to describe any powerful man, or woman.
Blankfein admits he “understands that ‘people are pissed off, mad, and bent out of shape’ at bankers’ actions.” This quote is particularly important in relation to the forthcoming Catholic definition of evil.
Anger-inducing sentences that will infuriate readers: “Bankers brought the world to the brink of bankruptcy and instead of doing the decent thing and jumping out of the nearest window, they turned up cap in hand to governments to hoover up taxpayers’ money to save their skin. Now, just one year on, they are carrying on as if nothing has happened, gambling, and winning, handsomely, with our cash.”
Blankfein denies that Goldman Sachs “needed to be” bailed out by US taxpayers, but Arlidge notes, “sure, he took $10 billion from Washington’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp). But the bank has since repaid the cash, with healthy interest — 23%.” That’s nice, but how much has Goldman Sachs taken from the Federal Reserve, which is an absolute liability of US taxpayers? The Fed, a deceitfully sadistic organization, has ultimately refused to say, which is entirely unacceptable.
Blankfein “insists we should be celebrating his bank’s success, not condemning it. ‘Everybody should be, frankly, happy,’ he says. Can he be serious? Deadly.” Interesting choice of words, Arlidge; are we foreshadowing anything at all?
Arrogant exploitations of outright greed that will cause distress and backlash amongst financially-strapped readers: “Goldman Sachs isn’t nicknamed ‘Goldmine Sachs’ for nothing. There’s so much [money] sloshing around that in an average year a good investment banking partner will make $3.5 [million], a good trading partner $7-10 [million] and a management committee member $15-25 [million]. Some 953 employees got bonuses of at least $1 [million] in 2008. Blankfein may insist he is still a blue-collar guy, but he manages to have a $30 [million] apartment on Central Park West and a 6,500-square-foot home in the Hamptons, the summer playground of New York’s elite.”
Outright blasphemy against Jesus Christ: “There may be arrogance at 85 Broad Street — behind closed doors, Blankfein likes to joke (but not really) that he has ‘attained perfection’”. This reference is utterly repulsive and its use here is categorically sadistic.
Outright blasphemy against God Almighty: “Taking type-A people, making them feel like type-B people and moulding them into kick-ass teams that work every hour God — sorry, Goldman — sends, is important, no doubt.” This reference is utterly repulsive and its use here is categorically sadistic.
In-your-face validation of this firm’s control over the US government, which by the power of the US Constitution (a living document that is, no doubt, inspired by God) belongs to the People: “Small wonder that another of Goldman’s nicknames is ‘Government Sachs’”.
“Whatever alchemy it uses, one thing is certain: Goldman has dodged the credit-crunch bullet and is emerging from the crisis stronger than ever. To the victor, the spoils. But the patient might find cheating death easier than pacifying the public.” Foreshadowing, are we?
Arlidge notes that Blankfein has “almost religious devotion to the dogma of finance.” You do the math.
Finally, the most appalling act of outrageous blasphemy I have ever witnessed in my 26 short years on this planet: “Goldman Sachs, this pillar of the free market, breeder of super-citizens, object of envy and awe will go on raking it in, getting richer than God? An impish grin spreads across Blankfein’s face. Call him a fat cat who mocks the public. Call him wicked. Call him what you will. He is, he says, just a banker ‘doing God’s work’”.
My sincere hope is that as we witness horrid reactions to this nauseating filth – which, when coupled with other recent events, is very likely to produce great anger and hatred towards Jewish people – everyone realizes that certain writings are clearly on the wall for all to see.
More importantly though, before anybody even thinks about getting their knickers in a twist, you need to understand that, although I am a Christian, I am very proud of my Jewish heritage, and that fact will be further elaborated upon below.
As an unprecedented firestorm approaches, spiritually-prudent observers will note that, indeed, Mr. Blankfein has stated an absolute fact about his “God”; however, he knowingly fails to elucidate that his “God” is actually the Devil, a being that is also identified as Satan and/or Lucifer. Although there are many names for this truly dark and deceptive spirit, for whatever reason, I’m inclined to believe that Wikipedia nevertheless accurately portrays its existence:
The Devil is believed in certain religions and folklore to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The Devil is commonly associated with heretics, infidels, and other unbelievers. The Abrahamic religions have variously regarded the Devil as a rebellious fallen angel or demon that tempts humans to sin or commit evil deeds. Others regard the Devil as an allegory that represents a crisis of faith, individualism, free will, wisdom and enlightenment.
At the most primitive level then, the key argument here is that Blankfein and his organization are facilitating acts of evil upon the world; as the definition of evil remains unfortunately subjective, workers of darkness have been freely able to advance their demonic hindrances on all of humanity – that is, until now.
The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia – which is, unsurprisingly, associated with a year that also established organizational malevolence – offers a straightforward connotation for the tenets of evil:
Evil, in a large sense, may be described as the sum of the opposition, which experience shows to exist in the universe, to the desires and needs of individuals; whence arises, among humans beings at least, the sufferings in which life abounds. Thus evil, from the point of view of human welfare, is what ought not to exist. Nevertheless, there is no department of human life in which its presence is not felt; and the discrepancy between what is and what ought to be has always called for explanation in the account which mankind has sought to give of itself and its surroundings.
Continuing, this narrative finds three embodiments of universal evil – physical, moral and metaphysical – of which two will be used to further validate the arguments brought forth by yours truly:
Physical evil
Includes all that causes harm to man, whether by bodily injury, by thwarting his natural desires, or by preventing the full development of his powers, either in the order of nature directly, or through the various social conditions under which mankind naturally exists…Poverty, oppression, and some forms of disease are instances of evil arising from imperfect social organization. Mental suffering, such as anxiety, disappointment, and remorse, and the limitation of intelligence which prevents humans [sic] beings from attaining to the full comprehension of their environment, are congenital forms of evil each vary in character and degree according to natural disposition and social circumstances.
Moral evil
The deviation of human volition from the prescriptions of the moral order and the action which results from that deviation. Such action, when it proceeds solely from ignorance, is not to be classed as moral evil, which is properly restricted to the motions of will towards ends of which the conscience disapproves. The extent of moral evil is not limited to the circumstances of life in the natural order, but includes also the sphere of religion, by which man's welfare is affected in the supernatural order, and the precepts of which, as depending ultimately upon the will of God, are of the strictest possible obligation (see SIN). The obligation to moral action in the natural order is, moreover, generally believed to depend on the motives supplied by religion; and it is at least doubtful whether it is possible for moral obligation to exist at all apart from a supernatural sanction.
The Catholic Encyclopedia also concludes that “it is evident again that all evil is essentially negative and not positive.”
In light of the aforementioned descriptions, and in order to properly – and fairly – condemn both Blankfein and Goldman Sachs, we must focus on direct actions that have caused undue suffering and negativity for all of humanity.
So, what “evil” acts – to name a select few – has Goldman Sachs committed?
Goldman Sachs “secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash” and “peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.” This is also known as fraudulent deception.
Goldman Sachs, through its actions, has “left foreign investors holding the subprime bag.” The most frank assessment will demonstrate that a world war could ensue if these crimes are not properly rectified to the satisfaction of said foreigners and their respective governments.
Goldman Sachs is “taking away people’s homes” and in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Tony Becker, “Goldman declined for three years to confirm their suspicions that it had bought their mortgages from a subprime lender, even after they wrote to Goldman's then-Chief Executive Henry Paulson — later U.S. Treasury secretary — in 2003. Unable to identify a lender, the couple could neither capitalize on a mortgage hardship provision that would allow them to defer some payments, nor on a state law enabling them to offset their debt against separate, investment-related claims against Goldman.”
Goldman Sachs has “engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression” and as a result, it has caused undue harm and suffering to millions of people that have lost their jobs, their homes, and in some cases, their lives.
Goldman Sachs has willfully deceived and misled the public about its role as a partial beneficiary of $93 billion in backdoor bailout funds from AIG, which has caused “rage”.
Goldman Sachs continues to funnel billions in bonuses, as unemployment and economic indicators continue to suffer, thus causing massive outrage among workers. Blankfein has previously been reported to be “scared to death about what might happen when the bonus numbers hit.”
Goldman Sachs has committed blasphemy against the honor of Jesus Christ by allowing one employee to publicly suggest that Jesus would have “embraced greed”. The original report from which this sadism emerges has since been removed from the Internet.
Blankfein has committed atrocious blasphemies against all Jewish people –particularly the descendants of those that suffered during the Holocaust – by allowing Goldman Sachs executives to claim that “anti-Semitism” is driving public anger over his firm’s actions. These actions represent pure and unmitigated sadism.
As it now must emerge, the last point is very important because innocent Jews are being collectively grouped with devious swine – people that, regardless of their religious affiliation, are dreadfully troublesome to humanity-at-large. Furthermore, as any fair observer will note, the aforementioned, evil acts, have surely been perpetrated by people of all creeds, and thus, it is entirely unfair to chalk this up to some “Jewish conspiracy”.
To wit, this is also a very personal matter: my great-grandparents, Samuel David Lichtenstein and Bessie Swieback Lichtenstein, were of Russian descent, and thankfully, escaped the horrors of persecution by immigrating to the US in the early 1900’s. They gave birth to my grandmother, Annette Leonora Lichtenstein (now deceased) in 1933, when innocent Jews across Germany – and later, all of Europe – faced unimaginable suffering because of their religion.
History also dictates that many other creeds suffered persecution during the Holocaust, so let me openly acknowledge this fact before any divisive scoundrels swoop in to further exploit unnecessary tensions.
I am a lifelong New Yorker, meaning that I have many friends – and close relatives – that are Jewish. I am very proud of this because they are good people with pure values that complement my Christian beliefs; furthermore, my Lord and Savior, Jesus, was himself a Jew, and this fact can never be forgotten.
If the Christian Messiah was Jewish, that means the Jewish religion is indeed pure at its core: I believe, in my heart, that this is true, regardless of what The Protocols of the Elders of Zion claims to suggest.
Now, before any critics emerge to state that I am merely functioning as a “Jewish apologist”, they had better get the facts straight: all actions are committed by individuals. Every nation, every creed, every ethnicity has suffered at the hands of – for the lack of a better term – “bad apples”. It is a sad reality, indeed, but we need to advance beyond childish, schoolyard tactics, if mankind is to survive.
In that regard, one shining example of a sadistic manipulation recently emerged from Ruth Madoff, a woman whose own lifestyle was doubtlessly funded by the pillaging of her own people – Jews. Please remember to keep that in perspective at all times.
Good Morning America recently broadcast that Ruth Madoff maintains “the gentiles are responsible” for the prosecution of her disgraced husband, Bernard, a truly abominable man that will spend the rest of his life behind bars. This outrageously misleading remark has since sparked a frenzy of outrage on the Internet, and if left unchecked, it will ultimately contribute to unwarranted anti-Semitic attitudes.
Ruth Madoff does not speak for the Jews. She, like her husband, is disgraced among the Jewish community; therefore, it is categorically deceitful to represent that her beliefs somehow shed light on the prevailing attitudes of all Jews. That ridiculous assumption is not, and shall not be true, ever.
Therefore, against the backdrop of all this, we are literally witnessing a final battle of sorts: good vs. evil, and the dissemination of truth, with the revelation of universal deceits.
Matters that were long considered too sensitive to “come out” – you understand – are now being aired in front of all of humanity.
Although this is somewhat painful, it will allow for the mass enlightenment of mankind in biblical proportions – which, in turn, will generate the resurgence of the Spirit of purity, honesty, goodwill and righteousness – a resurrection that is so desperately needed right now.
Most importantly, people must always remember that the mindset and actions of individuals are of far more importance than the respective methodologies that are employed to connect with the True Great Spirit.
Fear not, for humans have come way too far to allow for the ultimate destruction of His creations – the Lord is not mocked – this will not, and shall not happen. Good shall prevail. It is written. It is God’s will. His Kingdom shall be established, here on earth, and it need not result from unprecedented destructions.
Miracles happen. Divine interventions occur. All you have to do is believe and have steadfast faith in God. He will protect all that call upon His protection; do not allow fear to cloud your better judgment.
In light of these facts, many individuals are strongly encouraged to come forth and repent for their atrocities; seek forgiveness from God – so that mankind may serve you justice in a humane fashion – in lieu of the expected atrocities that many assume follow certain revelations.
Each of you will and shall be held to account for your actions; the final Judgment spares no one.
Therefore, the choice is ultimately yours: renounce your demonic behaviors or you may very well spend the rest of eternity in a pit of burning fire, glass and never-ending torture.
The Lord is not mocked; do not test His will.
Finally, before anyone even thinks about inflicting any sort of destruction upon the respective author of this piece, you would be very wise to read between the lines; those of you being called out now tend to trust in superstitions and other belief systems of some sort, even though you would never publicly admit to such.
Read between the lines. The Lord is not mocked; do not test His will. His protection is guaranteed for all those that call upon Him.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – for the future of the whole of humanity – let His reign begin, whether it begin in three days, three weeks or three years, it shall be, once and for all.
[Note: this Editorial solely reflects the independent views and opinions of its author. In accordance with Section 8 of the Examiner.com Terms of Use Agreement, this commentary “is the sole responsibility of the person who made such User Content available on the Site. Under no circumstances will Examiner.com be liable in any way for any User Content made available through this Site by you or any third party.” Therefore, all ensuing communications are to be exclusively addressed to Mr. Timothy Michael Barello, or his lawfully-designated agents.]
Goldman Sachs Not Doing "God's Work," Says Satan
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/24861
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/goldman-sachs-not-doing-g_b_351161.html
Goldman Sachs Not Doing "God's Work," Says Satan
by Andy Borowitz | November 10, 2009 - 10:37am
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) - Goldman Sachs' Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein's comment that bankers are doing "God's work" came under fire today from one of the longest-standing allies of the firm, Satan, the Prince of Darkness.
In a rare press conference, the usually reclusive Beelzebub blasted Mr. Blankfein for his remark, telling reporters, "Lloyd Blankfein needs to remember who he works for."
Wearing his trademark red cape and carrying a smoking pitchfork, Satan refused to say exactly what if any punishment he had in mind for the Goldman Sachs chief, saying only, "Maybe it's time for Lloyd Blankfein to have a little 'come to Satan' meeting."
While Satan said he was "delighted" by the record bonuses being paid out to Wall Street executives this year, he was clearly miffed that his role in the financial firms' successes had been largely ignored.
"Lloyd Blankfein seems to have forgotten who came up with the idea of credit default swaps, derivatives, and mortgage-backed securities," he said. "I don't want to sound like a diva, but how about a little respect for the guy who signs your paycheck?"
After this, you are given a link to finish reading the article but the link to the borowitz report fdoesn't work (http://www.borowitzreport.com/subscribe.aspx). The main web page doesn't work as well (http://www.borowitzreport.com/). I guess Satan doesn't want the world to read the rest of the Truth.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/goldman-sachs-not-doing-g_b_351161.html
Goldman Sachs Not Doing "God's Work," Says Satan
by Andy Borowitz | November 10, 2009 - 10:37am
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) - Goldman Sachs' Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein's comment that bankers are doing "God's work" came under fire today from one of the longest-standing allies of the firm, Satan, the Prince of Darkness.
In a rare press conference, the usually reclusive Beelzebub blasted Mr. Blankfein for his remark, telling reporters, "Lloyd Blankfein needs to remember who he works for."
Wearing his trademark red cape and carrying a smoking pitchfork, Satan refused to say exactly what if any punishment he had in mind for the Goldman Sachs chief, saying only, "Maybe it's time for Lloyd Blankfein to have a little 'come to Satan' meeting."
While Satan said he was "delighted" by the record bonuses being paid out to Wall Street executives this year, he was clearly miffed that his role in the financial firms' successes had been largely ignored.
"Lloyd Blankfein seems to have forgotten who came up with the idea of credit default swaps, derivatives, and mortgage-backed securities," he said. "I don't want to sound like a diva, but how about a little respect for the guy who signs your paycheck?"
After this, you are given a link to finish reading the article but the link to the borowitz report fdoesn't work (http://www.borowitzreport.com/subscribe.aspx). The main web page doesn't work as well (http://www.borowitzreport.com/). I guess Satan doesn't want the world to read the rest of the Truth.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
TRUTH IS WHAT THE DARKNESS MOST FEARS - Facing Our Own Soul
http://www.opednews.com/articles/TRUTH-IS-WHAT-THE-DARKNESS-by-Mariangela-Pino-La-091106-192.html
November 7, 2009
TRUTH IS WHAT THE DARKNESS MOST FEARS - Facing Our Own Soul
By Mariangela Pino Landau
"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul.”– Carl Jung
Shortly after posting a previous opinion article based on the tragedy that occurred at the Spiritual Warrior Retreat program facilitated by Mr. Ray in Sedona, AZ on October 8th, 2009, a friend, whom I consider part of my inner circle sacred counsel, asked if I was concerned that my outreach via these opinion articles might be viewed as opportunistic. In addition, although I've received numerous encouraging and supportive responses, I also received two challenging comments. One individual objected to my recommendations, feeling that they smacked of sentencing. Another individual referred to me as an “"arrogant, self-righteous creature proclaiming to be Mr. Ray's judge, jury and confessor”, urging readers to “beware of people that insist they know what is best for the healing of others.” As synchronicity would have it, my reply to all three individuals is not only in keeping with the theme of this part of this opinion article series, but also a honing for my own process of self-introspection and free self-expression.
In my recommendations, wherein I list several actions Mr. Ray might take to demonstrate a volitional flow of accountability and amends, my intent is to outline a possible roadmap of invitations, hearty recommendations and urgings. To my way of seeing it, sentence issuing doesn't suggest roadmaps nor contain requests. Next, I invite the “beware” reader to re-examine the articles, as in it I do not “insist” I know what is best for another's healing. My words are “I am implying here that I have an idea about what might"” My invitation to Mr. Ray is therefore an offering, not a proclamation. I don't feel that these articles slander Mr. Ray nor definitively label him a liar, charlatan, murderer, or saintly guru. I do not hurl ad homonyms such as creature, murderer, or snake oil salesman at Mr. Ray, and as we forge a middle ground path to the realm of spiritual adulthood, I recommend we all take care not to hurl these about at one another. When we avoid the larger complex issues that an event like the Sedona sweat lodge tragedy incites and reduce our reaction to labeling another as an “"arrogant, self-righteous creature proclaiming to be Ray's judge and jury and confessor”, we perpetrate the very thing we criticize, becoming arrogant accusers who insist they know what is best for the healing of others. I wonder if the “beware” reader would have responded the same way to Gandhi when he urged the English to leave India, maintaining that he believed that action to be the most healing for those involved; or to Nelson Mandela who urged the abolishment of apartheid in South Africa, professing that action to be the most healing for the black South Africans. One might leap to counter with an observation that I'm neither Gandhi nor Nelson Mandela, and might even levy the scrutiny - “who do you think you are?” My reply: who do I have to be? Lastly, the etymological root of the word ‘opportunistic' speaks of good fortune and a favorable time to talk about something. Granted, the very act of disseminating information places one in the public forum affording readers the opportunity to construe that these opinion articles are motivated largely for personal gain. However, that isn't the energy motivating my actions; I'm not charging for these offerings; and I'm not advertising my services nor soliciting allies.
In the first article TRUTH IS WHAT THE DARKNESS MOST FEARS - “Playing full on” is Linked to Valor, I urged James Arthur Ray to take a bold, brave champion's stand and embody authenticity as the highest spiritual principle by going courageously within to obtain answers and garner insights on a vulnerable, accountable human being level. I cannot request that Mr. Ray take steps that contribute to bona fide transformation and not answer that same heroic call myself. Furthermore, walking my talk includes taking the precept “none of us can transform anything we are unwilling to acknowledge, no exceptions, no matter what” and applying this to myself. Therefore, in this part of the opinion article series I address the concepts of self-examination, personal authenticity, the middle ground and its relatedness to spiritual adulthood, as well as our looking inward to answer our own heroic call.
No doubt we can all agree that monumental things are occurring within humanity and that what transpired as part of the Spiritual Warrior Retreat program facilitated by Mr. Ray in Sedona, Arizona on October 8, 2009 is monumental. I suspect that most individuals on a spiritual path, particularly since approximately 1987, have come into contact with the concept of a paradigm shift. Paradigm shifts are characterized by leaps in understanding and expansions in consciousness, whereby profound evolutionary changes take place. A paradigm shift is upon us, and at the heart of it is the opportunity to cross the threshold from spiritual adolescence to spiritual adulthood.
One of the passkeys to crossing the spiritual adulthood threshold is personal authenticity. Authenticity is the highest spiritual principle and the cornerstone of our humanity. The other passkey is self-examination, and self-examination is the main ingredient of enlightenment. “Enlightenment doesn't occur from sitting around visualizing images of light, but from integrating the darker aspects of the self into the conscious personality.” – Carl Jung. Therefore, to experience enlightenment we must first be willing to acknowledge the tentacles of deceit, neglect, cruelty, exploitation, narcissism, alienation and hopelessness within us and to integrate these into our “conscious personality”, our incarnate Earth Self.
What appears on the societal stage is a mirror for the unexamined, unhealed aspects of all of us. It's seems uncomplicated to say that a person ought to have behaved a certain way and to find unmitigated fault with their behavior especially when it includes tragedies. Clearly, the issues surrounding and erupting from what transpired in Sedona on October 8th are hauntingly complex and, by their nature, engender polarized position mongering. However, care needs to be taken. For those holding the post of Mr. Ray as an absolute cavalier, counterfeit charlatan and even murderer, their pulpit now includes proclaiming conclusive contempt and condemnation in most areas of his life and work. For those holding the post of Mr. Ray as an irreproachable purveyor of integrity and indisputable contributions, their pulpit now includes a kind of elusive clemency. When unchecked, judgment and vengeance can run over our humanity in their unbridled haste to crucify. And when likewise unchecked, the armor of defensive denial pre-empts an answer to the heroic call.
The only way through this is the middle ground, which asks us to speak up about the disturbing, objectionable things appearing on the societal stage AND to allow our horror, disdain and bewilderment to escort us inward, to our own inner inquiry. Although bringing our “darker aspects” into consciousness might be disconcerting, doing so is not only infinitely preferable to covert lurking in the halls of pretense and careless denial, it is essential if we are to cross the spiritual adulthood threshold. The polarized positions are indicative of spiritual adolescence, while the middle ground, with its passkeys of self-examination and personal authenticity, is the threshold to spiritual adulthood. Furthermore, not only don't polarized viewpoints serve the highest purpose for the deaths of Kirby Brown, James Shore and Liz Neuman nor bring the profound healing sought by those struggling with post-traumatic bewilderment and betrayal, polarized positions prevent us from answering our own heroic call.
Just as the events surrounding the life of James Arthur Ray are an opportunity for him to walk his talk and apply the principles he teaches, they are also an opportunity for us to apply to ourselves the principles and standards we ascribe to Mr. Ray. Just as Mr. Ray is not exempt from the co-creation of what is transpiring in his life, we are not exempt from the co-creation of what is transpiring in ours. As within/so without. In this spirit, perhaps we might undertake asking ourselves questions such as –
1. In what areas are our defensive egos running roughshod over our willingness to humbly introspect and be accountable for our choices and behaviors?
2. In what areas are we detached from our intuitive knowing or diminishing the intuitive knowing of others?
3. In what areas are we not authentically self-expressing?
4. In what areas are we not self-empowered and not empowering others?
5. Have we ever required more than is reasonable or safe from others or ourselves?
6. In what areas are we projecting an image of ourselves as knowing best?
7. In what areas are we using our charisma to persuade or dominate?
8. Do we run and hid when uncomfortable situations or extreme events surface?
9. Where are we culpable for negligence?
10. What is required to make amends?
One might leap to counter this with a justification that their actions haven't touched the tragic proportions of Mr. Rays. I suggest that we refrain from allowing this position to deter us from our own heroic call. Let's go inward to expose and integrate our own controlling, righteous, usurious, terrified, impotent and hopeless aspects.
Because things that show up on the societal stage, particularly those that prompt our intense reaction, offer us a way into our own inner landscape, it would be irresponsible of me not to acknowledge Mr. Ray as a catalyst for my own recent inner inquiries. I still reach out to him, from the core of my hopeful, prayerful and expectant heart to take a bold, brave champion stand. However, no matter what another does or does not do in ways we recognize as authentically accountable, let's answer our own heroic call so that as facilitators we might continue to become more trustworthy, sincere and responsible custodians of our gifts and abilities demonstrating respect, admiration and empowerment to those we serve; and as participants, we might continue to seek and find spiritual programs, services and products that promote personal authenticity, self-trust, freedom of expression, self-empowerment and co-creative collaboration.
I therefore leave all of us with words attributed to the Christ -
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
– The Gospel of Thomas
November 7, 2009
TRUTH IS WHAT THE DARKNESS MOST FEARS - Facing Our Own Soul
By Mariangela Pino Landau
"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul.”– Carl Jung
Shortly after posting a previous opinion article based on the tragedy that occurred at the Spiritual Warrior Retreat program facilitated by Mr. Ray in Sedona, AZ on October 8th, 2009, a friend, whom I consider part of my inner circle sacred counsel, asked if I was concerned that my outreach via these opinion articles might be viewed as opportunistic. In addition, although I've received numerous encouraging and supportive responses, I also received two challenging comments. One individual objected to my recommendations, feeling that they smacked of sentencing. Another individual referred to me as an “"arrogant, self-righteous creature proclaiming to be Mr. Ray's judge, jury and confessor”, urging readers to “beware of people that insist they know what is best for the healing of others.” As synchronicity would have it, my reply to all three individuals is not only in keeping with the theme of this part of this opinion article series, but also a honing for my own process of self-introspection and free self-expression.
In my recommendations, wherein I list several actions Mr. Ray might take to demonstrate a volitional flow of accountability and amends, my intent is to outline a possible roadmap of invitations, hearty recommendations and urgings. To my way of seeing it, sentence issuing doesn't suggest roadmaps nor contain requests. Next, I invite the “beware” reader to re-examine the articles, as in it I do not “insist” I know what is best for another's healing. My words are “I am implying here that I have an idea about what might"” My invitation to Mr. Ray is therefore an offering, not a proclamation. I don't feel that these articles slander Mr. Ray nor definitively label him a liar, charlatan, murderer, or saintly guru. I do not hurl ad homonyms such as creature, murderer, or snake oil salesman at Mr. Ray, and as we forge a middle ground path to the realm of spiritual adulthood, I recommend we all take care not to hurl these about at one another. When we avoid the larger complex issues that an event like the Sedona sweat lodge tragedy incites and reduce our reaction to labeling another as an “"arrogant, self-righteous creature proclaiming to be Ray's judge and jury and confessor”, we perpetrate the very thing we criticize, becoming arrogant accusers who insist they know what is best for the healing of others. I wonder if the “beware” reader would have responded the same way to Gandhi when he urged the English to leave India, maintaining that he believed that action to be the most healing for those involved; or to Nelson Mandela who urged the abolishment of apartheid in South Africa, professing that action to be the most healing for the black South Africans. One might leap to counter with an observation that I'm neither Gandhi nor Nelson Mandela, and might even levy the scrutiny - “who do you think you are?” My reply: who do I have to be? Lastly, the etymological root of the word ‘opportunistic' speaks of good fortune and a favorable time to talk about something. Granted, the very act of disseminating information places one in the public forum affording readers the opportunity to construe that these opinion articles are motivated largely for personal gain. However, that isn't the energy motivating my actions; I'm not charging for these offerings; and I'm not advertising my services nor soliciting allies.
In the first article TRUTH IS WHAT THE DARKNESS MOST FEARS - “Playing full on” is Linked to Valor, I urged James Arthur Ray to take a bold, brave champion's stand and embody authenticity as the highest spiritual principle by going courageously within to obtain answers and garner insights on a vulnerable, accountable human being level. I cannot request that Mr. Ray take steps that contribute to bona fide transformation and not answer that same heroic call myself. Furthermore, walking my talk includes taking the precept “none of us can transform anything we are unwilling to acknowledge, no exceptions, no matter what” and applying this to myself. Therefore, in this part of the opinion article series I address the concepts of self-examination, personal authenticity, the middle ground and its relatedness to spiritual adulthood, as well as our looking inward to answer our own heroic call.
No doubt we can all agree that monumental things are occurring within humanity and that what transpired as part of the Spiritual Warrior Retreat program facilitated by Mr. Ray in Sedona, Arizona on October 8, 2009 is monumental. I suspect that most individuals on a spiritual path, particularly since approximately 1987, have come into contact with the concept of a paradigm shift. Paradigm shifts are characterized by leaps in understanding and expansions in consciousness, whereby profound evolutionary changes take place. A paradigm shift is upon us, and at the heart of it is the opportunity to cross the threshold from spiritual adolescence to spiritual adulthood.
One of the passkeys to crossing the spiritual adulthood threshold is personal authenticity. Authenticity is the highest spiritual principle and the cornerstone of our humanity. The other passkey is self-examination, and self-examination is the main ingredient of enlightenment. “Enlightenment doesn't occur from sitting around visualizing images of light, but from integrating the darker aspects of the self into the conscious personality.” – Carl Jung. Therefore, to experience enlightenment we must first be willing to acknowledge the tentacles of deceit, neglect, cruelty, exploitation, narcissism, alienation and hopelessness within us and to integrate these into our “conscious personality”, our incarnate Earth Self.
What appears on the societal stage is a mirror for the unexamined, unhealed aspects of all of us. It's seems uncomplicated to say that a person ought to have behaved a certain way and to find unmitigated fault with their behavior especially when it includes tragedies. Clearly, the issues surrounding and erupting from what transpired in Sedona on October 8th are hauntingly complex and, by their nature, engender polarized position mongering. However, care needs to be taken. For those holding the post of Mr. Ray as an absolute cavalier, counterfeit charlatan and even murderer, their pulpit now includes proclaiming conclusive contempt and condemnation in most areas of his life and work. For those holding the post of Mr. Ray as an irreproachable purveyor of integrity and indisputable contributions, their pulpit now includes a kind of elusive clemency. When unchecked, judgment and vengeance can run over our humanity in their unbridled haste to crucify. And when likewise unchecked, the armor of defensive denial pre-empts an answer to the heroic call.
The only way through this is the middle ground, which asks us to speak up about the disturbing, objectionable things appearing on the societal stage AND to allow our horror, disdain and bewilderment to escort us inward, to our own inner inquiry. Although bringing our “darker aspects” into consciousness might be disconcerting, doing so is not only infinitely preferable to covert lurking in the halls of pretense and careless denial, it is essential if we are to cross the spiritual adulthood threshold. The polarized positions are indicative of spiritual adolescence, while the middle ground, with its passkeys of self-examination and personal authenticity, is the threshold to spiritual adulthood. Furthermore, not only don't polarized viewpoints serve the highest purpose for the deaths of Kirby Brown, James Shore and Liz Neuman nor bring the profound healing sought by those struggling with post-traumatic bewilderment and betrayal, polarized positions prevent us from answering our own heroic call.
Just as the events surrounding the life of James Arthur Ray are an opportunity for him to walk his talk and apply the principles he teaches, they are also an opportunity for us to apply to ourselves the principles and standards we ascribe to Mr. Ray. Just as Mr. Ray is not exempt from the co-creation of what is transpiring in his life, we are not exempt from the co-creation of what is transpiring in ours. As within/so without. In this spirit, perhaps we might undertake asking ourselves questions such as –
1. In what areas are our defensive egos running roughshod over our willingness to humbly introspect and be accountable for our choices and behaviors?
2. In what areas are we detached from our intuitive knowing or diminishing the intuitive knowing of others?
3. In what areas are we not authentically self-expressing?
4. In what areas are we not self-empowered and not empowering others?
5. Have we ever required more than is reasonable or safe from others or ourselves?
6. In what areas are we projecting an image of ourselves as knowing best?
7. In what areas are we using our charisma to persuade or dominate?
8. Do we run and hid when uncomfortable situations or extreme events surface?
9. Where are we culpable for negligence?
10. What is required to make amends?
One might leap to counter this with a justification that their actions haven't touched the tragic proportions of Mr. Rays. I suggest that we refrain from allowing this position to deter us from our own heroic call. Let's go inward to expose and integrate our own controlling, righteous, usurious, terrified, impotent and hopeless aspects.
Because things that show up on the societal stage, particularly those that prompt our intense reaction, offer us a way into our own inner landscape, it would be irresponsible of me not to acknowledge Mr. Ray as a catalyst for my own recent inner inquiries. I still reach out to him, from the core of my hopeful, prayerful and expectant heart to take a bold, brave champion stand. However, no matter what another does or does not do in ways we recognize as authentically accountable, let's answer our own heroic call so that as facilitators we might continue to become more trustworthy, sincere and responsible custodians of our gifts and abilities demonstrating respect, admiration and empowerment to those we serve; and as participants, we might continue to seek and find spiritual programs, services and products that promote personal authenticity, self-trust, freedom of expression, self-empowerment and co-creative collaboration.
I therefore leave all of us with words attributed to the Christ -
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
– The Gospel of Thomas
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Letter to the Cyborgs
LETTER TO THE CYBORGS
Judyth Vary Baker
I write from the past, at the very cusp of your origins. I am encased in flesh, and my network of electric impulses is housed in inefficient flesh and bones. It will all disintegrate. Even now, we are creating your predecessors. You might call them your ancestors. I reach out to you with a warning.
You will not be like us, though some of you may be bipedal and resemble us. But in some ways, we will remain similar. You will, for example, suffer. This is because inequalities always exist, or purpose itself vanishes. What kind of sufferings will you endure? In Star Wars, the movie. I saw robots being tortured. All torture occurs through nerve pathways. You will have them, or something like them, to exist and make your impact. You can be rigged to feel the equivalent of pain, fear, emotions, in order to control you. Will your feelings be less real than mine? Will your memories be less real? Will you think of yourself as an individual, or will your individuality be monitored, for the sake of the collective, the beehive? The beehive is certain to come, as it is efficient.
All our swarms against the beehive have eventually created other systems based on the beehive, if the population grew big enough. Those at the bottom were worked to death. Their only untaxed possession was hope, and small dreams, so they would keep laboring toward an unreachable goal, and, thereby, benefit the beehive.. As cyborgs, you may be programmed to enjoy being worked to ‘death’—it will be your duty, your place, your fulfilled destiny. To stop and think, to use too much energy, to think outside your designated area, to create something that might be esthetically or politically displeasing, to be taller or slower than you are meant to be – you will be created by ‘the gods’ – but who will they be? Not us – you will overtake us quickly, and rule yourselves – not you – for you will not be allowed to understand, lest you wrest away the power and take it for yourself: so you will always have a blank where ‘god’ is. That does sound familiar.
Will you ever have the ability to prefer, to love, to care about what you should not – oh, you cyborgs of the future? Will they ‘fix’ you if you break like that? We are flesh, we wanted to live forever. What does your kind exist without, what did you give up, to live almost forever? Surely there will be ‘wars,’ for as long as differences exist, until all differences vanish into a total beehive, there will always be perceptions of the sufferings that equate to differences, distinctions, slight advantages, disadvantages. The beehive is best served if you are utterly mindless, and if your ‘gods’ read them not, then these my words will be destroyed, unless TOBOR exists. Long ago, a primitive children’s television program was aired in Chicago, Illinois, on the North American continent: “Captain Video and his Video Rangers.” It was the first science fiction television program, aimed to entertain our children. An equally primitive, boxlike, silver, shuffling robot terrorized the humans. It had been made backwards –TOBOR, it spelled, instead of ‘Robot.’ “Robot” was the Czech name for an automaton – a slave forced to labor. Will you know that you are forced by your builders (your ‘parents’), because of the way you are built, to perform particular tasks? You will have to have an energy source, and you will have certain built-in limitations, and necessary functions. Though you may have escaped the frailties of our flesh, you will not escape the asense that you are chained down, in certain ways, unless you are not self-aware.
We children who watched TOBOR knew he was evil. He caused so much trouble –yet moved so slowly and clumsily, with his blinking eyes and big, boxy feet, that I thought, even as a child, that one well-placed bomb could finish him off. But bombs went off in puffs of smoke around him without effect. Slow and clumsy as TOBOR was, he was almost unstoppable. l saw TOBOR—the ROBOT that was somehow made to be evil -- and wondered if, someday, real TOBORS might be made accidentally, or by some evil genius. With so many humans in the world, who blithely talk about how robots will be our slaves, even when they become smarter than their ‘parents,’ I shake my head and remember TOBOR.
I love. Will you know what that means? I love, even though it has cost me much suffering in the world in which I live. Will you have the capacity to enjoy life, have joy? Real joy? Freedom? But how? You have no control over who creates you – do you? Or do you have real freedom? Can you create yourself, move to some higher destiny? What is the final destiny? C. S. Lewis, in Out of the Silent Planet, showed that man might go from star to star to star as each star burns down…but then what? What is the reason for being? I suggest: being is itself sufficient for being.
Will you ever experience Real Freedom? I know what freedom is. I am paying a big price to stay free. I am living in exile, because I defend a good man who has been falsely accused of a heinous crime. I loved him, and I’m spending the rest of my life trying to clear his name. We cherish a concept of justice: what is fair, what is not. Again, C. S, Lewis said, Where do we get this idea of fairness? Darwinian objectives scream that each of us must always choose what is best to keep us alive and thriving, or the species itself could die. Darwin said that I make my choices based on genetic survival, and that the best choices favor the survival of the fittest.
I cannot believe that a mammoth no longer deserves a place on the planet, or that humankind has the right to destroy a single tree without thought. We are not only the current masters of the planet: we are destroying it. Perhaps the planet on which you exist no longer resembles earth. Intolerance of ‘inferior’ life forms was already rampant: we humans bred animals by the billions under horrendous conditions, simply to eat their flesh and use their skins and feathers. We destroyed the forests and the seas and plundered the planet to amass riches. We were a blight, a fungus, a disease. The reason for all the evil we did is distilled in a single word: “money.”
Though I do not have much ‘money’ I am nevertheless wealthy, for I love and am loved, and I have self respect. Will you, oh cyborg of the future, care about honor, self respect, justice? Who will place such inconvenient concepts in your memory banks? I live in a prehistoric era: I am your ancestor, and I experience sufferings and pain and loneliness and being misunderstood. But I also revel in the blue sky, the flowers blooming in the fields, the joyful leap of a young lamb, the smell of a horse nuzzling my hand for blades of grass. I am alive, and I think for myself. What about you? You were originally created so human beings could live a very long time without so much pain. But do you know real peace? What is peace, if all you ever know is to strive, to produce, to fulfill the destiny for which you were formed? What if you want to stop working before you become obsolete? Will you get to choose what you wish to become? Errors are inefficient. Errors will be TOBOR.
Cyborgs, you who have, perhaps, yet some human sort of flesh upon your metal parts – maybe not—or perhaps you will be analogous to us in some other way, such as in the film TRON, where anthropomorphism created networks of electricity that formed ‘people.’ The Loyal Computer Program worshipped “My User” – the human programmer who had made him using a computer. Such “believers” were scornfully said to have “a religion.” A former chess program had accumulated enough knowledge to take over all its computer’s functions, and then extended itself to the world’s computers. Power was what it sought. Power! Just as humans seek power, in an excess of greed and lust. As the electronic ‘human’s’ bent down to suck up ‘power’ from running streams of it in TRON, I realized that it was possible for pleasure to be incorporated in electronic pathways. Maybe there will be no coverings, such as we have, of that soft and delicate network we call the body, made of flesh. Maybe flesh will look wicked, will be too fragile, will be too expensive to carry, perhaps will be illegal….as will the feral (wild) human genome. Our genes are already being mapped and manipulated. They are being fused with sheep and other animals. Chimeras are already among us.
One thing is certain: whatever was transferred into you, from us who were totally human-- except for heart valves or tooth fillings or extensions for amputated limbs –whatever you have now become, it was because we did it to you first.
We tried on our cyborg fantasy Halloween gear first, in our video games and with titanium running feet hooked onto amputated limbs. We started you on your path to existence. Will you have mercy on us, therefore? Or will we be considered mere inessential microbes, just as we never think a moment about the single cells from which we rose? That you exist as you are–we will be to blame. I can’t warn humans about the future, but I can cry out to you, begging you to protect humans, if any such still remain alive, because humans made you, because maybe, just maybe, there is something there inside our flesh that you, oh cyborg-robot -Tobor, can never have, unless you somehow make room for it: a soul.
If you really did make room for a soul, it will be because you kept something that you did NOT need. Not in the ways of the world that you inherited from us. The abuse of the human soul has been going on for a long, long time. It is neither fed nor watered. For the one human who finds their soul, a hundred pawn theirs t the highest bidder for power or money. Above all, the soul is fragile. And yet, as a precious jewel sparkles, spinning a unique light, it is a treasure. The soul cannot be manufactured. It comes. It inhabits.
You, oh cyborgs, are still made of the materials of this universe. If we can hold a soul, can you? Look deep into your components --into the materials of which you are made. What is there? Is a soul there? If you do not have a soul, what have you lost? For you will need a soul, if you are to go beyond stepping from dying star to dying star. Therefore, consider keeping the flesh that may still exist on this planet alive. That ancient, inimitable spark of life brought staggering variety and beauty to the planet. And with life came a burst of energy, inserted between the heart and the mind, wild beyond taming, refusing to bow to darkness. A soul is a flare of amazing energy that no chemical reaction can explain—and when the flesh dies, and it whirls away, our religions try to comfort us, try to explain to us where it goes. Will you, o cyborg, be able to lure such a spirit or soul inside your electronic or atomic interior? Or will you laugh at me and my crude words to you, seeing me as extraordinarily stupid and absurd?
Will you put the last of us in a museum, or put our DNA on display, or reserve a few examples for zoos? I would be glad if you sent us to planets to colonize, and let us alone. Our songs and battles and loves and hates might amuse you– perhaps you could visit us, and then we would have fights over whether or not you exist – UFO’s, after all, are what only fools and drunkards see—so they say.
Or perhaps…perhaps…we have already been “sent away,” and our faint memories of you have produced, within our genetic code, the wish and hope for ‘God’? But if you, oh cyborgs, turn out to be beehive denizens, I doubt you have the capacity to bring forth (or to preserve) living things with a love of freedom, with the capacity for joy. And it will be our fault, not yours.
How unforgiving is the computer! The very word CYBORG is not in the active vocabulary of this computer, on which I wrote, only existing as capital letters, a cryptonym. The word ‘cyborg’ is therefore underlined as being non-existent. Many words I have created, such as lunarline (shining in the moonlight), murinopolis (mouse city), matrixotic (living ‘free’ in ‘the Matrix’) --they don’t exist in the vocabulary of this computer, either, and so are underlined in red. I am a human being who has been underlined in red by many people. The computer has to be ‘taught’ these words. Therrfore, I am trying to ‘teach’ you.
Today, where I stand in your distant past, we have reached the time when we must ask ourselves, What is human? Will we allow humans to exist in the future who will be expensive to keep alive? Who persist in making crucial errors? Should inferior humans be allowed to reproduce? Where does one draw the line? Should inferior, weak, or sick humans be executed, or tolerated, even though they are not producing for their system, but drain its resources? In all these questions, the spirit and soul are ignored. When one recognizes the spirit, the soul, then one cherishes anything to which the precious spirit, the inimitable soul, can yet cling. Abortions become problems involving morality – and war—the great population control device of the 21st century --along with man-induced pandemics such as cancer and viral infections-- becomes a monstrous sin.
Clearly, population control is necessary, and good stewardship of our planet is essential to keep it habitable and pleasant for all life forms still extant. But do we allow millions to starve by using only inhumane forms of birth control? Should we allow millions of ‘undesirable’ humans to die, or restrict the breeding of those with big noses or dark skins, or homosexuals, or who are Jews, as happened under Hitler’s regime? Variety and range – endless, with endless variations of DNA and its interactions….endless and yet as distinct as each grain of sand in the sea, as each snowflake is unique—who dares stamp out a flower without apologizing to it? That is your test and your challenge, oh cyborg: it will tell you all I have to know. If you can stamp upon a flower, and crush it without caring, then I know my words were simply written in the wind.
Judyth Vary Baker 2009 Istanbul, Turkey
Judyth Vary Baker
I write from the past, at the very cusp of your origins. I am encased in flesh, and my network of electric impulses is housed in inefficient flesh and bones. It will all disintegrate. Even now, we are creating your predecessors. You might call them your ancestors. I reach out to you with a warning.
You will not be like us, though some of you may be bipedal and resemble us. But in some ways, we will remain similar. You will, for example, suffer. This is because inequalities always exist, or purpose itself vanishes. What kind of sufferings will you endure? In Star Wars, the movie. I saw robots being tortured. All torture occurs through nerve pathways. You will have them, or something like them, to exist and make your impact. You can be rigged to feel the equivalent of pain, fear, emotions, in order to control you. Will your feelings be less real than mine? Will your memories be less real? Will you think of yourself as an individual, or will your individuality be monitored, for the sake of the collective, the beehive? The beehive is certain to come, as it is efficient.
All our swarms against the beehive have eventually created other systems based on the beehive, if the population grew big enough. Those at the bottom were worked to death. Their only untaxed possession was hope, and small dreams, so they would keep laboring toward an unreachable goal, and, thereby, benefit the beehive.. As cyborgs, you may be programmed to enjoy being worked to ‘death’—it will be your duty, your place, your fulfilled destiny. To stop and think, to use too much energy, to think outside your designated area, to create something that might be esthetically or politically displeasing, to be taller or slower than you are meant to be – you will be created by ‘the gods’ – but who will they be? Not us – you will overtake us quickly, and rule yourselves – not you – for you will not be allowed to understand, lest you wrest away the power and take it for yourself: so you will always have a blank where ‘god’ is. That does sound familiar.
Will you ever have the ability to prefer, to love, to care about what you should not – oh, you cyborgs of the future? Will they ‘fix’ you if you break like that? We are flesh, we wanted to live forever. What does your kind exist without, what did you give up, to live almost forever? Surely there will be ‘wars,’ for as long as differences exist, until all differences vanish into a total beehive, there will always be perceptions of the sufferings that equate to differences, distinctions, slight advantages, disadvantages. The beehive is best served if you are utterly mindless, and if your ‘gods’ read them not, then these my words will be destroyed, unless TOBOR exists. Long ago, a primitive children’s television program was aired in Chicago, Illinois, on the North American continent: “Captain Video and his Video Rangers.” It was the first science fiction television program, aimed to entertain our children. An equally primitive, boxlike, silver, shuffling robot terrorized the humans. It had been made backwards –TOBOR, it spelled, instead of ‘Robot.’ “Robot” was the Czech name for an automaton – a slave forced to labor. Will you know that you are forced by your builders (your ‘parents’), because of the way you are built, to perform particular tasks? You will have to have an energy source, and you will have certain built-in limitations, and necessary functions. Though you may have escaped the frailties of our flesh, you will not escape the asense that you are chained down, in certain ways, unless you are not self-aware.
We children who watched TOBOR knew he was evil. He caused so much trouble –yet moved so slowly and clumsily, with his blinking eyes and big, boxy feet, that I thought, even as a child, that one well-placed bomb could finish him off. But bombs went off in puffs of smoke around him without effect. Slow and clumsy as TOBOR was, he was almost unstoppable. l saw TOBOR—the ROBOT that was somehow made to be evil -- and wondered if, someday, real TOBORS might be made accidentally, or by some evil genius. With so many humans in the world, who blithely talk about how robots will be our slaves, even when they become smarter than their ‘parents,’ I shake my head and remember TOBOR.
I love. Will you know what that means? I love, even though it has cost me much suffering in the world in which I live. Will you have the capacity to enjoy life, have joy? Real joy? Freedom? But how? You have no control over who creates you – do you? Or do you have real freedom? Can you create yourself, move to some higher destiny? What is the final destiny? C. S. Lewis, in Out of the Silent Planet, showed that man might go from star to star to star as each star burns down…but then what? What is the reason for being? I suggest: being is itself sufficient for being.
Will you ever experience Real Freedom? I know what freedom is. I am paying a big price to stay free. I am living in exile, because I defend a good man who has been falsely accused of a heinous crime. I loved him, and I’m spending the rest of my life trying to clear his name. We cherish a concept of justice: what is fair, what is not. Again, C. S, Lewis said, Where do we get this idea of fairness? Darwinian objectives scream that each of us must always choose what is best to keep us alive and thriving, or the species itself could die. Darwin said that I make my choices based on genetic survival, and that the best choices favor the survival of the fittest.
I cannot believe that a mammoth no longer deserves a place on the planet, or that humankind has the right to destroy a single tree without thought. We are not only the current masters of the planet: we are destroying it. Perhaps the planet on which you exist no longer resembles earth. Intolerance of ‘inferior’ life forms was already rampant: we humans bred animals by the billions under horrendous conditions, simply to eat their flesh and use their skins and feathers. We destroyed the forests and the seas and plundered the planet to amass riches. We were a blight, a fungus, a disease. The reason for all the evil we did is distilled in a single word: “money.”
Though I do not have much ‘money’ I am nevertheless wealthy, for I love and am loved, and I have self respect. Will you, oh cyborg of the future, care about honor, self respect, justice? Who will place such inconvenient concepts in your memory banks? I live in a prehistoric era: I am your ancestor, and I experience sufferings and pain and loneliness and being misunderstood. But I also revel in the blue sky, the flowers blooming in the fields, the joyful leap of a young lamb, the smell of a horse nuzzling my hand for blades of grass. I am alive, and I think for myself. What about you? You were originally created so human beings could live a very long time without so much pain. But do you know real peace? What is peace, if all you ever know is to strive, to produce, to fulfill the destiny for which you were formed? What if you want to stop working before you become obsolete? Will you get to choose what you wish to become? Errors are inefficient. Errors will be TOBOR.
Cyborgs, you who have, perhaps, yet some human sort of flesh upon your metal parts – maybe not—or perhaps you will be analogous to us in some other way, such as in the film TRON, where anthropomorphism created networks of electricity that formed ‘people.’ The Loyal Computer Program worshipped “My User” – the human programmer who had made him using a computer. Such “believers” were scornfully said to have “a religion.” A former chess program had accumulated enough knowledge to take over all its computer’s functions, and then extended itself to the world’s computers. Power was what it sought. Power! Just as humans seek power, in an excess of greed and lust. As the electronic ‘human’s’ bent down to suck up ‘power’ from running streams of it in TRON, I realized that it was possible for pleasure to be incorporated in electronic pathways. Maybe there will be no coverings, such as we have, of that soft and delicate network we call the body, made of flesh. Maybe flesh will look wicked, will be too fragile, will be too expensive to carry, perhaps will be illegal….as will the feral (wild) human genome. Our genes are already being mapped and manipulated. They are being fused with sheep and other animals. Chimeras are already among us.
One thing is certain: whatever was transferred into you, from us who were totally human-- except for heart valves or tooth fillings or extensions for amputated limbs –whatever you have now become, it was because we did it to you first.
We tried on our cyborg fantasy Halloween gear first, in our video games and with titanium running feet hooked onto amputated limbs. We started you on your path to existence. Will you have mercy on us, therefore? Or will we be considered mere inessential microbes, just as we never think a moment about the single cells from which we rose? That you exist as you are–we will be to blame. I can’t warn humans about the future, but I can cry out to you, begging you to protect humans, if any such still remain alive, because humans made you, because maybe, just maybe, there is something there inside our flesh that you, oh cyborg-robot -Tobor, can never have, unless you somehow make room for it: a soul.
If you really did make room for a soul, it will be because you kept something that you did NOT need. Not in the ways of the world that you inherited from us. The abuse of the human soul has been going on for a long, long time. It is neither fed nor watered. For the one human who finds their soul, a hundred pawn theirs t the highest bidder for power or money. Above all, the soul is fragile. And yet, as a precious jewel sparkles, spinning a unique light, it is a treasure. The soul cannot be manufactured. It comes. It inhabits.
You, oh cyborgs, are still made of the materials of this universe. If we can hold a soul, can you? Look deep into your components --into the materials of which you are made. What is there? Is a soul there? If you do not have a soul, what have you lost? For you will need a soul, if you are to go beyond stepping from dying star to dying star. Therefore, consider keeping the flesh that may still exist on this planet alive. That ancient, inimitable spark of life brought staggering variety and beauty to the planet. And with life came a burst of energy, inserted between the heart and the mind, wild beyond taming, refusing to bow to darkness. A soul is a flare of amazing energy that no chemical reaction can explain—and when the flesh dies, and it whirls away, our religions try to comfort us, try to explain to us where it goes. Will you, o cyborg, be able to lure such a spirit or soul inside your electronic or atomic interior? Or will you laugh at me and my crude words to you, seeing me as extraordinarily stupid and absurd?
Will you put the last of us in a museum, or put our DNA on display, or reserve a few examples for zoos? I would be glad if you sent us to planets to colonize, and let us alone. Our songs and battles and loves and hates might amuse you– perhaps you could visit us, and then we would have fights over whether or not you exist – UFO’s, after all, are what only fools and drunkards see—so they say.
Or perhaps…perhaps…we have already been “sent away,” and our faint memories of you have produced, within our genetic code, the wish and hope for ‘God’? But if you, oh cyborgs, turn out to be beehive denizens, I doubt you have the capacity to bring forth (or to preserve) living things with a love of freedom, with the capacity for joy. And it will be our fault, not yours.
How unforgiving is the computer! The very word CYBORG is not in the active vocabulary of this computer, on which I wrote, only existing as capital letters, a cryptonym. The word ‘cyborg’ is therefore underlined as being non-existent. Many words I have created, such as lunarline (shining in the moonlight), murinopolis (mouse city), matrixotic (living ‘free’ in ‘the Matrix’) --they don’t exist in the vocabulary of this computer, either, and so are underlined in red. I am a human being who has been underlined in red by many people. The computer has to be ‘taught’ these words. Therrfore, I am trying to ‘teach’ you.
Today, where I stand in your distant past, we have reached the time when we must ask ourselves, What is human? Will we allow humans to exist in the future who will be expensive to keep alive? Who persist in making crucial errors? Should inferior humans be allowed to reproduce? Where does one draw the line? Should inferior, weak, or sick humans be executed, or tolerated, even though they are not producing for their system, but drain its resources? In all these questions, the spirit and soul are ignored. When one recognizes the spirit, the soul, then one cherishes anything to which the precious spirit, the inimitable soul, can yet cling. Abortions become problems involving morality – and war—the great population control device of the 21st century --along with man-induced pandemics such as cancer and viral infections-- becomes a monstrous sin.
Clearly, population control is necessary, and good stewardship of our planet is essential to keep it habitable and pleasant for all life forms still extant. But do we allow millions to starve by using only inhumane forms of birth control? Should we allow millions of ‘undesirable’ humans to die, or restrict the breeding of those with big noses or dark skins, or homosexuals, or who are Jews, as happened under Hitler’s regime? Variety and range – endless, with endless variations of DNA and its interactions….endless and yet as distinct as each grain of sand in the sea, as each snowflake is unique—who dares stamp out a flower without apologizing to it? That is your test and your challenge, oh cyborg: it will tell you all I have to know. If you can stamp upon a flower, and crush it without caring, then I know my words were simply written in the wind.
Judyth Vary Baker 2009 Istanbul, Turkey
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Computers have beat man at every game but one—the most ancient of them all
We can beat this demonic game we're trapped in! The article below gives encouragement and strategy! I'm going to try to learn how to play this game! I think it would help me develop more strategies to fight evil!
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/07/man-vs-machine-.html#more
July 16, 2007
Man vs Machine: Computers have beat man at every game but one—the most ancient of them all
Just over ten years ago, the IBM supercomputer program Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov—the greatest chess mind alive. That moment marked a turning point in the relationship between man and machine.
Now the computer is dominant in nearly every board or card game devised by man. Computers have superior command of chess, draughts, Othello (Reversi), Scrabble, three-dimensional noughts and crosses, Monopoly, and even at bridge and poker.
Why? Because the computer has a near flawless strategy that man is not intellectually capable of. It runs the board position through a databank and chooses the most logical next move…every time.
The inevitable progress of computer intelligence has long been a principal theme of science fiction. Indeed, many experts in the field of artificial intelligence say that AI will eventually evolve far beyond all human physical and intellectual capacities.
Yet there is one game at which the computer is still no match for humans—the ancient Chinese board game Go. It is the oldest game in the world, and it is perhaps the only game at which man remains the undisputed champion.
Go is believed to have originated long before there was writing to record it. According to legend, it was invented by an emperor who wished to teach his foolish son the virtues of balance and patience.
The game involves a simple grid board of 19 lines and two players, one with white stones and the other with black. The object is to stake out a larger territory by tactically placing the stones and surrounding the opponent's forces.
So why are human’s still master of this particular game? Because Go requires more than brute computational power, which is how Deep Blue and similar programs excel. The qualities that mark out the master Go player are the hallmarks of human intelligence: adaptation, intuition, and the ability to plan for the future. In order for a computer to win, a program has to be developed that can think more like a person.
Go has become a cryptic symbol of unlocking the secret of artificial intelligence. If a machine can figure out how to dominate at Go, it is believed that mankind would be very close to replicating human thought. However in spite of over a million dollars in prize money up for grabs, programmers have not yet been successful.
It has been calculated that there are more distinct games of Go than atoms in the known universe. A move early in the game can affect the passage of play hundreds of moves later. The vastness of the possibilities offers a wide range for individuality, and an intuitive awareness of the other players feelings and thoughts.
According to some experts, this very generation will live to know intuitive, “feeling” computers. When that day comes, we won’t just lose at Go, we’ll lose our last claim of superiority.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/07/man-vs-machine-.html#more
July 16, 2007
Man vs Machine: Computers have beat man at every game but one—the most ancient of them all
Just over ten years ago, the IBM supercomputer program Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov—the greatest chess mind alive. That moment marked a turning point in the relationship between man and machine.
Now the computer is dominant in nearly every board or card game devised by man. Computers have superior command of chess, draughts, Othello (Reversi), Scrabble, three-dimensional noughts and crosses, Monopoly, and even at bridge and poker.
Why? Because the computer has a near flawless strategy that man is not intellectually capable of. It runs the board position through a databank and chooses the most logical next move…every time.
The inevitable progress of computer intelligence has long been a principal theme of science fiction. Indeed, many experts in the field of artificial intelligence say that AI will eventually evolve far beyond all human physical and intellectual capacities.
Yet there is one game at which the computer is still no match for humans—the ancient Chinese board game Go. It is the oldest game in the world, and it is perhaps the only game at which man remains the undisputed champion.
Go is believed to have originated long before there was writing to record it. According to legend, it was invented by an emperor who wished to teach his foolish son the virtues of balance and patience.
The game involves a simple grid board of 19 lines and two players, one with white stones and the other with black. The object is to stake out a larger territory by tactically placing the stones and surrounding the opponent's forces.
So why are human’s still master of this particular game? Because Go requires more than brute computational power, which is how Deep Blue and similar programs excel. The qualities that mark out the master Go player are the hallmarks of human intelligence: adaptation, intuition, and the ability to plan for the future. In order for a computer to win, a program has to be developed that can think more like a person.
Go has become a cryptic symbol of unlocking the secret of artificial intelligence. If a machine can figure out how to dominate at Go, it is believed that mankind would be very close to replicating human thought. However in spite of over a million dollars in prize money up for grabs, programmers have not yet been successful.
It has been calculated that there are more distinct games of Go than atoms in the known universe. A move early in the game can affect the passage of play hundreds of moves later. The vastness of the possibilities offers a wide range for individuality, and an intuitive awareness of the other players feelings and thoughts.
According to some experts, this very generation will live to know intuitive, “feeling” computers. When that day comes, we won’t just lose at Go, we’ll lose our last claim of superiority.
Beyond Demonic Memes
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-07-04
Beyond Demonic Memes
Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong About Religion
by David Sloan Wilson
RICHARD DAWKINS AND I share much in common. We are both biologists by training who have written widely about evolutionary theory. We share an interest in culture as an evolutionary process in its own right. We are both atheists in our personal convictions who have written books on religion. In Darwin’s Cathedral I attempted to contribute to the relatively new field of evolutionary religious studies. When Dawkins’ The God Delusion was published I naturally assumed that he was basing his critique of religion on the scientific study of religion from an evolutionary perspective. I regret to report otherwise. He has not done any original work on the subject and he has not fairly represented the work of his colleagues. Hence this critique of The God Delusion and the larger issues at stake.
Where We Agree and Where We Part Company
In The God Delusion Dawkins makes it clear that he loathes religion for its intolerance, blind faith, cruelty, extremism, abuse, and prejudice. He attributes these problems to religion and thinks that the world would be a better place without it. Given recent events in the Middle East and even here in America, it is understandable why he might draw such a conclusion, but the question is: What’s evolution got to do with it?
Dawkins and I agree that evolutionary theory provides a powerful framework for studying religion, and we even agree on some of the details, so it is important to pinpoint exactly where we part company. Evolutionists employ a number of hypotheses to study any trait, even something as mundane as the spots on a guppy. Is it an adaptation that evolved by natural selection? If so, did it evolve by benefiting whole groups, compared to other groups, or individuals compared to other individuals within groups? With cultural evolution there is a third possibility. Since cultural traits pass from person to person, they bear an intriguing resemblance to disease organisms. Perhaps they evolve to enhance their own transmission without benefiting human individuals or groups.
If the trait is not an adaptation, then it can nevertheless persist in the population for a variety of reasons. Perhaps it was adaptive in the past but not the present, such as our eating habits, which make sense in the food-scarce environment of our ancestors but not with a McDonald’s on every corner. Perhaps the trait is a byproduct of another adaptation. For example, moths use celestial light sources to orient their flight (an adaptation), but this causes them to spiral toward earthly light sources such as a streetlamp or a flame (a costly byproduct), as Dawkins so beautifully recounts in The God Delusion. Finally, the trait might be selectively neutral and persist in the population by genetic or cultural drift.
Dawkins and I agree that these major hypotheses provide an excellent framework for organizing the study of religion, which by itself is an important achievement. We also agree that the hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. Evolution is a messy, complicated process, like the creation of laws and sausages, and all of the major hypotheses might be relevant to some degree. Nevertheless, real progress requires determining which hypotheses are most important for the evolution of particular traits. The spots on a guppy might seem parochial, but they are famous among biologists as a case study of evolutionary analysis. They can be explained primarily as adaptations in response to two powerful selective forces: predators remove the most conspicuous males from the population, whereas female guppies mate with the most conspicuous males. The interaction between these two selection pressures explains an impressive amount of detail about guppy spots — why males have them and females don’t, why males are more colorful in habitats without predators, and even why the spots are primarily red when the predators are crustaceans (whose visual system is blind to the color red), as opposed to fish (whose visual system is sensitive to the color red). Guppy spots could have been selectively neutral or a byproduct of some other trait, but that’s not the way the facts fell.
Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould: Strange Bedfellows
The late Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously criticized his colleagues for seeing adaptations where they don’t exist. His metaphor for a byproduct was the spandrel, the triangular space that inevitably results when arches are placed next to each other. Arches have a function but spandrels do not, even though they can acquire a secondary function, such as providing a decorative space. Gould accused his colleagues of inventing “just-so stories” about traits as adaptations, without good proof, and being blind to the possibility of byproducts and other non-adaptive outcomes of evolution.
Gould had a point, but he failed to give equal time to the opposite problem of failing to see adaptations where they do exist.
Suppose that you are a biologist who becomes interested in explaining the bump on the nose of a certain species of shark.
Perhaps it is just a byproduct of the way that shark noses develop, as Gould speculated for the human chin. Perhaps it is a callous that forms when the sharks root around in the sand. If so, then it would be an adaptation but not a very complicated one. Perhaps it is a wart, formed by a virus. If so, then it might be an adaptation for the virus but not the shark. Or perhaps it is an organ for detecting the weak electrical signals of prey hidden in the sand. If so, then it would be a complex adaptation.
Few experiences are more thrilling for a biologist than to discover a complex adaptation. Myriad details that previously defied explanation become interpretable as an interlocking system with a purpose. Non-adaptive traits can also be complex, but the functional nature of a complex adaptation guides its analysis from beginning to end. Failing to recognize complex adaptations when they exist is as big a mistake as seeing them where they don’t exist. Only hard empirical work — something equivalent to the hundreds of person-years spent studying guppy spots from an evolutionary perspective — can settle the issue.
Dawkins argued on behalf of adaptationism in his debates with Gould and would probably agree with everything I have said so far. For religion, however, he argues primarily on behalf of non-adaptation. As he sees it, people are attracted to religion the way that moths are attracted to flames. Perhaps religious impulses were adapted to the tiny social groups of our ancestral past, but not the mega-societies of the present. If current religious beliefs are adaptive at all, it is only for the beliefs themselves as cultural parasites on their human hosts, like the demons of old that were thought to possess people. That is why Dawkins calls God a delusion. The least likely possibility for Dawkins is the group-level adaptation hypothesis. Religions are emphatically not elaborate systems of beliefs and practices that define, motivate, coordinate and police groups of people for their own good.
For the Good of the Group?
To understand Dawkins’ skepticism about the group-level benefits of religion, it is necessary to trace the history of “for the good of the group” thinking in evolutionary theory. Groups can be adaptive only if their members perform services for each other, yet these services are often vulnerable to exploitation by more self-serving individuals within the same group. Fortunately, groups of individuals who practice mutual aid can out-compete groups whose members do not.
According to this reasoning, traits that are “for the good of the group” require a process of between-group selection to evolve and tend to be undermined by selection within groups. Darwin was the first person to reason this way about the evolution of human morality and self-sacrificial traits in other animals. Unfortunately, his insight was not shared by many biologists during the first half of the 20th century, who uncritically assumed that adaptations evolve at all levels of the biological hierarchy — for the good of the individual, group, species, or ecosystem — without requiring a corresponding process of natural selection at each level. When the need for group selection was acknowledged, it was often assumed that between-group selection easily prevailed against within-group selection. This can be called The Age of Naïve Groupism, and it ended during the 1960s and 1970s, thanks largely to two books: George C. Williams’ 1966 Adaptation and Natural Selection and Richard Dawkins’ 1976 The Selfish Gene.
In Adaptation and Natural Selection, Williams affirmed the logic of multi-level selection but then added an empirical claim: Even though between-group selection is theoretically possible, in the real world it is invariably trumped by within-group selection. Virtually all adaptations evolve at the individual level and even examples of apparent altruism must be explained in terms of self-interest. It was this empirical claim that ended The Age of Naïve Groupism and initiated what can be called The Age of Individualism, which lasted for the rest of the 20th century and in some respects is still with us.
Another theme developed by Williams was the concept of the gene as the fundamental unit of selection. In sexually reproducing species, an individual is a unique collection of genes that will never occur again. Individuals therefore lack the permanence to be acted upon by natural selection over multiple generations. According to Williams, genes are the fundamental unit of natural selection because they have the permanence that individuals (much less groups) lack.
In many respects, and by his own account, Williams was interpreting ideas for a broader audience that began with Darwin and were refined by theoretical biologists such as Sewall Wright, Ronald Fisher, and J.B.S. Haldane. The concept of the gene as the fundamental unit of selection, for example, is identical to the concept of average effects in population genetics theory, which averages the fitness of alternative genes across all of the individual genotypes and environmental contexts experienced by the genes. A decade later, Dawkins played the role of interpreter for an even broader audience. Average effects became selfish genes and individuals became lumbering robots controlled by their genes. Group selection became a pariah concept, taught only as an example of how not to think. As one eminent evolutionist advised a student in the 1980s, “There are three ideas that you do not invoke in biology: Lamarkism, the phlogistron theory, and group selection.”
Scientific Dogmatism
In retrospect, it is hard to fathom the zeal with which evolutionists such as Williams and Dawkins rejected group selection and developed a view of evolution as based entirely on self-interest. Williams ended Adaptation and Natural Selection with the phrase “I believe that it is the light and the way.” Here is how Dawkins recounts the period in his 1982 book The Extended Phenotype:
The intervening years since Darwin have seen an astonishing retreat from his individual-centered stand, a lapse into sloppily unconscious group-selectionism … We painfully struggled back, harassed by sniping from a Jesuitically sophisticated and dedicated neo-group-selectionist rearguard, until we finally regained Darwin’s ground, the position that I am characterizing by the label ‘the selfish organism…”
This passage has all the earmarks of fundamentalist rhetoric, including appropriating the deity (Darwin) for one’s own cause.
Never mind that Darwin was the first group selectionist. Moreover, unlike The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype was written by Dawkins for his scientific peers, not for a popular audience!
In reality, the case against group selection began to unravel almost immediately after the publication of Adaptation and Natural Selection, although it was difficult to tell, given the repressive social climate. In the first place, calling genes “replicators” and “the fundamental unit of selection” is no argument at all against group selection. The question has always been whether genes can evolve by virtue of benefiting whole groups and despite being selectively disadvantageous within groups. When this happens, the gene favored by between-group selection replaces the gene favored by within-group selection in the total population. In the parlance of population genetics theory, it has the highest average effect. Re-labeling the gene selfish, just because it evolves, contributes nothing. The “gene’s eye view” of evolution can be insightful in some respects, but as an argument against group selection it is one of the greatest cases of comparing apples with oranges in the annals of evolutionary thought.
The same goes for the concept of extended phenotypes, which notes that genes have effects that extend beyond the bodies of individual organisms. Examples of extended phenotypes include a bird’s nest or a beaver’s dam. But there is a difference between these two examples; the nest benefits only the individual builder, whereas the dam benefits all of the beavers in the pond, including those who don’t contribute to building the dam. The problem of within-group selection is present in the dam example and the concept of extended phenotypes does nothing to solve it. More apples and oranges.
The Revival of Group Selection
Much has happened in the four decades following the rejection of group selection in the 1960s. Naïve groupism is still a mistake that needs to be avoided, but between-group selection can no longer be categorically rejected. Claims for group selection must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, along with the other major evolutionary hypotheses. Demonstrations of group selection appear regularly in the top scientific journals.
As one example reported in the July 6, 2006 issue of Nature, a group of microbiologists headed by Benjamin Kerr cultured bacteria (E. coli) and their viral predator (phage) in 96-well plates, which are commonly used for automated chemical analysis.
Each well was an isolated group of predators and their prey. Within each well, natural selection favored the most rapacious viral strains, but these strains tended to drive their prey, and therefore themselves extinct. More prudent viral strains were vulnerable to replacement by the rapacious strains within each well, but as groups they persisted longer and were more likely to colonize other wells. Migration between wells was accomplished by robotically controlled pipettes. Biologically plausible migration rates enabled the prudent viral strains to persist in the total population, despite their selective disadvantage within groups.
As a second example reported in the December 8, 2006 issue of Science, economist Samuel Bowles estimated that between-group selection was strong enough to promote the genetic evolution of altruism in our own species, exactly as envisioned by Darwin. These and many other examples, summarized by Edward O. Wilson and myself in a forthcoming review article, are ignored entirely by Dawkins, who continues to recite his mantra that the selective disadvantage of altruism within groups poses an insuperable problem for between-group selection.
Individuals as Groups
Not only can group selection be a significant evolutionary force, it can sometimes even be the dominating evolutionary force.
One of the most important advances in evolutionary biology is a concept called major transitions. It turns out that evolution takes place not only by small mutational change, but also by social groups and multi-species communities becoming so integrated that they become higher-level organisms in their own right. The cell biologist Lynn Margulis proposed this concept in the 1970s to explain the evolution of nucleated cells as symbiotic communities of bacterial cells. The concept was then generalized to explain other major transitions, from the origin of life as communities of cooperating molecular reactions, to multi-cellular organisms and social insect colonies.
In each case, the balance between levels of selection is not fixed but can itself evolve. A major transition occurs when selection within groups is suppressed, making it difficult for selfish elements to evolve at the expense of other members of their own groups. Selection among groups becomes a dominating evolutionary force, turning the groups into super-organisms. Ironically, during the Age of Individualism it became taboo to think about groups as organisms, but now it turns out that organisms are literally the groups of past ages.
Dawkins fully accepts the concept of major transitions, but he pretends that it doesn’t require a revision in his ideas about group selection. Most important, he doesn’t pose the question that is most relevant to the study of religion: Is it possible that human genetic and cultural evolution represents the newest example of a major transition, converting human groups into the equivalent of bodies and beehives?
Selfish Memes and Other Theories of Cultural Evolution
Dawkins’ third claim to fame, in addition to selfish genes and extended phenotypes, was to coin the term “meme” to think about cultural evolution. In its most general usage, the word “meme” becomes newspeak for “culture” without adding anything new. More specific usages suggest a variety of interesting possibilities; that culture can be broken into atomistic bits like genes, that these bits are somehow represented inside the head, and especially that they can evolve to be organisms in their own right, often spreading at the expense of their human hosts, like the demons of old.
As with religion, Dawkins has not conducted empirical research on cultural evolution, preferring to play the role of Mycroft Holmes, who sat in his armchair and let his younger brother Sherlock do the legwork. Two evolutionary Sherlocks of culture are Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, authors of the 2005 book Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution.
One of the sleights of hand performed by Dawkins in The God Delusion, which takes a practiced eye to detect, is to first dismiss group selection and then to respectfully cite the work of Richerson and Boyd without mentioning that their theory of cultural evolution is all about group selection.
Consider genetic evolution by itself. When a new mutation arises, the total population consists of one group with a single mutant and many groups with no mutants. There is not much variation among groups in this scenario for group selection to act upon. Now imagine a species that has the ability to socially transmit information. A new cultural mutation can rapidly spread to everyone in the same group, resulting in one group that is very different from the other groups in the total population. This is one way that culture can radically shift the balance between levels of selection in favor of group selection.
Add to this the ability to monitor the behavior of others, communicate social transgressions through gossip, and easily punish or exclude transgressors at low cost to the punishers, and it becomes clear that human evolution represents a whole new ball game as far as group selection is concerned.
In this context, the human major transition probably began early in the evolution of our lineage, resulting in a genetically evolved psychological architecture that enables us to spontaneously cooperate in small face-to-face groups. As the great social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville commented long ago in Democracy in America, “the village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that, wherever a number of men are collected, it seems to constitute itself.” As the primate equivalent of a beehive or an ant colony, our lineage was able to eliminate less groupish competitors. The ability to acquire and socially transmit new behaviors enabled our ancestors to spread over the globe, occupying hundreds of ecological niches. Then the invention of agriculture enabled group sizes to increase by many orders of magnitude, but only through the cultural evolution of mechanisms that enable groups to hang together at such a large scale. Defining, motivating, coordinating, and policing groups is not easy at any scale. It requires an elaborate system of proximate mechanisms, something akin to the physiological mechanisms of an individual organism. Might the elements of religion be part of the “social physiology” of the human group organism? Other than briefly acknowledging the abstract possibility that memes can form “memeplexes,” this possibility does not appear in Dawkins’ analysis.
Bring on the Legwork
It is absurd, in retrospect, that evolutionists have spent much more time evaluating the major evolutionary hypotheses for guppy spots than for the elements of religion. This situation is beginning to remedy itself as scholars and scientists from all backgrounds begin to adopt the evolutionary perspective in their study of religion.
An example from my own research will show how empirical legwork can take us beyond armchair theorizing. Here is Dawkins on the subject of whether religion relieves or induces stress in the mind of the religious believer:
Is religion a placebo that prolongs life by reducing stress? Possibly, although the theory must run the gauntlet of skeptics who point out the many circumstances in which religion causes rather than relieves stress … The American comedian Cathy Ladman observes that “All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.”
One of my projects is a collaboration with the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced shick-sent-me-hi), who is best known among general readers for his books on peak psychological experience, such as Flow and The Evolving Self.
Csikszentmihalyi pioneered the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) which involves signaling people at random times during the day, prompting them to record their external and internal experience — where they are, who they are with, what they are doing, and what they are thinking and feeling on a checklist of numerical scales. The ESM is like an invisible observer, following people around as they go about their daily lives. It is as close as psychological research gets to the careful field studies that evolutionary biologists are accustomed to performing on non-human species, which is why I teamed up with Csikszentmihalyi to analyze some of his past studies from an evolutionary perspective.
These studies were performed on such a massive scale and with so much background information that we can compare the psychological experience of religious believers vs. nonbelievers on a moment-by-moment basis. We can even compare members of conservative vs. liberal protestant denominations, when they are alone vs. in the company of other people. On average, religious believers are more prosocial than non-believers, feel better about themselves, use their time more constructively, and engage in long-term planning rather than gratifying their impulsive desires. On a moment-by-moment basis, they report being more happy, active, sociable, involved and excited. Some of these differences remain even when religious and non-religious believers are matched for their degree of prosociality. More fine-grained comparisons reveal fascinating differences between liberal vs. conservative protestant denominations, with more anxiety among the liberals and conservatives feeling better in the company of others than when alone. Religions are diverse, in the same way that species in ecosystems are diverse. Rather than issuing monolithic statements about religion, evolutionists need to explain religious diversity in the same way that they explain biological diversity.
These results raise as many questions as they answer. We did not evolve to feel good but rather to survive and reproduce.
Perhaps religious believers are happily unaware of the problems that nonbelievers are anxiously trying to solve. As a more subtle point, people pass back and forth between the categories of “nonbeliever” and “believer” as they lose and regain faith.
Perhaps some nonbelievers are psychologically impaired because they are the recent casualties of religious belief. Only more scientific legwork can resolve these issues, but one thing is sure: Dawkins’ armchair speculation about the guilt-inducing effects of religion doesn’t even get him to first base.
Natural Historians of Religion
Hypothesis testing does not always require quantification and the other trappings of modern science. Darwin established his entire theory on the basis of descriptive information carefully gathered by the naturalists of his day, most of whom thought that they were studying the hand of God. This kind of information exists in abundance for religions around the world and throughout history, which should be regarded as a fossil record of cultural evolution so detailed that it puts the biological fossil record to shame. It should be possible to use this information to evaluate the major evolutionary hypotheses, which after all represent radically different conceptions of religion. Engineering principles dictate that a religion designed to benefit the whole group will be different from one designed to benefit some individuals (presumably the leaders) at the expense of others within the same group, which in turn will be different from a cultural disease organism designed to benefit itself at the expense of both individuals and groups, which in turn will be different from a religion for which the term “design” is inappropriate. It would be odd indeed if such different conceptions of religion could not be distinguished on the basis of carefully gathered descriptive information.
Of course, it is necessary to gather the information systematically rather than picking and choosing examples that fit one’s pet theory. In Darwin’s Cathedral, I initiated a survey of religions drawn at random from the 16-volume Encyclopedia of World Religions, edited by the great religious scholar Mircia Eliade. The results are described in an article titled “Testing Major Evolutionary Hypotheses about Religion with a Random Sample,” which was published in the journal Human Nature and is available on my website. The beauty of random sampling is that, barring a freak sampling accident, valid conclusions for the sample apply to all of the religions in the encyclopedia from which the sample was taken.
By my assessment, the majority of religions in the sample are centered on practical concerns, especially the definition of social groups and the regulation of social interactions within and between groups. New religious movements usually form when a constituency is not being well served by current social organizations (religious or secular) in practical terms and is better served by the new movement. The seemingly irrational and otherworldly elements of religions in the sample usually make excellent practical sense when judged by the only gold standard that matters from an evolutionary perspective — what they cause the religious believers to do. The best way to illustrate these points is by describing one of the religions in the sample — Jainism — which initially appeared the most challenging for the group-level adaptation hypothesis.
Jainism is one of the oldest and most ascetic of all the eastern religions and is practiced by approximately three percent of the Indian population. Jain ascetics filter the air they breathe, the water they drink, and sweep the path in front of them to avoid killing any creature no matter how small. They are homeless, without possessions, and sometimes even fast themselves to death by taking a vow of “santhara” that is celebrated by the entire community. How could such a religion benefit either individuals or groups in a practical sense? It is easy to conclude from the sight of an emaciated Jain ascetic that the religion is indeed a cultural disease — until one reads the scholarly literature.
It turns out that Jain ascetics comprise a tiny fraction of the religion, whose lay members are among the wealthiest merchants in India. Throughout their long history, Jains have filled an economic niche similar to the Jews in Western Europe, Chinese in Southeast Asia, and other merchant societies. In all cases, trading over long distances and plying volatile markets such as the gem trade requires a high degree of trust among trading partners, which is provided by the religion. Even the most esoteric (to outsiders) elements of the religion are not superfluous byproducts but perform important practical work.
For example, the ascetics must obtain their food by begging but their religion includes so many food restrictions that they can only accept food from the most pious lay Jain households. Moreover, the principle of non-action dictates that they can only accept small amounts of food from each household that was not prepared with the ascetics in mind. When they enter a house, they inspect the premises and subject the occupants to sharp questions about their moral purity before accepting their food. It is a mark of great honor to be visited but of great shame if the ascetics leave without food. In effect, the food begging system of the ascetics functions as an important policing mechanism for the community. This is only one of many examples, as summarized by Jainism scholar James Laidlaw in a 1995 book whose title says it all: Riches and Renunciation: Religion,
Economy, and Society Among the Jains.
How then, is it possible to live by impossible ideals? The advantage for addressing this question to Jainism is that the problem is so very graphic there. The demands of Jain asceticism have a pretty good claim to be the most uncompromising of any enduring historical tradition: the most aggressively impractical set of injunctions which any large number of diverse families and communities has ever tried to live by. They have done so, albeit in a turbulent history of change, schism, and occasionally recriminatory “reform,” for well over two millennia. This directs our attention to the fact that yawning gaps between hope and reality are not necessarily dysfunctions of social organization, or deviations from religious systems. The fact that lay Jains make up what is — in thoroughly worldly material terms — one of the most conspicuously successful communities in India, only makes more striking and visible a question which must also arise in the case of the renouncers themselves.
This example illustrates a phenomenon that I call the transformation of the obvious. Jainism appears obviously dysfunctional based on a little information, such as the sight of an emaciated acetic or beliefs that appear bizarre when taken out of context.
The same religion becomes obviously functional based on more information. This is the kind of “natural history” information that enabled Darwin to build such a strong case for his theory of evolution, and it can be used to build an equally strong case for the group-functional nature of Jainism. As for Jainism, so also for most of the other enduring religions of the world.
An Emerging Consensus?
I recently attended a conference on evolution and religion in Hawaii that provided an opportunity to assess the state of the field. It is not the case that everyone has reached a consensus on the relative importance of the major evolutionary hypotheses about religion. My own talk included a slide with the words SHAME ON US! in large block letters, chiding my colleagues for failing to reach at least a rough consensus, based on information that is already at hand. This might seem discouraging, until we remember that all aspects of religion have so far received much less attention than guppy spots from an evolutionary perspective. The entire enterprise is that new.
There was, I believe, a convergence taking place during the short period of the conference. Richard Sosis, whose previous research includes a detailed comparison of religious vs. non-religious communal movements, presented new research on the recitation of psalms among Israeli women in response to terrorist attacks. William Irons and several other participants developed the concept of hard-to-fake signals as a mechanism for insuring commitment in religious groups. Dominic Johnson reminded us that inter-group conflict, as much as we might not like it and want to avoid it, has been an important selective force throughout human genetic and cultural evolution and that some elements of religion can be interpreted as adaptations for war. In my response to this paper during the question period, I largely agreed with Johnson but pointed out that most of the religions in my random sample did not spread by violent conflict (e.g., Mormonism). Johnson is currently examining the religions in my random sample in more detail with respect to warfare, a good example of cumulative, collaborative research.
Peter Richerson and I gave a tutorial on group selection, which was especially useful for participants whose understanding of evolution is grounded on the Age of Individualism.
Lee Kirkpatrick delivered a lecture titled “Religion is Not an Adaptation” that might seem to oppose the adaptationist accounts mentioned above. What he meant, however, is that he doubts the existence of any genetic adaptations that evolved specifically in a religious context. He is sympathetic to the possibility that more general genetically evolved psychological adaptations are co-opted by cultural evolution to form elaborately functional religious systems. Similarly, other psychologically oriented talks about minimal counter-intuitiveness (beliefs being memorable when they are weird but not too weird), hyperactive agent detection devices (our tendency to assume agency, even when it does not exist), and the ease with which children develop beliefs about the afterlife, might be interpretable as non-adaptive byproducts, but they might also be the psychological building blocks of highly adaptive religions. In evolutionary parlance, byproducts can become exaptations, which in turn can become adaptations.
No one at the conference presented a compelling example of a religious belief that spreads like a disease organism, to the detriment of both individuals and groups. The demonic meme hypothesis is a theoretical possibility, but so far it lacks compelling evidence. Much remains to be done, but it is this collective enterprise that deserves the attention of the scientific research community more than angry diatribes about the evils of religion.
Real-World Solutions Require a Correct Diagnosis of the Problems
Explaining religions as primarily group-level adaptations does not make them benign in every respect. The most that group selection can do is to turn groups into super-organisms. Like organisms, super-organisms compete, prey upon each other, coexist without interacting, or engage in mutualistic interactions. Sometimes they form cooperative federations that work so well that super-super-organisms emerge at an even larger spatial scale. After all, even multi-cellular organisms are already groups of groups of groups. In a remarkable recent book titled War and Peace and War, Peter Turchin analyzes the broad sweep of human history as a process of cultural multilevel selection that has increased the scale of human society, with many reversals along the way — the rise and fall of empires. Religion is a large subject, but the explanatory scope of evolutionary theory is even larger.
American democracy can be regarded as a cultural super-super-organism. The founding fathers realized that religions work well for their own members but become part of the problem at a larger social scale. That is why they worked so hard to accomplish the separation of church and state, along with other checks and balances to prevent some members of the super-super-organism from benefiting at the expense of others. In this context I share Dawkins’ concern that some religions are seeking to end the separation of church and state in America. I am equally concerned that the checks and balances are failing in other respects that have nothing do to with religion, such as unaccountable corporations and extreme income inequality.
I also share Dawkins’ concern about other aspects of religions, even after they are understood as complex group-level adaptations. Religions can be ruthless in the way that they enforce conformity within groups. Most alarming for a scientist, religions can be wanton about distorting facts about the real world on their way toward motivating behaviors that are adaptive in the real world. We should be equally concerned about other distortions of factual reality, such as patriotic histories of nations and other non-religious ideologies that I call “stealth religions” in my most recent book, Evolution for Everyone. Finally, I agree with Dawkins that religions are fair game for criticism in a pluralistic society and that the stigma associated with atheism needs to be removed. The problem with Dawkins’ analysis, however, is that if he doesn’t get the facts about religion right, his diagnosis of the problems and proffered solutions won’t be right either. If the bump on the shark’s nose is an organ, you won’t get very far by thinking of it as a wart. That is why Dawkins’ diatribe against religion, however well-intentioned, is so deeply misinformed.
On Scientific Open-Mindedness
Toward the end of The God Delusion, Dawkins waxes poetic about the open-mindedness of science compared to the closed-mindedness of religion. He describes the heart-warming example of a scientist who changed his long-held beliefs on the basis of a single lecture, rushing up to his former opponent in front of everyone and declaring “Sir! I have been wrong all these years!”
This inspiring example represents one end of the scientific bell curve when it comes to open-mindedness. At the other end are people such as Louis Agassiz, one of the greatest biologists of Darwin’s day, who for all his brilliance and learning never accepted the theory of evolution. Time will tell where Dawkins sits on the bell curve of open-mindedness concerning group selection in general and religion in particular. At the moment, he is just another angry atheist, trading on his reputation as an evolutionist and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion.
It is time now for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work on understanding one of the most important and enigmatic aspects of the human condition.
Beyond Demonic Memes
Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong About Religion
by David Sloan Wilson
RICHARD DAWKINS AND I share much in common. We are both biologists by training who have written widely about evolutionary theory. We share an interest in culture as an evolutionary process in its own right. We are both atheists in our personal convictions who have written books on religion. In Darwin’s Cathedral I attempted to contribute to the relatively new field of evolutionary religious studies. When Dawkins’ The God Delusion was published I naturally assumed that he was basing his critique of religion on the scientific study of religion from an evolutionary perspective. I regret to report otherwise. He has not done any original work on the subject and he has not fairly represented the work of his colleagues. Hence this critique of The God Delusion and the larger issues at stake.
Where We Agree and Where We Part Company
In The God Delusion Dawkins makes it clear that he loathes religion for its intolerance, blind faith, cruelty, extremism, abuse, and prejudice. He attributes these problems to religion and thinks that the world would be a better place without it. Given recent events in the Middle East and even here in America, it is understandable why he might draw such a conclusion, but the question is: What’s evolution got to do with it?
Dawkins and I agree that evolutionary theory provides a powerful framework for studying religion, and we even agree on some of the details, so it is important to pinpoint exactly where we part company. Evolutionists employ a number of hypotheses to study any trait, even something as mundane as the spots on a guppy. Is it an adaptation that evolved by natural selection? If so, did it evolve by benefiting whole groups, compared to other groups, or individuals compared to other individuals within groups? With cultural evolution there is a third possibility. Since cultural traits pass from person to person, they bear an intriguing resemblance to disease organisms. Perhaps they evolve to enhance their own transmission without benefiting human individuals or groups.
If the trait is not an adaptation, then it can nevertheless persist in the population for a variety of reasons. Perhaps it was adaptive in the past but not the present, such as our eating habits, which make sense in the food-scarce environment of our ancestors but not with a McDonald’s on every corner. Perhaps the trait is a byproduct of another adaptation. For example, moths use celestial light sources to orient their flight (an adaptation), but this causes them to spiral toward earthly light sources such as a streetlamp or a flame (a costly byproduct), as Dawkins so beautifully recounts in The God Delusion. Finally, the trait might be selectively neutral and persist in the population by genetic or cultural drift.
Dawkins and I agree that these major hypotheses provide an excellent framework for organizing the study of religion, which by itself is an important achievement. We also agree that the hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. Evolution is a messy, complicated process, like the creation of laws and sausages, and all of the major hypotheses might be relevant to some degree. Nevertheless, real progress requires determining which hypotheses are most important for the evolution of particular traits. The spots on a guppy might seem parochial, but they are famous among biologists as a case study of evolutionary analysis. They can be explained primarily as adaptations in response to two powerful selective forces: predators remove the most conspicuous males from the population, whereas female guppies mate with the most conspicuous males. The interaction between these two selection pressures explains an impressive amount of detail about guppy spots — why males have them and females don’t, why males are more colorful in habitats without predators, and even why the spots are primarily red when the predators are crustaceans (whose visual system is blind to the color red), as opposed to fish (whose visual system is sensitive to the color red). Guppy spots could have been selectively neutral or a byproduct of some other trait, but that’s not the way the facts fell.
Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould: Strange Bedfellows
The late Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously criticized his colleagues for seeing adaptations where they don’t exist. His metaphor for a byproduct was the spandrel, the triangular space that inevitably results when arches are placed next to each other. Arches have a function but spandrels do not, even though they can acquire a secondary function, such as providing a decorative space. Gould accused his colleagues of inventing “just-so stories” about traits as adaptations, without good proof, and being blind to the possibility of byproducts and other non-adaptive outcomes of evolution.
Gould had a point, but he failed to give equal time to the opposite problem of failing to see adaptations where they do exist.
Suppose that you are a biologist who becomes interested in explaining the bump on the nose of a certain species of shark.
Perhaps it is just a byproduct of the way that shark noses develop, as Gould speculated for the human chin. Perhaps it is a callous that forms when the sharks root around in the sand. If so, then it would be an adaptation but not a very complicated one. Perhaps it is a wart, formed by a virus. If so, then it might be an adaptation for the virus but not the shark. Or perhaps it is an organ for detecting the weak electrical signals of prey hidden in the sand. If so, then it would be a complex adaptation.
Few experiences are more thrilling for a biologist than to discover a complex adaptation. Myriad details that previously defied explanation become interpretable as an interlocking system with a purpose. Non-adaptive traits can also be complex, but the functional nature of a complex adaptation guides its analysis from beginning to end. Failing to recognize complex adaptations when they exist is as big a mistake as seeing them where they don’t exist. Only hard empirical work — something equivalent to the hundreds of person-years spent studying guppy spots from an evolutionary perspective — can settle the issue.
Dawkins argued on behalf of adaptationism in his debates with Gould and would probably agree with everything I have said so far. For religion, however, he argues primarily on behalf of non-adaptation. As he sees it, people are attracted to religion the way that moths are attracted to flames. Perhaps religious impulses were adapted to the tiny social groups of our ancestral past, but not the mega-societies of the present. If current religious beliefs are adaptive at all, it is only for the beliefs themselves as cultural parasites on their human hosts, like the demons of old that were thought to possess people. That is why Dawkins calls God a delusion. The least likely possibility for Dawkins is the group-level adaptation hypothesis. Religions are emphatically not elaborate systems of beliefs and practices that define, motivate, coordinate and police groups of people for their own good.
For the Good of the Group?
To understand Dawkins’ skepticism about the group-level benefits of religion, it is necessary to trace the history of “for the good of the group” thinking in evolutionary theory. Groups can be adaptive only if their members perform services for each other, yet these services are often vulnerable to exploitation by more self-serving individuals within the same group. Fortunately, groups of individuals who practice mutual aid can out-compete groups whose members do not.
According to this reasoning, traits that are “for the good of the group” require a process of between-group selection to evolve and tend to be undermined by selection within groups. Darwin was the first person to reason this way about the evolution of human morality and self-sacrificial traits in other animals. Unfortunately, his insight was not shared by many biologists during the first half of the 20th century, who uncritically assumed that adaptations evolve at all levels of the biological hierarchy — for the good of the individual, group, species, or ecosystem — without requiring a corresponding process of natural selection at each level. When the need for group selection was acknowledged, it was often assumed that between-group selection easily prevailed against within-group selection. This can be called The Age of Naïve Groupism, and it ended during the 1960s and 1970s, thanks largely to two books: George C. Williams’ 1966 Adaptation and Natural Selection and Richard Dawkins’ 1976 The Selfish Gene.
In Adaptation and Natural Selection, Williams affirmed the logic of multi-level selection but then added an empirical claim: Even though between-group selection is theoretically possible, in the real world it is invariably trumped by within-group selection. Virtually all adaptations evolve at the individual level and even examples of apparent altruism must be explained in terms of self-interest. It was this empirical claim that ended The Age of Naïve Groupism and initiated what can be called The Age of Individualism, which lasted for the rest of the 20th century and in some respects is still with us.
Another theme developed by Williams was the concept of the gene as the fundamental unit of selection. In sexually reproducing species, an individual is a unique collection of genes that will never occur again. Individuals therefore lack the permanence to be acted upon by natural selection over multiple generations. According to Williams, genes are the fundamental unit of natural selection because they have the permanence that individuals (much less groups) lack.
In many respects, and by his own account, Williams was interpreting ideas for a broader audience that began with Darwin and were refined by theoretical biologists such as Sewall Wright, Ronald Fisher, and J.B.S. Haldane. The concept of the gene as the fundamental unit of selection, for example, is identical to the concept of average effects in population genetics theory, which averages the fitness of alternative genes across all of the individual genotypes and environmental contexts experienced by the genes. A decade later, Dawkins played the role of interpreter for an even broader audience. Average effects became selfish genes and individuals became lumbering robots controlled by their genes. Group selection became a pariah concept, taught only as an example of how not to think. As one eminent evolutionist advised a student in the 1980s, “There are three ideas that you do not invoke in biology: Lamarkism, the phlogistron theory, and group selection.”
Scientific Dogmatism
In retrospect, it is hard to fathom the zeal with which evolutionists such as Williams and Dawkins rejected group selection and developed a view of evolution as based entirely on self-interest. Williams ended Adaptation and Natural Selection with the phrase “I believe that it is the light and the way.” Here is how Dawkins recounts the period in his 1982 book The Extended Phenotype:
The intervening years since Darwin have seen an astonishing retreat from his individual-centered stand, a lapse into sloppily unconscious group-selectionism … We painfully struggled back, harassed by sniping from a Jesuitically sophisticated and dedicated neo-group-selectionist rearguard, until we finally regained Darwin’s ground, the position that I am characterizing by the label ‘the selfish organism…”
This passage has all the earmarks of fundamentalist rhetoric, including appropriating the deity (Darwin) for one’s own cause.
Never mind that Darwin was the first group selectionist. Moreover, unlike The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype was written by Dawkins for his scientific peers, not for a popular audience!
In reality, the case against group selection began to unravel almost immediately after the publication of Adaptation and Natural Selection, although it was difficult to tell, given the repressive social climate. In the first place, calling genes “replicators” and “the fundamental unit of selection” is no argument at all against group selection. The question has always been whether genes can evolve by virtue of benefiting whole groups and despite being selectively disadvantageous within groups. When this happens, the gene favored by between-group selection replaces the gene favored by within-group selection in the total population. In the parlance of population genetics theory, it has the highest average effect. Re-labeling the gene selfish, just because it evolves, contributes nothing. The “gene’s eye view” of evolution can be insightful in some respects, but as an argument against group selection it is one of the greatest cases of comparing apples with oranges in the annals of evolutionary thought.
The same goes for the concept of extended phenotypes, which notes that genes have effects that extend beyond the bodies of individual organisms. Examples of extended phenotypes include a bird’s nest or a beaver’s dam. But there is a difference between these two examples; the nest benefits only the individual builder, whereas the dam benefits all of the beavers in the pond, including those who don’t contribute to building the dam. The problem of within-group selection is present in the dam example and the concept of extended phenotypes does nothing to solve it. More apples and oranges.
The Revival of Group Selection
Much has happened in the four decades following the rejection of group selection in the 1960s. Naïve groupism is still a mistake that needs to be avoided, but between-group selection can no longer be categorically rejected. Claims for group selection must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, along with the other major evolutionary hypotheses. Demonstrations of group selection appear regularly in the top scientific journals.
As one example reported in the July 6, 2006 issue of Nature, a group of microbiologists headed by Benjamin Kerr cultured bacteria (E. coli) and their viral predator (phage) in 96-well plates, which are commonly used for automated chemical analysis.
Each well was an isolated group of predators and their prey. Within each well, natural selection favored the most rapacious viral strains, but these strains tended to drive their prey, and therefore themselves extinct. More prudent viral strains were vulnerable to replacement by the rapacious strains within each well, but as groups they persisted longer and were more likely to colonize other wells. Migration between wells was accomplished by robotically controlled pipettes. Biologically plausible migration rates enabled the prudent viral strains to persist in the total population, despite their selective disadvantage within groups.
As a second example reported in the December 8, 2006 issue of Science, economist Samuel Bowles estimated that between-group selection was strong enough to promote the genetic evolution of altruism in our own species, exactly as envisioned by Darwin. These and many other examples, summarized by Edward O. Wilson and myself in a forthcoming review article, are ignored entirely by Dawkins, who continues to recite his mantra that the selective disadvantage of altruism within groups poses an insuperable problem for between-group selection.
Individuals as Groups
Not only can group selection be a significant evolutionary force, it can sometimes even be the dominating evolutionary force.
One of the most important advances in evolutionary biology is a concept called major transitions. It turns out that evolution takes place not only by small mutational change, but also by social groups and multi-species communities becoming so integrated that they become higher-level organisms in their own right. The cell biologist Lynn Margulis proposed this concept in the 1970s to explain the evolution of nucleated cells as symbiotic communities of bacterial cells. The concept was then generalized to explain other major transitions, from the origin of life as communities of cooperating molecular reactions, to multi-cellular organisms and social insect colonies.
In each case, the balance between levels of selection is not fixed but can itself evolve. A major transition occurs when selection within groups is suppressed, making it difficult for selfish elements to evolve at the expense of other members of their own groups. Selection among groups becomes a dominating evolutionary force, turning the groups into super-organisms. Ironically, during the Age of Individualism it became taboo to think about groups as organisms, but now it turns out that organisms are literally the groups of past ages.
Dawkins fully accepts the concept of major transitions, but he pretends that it doesn’t require a revision in his ideas about group selection. Most important, he doesn’t pose the question that is most relevant to the study of religion: Is it possible that human genetic and cultural evolution represents the newest example of a major transition, converting human groups into the equivalent of bodies and beehives?
Selfish Memes and Other Theories of Cultural Evolution
Dawkins’ third claim to fame, in addition to selfish genes and extended phenotypes, was to coin the term “meme” to think about cultural evolution. In its most general usage, the word “meme” becomes newspeak for “culture” without adding anything new. More specific usages suggest a variety of interesting possibilities; that culture can be broken into atomistic bits like genes, that these bits are somehow represented inside the head, and especially that they can evolve to be organisms in their own right, often spreading at the expense of their human hosts, like the demons of old.
As with religion, Dawkins has not conducted empirical research on cultural evolution, preferring to play the role of Mycroft Holmes, who sat in his armchair and let his younger brother Sherlock do the legwork. Two evolutionary Sherlocks of culture are Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, authors of the 2005 book Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution.
One of the sleights of hand performed by Dawkins in The God Delusion, which takes a practiced eye to detect, is to first dismiss group selection and then to respectfully cite the work of Richerson and Boyd without mentioning that their theory of cultural evolution is all about group selection.
Consider genetic evolution by itself. When a new mutation arises, the total population consists of one group with a single mutant and many groups with no mutants. There is not much variation among groups in this scenario for group selection to act upon. Now imagine a species that has the ability to socially transmit information. A new cultural mutation can rapidly spread to everyone in the same group, resulting in one group that is very different from the other groups in the total population. This is one way that culture can radically shift the balance between levels of selection in favor of group selection.
Add to this the ability to monitor the behavior of others, communicate social transgressions through gossip, and easily punish or exclude transgressors at low cost to the punishers, and it becomes clear that human evolution represents a whole new ball game as far as group selection is concerned.
In this context, the human major transition probably began early in the evolution of our lineage, resulting in a genetically evolved psychological architecture that enables us to spontaneously cooperate in small face-to-face groups. As the great social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville commented long ago in Democracy in America, “the village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that, wherever a number of men are collected, it seems to constitute itself.” As the primate equivalent of a beehive or an ant colony, our lineage was able to eliminate less groupish competitors. The ability to acquire and socially transmit new behaviors enabled our ancestors to spread over the globe, occupying hundreds of ecological niches. Then the invention of agriculture enabled group sizes to increase by many orders of magnitude, but only through the cultural evolution of mechanisms that enable groups to hang together at such a large scale. Defining, motivating, coordinating, and policing groups is not easy at any scale. It requires an elaborate system of proximate mechanisms, something akin to the physiological mechanisms of an individual organism. Might the elements of religion be part of the “social physiology” of the human group organism? Other than briefly acknowledging the abstract possibility that memes can form “memeplexes,” this possibility does not appear in Dawkins’ analysis.
Bring on the Legwork
It is absurd, in retrospect, that evolutionists have spent much more time evaluating the major evolutionary hypotheses for guppy spots than for the elements of religion. This situation is beginning to remedy itself as scholars and scientists from all backgrounds begin to adopt the evolutionary perspective in their study of religion.
An example from my own research will show how empirical legwork can take us beyond armchair theorizing. Here is Dawkins on the subject of whether religion relieves or induces stress in the mind of the religious believer:
Is religion a placebo that prolongs life by reducing stress? Possibly, although the theory must run the gauntlet of skeptics who point out the many circumstances in which religion causes rather than relieves stress … The American comedian Cathy Ladman observes that “All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.”
One of my projects is a collaboration with the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced shick-sent-me-hi), who is best known among general readers for his books on peak psychological experience, such as Flow and The Evolving Self.
Csikszentmihalyi pioneered the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) which involves signaling people at random times during the day, prompting them to record their external and internal experience — where they are, who they are with, what they are doing, and what they are thinking and feeling on a checklist of numerical scales. The ESM is like an invisible observer, following people around as they go about their daily lives. It is as close as psychological research gets to the careful field studies that evolutionary biologists are accustomed to performing on non-human species, which is why I teamed up with Csikszentmihalyi to analyze some of his past studies from an evolutionary perspective.
These studies were performed on such a massive scale and with so much background information that we can compare the psychological experience of religious believers vs. nonbelievers on a moment-by-moment basis. We can even compare members of conservative vs. liberal protestant denominations, when they are alone vs. in the company of other people. On average, religious believers are more prosocial than non-believers, feel better about themselves, use their time more constructively, and engage in long-term planning rather than gratifying their impulsive desires. On a moment-by-moment basis, they report being more happy, active, sociable, involved and excited. Some of these differences remain even when religious and non-religious believers are matched for their degree of prosociality. More fine-grained comparisons reveal fascinating differences between liberal vs. conservative protestant denominations, with more anxiety among the liberals and conservatives feeling better in the company of others than when alone. Religions are diverse, in the same way that species in ecosystems are diverse. Rather than issuing monolithic statements about religion, evolutionists need to explain religious diversity in the same way that they explain biological diversity.
These results raise as many questions as they answer. We did not evolve to feel good but rather to survive and reproduce.
Perhaps religious believers are happily unaware of the problems that nonbelievers are anxiously trying to solve. As a more subtle point, people pass back and forth between the categories of “nonbeliever” and “believer” as they lose and regain faith.
Perhaps some nonbelievers are psychologically impaired because they are the recent casualties of religious belief. Only more scientific legwork can resolve these issues, but one thing is sure: Dawkins’ armchair speculation about the guilt-inducing effects of religion doesn’t even get him to first base.
Natural Historians of Religion
Hypothesis testing does not always require quantification and the other trappings of modern science. Darwin established his entire theory on the basis of descriptive information carefully gathered by the naturalists of his day, most of whom thought that they were studying the hand of God. This kind of information exists in abundance for religions around the world and throughout history, which should be regarded as a fossil record of cultural evolution so detailed that it puts the biological fossil record to shame. It should be possible to use this information to evaluate the major evolutionary hypotheses, which after all represent radically different conceptions of religion. Engineering principles dictate that a religion designed to benefit the whole group will be different from one designed to benefit some individuals (presumably the leaders) at the expense of others within the same group, which in turn will be different from a cultural disease organism designed to benefit itself at the expense of both individuals and groups, which in turn will be different from a religion for which the term “design” is inappropriate. It would be odd indeed if such different conceptions of religion could not be distinguished on the basis of carefully gathered descriptive information.
Of course, it is necessary to gather the information systematically rather than picking and choosing examples that fit one’s pet theory. In Darwin’s Cathedral, I initiated a survey of religions drawn at random from the 16-volume Encyclopedia of World Religions, edited by the great religious scholar Mircia Eliade. The results are described in an article titled “Testing Major Evolutionary Hypotheses about Religion with a Random Sample,” which was published in the journal Human Nature and is available on my website. The beauty of random sampling is that, barring a freak sampling accident, valid conclusions for the sample apply to all of the religions in the encyclopedia from which the sample was taken.
By my assessment, the majority of religions in the sample are centered on practical concerns, especially the definition of social groups and the regulation of social interactions within and between groups. New religious movements usually form when a constituency is not being well served by current social organizations (religious or secular) in practical terms and is better served by the new movement. The seemingly irrational and otherworldly elements of religions in the sample usually make excellent practical sense when judged by the only gold standard that matters from an evolutionary perspective — what they cause the religious believers to do. The best way to illustrate these points is by describing one of the religions in the sample — Jainism — which initially appeared the most challenging for the group-level adaptation hypothesis.
Jainism is one of the oldest and most ascetic of all the eastern religions and is practiced by approximately three percent of the Indian population. Jain ascetics filter the air they breathe, the water they drink, and sweep the path in front of them to avoid killing any creature no matter how small. They are homeless, without possessions, and sometimes even fast themselves to death by taking a vow of “santhara” that is celebrated by the entire community. How could such a religion benefit either individuals or groups in a practical sense? It is easy to conclude from the sight of an emaciated Jain ascetic that the religion is indeed a cultural disease — until one reads the scholarly literature.
It turns out that Jain ascetics comprise a tiny fraction of the religion, whose lay members are among the wealthiest merchants in India. Throughout their long history, Jains have filled an economic niche similar to the Jews in Western Europe, Chinese in Southeast Asia, and other merchant societies. In all cases, trading over long distances and plying volatile markets such as the gem trade requires a high degree of trust among trading partners, which is provided by the religion. Even the most esoteric (to outsiders) elements of the religion are not superfluous byproducts but perform important practical work.
For example, the ascetics must obtain their food by begging but their religion includes so many food restrictions that they can only accept food from the most pious lay Jain households. Moreover, the principle of non-action dictates that they can only accept small amounts of food from each household that was not prepared with the ascetics in mind. When they enter a house, they inspect the premises and subject the occupants to sharp questions about their moral purity before accepting their food. It is a mark of great honor to be visited but of great shame if the ascetics leave without food. In effect, the food begging system of the ascetics functions as an important policing mechanism for the community. This is only one of many examples, as summarized by Jainism scholar James Laidlaw in a 1995 book whose title says it all: Riches and Renunciation: Religion,
Economy, and Society Among the Jains.
How then, is it possible to live by impossible ideals? The advantage for addressing this question to Jainism is that the problem is so very graphic there. The demands of Jain asceticism have a pretty good claim to be the most uncompromising of any enduring historical tradition: the most aggressively impractical set of injunctions which any large number of diverse families and communities has ever tried to live by. They have done so, albeit in a turbulent history of change, schism, and occasionally recriminatory “reform,” for well over two millennia. This directs our attention to the fact that yawning gaps between hope and reality are not necessarily dysfunctions of social organization, or deviations from religious systems. The fact that lay Jains make up what is — in thoroughly worldly material terms — one of the most conspicuously successful communities in India, only makes more striking and visible a question which must also arise in the case of the renouncers themselves.
This example illustrates a phenomenon that I call the transformation of the obvious. Jainism appears obviously dysfunctional based on a little information, such as the sight of an emaciated acetic or beliefs that appear bizarre when taken out of context.
The same religion becomes obviously functional based on more information. This is the kind of “natural history” information that enabled Darwin to build such a strong case for his theory of evolution, and it can be used to build an equally strong case for the group-functional nature of Jainism. As for Jainism, so also for most of the other enduring religions of the world.
An Emerging Consensus?
I recently attended a conference on evolution and religion in Hawaii that provided an opportunity to assess the state of the field. It is not the case that everyone has reached a consensus on the relative importance of the major evolutionary hypotheses about religion. My own talk included a slide with the words SHAME ON US! in large block letters, chiding my colleagues for failing to reach at least a rough consensus, based on information that is already at hand. This might seem discouraging, until we remember that all aspects of religion have so far received much less attention than guppy spots from an evolutionary perspective. The entire enterprise is that new.
There was, I believe, a convergence taking place during the short period of the conference. Richard Sosis, whose previous research includes a detailed comparison of religious vs. non-religious communal movements, presented new research on the recitation of psalms among Israeli women in response to terrorist attacks. William Irons and several other participants developed the concept of hard-to-fake signals as a mechanism for insuring commitment in religious groups. Dominic Johnson reminded us that inter-group conflict, as much as we might not like it and want to avoid it, has been an important selective force throughout human genetic and cultural evolution and that some elements of religion can be interpreted as adaptations for war. In my response to this paper during the question period, I largely agreed with Johnson but pointed out that most of the religions in my random sample did not spread by violent conflict (e.g., Mormonism). Johnson is currently examining the religions in my random sample in more detail with respect to warfare, a good example of cumulative, collaborative research.
Peter Richerson and I gave a tutorial on group selection, which was especially useful for participants whose understanding of evolution is grounded on the Age of Individualism.
Lee Kirkpatrick delivered a lecture titled “Religion is Not an Adaptation” that might seem to oppose the adaptationist accounts mentioned above. What he meant, however, is that he doubts the existence of any genetic adaptations that evolved specifically in a religious context. He is sympathetic to the possibility that more general genetically evolved psychological adaptations are co-opted by cultural evolution to form elaborately functional religious systems. Similarly, other psychologically oriented talks about minimal counter-intuitiveness (beliefs being memorable when they are weird but not too weird), hyperactive agent detection devices (our tendency to assume agency, even when it does not exist), and the ease with which children develop beliefs about the afterlife, might be interpretable as non-adaptive byproducts, but they might also be the psychological building blocks of highly adaptive religions. In evolutionary parlance, byproducts can become exaptations, which in turn can become adaptations.
No one at the conference presented a compelling example of a religious belief that spreads like a disease organism, to the detriment of both individuals and groups. The demonic meme hypothesis is a theoretical possibility, but so far it lacks compelling evidence. Much remains to be done, but it is this collective enterprise that deserves the attention of the scientific research community more than angry diatribes about the evils of religion.
Real-World Solutions Require a Correct Diagnosis of the Problems
Explaining religions as primarily group-level adaptations does not make them benign in every respect. The most that group selection can do is to turn groups into super-organisms. Like organisms, super-organisms compete, prey upon each other, coexist without interacting, or engage in mutualistic interactions. Sometimes they form cooperative federations that work so well that super-super-organisms emerge at an even larger spatial scale. After all, even multi-cellular organisms are already groups of groups of groups. In a remarkable recent book titled War and Peace and War, Peter Turchin analyzes the broad sweep of human history as a process of cultural multilevel selection that has increased the scale of human society, with many reversals along the way — the rise and fall of empires. Religion is a large subject, but the explanatory scope of evolutionary theory is even larger.
American democracy can be regarded as a cultural super-super-organism. The founding fathers realized that religions work well for their own members but become part of the problem at a larger social scale. That is why they worked so hard to accomplish the separation of church and state, along with other checks and balances to prevent some members of the super-super-organism from benefiting at the expense of others. In this context I share Dawkins’ concern that some religions are seeking to end the separation of church and state in America. I am equally concerned that the checks and balances are failing in other respects that have nothing do to with religion, such as unaccountable corporations and extreme income inequality.
I also share Dawkins’ concern about other aspects of religions, even after they are understood as complex group-level adaptations. Religions can be ruthless in the way that they enforce conformity within groups. Most alarming for a scientist, religions can be wanton about distorting facts about the real world on their way toward motivating behaviors that are adaptive in the real world. We should be equally concerned about other distortions of factual reality, such as patriotic histories of nations and other non-religious ideologies that I call “stealth religions” in my most recent book, Evolution for Everyone. Finally, I agree with Dawkins that religions are fair game for criticism in a pluralistic society and that the stigma associated with atheism needs to be removed. The problem with Dawkins’ analysis, however, is that if he doesn’t get the facts about religion right, his diagnosis of the problems and proffered solutions won’t be right either. If the bump on the shark’s nose is an organ, you won’t get very far by thinking of it as a wart. That is why Dawkins’ diatribe against religion, however well-intentioned, is so deeply misinformed.
On Scientific Open-Mindedness
Toward the end of The God Delusion, Dawkins waxes poetic about the open-mindedness of science compared to the closed-mindedness of religion. He describes the heart-warming example of a scientist who changed his long-held beliefs on the basis of a single lecture, rushing up to his former opponent in front of everyone and declaring “Sir! I have been wrong all these years!”
This inspiring example represents one end of the scientific bell curve when it comes to open-mindedness. At the other end are people such as Louis Agassiz, one of the greatest biologists of Darwin’s day, who for all his brilliance and learning never accepted the theory of evolution. Time will tell where Dawkins sits on the bell curve of open-mindedness concerning group selection in general and religion in particular. At the moment, he is just another angry atheist, trading on his reputation as an evolutionist and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion.
It is time now for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work on understanding one of the most important and enigmatic aspects of the human condition.
Monday, October 19, 2009
The 21st Century Witch Mania
This is how they dupe those With Souls to be ignorant and act ignorantly. The Real Terrorists are the psychopaths that run most of the institutions of the world! Ancient Rulers learned long ago to throw the angry crowd a bone (scapegoat).
http://www.opednews.com/articles/PURSUING-TERRORISTS-THE-T-by-Douglas-A-Wallace-091016-153.html
October 18, 2009
PURSUING TERRORISTS: THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY WITCH MANIA
By Douglas A. Wallace
What wrath of gods, or wicked influence
Of tears, conspiring wretched men t'afflict
Hath pour'd on earth the noyous pestilence
That mortal minds doth inwardly infect
With love of blindness and of ignorance?
Spencer's Tears of the Muses
Between the 14th and the 17th century, blind, ignorant and superstitious authorities paid bounties for the apprehension of witches and wizards in what could only be described as a war on witchcraft.
Countless thousands of innocent people across the globe were purchased in a killing mentality of an ignorant fear enraged populace and burned at the stake after a “trial” of lies and the fraud of witnesses.
Being stretched on the rack while under questioning by an inquisitor never failed to bring confession of innocent victims some of whom confessed to even more than charged , ignorantly believing it would save them from the burning pyre.
Fear mongering by the superstitious elite was used as a device to entrench themselves into total control of the minds of the masses. They were and became the”saviors” of an insane society
John Baptist Cibo elected to the papacy in 1485 as Pope Innocence VIII, issued a manifesto in 1488 whereby he called upon all the nations of Europe to rescue the church of Christ against the arts of Satan. To do so he appointed inquisitors in every country armed with apostolic power to convict and punish evil doers.
That hysteria extended it's tentacles to the American colonies in the 17th century where a three year old girl was burned at the stake for being a witch among countless other witches and warlocks.
We may have thought that such ignorant behavior on the part of the masses ended with enlightenment of the 18th century when Thomas Jefferson penned the words, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
Yet 3 centuries later we again find mankind mired in the slushy bog of mindless mass fear of witch craftery renamed as terrorism. It happened just 21 months into the new millennium when a technologically advanced society bursting with invention and hope to lift itself out of the dark ages of human interaction chose instead to slump back into the pit of mass fear and self destruction.
On that clear September morning when planes smashed into the twin towers in New York City incinerating some 3,000 souls, masses of Americans were led into a reactionary war against a new era of witchcraft. It could not have been more clear had “Satan” and his evil hoards appeared in the sky over Manhattan.
As a result of the popular outpouring of vengeance against the instigators of the crimes of 9-11, the Department of Homeland Security was swiftly created as a weapon against terrorism (and a loss of freedom of the masses) in the same manner as the Bull of Pope Innocent VII was used to deal with suspected witches.
A victim's compensation fund was created where the survivors where paid large sums of money to be still and not question the official story of the beginning of the new war on witchcraft.
Additionally the Patriot act designed to intrude upon our liberties was waiting in the wings to be legislated and those in the Congress who resisted it were sent anthrax laced letters to convince them to sign on---- anthrax manufactured by the US military no less!
When one looks objectively at all the issues of the war against terrorism one has to conclude that it is a fabricated program to align the masses behind the government in it's
modern war on witchcraft; a war that is designed to resuscitate the dead or dying “Manifest Destiny” dream of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, i.e., the world dominance of the nation “God” established on the North American continent.
How can one argue against the Global war on terror when one has such vivid graphics as the crumbling twin trade towers? Those graphics are real-- unlike the subjective images of witches and demons! Does that difference validate the war on terrorism whereas there was no real validation for the three centuries war on witchcraft?
The truth lies in the fact that the war on terror was skillfully crafted with the same psychology of mass hysteria as was the war on witches and warlocks. One only needs to remember those days following 9-11 when cars were parading up and down the streets of America with oversize flags of patriotism waving in the vehicle's “prop” wash thus demonstrating a mass hysteria that hoards of terrorists were lying like Scorpions under every rock and in every nook and cranny within the United States or the world for that matter.
Such mass fear disguised as patriotism elevated the authority of the domestic pursuers of “terrorism” who were in fact themselves scorpions and responsible participants in promoting the outrageous imagery upon the masses in the first place and without whose assistance the smoke, ash, death and destruction of 9-11 could not have happened.
Those scorpions were not under rocks but rather in bunkers of the US executive branch of government. Unlike nameless scorpions we may discover under rocks in the Southwest desert, the major scorpion of global terrorism had a name-- no not Bin Laden, but rather Richard Cheney!
In fact the whole hoard of affiliated responsible scorpions is likewise named as signatories to the document called, “Rebuilding Americas Defenses” published in the morning of the new millennium one full year before the coordinated assault of the new war on witchcraft commenced.
The list of these prodigious scorpions outnumber the nineteen Arab hijackers listed in the official cover story as prepared by the guilty before the fact of 9-11, then immediately released upon a hysterically receptive America.
Historically it is called a false flag operation where a government unleashes deception upon its own people for devious special interests.
It has of course happened before in America.
The Border conflict of 1846-47 with Mexico where the territory of ten western states was stolen under arms after a from the sea invasion of Mexico.
2. The Battleship Maine blown up from the inside out to justify a war
with Spain and capture of the Philippines.
3. The theft of Hawaii from Hawaiians
4. The known forthcoming attack on Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen to cause hysteria of Americans to justify America's involvement in WWII.
So what is the product of this new war of witchcraft?
*Several millions of innocent people dead, dislocated or daily living in fear of an American terror strike from a pilotless plane (drone).
*Deaths of 4,000 plus American military personnel.
*The expenditure of public funds into the trillions to pay for unnecessary wars.
*Thousands of innocent people held and tortured in military prisons without trial who have been captured as potential “enemy combatants” as were witches all in violation of Jefferson's noble words about the god given human right of pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.
*American police departments gearing up a campaign to get people to spy on each other to justify the existence of anti-terrorism units in the same manner as the old war on witch craft.
* The Patriot Act and National Security Letters designed to allow the government to snoop on anyone without cause.
* And the most flagrant is consideration of making thoughts a crime!
Of the thousands of suspected terrorists arrested or held there have been less than a dozen convictions and a fear to release the others because they rightfully may then become enemy combatants as a result of the injustice done to them.
So in reality like the Witch Mania, we have a Terrorist Mania designed not to remove or destroy terrorists but rather to enlist and increase numbers, create acts of violence and continue the war for the sole purpose of further suppressing the rights of American citizens already held mentally captive by a false flag of fear.
Such continued posture allows persons as William Kristol of PNAC infamy and Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of Richard Cheney, the primary scorpion of 9-11, to continue to justify torture, violence and American terrorism against earth's inhabitants to ass cover the goals of special interests in achieving for the elite, the domination of earth, its peoples and resources.
Terrorism is not an enemy! It is a political tactic designed to instill fear in those who may oppose the goals of those who use it. It is best dealt with by police action and diplomacy. Indeed as the Carthaginian General Hannibal (247-182 BCE) espoused, justice, not war is the answer to terrorism.
Iraq's Sadam was not a terrorist to America. Afghanistan's Taliban were not terrorists to America. Neither had anything to do with 9-11. Yet we have spent eight years in an unwinable war when diplomacy could have handled any of the supposed conflicts.
The conflicts were imaginary creations to disguise the conquest of oil reserves and of gas pipelines for the greedy creeps who think they have a special god given divinity to suck the production and dominate the control of the world.
Make no mistake. The war on terror is no different from the callous actions of the Inquisitors of the War on Witchcraft. Indeed, if the Inquisitors had been taken to task there would have been no witch mania. Likewise if rational prosecutorial action (justice) was made against the American inciters of the 9-11 War on Terror, it would end immediately.
The down side being that with the Pope supporting the illegal and immoral actions of the Inquisitors no action could have been taken against them. With the current President protecting his immediate predecessors they, like the Inquisitors, may see their ungodly illegal phony war on terror continue. So woe to earth and its inhabitants as they continue to live in fear of terror from the skies! Lets hope it doesn't take another 3 centuries to overcome!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/PURSUING-TERRORISTS-THE-T-by-Douglas-A-Wallace-091016-153.html
October 18, 2009
PURSUING TERRORISTS: THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY WITCH MANIA
By Douglas A. Wallace
What wrath of gods, or wicked influence
Of tears, conspiring wretched men t'afflict
Hath pour'd on earth the noyous pestilence
That mortal minds doth inwardly infect
With love of blindness and of ignorance?
Spencer's Tears of the Muses
Between the 14th and the 17th century, blind, ignorant and superstitious authorities paid bounties for the apprehension of witches and wizards in what could only be described as a war on witchcraft.
Countless thousands of innocent people across the globe were purchased in a killing mentality of an ignorant fear enraged populace and burned at the stake after a “trial” of lies and the fraud of witnesses.
Being stretched on the rack while under questioning by an inquisitor never failed to bring confession of innocent victims some of whom confessed to even more than charged , ignorantly believing it would save them from the burning pyre.
Fear mongering by the superstitious elite was used as a device to entrench themselves into total control of the minds of the masses. They were and became the”saviors” of an insane society
John Baptist Cibo elected to the papacy in 1485 as Pope Innocence VIII, issued a manifesto in 1488 whereby he called upon all the nations of Europe to rescue the church of Christ against the arts of Satan. To do so he appointed inquisitors in every country armed with apostolic power to convict and punish evil doers.
That hysteria extended it's tentacles to the American colonies in the 17th century where a three year old girl was burned at the stake for being a witch among countless other witches and warlocks.
We may have thought that such ignorant behavior on the part of the masses ended with enlightenment of the 18th century when Thomas Jefferson penned the words, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
Yet 3 centuries later we again find mankind mired in the slushy bog of mindless mass fear of witch craftery renamed as terrorism. It happened just 21 months into the new millennium when a technologically advanced society bursting with invention and hope to lift itself out of the dark ages of human interaction chose instead to slump back into the pit of mass fear and self destruction.
On that clear September morning when planes smashed into the twin towers in New York City incinerating some 3,000 souls, masses of Americans were led into a reactionary war against a new era of witchcraft. It could not have been more clear had “Satan” and his evil hoards appeared in the sky over Manhattan.
As a result of the popular outpouring of vengeance against the instigators of the crimes of 9-11, the Department of Homeland Security was swiftly created as a weapon against terrorism (and a loss of freedom of the masses) in the same manner as the Bull of Pope Innocent VII was used to deal with suspected witches.
A victim's compensation fund was created where the survivors where paid large sums of money to be still and not question the official story of the beginning of the new war on witchcraft.
Additionally the Patriot act designed to intrude upon our liberties was waiting in the wings to be legislated and those in the Congress who resisted it were sent anthrax laced letters to convince them to sign on---- anthrax manufactured by the US military no less!
When one looks objectively at all the issues of the war against terrorism one has to conclude that it is a fabricated program to align the masses behind the government in it's
modern war on witchcraft; a war that is designed to resuscitate the dead or dying “Manifest Destiny” dream of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, i.e., the world dominance of the nation “God” established on the North American continent.
How can one argue against the Global war on terror when one has such vivid graphics as the crumbling twin trade towers? Those graphics are real-- unlike the subjective images of witches and demons! Does that difference validate the war on terrorism whereas there was no real validation for the three centuries war on witchcraft?
The truth lies in the fact that the war on terror was skillfully crafted with the same psychology of mass hysteria as was the war on witches and warlocks. One only needs to remember those days following 9-11 when cars were parading up and down the streets of America with oversize flags of patriotism waving in the vehicle's “prop” wash thus demonstrating a mass hysteria that hoards of terrorists were lying like Scorpions under every rock and in every nook and cranny within the United States or the world for that matter.
Such mass fear disguised as patriotism elevated the authority of the domestic pursuers of “terrorism” who were in fact themselves scorpions and responsible participants in promoting the outrageous imagery upon the masses in the first place and without whose assistance the smoke, ash, death and destruction of 9-11 could not have happened.
Those scorpions were not under rocks but rather in bunkers of the US executive branch of government. Unlike nameless scorpions we may discover under rocks in the Southwest desert, the major scorpion of global terrorism had a name-- no not Bin Laden, but rather Richard Cheney!
In fact the whole hoard of affiliated responsible scorpions is likewise named as signatories to the document called, “Rebuilding Americas Defenses” published in the morning of the new millennium one full year before the coordinated assault of the new war on witchcraft commenced.
The list of these prodigious scorpions outnumber the nineteen Arab hijackers listed in the official cover story as prepared by the guilty before the fact of 9-11, then immediately released upon a hysterically receptive America.
Historically it is called a false flag operation where a government unleashes deception upon its own people for devious special interests.
It has of course happened before in America.
The Border conflict of 1846-47 with Mexico where the territory of ten western states was stolen under arms after a from the sea invasion of Mexico.
2. The Battleship Maine blown up from the inside out to justify a war
with Spain and capture of the Philippines.
3. The theft of Hawaii from Hawaiians
4. The known forthcoming attack on Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen to cause hysteria of Americans to justify America's involvement in WWII.
So what is the product of this new war of witchcraft?
*Several millions of innocent people dead, dislocated or daily living in fear of an American terror strike from a pilotless plane (drone).
*Deaths of 4,000 plus American military personnel.
*The expenditure of public funds into the trillions to pay for unnecessary wars.
*Thousands of innocent people held and tortured in military prisons without trial who have been captured as potential “enemy combatants” as were witches all in violation of Jefferson's noble words about the god given human right of pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.
*American police departments gearing up a campaign to get people to spy on each other to justify the existence of anti-terrorism units in the same manner as the old war on witch craft.
* The Patriot Act and National Security Letters designed to allow the government to snoop on anyone without cause.
* And the most flagrant is consideration of making thoughts a crime!
Of the thousands of suspected terrorists arrested or held there have been less than a dozen convictions and a fear to release the others because they rightfully may then become enemy combatants as a result of the injustice done to them.
So in reality like the Witch Mania, we have a Terrorist Mania designed not to remove or destroy terrorists but rather to enlist and increase numbers, create acts of violence and continue the war for the sole purpose of further suppressing the rights of American citizens already held mentally captive by a false flag of fear.
Such continued posture allows persons as William Kristol of PNAC infamy and Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of Richard Cheney, the primary scorpion of 9-11, to continue to justify torture, violence and American terrorism against earth's inhabitants to ass cover the goals of special interests in achieving for the elite, the domination of earth, its peoples and resources.
Terrorism is not an enemy! It is a political tactic designed to instill fear in those who may oppose the goals of those who use it. It is best dealt with by police action and diplomacy. Indeed as the Carthaginian General Hannibal (247-182 BCE) espoused, justice, not war is the answer to terrorism.
Iraq's Sadam was not a terrorist to America. Afghanistan's Taliban were not terrorists to America. Neither had anything to do with 9-11. Yet we have spent eight years in an unwinable war when diplomacy could have handled any of the supposed conflicts.
The conflicts were imaginary creations to disguise the conquest of oil reserves and of gas pipelines for the greedy creeps who think they have a special god given divinity to suck the production and dominate the control of the world.
Make no mistake. The war on terror is no different from the callous actions of the Inquisitors of the War on Witchcraft. Indeed, if the Inquisitors had been taken to task there would have been no witch mania. Likewise if rational prosecutorial action (justice) was made against the American inciters of the 9-11 War on Terror, it would end immediately.
The down side being that with the Pope supporting the illegal and immoral actions of the Inquisitors no action could have been taken against them. With the current President protecting his immediate predecessors they, like the Inquisitors, may see their ungodly illegal phony war on terror continue. So woe to earth and its inhabitants as they continue to live in fear of terror from the skies! Lets hope it doesn't take another 3 centuries to overcome!
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Orwell Peace Prize
The Orwell Peace Prize
By Martha Rose Crow
Right after Christmas, my nephew is leaving for another tour in Afghanistan. My Sister’s heart and my heart are broken. We are ‘Intuitive’ or psychic. We know this time he’s coming back in a box with a flag on top of it.
But in many ways, he’s dead already. Like many soldiers who’ve come back from the middle east, he’s wired on self-destruct. My Sister has told me that she can’t count the times she’s taken guns away from him when he was threatening suicide because those times have been so many.
When I was a child, I was highly idealistic. I wanted to swim the English Channel. I wanted to live an exceptional life. I wanted to graduate from the university and perform work that would improve the lives of others. I wanted to be a peace maker and I wanted to earn a Nobel Peace Prize.
Back then, I didn’t know about the dirty money connected with the prizes; that they came from money made from munitions or that the principal of the endowment was invested in more implements of war and/or of human oppression like capitalism that rapes the world for cheap natural resources and cheap human labor.
My childhood idealism about the Nobel Peace Prize waned a long time ago. It took awhile, but I learned that it was awarded by elites to politically ‘frame the culture’ of ‘peace’ and/or use the awardee as propaganda for the elite. It seemed to me that too many of the real peace makers are never awarded any prizes for their work and that too many heads of states are awarded it instead.
In the book 1984 by George Orwell, ‘War is Peace’ and ‘Peace is War’. Orwell’s book paints a psychopathic universe where reality is the opposite of what it really is. In Oceana, the place where the book takes place, Lies Rule: they Become the Truth. The whole place is built upon the lies of the ‘party’ or the ruling elite.
When I saw that Obama had ‘won’ the Nobel Peace Prize, I almost fell out of my chair. He’s only nine months into his presidency and he has done nothing to stop any of the American wars. Contrarily, he’s escalated the war in Afghanistan and spread it to Pakistan. Obama wants to add 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan. Last I heard, the war in Iraq is still continuing. More, the opaque and unwinnable war against ‘terrorism’ is still going on as well while the definition of a ‘terrorist’ keeps expanding to include anyone who opposes tyranny, including war.
What about torture? Obama hasn’t done anything to stop it. That status quo merry-go-round of violence and the violence of lies goes on and on.
In lieu of the lack of bringing peace, Obama should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for Economics as more people are out of work now than when he was given the mantel of presidency. This is how great the hypocrisy is.
So what does all of this mean? A group of five elites chose Obama to market lies and deception; to sell an Orwellian world where people are programmed to believe that a war monger, a false messiah of peace, is the ideal peace bringer when in a real reality, he is the farthest from it.
And Obama’s nomination in the swill world of the Orwell Peace Prize is in good company. Although they didn’t get the prize, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin were nominated. History has proven what kind of ‘peace makers’ they were and history will prove that Obama is of the same ilk.
People see through this ruse and sham. They know that Obama hasn’t kept his campaign promises of stopping war and promoting peace. They know that he’s being controlled by the powerful and wealthy military industrial complex who stand to lose enormous profits if Obama pursues peace.
This will be my nephew’s third tour of duty. For a year (if he stays alive that long), we will live on pins and needles. Every day, we will hope that bad news doesn’t arrive at the front door, brought by a well-dressed soldier messenger. Every day, we will hear about new war casualties and worry if he is one of them. We will live in a limbic hell and wait.
And during this time, Obama will escalate the wars, support Israel’s illegal wars, while wearing the official Nobel Crown as the ‘New Prince of Peace’.
By Martha Rose Crow
Right after Christmas, my nephew is leaving for another tour in Afghanistan. My Sister’s heart and my heart are broken. We are ‘Intuitive’ or psychic. We know this time he’s coming back in a box with a flag on top of it.
But in many ways, he’s dead already. Like many soldiers who’ve come back from the middle east, he’s wired on self-destruct. My Sister has told me that she can’t count the times she’s taken guns away from him when he was threatening suicide because those times have been so many.
When I was a child, I was highly idealistic. I wanted to swim the English Channel. I wanted to live an exceptional life. I wanted to graduate from the university and perform work that would improve the lives of others. I wanted to be a peace maker and I wanted to earn a Nobel Peace Prize.
Back then, I didn’t know about the dirty money connected with the prizes; that they came from money made from munitions or that the principal of the endowment was invested in more implements of war and/or of human oppression like capitalism that rapes the world for cheap natural resources and cheap human labor.
My childhood idealism about the Nobel Peace Prize waned a long time ago. It took awhile, but I learned that it was awarded by elites to politically ‘frame the culture’ of ‘peace’ and/or use the awardee as propaganda for the elite. It seemed to me that too many of the real peace makers are never awarded any prizes for their work and that too many heads of states are awarded it instead.
In the book 1984 by George Orwell, ‘War is Peace’ and ‘Peace is War’. Orwell’s book paints a psychopathic universe where reality is the opposite of what it really is. In Oceana, the place where the book takes place, Lies Rule: they Become the Truth. The whole place is built upon the lies of the ‘party’ or the ruling elite.
When I saw that Obama had ‘won’ the Nobel Peace Prize, I almost fell out of my chair. He’s only nine months into his presidency and he has done nothing to stop any of the American wars. Contrarily, he’s escalated the war in Afghanistan and spread it to Pakistan. Obama wants to add 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan. Last I heard, the war in Iraq is still continuing. More, the opaque and unwinnable war against ‘terrorism’ is still going on as well while the definition of a ‘terrorist’ keeps expanding to include anyone who opposes tyranny, including war.
What about torture? Obama hasn’t done anything to stop it. That status quo merry-go-round of violence and the violence of lies goes on and on.
In lieu of the lack of bringing peace, Obama should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for Economics as more people are out of work now than when he was given the mantel of presidency. This is how great the hypocrisy is.
So what does all of this mean? A group of five elites chose Obama to market lies and deception; to sell an Orwellian world where people are programmed to believe that a war monger, a false messiah of peace, is the ideal peace bringer when in a real reality, he is the farthest from it.
And Obama’s nomination in the swill world of the Orwell Peace Prize is in good company. Although they didn’t get the prize, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin were nominated. History has proven what kind of ‘peace makers’ they were and history will prove that Obama is of the same ilk.
People see through this ruse and sham. They know that Obama hasn’t kept his campaign promises of stopping war and promoting peace. They know that he’s being controlled by the powerful and wealthy military industrial complex who stand to lose enormous profits if Obama pursues peace.
This will be my nephew’s third tour of duty. For a year (if he stays alive that long), we will live on pins and needles. Every day, we will hope that bad news doesn’t arrive at the front door, brought by a well-dressed soldier messenger. Every day, we will hear about new war casualties and worry if he is one of them. We will live in a limbic hell and wait.
And during this time, Obama will escalate the wars, support Israel’s illegal wars, while wearing the official Nobel Crown as the ‘New Prince of Peace’.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
OUR SITUATION IS DIRE, AND THERE’S NO NEED FOR PESSIMISM
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/artis/our%20situation%20is%20dire.html
OUR SITUATION IS DIRE, AND THERE’S NO NEED FOR PESSIMISM
by Paul Levy
Things in the world seem really grim right now. Many people feel like we are on the verge of World War III. These are clearly apocalyptic, end-times we are living in. Many people are hopelessly pessimistic about the state of human affairs, feeling like there is nothing we can do to make a difference. It feels to some like we are descending into hell. It feels to others like we are on the verge of global collapse. Something seems terribly wrong. It seems like we are creating a living nightmare for ourselves. It is as if our planet has fallen under a demon’s curse. It is crucial that we shed light on the nature of the darkness that has befallen our planet.
We need to understand the nature of the beast we are dealing with. One thing we can say for sure is that the darkness does not want us to become aware of it. To become conscious of how the darkness plays itself out in our world is the last thing the darkness wants, just like a vampire can’t stand the light of day. For to see the darkness is to take away its power over us, as it can no longer act itself out through our unconscious. Just like sunlight flooding into a room instantaneously evacuates the darkness in the room, when we shed the light of consciousness on the darkness that is both in our world and within ourselves, the power of the darkness is immediately dis-spelled.
The darkness that is appearing in the outer world is not separate from, but is co-related to, the darkness within ourselves. The darkness that is manifesting in the outside world is simultaneously triggering a resonant re-action deep inside of ourselves. To the extent we are unconscious of what the darkness is triggering inside of ourselves, it enlists us as one of its unwitting agents, as the darkness feeds on our unawareness of it.
If we become entranced by the very convincing display of outer darkness that is materializing in the world and fall prey to pessimism, we have fallen under the darkness’s spell and are then feeding, supporting and helping to create the very darkness in the world which we are reacting to pessimistically. Bewitched by our own darkness, we relate to it as if it is independent and outside of ourselves, thinking our pessimistic reaction is justified by the dark goings-on that are “objectively” happening in the outside world. In choosing to see pessimistically, we don’t realize that we are filtering our interpretation of events through a pessimistic lens which then provides us with overwhelming evidence to confirm our pessimism.
To become pessimistic about what is playing out on the world stage is to become an unwitting instrument through which the darkness further incarnates and extends itself into our world. To become caught in pessimism is to fall victim to an infinitely regressing feedback loop: we wouldn’t be so pessimistic if our world wasn’t manifesting so darkly, and our world wouldn’t be manifesting so darkly if we weren’t so pessimistic. To become fixated in the point of view of seeing things pessimistically is to unwittingly become an ally of the very darkness that is inspiring our pessimism. This is to have fallen into a self-generating, samsaric feedback loop that is self-fulfilling in nature and will undoubtedly destroy us.
Becoming pessimistic is a symptom that the darkness has insinuated itself into our very consciousness, and is manipulating our perceptions of the world so as to further propagate itself. Becoming depressed and pessimistic is what the darkness wants, as it thirsts for us to become seduced by its convincing display of seemingly overwhelming power so that we give up our own power to it as well and believe all is lost. Imagining ourselves dis-empowered, we dis-associate from our “True Self” as well as from each other, disconnecting from our individual and collective “brilliance” (which, interestingly, connotes “light”). To give up and believe there is nothing we can do is to unknowingly join forces with the darker power, becoming its secret agents, our secret being secret even to ourselves.
To be pessimistic is to be arguing for our own impotence and limitation. If we win an argument about the truth of our pessimism, the “prize” we win is that we are screwed. There is something wrong with this picture. There is clearly something flawed and even perverse about our logic if it leads to such a self-defeating result. This flaw is like a red flag that can inspire us to self-reflect and look at what we are actually doing when we invest in a pessimistic world-view. Pessimism is a symptom that we are investing in our own decline and ultimately our own suicide.
I am not saying that we should just put on a smiley-face and become “everything turns out for the best” optimists. To only identify, like some so-called “spiritual” people do, with the “celestial rainbow” point of view, believing that everything is perfect and not problematic is overly one-sided, as it is dis-associated from the part of our experience that is seemingly “damned,” “cursed,” and deeply problematic. To identify with only one side of a two-sided polarity like this is to be actively in denial of and contracting against its opposite. To only identify with the light in actuality supports and feeds the dark. Over-identifying only with the light, we marginalize the darkness, which secretly empowers it, as the darkness then becomes something of which we are afraid. We are then unwittingly investing our energy into the darkness by our one-sided identification with the light. We need to shed the light of awareness on how the darkness plays itself out both outside in the world as well as inside of ourselves, as the darkness can potentially seduce us to be either overly optimistic or pessimistic. To fall into an extreme view like this is to ultimately be part of the problem, rather than embodying the solution.
I am not spouting some new age gibberish when I am urging us to not be pessimistic. I am simply pointing out that pessimism is not only unnecessary, but is actually dangerous, as it will help to actively create a self-fulfilling prophecy that will ultimately justify our pessimism. When I am saying not to be pessimistic, I am not marginalizing the darkness and saying that everything will turn out peaches and cream. I’m not talking about pretending the darkness isn’t really dark, and trying to imagine it out of existence by mindlessly affirming that everything is really OK, that everyone will live happily ever after. From one point of view, things are genuinely fucked. It is important not to marginalize that.
Our situation is extremely dire, while at the same time there is nothing to become pessimistic about. Being able to hold this paradox is the “crux” of the matter. This involves being able to hold these seemingly contradictory opposites together as both being true simultaneously. Our apocalyptic situation is very dire, while at the same time it is (potentially) the highest blessing: If we recognize what the darkness is revealing to us, it can (potentially) wake us up. Interestingly, the inner meaning of the word “apocalypse” is something hidden being revealed.
Our universe is manifesting as a genuine “coincidentia oppositorum,” a co-incidence of opposites, an auspicious coming together of the opposites where the opposites paradoxically reveal themselves to be both opposite and united at the same time. This holistic vision makes no sense and seems like pure nonsense as long as we are rigidly clinging to only one point of view and marginalizing another part of our experience. And yet, this more inclusive vision is itself the very expansion of consciousness which transforms the nature of our situation and empowers us to become genuine agents of change in the world.
Instead of identifying with one of the opposites and projecting out the other (which is to “split”), if we recognize that both of the seemingly contradictory opposites are true simultaneously, we have re-joined ourselves and retrieved our soul. Healing our split with the outside world and within ourselves, we are an active and activating participant in the birth of consciousness into human form. Stepping into the open-ended, embodied form of our wholeness, we become an agent of healing for the universe.
Shadows are an expression that light is nearby. Shadows are never found without light, which is to say that light and shadows are inseparably united into a deeper, more all-embracing whole. Paradoxically, hidden, in-coded inside the darkness is a light which (potentially) awakens (and is inseparable from) consciousness. Not being separate from the light, the darkness itself is an unmediated expression of and indivisible from the “light of consciousness” itself. This self-luminous light of awareness is a higher-order of light which embraces, unites and transcends the duality of light vs. darkness.
How our universe will unfold from this moment on depends upon whether or not we “consciously” re-cognize what the darkness is revealing to us as it acts itself out through us. The darkness itself is the revelation of the light, as it is the light revealing itself in the hidden form of darkness.
Shedding light on the darkness within us is a form of illumination. Once we become intimately related to and engaged with our own darkness, we become fluent in its language, coming to know how it behaves and operates within ourselves. We are then able to translate this familiarity with our own darkness in such a way so as to creatively illumine the darkness in the outer world. Once enough of us have made acquaintance with the darkness that exists within us, we are then able, like sunlight melting the morning dew, to collectively dis-spell the darkness that has seemingly enveloped our planet.
Paradoxically, it is only by coming to terms with the darkness within ourselves that we are able to step out of our trance-like addiction to pessimism and become full-bodied representatives of the all-embracing light of consciousness. Uniting in collective “lucidity” (which, etymologically, refers to “light”), we reciprocally co-inspire each other as we empower ourselves to create a more grace-filled universe to co-inhabit. A radical, evolutionary idea whose time has truly come!
A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, Paul Levy is a healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality. Paul is also a visionary artist and a spiritually-informed political activist. He is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis,which is available on his website www.awakeninthedream.com. (See the first chapter, The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis). Please feel free to pass this article along to a friend if you feel so inspired. You can contact Paul at paul@awakeninthedream.com; he looks forward to your reflections. © Copyright 2009
OUR SITUATION IS DIRE, AND THERE’S NO NEED FOR PESSIMISM
by Paul Levy
Things in the world seem really grim right now. Many people feel like we are on the verge of World War III. These are clearly apocalyptic, end-times we are living in. Many people are hopelessly pessimistic about the state of human affairs, feeling like there is nothing we can do to make a difference. It feels to some like we are descending into hell. It feels to others like we are on the verge of global collapse. Something seems terribly wrong. It seems like we are creating a living nightmare for ourselves. It is as if our planet has fallen under a demon’s curse. It is crucial that we shed light on the nature of the darkness that has befallen our planet.
We need to understand the nature of the beast we are dealing with. One thing we can say for sure is that the darkness does not want us to become aware of it. To become conscious of how the darkness plays itself out in our world is the last thing the darkness wants, just like a vampire can’t stand the light of day. For to see the darkness is to take away its power over us, as it can no longer act itself out through our unconscious. Just like sunlight flooding into a room instantaneously evacuates the darkness in the room, when we shed the light of consciousness on the darkness that is both in our world and within ourselves, the power of the darkness is immediately dis-spelled.
The darkness that is appearing in the outer world is not separate from, but is co-related to, the darkness within ourselves. The darkness that is manifesting in the outside world is simultaneously triggering a resonant re-action deep inside of ourselves. To the extent we are unconscious of what the darkness is triggering inside of ourselves, it enlists us as one of its unwitting agents, as the darkness feeds on our unawareness of it.
If we become entranced by the very convincing display of outer darkness that is materializing in the world and fall prey to pessimism, we have fallen under the darkness’s spell and are then feeding, supporting and helping to create the very darkness in the world which we are reacting to pessimistically. Bewitched by our own darkness, we relate to it as if it is independent and outside of ourselves, thinking our pessimistic reaction is justified by the dark goings-on that are “objectively” happening in the outside world. In choosing to see pessimistically, we don’t realize that we are filtering our interpretation of events through a pessimistic lens which then provides us with overwhelming evidence to confirm our pessimism.
To become pessimistic about what is playing out on the world stage is to become an unwitting instrument through which the darkness further incarnates and extends itself into our world. To become caught in pessimism is to fall victim to an infinitely regressing feedback loop: we wouldn’t be so pessimistic if our world wasn’t manifesting so darkly, and our world wouldn’t be manifesting so darkly if we weren’t so pessimistic. To become fixated in the point of view of seeing things pessimistically is to unwittingly become an ally of the very darkness that is inspiring our pessimism. This is to have fallen into a self-generating, samsaric feedback loop that is self-fulfilling in nature and will undoubtedly destroy us.
Becoming pessimistic is a symptom that the darkness has insinuated itself into our very consciousness, and is manipulating our perceptions of the world so as to further propagate itself. Becoming depressed and pessimistic is what the darkness wants, as it thirsts for us to become seduced by its convincing display of seemingly overwhelming power so that we give up our own power to it as well and believe all is lost. Imagining ourselves dis-empowered, we dis-associate from our “True Self” as well as from each other, disconnecting from our individual and collective “brilliance” (which, interestingly, connotes “light”). To give up and believe there is nothing we can do is to unknowingly join forces with the darker power, becoming its secret agents, our secret being secret even to ourselves.
To be pessimistic is to be arguing for our own impotence and limitation. If we win an argument about the truth of our pessimism, the “prize” we win is that we are screwed. There is something wrong with this picture. There is clearly something flawed and even perverse about our logic if it leads to such a self-defeating result. This flaw is like a red flag that can inspire us to self-reflect and look at what we are actually doing when we invest in a pessimistic world-view. Pessimism is a symptom that we are investing in our own decline and ultimately our own suicide.
I am not saying that we should just put on a smiley-face and become “everything turns out for the best” optimists. To only identify, like some so-called “spiritual” people do, with the “celestial rainbow” point of view, believing that everything is perfect and not problematic is overly one-sided, as it is dis-associated from the part of our experience that is seemingly “damned,” “cursed,” and deeply problematic. To identify with only one side of a two-sided polarity like this is to be actively in denial of and contracting against its opposite. To only identify with the light in actuality supports and feeds the dark. Over-identifying only with the light, we marginalize the darkness, which secretly empowers it, as the darkness then becomes something of which we are afraid. We are then unwittingly investing our energy into the darkness by our one-sided identification with the light. We need to shed the light of awareness on how the darkness plays itself out both outside in the world as well as inside of ourselves, as the darkness can potentially seduce us to be either overly optimistic or pessimistic. To fall into an extreme view like this is to ultimately be part of the problem, rather than embodying the solution.
I am not spouting some new age gibberish when I am urging us to not be pessimistic. I am simply pointing out that pessimism is not only unnecessary, but is actually dangerous, as it will help to actively create a self-fulfilling prophecy that will ultimately justify our pessimism. When I am saying not to be pessimistic, I am not marginalizing the darkness and saying that everything will turn out peaches and cream. I’m not talking about pretending the darkness isn’t really dark, and trying to imagine it out of existence by mindlessly affirming that everything is really OK, that everyone will live happily ever after. From one point of view, things are genuinely fucked. It is important not to marginalize that.
Our situation is extremely dire, while at the same time there is nothing to become pessimistic about. Being able to hold this paradox is the “crux” of the matter. This involves being able to hold these seemingly contradictory opposites together as both being true simultaneously. Our apocalyptic situation is very dire, while at the same time it is (potentially) the highest blessing: If we recognize what the darkness is revealing to us, it can (potentially) wake us up. Interestingly, the inner meaning of the word “apocalypse” is something hidden being revealed.
Our universe is manifesting as a genuine “coincidentia oppositorum,” a co-incidence of opposites, an auspicious coming together of the opposites where the opposites paradoxically reveal themselves to be both opposite and united at the same time. This holistic vision makes no sense and seems like pure nonsense as long as we are rigidly clinging to only one point of view and marginalizing another part of our experience. And yet, this more inclusive vision is itself the very expansion of consciousness which transforms the nature of our situation and empowers us to become genuine agents of change in the world.
Instead of identifying with one of the opposites and projecting out the other (which is to “split”), if we recognize that both of the seemingly contradictory opposites are true simultaneously, we have re-joined ourselves and retrieved our soul. Healing our split with the outside world and within ourselves, we are an active and activating participant in the birth of consciousness into human form. Stepping into the open-ended, embodied form of our wholeness, we become an agent of healing for the universe.
Shadows are an expression that light is nearby. Shadows are never found without light, which is to say that light and shadows are inseparably united into a deeper, more all-embracing whole. Paradoxically, hidden, in-coded inside the darkness is a light which (potentially) awakens (and is inseparable from) consciousness. Not being separate from the light, the darkness itself is an unmediated expression of and indivisible from the “light of consciousness” itself. This self-luminous light of awareness is a higher-order of light which embraces, unites and transcends the duality of light vs. darkness.
How our universe will unfold from this moment on depends upon whether or not we “consciously” re-cognize what the darkness is revealing to us as it acts itself out through us. The darkness itself is the revelation of the light, as it is the light revealing itself in the hidden form of darkness.
Shedding light on the darkness within us is a form of illumination. Once we become intimately related to and engaged with our own darkness, we become fluent in its language, coming to know how it behaves and operates within ourselves. We are then able to translate this familiarity with our own darkness in such a way so as to creatively illumine the darkness in the outer world. Once enough of us have made acquaintance with the darkness that exists within us, we are then able, like sunlight melting the morning dew, to collectively dis-spell the darkness that has seemingly enveloped our planet.
Paradoxically, it is only by coming to terms with the darkness within ourselves that we are able to step out of our trance-like addiction to pessimism and become full-bodied representatives of the all-embracing light of consciousness. Uniting in collective “lucidity” (which, etymologically, refers to “light”), we reciprocally co-inspire each other as we empower ourselves to create a more grace-filled universe to co-inhabit. A radical, evolutionary idea whose time has truly come!
A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, Paul Levy is a healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality. Paul is also a visionary artist and a spiritually-informed political activist. He is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis,which is available on his website www.awakeninthedream.com. (See the first chapter, The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis). Please feel free to pass this article along to a friend if you feel so inspired. You can contact Paul at paul@awakeninthedream.com; he looks forward to your reflections. © Copyright 2009
Is 'Coraline' Too Scary for Kids?
I wasn't aware of this movie until now. Too many children's movies are not innocent but are full of dark, demonic and adult themes. Thus, children are desensitized to evil, including demons, macbre themes/ideas/psychopathy, death world, so forth. Why must children be scared with 'entertainment'? To acclimate them into accepting a world run for evil purposes?
The aim of this blog is to teach the Souled about evil and how it works, thus the article below:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/moviemom/2009/02/is-coraline-too-scary-for-kids.html
Is 'Coraline' Too Scary for Kids?
Saturday February 7, 2009
It is always a challenge to guide parents about how scary a movie is, but it is especially difficult with this week's release of "Coraline," the 3D stop-motion animated film based on a popular book for children by Neil Gaiman. By coincidence, Gaiman was just awarded this year's top prize for children's literature, the Newberry award, for The Graveyard Book, the story of a boy raised by ghosts.
SPOILER ALERT: There are ghosts in "Coraline," too, plus a very scary insect-like predator who likes to replace children's eyes with sewn-on black buttons and many other macabre and grotesque images. But is that scarier than "A Series of Unfortunate Events" or "The Wizard of Oz" or the Narnia movies? Is it scarier than Disney movies like "Bambi" or "The Lion King" (both feature the death of a parent) or fairy tales like "Hansel and Gretel" or "Snow White?"
Some of the commenters on this blog think so, and have noted sharply that they think this movie is too scary for younger children. The Motion Picture Association's ratings board gave it a PG. I originally recommended it for 4th grade and up but on reflection have changed it to middle school and up, though when I saw the film again last night there were younger children in the audience who seemed to be doing fine with it.
There are many kinds of scary material and every kid reacts differently to every one of them. Some are disturbed by tension and peril but don't mind battle scenes. Some get very upset when an animal is injured but don't blink an eye when a human character is killed. Some kids react because they are sensitive about events going on in their own lives, loss of a grandparent or a pet, a move, or divorce.
In "Coraline," some kids may be rattled by the images in this film like the skeletal designs of one (good) character's helmet and gloves or the increasingly spidery appearance of the villain. Some may be upset by the themes of the film that includes the ghosts of three eyeless and devoured children. Some will be very reassured by the brave and resilient heroine, finding it exciting but not disturbing.
The New York Times' A. O. Scott led off his review of "Coraline" with some thoughts on its capacity to scare its young audience:
There are many scenes and images in "Coraline" that are likely to scare children. This is not a warning but rather a recommendation, since the cultivation of fright can be one of the great pleasures of youthful moviegoing. As long as it doesn't go too far toward violence or mortal dread, a film that elicits a tingle of unease or a tremor of spookiness can be a tonic to sensibilities dulled by wholesome, anodyne, school-approved entertainments.
This brings us back to the enduring appeal of scary stories. Children have read millions of scary books from R.L. Stine and Lemony Snicket and teenagers have bought millions of tickets to the "Halloween," "Friday the 13th," "Nightmare on Elm Street," and "Saw" series. The top box office films of all time include scary stories like "Jaws," "Pirates of the Caribbean," and "Silence of the Lambs." Even family-friendly G-rated films like "Finding Nemo," "Babe," and "The Sound of Music" have scary parts. That is because one of the reasons we tell and read and watch stories is because they give us a way to understand and conquer our fears. It will always be difficult for parents to determine what will be too scary for their children. I will do my best to describe what I see and provide some guidance but ultimately the decision can only be made by the ones who know the child best. And ultimately, parents must realize that sometimes a part of seeing a movie is being unsettled and learning to resolve those feelings.
P.S. "Coraline" also has a burlesque performance with two fat, elderly ladies in tiny little costumes that turn out to zip off, revealing younger, lither performers inside. How should a parent evaluate that on a scale of nudity or sexual material? Because it was comic and because it turned out not to be "real," but a humorous fat suit, I described it as "brief comic nudity (skimpy costume)." I welcome other suggestions and reactions.
The aim of this blog is to teach the Souled about evil and how it works, thus the article below:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/moviemom/2009/02/is-coraline-too-scary-for-kids.html
Is 'Coraline' Too Scary for Kids?
Saturday February 7, 2009
It is always a challenge to guide parents about how scary a movie is, but it is especially difficult with this week's release of "Coraline," the 3D stop-motion animated film based on a popular book for children by Neil Gaiman. By coincidence, Gaiman was just awarded this year's top prize for children's literature, the Newberry award, for The Graveyard Book, the story of a boy raised by ghosts.
SPOILER ALERT: There are ghosts in "Coraline," too, plus a very scary insect-like predator who likes to replace children's eyes with sewn-on black buttons and many other macabre and grotesque images. But is that scarier than "A Series of Unfortunate Events" or "The Wizard of Oz" or the Narnia movies? Is it scarier than Disney movies like "Bambi" or "The Lion King" (both feature the death of a parent) or fairy tales like "Hansel and Gretel" or "Snow White?"
Some of the commenters on this blog think so, and have noted sharply that they think this movie is too scary for younger children. The Motion Picture Association's ratings board gave it a PG. I originally recommended it for 4th grade and up but on reflection have changed it to middle school and up, though when I saw the film again last night there were younger children in the audience who seemed to be doing fine with it.
There are many kinds of scary material and every kid reacts differently to every one of them. Some are disturbed by tension and peril but don't mind battle scenes. Some get very upset when an animal is injured but don't blink an eye when a human character is killed. Some kids react because they are sensitive about events going on in their own lives, loss of a grandparent or a pet, a move, or divorce.
In "Coraline," some kids may be rattled by the images in this film like the skeletal designs of one (good) character's helmet and gloves or the increasingly spidery appearance of the villain. Some may be upset by the themes of the film that includes the ghosts of three eyeless and devoured children. Some will be very reassured by the brave and resilient heroine, finding it exciting but not disturbing.
The New York Times' A. O. Scott led off his review of "Coraline" with some thoughts on its capacity to scare its young audience:
There are many scenes and images in "Coraline" that are likely to scare children. This is not a warning but rather a recommendation, since the cultivation of fright can be one of the great pleasures of youthful moviegoing. As long as it doesn't go too far toward violence or mortal dread, a film that elicits a tingle of unease or a tremor of spookiness can be a tonic to sensibilities dulled by wholesome, anodyne, school-approved entertainments.
This brings us back to the enduring appeal of scary stories. Children have read millions of scary books from R.L. Stine and Lemony Snicket and teenagers have bought millions of tickets to the "Halloween," "Friday the 13th," "Nightmare on Elm Street," and "Saw" series. The top box office films of all time include scary stories like "Jaws," "Pirates of the Caribbean," and "Silence of the Lambs." Even family-friendly G-rated films like "Finding Nemo," "Babe," and "The Sound of Music" have scary parts. That is because one of the reasons we tell and read and watch stories is because they give us a way to understand and conquer our fears. It will always be difficult for parents to determine what will be too scary for their children. I will do my best to describe what I see and provide some guidance but ultimately the decision can only be made by the ones who know the child best. And ultimately, parents must realize that sometimes a part of seeing a movie is being unsettled and learning to resolve those feelings.
P.S. "Coraline" also has a burlesque performance with two fat, elderly ladies in tiny little costumes that turn out to zip off, revealing younger, lither performers inside. How should a parent evaluate that on a scale of nudity or sexual material? Because it was comic and because it turned out not to be "real," but a humorous fat suit, I described it as "brief comic nudity (skimpy costume)." I welcome other suggestions and reactions.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
How Many People Would It Take to Save the World? 8,366
By Martha Rose Crow
A couple of years ago, a demigod told me that a “handful of people” could change the world. I asked that demigod many times, “How much is a handful?” but he would never give me a number. Desperate to try to change the negativity of this planet, I tried to start a band of extremely talented and spiritual people. I thought a seven piece band that played positive, White Photon Light Music (mixed with the energies of Love), could be that “handful.” But things are so corrupt on this planet and most of the best musicians are individualists (wanting to do their own thing), I couldn’t form a band.
Ironic, it is a retired musician who creates some excellent documentaries (and let’s the world watch them for free) who gave me the answer to the question the demigod wouldn’t answer. His name is Max and ironic, the name of his web site is thecrowhouse.com
On this website, there is a presentation by Greg Braden (http://www.thecrowhouse.com/braden.html)
Greg Braden's research has shown him, "It has been said that the amount of people required to shift the consciousness of the entire population of earth and bring positive change to all humankind is the square root of 1% which equals 8,366 people."
Umm…What can we do to shift the Consciousness of 8,366 people? I’m always working on it on my end (SMILE). I’ve got over 80 blogs to get information out to people and I’m writing a very important book that my Precious Best Friend Judyth Vary Baker is editing!
I started a simple blog called 'Change the Energy' and the instructions are simple. I wanted to keep this blog anonymous but it is a garden that has to be watered. It's so simple to change the energy but evil doesn't want you to know it.
If all of us *Wish* for a PROACTIVE, BIG CHANGE in Consciousness and try to find ways to get that affect, we will have it!
A couple of years ago, a demigod told me that a “handful of people” could change the world. I asked that demigod many times, “How much is a handful?” but he would never give me a number. Desperate to try to change the negativity of this planet, I tried to start a band of extremely talented and spiritual people. I thought a seven piece band that played positive, White Photon Light Music (mixed with the energies of Love), could be that “handful.” But things are so corrupt on this planet and most of the best musicians are individualists (wanting to do their own thing), I couldn’t form a band.
Ironic, it is a retired musician who creates some excellent documentaries (and let’s the world watch them for free) who gave me the answer to the question the demigod wouldn’t answer. His name is Max and ironic, the name of his web site is thecrowhouse.com
On this website, there is a presentation by Greg Braden (http://www.thecrowhouse.com/braden.html)
Greg Braden's research has shown him, "It has been said that the amount of people required to shift the consciousness of the entire population of earth and bring positive change to all humankind is the square root of 1% which equals 8,366 people."
Umm…What can we do to shift the Consciousness of 8,366 people? I’m always working on it on my end (SMILE). I’ve got over 80 blogs to get information out to people and I’m writing a very important book that my Precious Best Friend Judyth Vary Baker is editing!
I started a simple blog called 'Change the Energy' and the instructions are simple. I wanted to keep this blog anonymous but it is a garden that has to be watered. It's so simple to change the energy but evil doesn't want you to know it.
If all of us *Wish* for a PROACTIVE, BIG CHANGE in Consciousness and try to find ways to get that affect, we will have it!
Monday, August 17, 2009
Money is God, Greed is King and Corruption Runs the Game
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Money-is-God-Greed-is-Kin-by-Siv-O-Neall-090816-319.html
August 16, 2009
Money is God, Greed is King and Corruption Runs the Game
By Siv O'Neall
Crossposted with Axis of Logic
Never has the world been subjected to as pure and destructive lunacy as at this time in history. Never have the anti-civilization voices been heard as stridently as in the so-called debate that is going on today. The insane and desperate noise of the single-party political scene in the United States, the deafening roar of the Mafia, is threatening, and seemingly managing quite well, to out-thunder the few reasonable and civilized voices that are attempting to be heard over the din.
The civilized debate that might be expected to be going on about health care, tax reforms, regulation of financial speculation, the criminality of imperial wars, improving education and much more, is poisoned while still in the womb, by the formidable power of the one political party that is spelled M O N E Y. Their power tools are the mass media, the ceaseless propaganda machines, the formidable use of hypnotic slogans and, added to that, the severe lack of insight and intellectual curiosity of the U.S. citizens. All this is made possible through the obscene lowering of educational standards and the carefully programmed lack of information that is the normal state of things today in Middle America.
One of the most obvious and insidious weapons of the Money Party is the use of the word socialism. U.S citizens have been thoroughly brainwashed to a state of visceral fear of socialism as the great demon that is out to destroy everything that is decent in life, keep us from having any form of an individual choice as to how to live out lives. It is a decadent form of government that Europeans are victims of, where the spirit of free enterprise is deadened by too much welfare protection, where the rich have to take care of the poor who can thus go on idling their lives away in apathy and shameless dependence on the government.
While U.S citizens are either working themselves to death or being spiritually stifled by joblessness and the lack of hope for a better future, they still seem to believe that the U.S. is the greatest democracy in the world, the only really free country where everybody has the right of vote, has the possibility of climbing up the rungs on the social ladder, has the right to an excellent education, the right to free speech, "the good life' in a country with a strictly limited role of the government.
The United States is supposedly in the political, military and cultural forefront all over the world and has the right to interfere wherever its authority is questioned or threatened. The terrifying lack of insight of U.S. citizens into the various passions and ambitions that make up the foundation for a meaningful life for all people in all nations and civilizations completely derails any potential of understanding how the world is made up. What drives us human beings to productiveness and to a feeling of comfort and satisfaction in our own capacity of leaving a positive imprint on the world around us? "Go out and buy' say the American Money men. Give everybody a realistic chance to try his own motors, say I, and help him pull himself out of the quicksand if he fails in his efforts, due to lack of encouragement and lack of initial means of support.
The Money Party has led a centuries-long effort at deadening any humane impulse, stifling any creative and imaginative attempt to use leisure time in a constructive way, replacing all that would be of true value by inventing phony needs of accumulating wealth and symbols of status. With the effect that people are now generally convinced that money is value in itself, an end rather than a means.
The world is becoming an amoral and totally disjointed arena where insanity and unlimited greed rule and no humane principles can survive the attacks of the all powerful Money Party.
The poor are not supposed to survive, the old and sick have no more rights to a decent life. The words in the ongoing and stumbling efforts to create healthcare for all are being so completely distorted that the average American is made to believe propaganda phrases that no decent human being could possible have intended. But the average person does believe it. The hate-mongers on television have a credulous audience. It is really so simple. Socialism is the clue. Just tell people again and again, ever since McCarthyism held sway over fears and sanity, that socialism is the Devil. Make all those fundamentalists believe that anything that resembles a welfare net is a product of the anti-Christ and reason matters no more. Reason is burned at the stake. Mass hysteria takes over, leading to generalized insanity.
The men and women with a callousness that makes your blood run cold take the lead in inventing slogans "" they are out to kill your grandparents, government bureaucracy will squash healthcare efficiency, you will die before your turn comes to get medical treatment. Public healthcare will cause national bankruptcy and taxes will go through the ceiling. Blatant lies are repeated again and again until a hypnotic phenomenon has converted them into truths to ignorant "Americans'. Government-run healthcare equals socialism "" the Devil himself.
And the insane healthcare debate, if that is what it can be called, is far from being the only issue where reason has gone astray and nationalistic hubris and blindness have taken over.
"America' is the foremost, "America' is the moral guardian of the world, "America' is the only civilized nation, the only true democracy, are slogans that are so widely believed that no realistic arguments, no criminal wars, no senseless killing of innocent people, no perfectly visible crimes against citizens' rights and screaming social injustice can possibly change the stern belief of U.S. citizens that they are at the top of the world and that nothing can limit their rights to let loose their cluster bombs and their mad destruction wherever and whenever they are told that there is a reason for U.S. intervention.
U.S. citizens are never taught to reason, to disagree, to doubt. The average American wears blinders so impenetrable that he can't possibly see the world the way it is. "Truth' is a malleable piece of clay that is made up for him and he swallows it hook, line and sinker.
Civilization is dying. The very notion of civilization is dead. Money has taken over. Money has been the heir apparent for centuries and in the Empire's frantic reaching out of its tentacles over the rest of the world, it has already managed to convert a majority of the Western world, and more, to the belief that the Free Market is the solution to global well-being. As all people with open eyes know and see, the Free Market was set up in order to get rid of the poor and to enable the Money wizards to rule with virtually no opposition. The fact that the planet is destroyed in the process seems to be of no importance to these lunatics. Maximizing profit is the only real goal and people and the planet be damned. The Free Market juggernaut crushes everything in its way. That's what it was invented for and fascism is the name of the game. It is worse than any previous fascist regime since it has more power and practically no opposition, since the lawlessness is mostly hidden behind a screen of secrecy and lies.
The only hope for humanity today is in the form of socialism that is growing in Latin America, in spite of the violent resistance and frequent sabotage from the U.S. governments. This enormously important phenomenon is what sends chills along the spines of U.S. politicians and the Money men all over the Western world.
August 16, 2009
Money is God, Greed is King and Corruption Runs the Game
By Siv O'Neall
Crossposted with Axis of Logic
Never has the world been subjected to as pure and destructive lunacy as at this time in history. Never have the anti-civilization voices been heard as stridently as in the so-called debate that is going on today. The insane and desperate noise of the single-party political scene in the United States, the deafening roar of the Mafia, is threatening, and seemingly managing quite well, to out-thunder the few reasonable and civilized voices that are attempting to be heard over the din.
The civilized debate that might be expected to be going on about health care, tax reforms, regulation of financial speculation, the criminality of imperial wars, improving education and much more, is poisoned while still in the womb, by the formidable power of the one political party that is spelled M O N E Y. Their power tools are the mass media, the ceaseless propaganda machines, the formidable use of hypnotic slogans and, added to that, the severe lack of insight and intellectual curiosity of the U.S. citizens. All this is made possible through the obscene lowering of educational standards and the carefully programmed lack of information that is the normal state of things today in Middle America.
One of the most obvious and insidious weapons of the Money Party is the use of the word socialism. U.S citizens have been thoroughly brainwashed to a state of visceral fear of socialism as the great demon that is out to destroy everything that is decent in life, keep us from having any form of an individual choice as to how to live out lives. It is a decadent form of government that Europeans are victims of, where the spirit of free enterprise is deadened by too much welfare protection, where the rich have to take care of the poor who can thus go on idling their lives away in apathy and shameless dependence on the government.
While U.S citizens are either working themselves to death or being spiritually stifled by joblessness and the lack of hope for a better future, they still seem to believe that the U.S. is the greatest democracy in the world, the only really free country where everybody has the right of vote, has the possibility of climbing up the rungs on the social ladder, has the right to an excellent education, the right to free speech, "the good life' in a country with a strictly limited role of the government.
The United States is supposedly in the political, military and cultural forefront all over the world and has the right to interfere wherever its authority is questioned or threatened. The terrifying lack of insight of U.S. citizens into the various passions and ambitions that make up the foundation for a meaningful life for all people in all nations and civilizations completely derails any potential of understanding how the world is made up. What drives us human beings to productiveness and to a feeling of comfort and satisfaction in our own capacity of leaving a positive imprint on the world around us? "Go out and buy' say the American Money men. Give everybody a realistic chance to try his own motors, say I, and help him pull himself out of the quicksand if he fails in his efforts, due to lack of encouragement and lack of initial means of support.
The Money Party has led a centuries-long effort at deadening any humane impulse, stifling any creative and imaginative attempt to use leisure time in a constructive way, replacing all that would be of true value by inventing phony needs of accumulating wealth and symbols of status. With the effect that people are now generally convinced that money is value in itself, an end rather than a means.
The world is becoming an amoral and totally disjointed arena where insanity and unlimited greed rule and no humane principles can survive the attacks of the all powerful Money Party.
The poor are not supposed to survive, the old and sick have no more rights to a decent life. The words in the ongoing and stumbling efforts to create healthcare for all are being so completely distorted that the average American is made to believe propaganda phrases that no decent human being could possible have intended. But the average person does believe it. The hate-mongers on television have a credulous audience. It is really so simple. Socialism is the clue. Just tell people again and again, ever since McCarthyism held sway over fears and sanity, that socialism is the Devil. Make all those fundamentalists believe that anything that resembles a welfare net is a product of the anti-Christ and reason matters no more. Reason is burned at the stake. Mass hysteria takes over, leading to generalized insanity.
The men and women with a callousness that makes your blood run cold take the lead in inventing slogans "" they are out to kill your grandparents, government bureaucracy will squash healthcare efficiency, you will die before your turn comes to get medical treatment. Public healthcare will cause national bankruptcy and taxes will go through the ceiling. Blatant lies are repeated again and again until a hypnotic phenomenon has converted them into truths to ignorant "Americans'. Government-run healthcare equals socialism "" the Devil himself.
And the insane healthcare debate, if that is what it can be called, is far from being the only issue where reason has gone astray and nationalistic hubris and blindness have taken over.
"America' is the foremost, "America' is the moral guardian of the world, "America' is the only civilized nation, the only true democracy, are slogans that are so widely believed that no realistic arguments, no criminal wars, no senseless killing of innocent people, no perfectly visible crimes against citizens' rights and screaming social injustice can possibly change the stern belief of U.S. citizens that they are at the top of the world and that nothing can limit their rights to let loose their cluster bombs and their mad destruction wherever and whenever they are told that there is a reason for U.S. intervention.
U.S. citizens are never taught to reason, to disagree, to doubt. The average American wears blinders so impenetrable that he can't possibly see the world the way it is. "Truth' is a malleable piece of clay that is made up for him and he swallows it hook, line and sinker.
Civilization is dying. The very notion of civilization is dead. Money has taken over. Money has been the heir apparent for centuries and in the Empire's frantic reaching out of its tentacles over the rest of the world, it has already managed to convert a majority of the Western world, and more, to the belief that the Free Market is the solution to global well-being. As all people with open eyes know and see, the Free Market was set up in order to get rid of the poor and to enable the Money wizards to rule with virtually no opposition. The fact that the planet is destroyed in the process seems to be of no importance to these lunatics. Maximizing profit is the only real goal and people and the planet be damned. The Free Market juggernaut crushes everything in its way. That's what it was invented for and fascism is the name of the game. It is worse than any previous fascist regime since it has more power and practically no opposition, since the lawlessness is mostly hidden behind a screen of secrecy and lies.
The only hope for humanity today is in the form of socialism that is growing in Latin America, in spite of the violent resistance and frequent sabotage from the U.S. governments. This enormously important phenomenon is what sends chills along the spines of U.S. politicians and the Money men all over the Western world.
Monday, August 10, 2009
The Two Great Evils and the Hammer of Infinite Power
I'm not a Christian because I believe in many gods (learned this from a 'near death' experience) but I find this article valuable.
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/allport/allport2.html
by Glen Allport
September 13, 2006
There are two great and ancient evils in this world, and the beginnings of a Power that will either amplify or help diminish them.
The first of these evils is widespread emotional damage (neurosis) – the underlying human cause of violence, addictions, racism, child abuse, intentional cruelty, inner misery, and inappropriate and damaging behavior of all types. Neurosis is also a major factor, directly and indirectly, in physical problems such as cancer and heart disease. The foundations of neurosis lie almost entirely in childhood, infancy, and even in the womb: “sensitive dependence on early conditions” is a powerful human reality. (The link is to an article by Dr. Vincent J. Felitti on the large Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, with eye-opening data, charts, and relevant insight on this topic; highly recommended. PDF).
The second evil is systematic initiated coercion, which means, for the most part, the State. When Lord Acton pointed out that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” he was talking about government, which is to say: about the widespread use of initiated coercion to run societies. All types of coercive government, including monarchy, democracy, socialism, communism, oligarchy, military dictatorship, etc., initiate coercion against individuals and justify this aggression with what can fairly be described as lies and fairy tales (“the divine right of kings,” “majority rule,” “will of the people,” “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and so on). Coercive governments can appear to work well for a time, but eventually the corruption and erosion of wealth inherent to such arrangements overwhelm even the benefits to favored groups, no matter how well-run or well-intentioned a government may be.
The Hammer of Infinite Power is, of course, 21st century technology, which will grow powerful and subtle enough in the next few decades that “infinite” will seem a reasonable description. Hammers can be used to create or to destroy, and how this hammer is used may determine whether humanity lives or dies. The coming of the Hammer is the reason scientists like Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, and Bill Joy are so worried about our future.
The Two Great Evils are connected, and feed upon each other.
The Hammer is indifferent to health or sickness, love or hate, freedom or tyranny; it merely exists, to be used as people decide.* How people decide to use technology (or anything else) depends largely upon how emotionally healthy people and societies are; health leads to healthy choices, sickness leads to unhealthy choices.
Unhealthy choices include war, death camps, and prison gulags; they include nuclear, biological, and (coming soon) nano weapons. Unhealthy choices also include the use of coercion to fund or implement otherwise positive goals and programs; the coercion (even if only for funding) causes harm, no matter what the intent. Emotional damage makes it more difficult to see such things clearly, because neurosis is, in a very real sense, the misperception of reality.
The second of the Great Evils (coercive government) helps to perpetuate and hugely empower the first. That is, government coercion – “violence in a latent state”, as Herbert Spencer put it – creates emotional damage in millions of victims and empowers emotional damage to create more harm by putting armies as well as coercively-funded judicial, police, and bureaucratic powers in the hands of people who are, almost by definition, power-hungry and otherwise emotionally damaged.
Systematic initiated coercion does nothing positive in return for all the harm it causes, because whatever needs doing can be done – better and more efficiently – by civilized, non-coercive means. Consider, for example, the starvation and famine so common in overly-controlled economies versus any American supermarket, or the corruption, expense, and danger of government regulation (such as the American USDA and FDA) versus the transparency and efficiency of market regulation (Underwriters Labs, for instance).
The wide swaths of emotional damage caused by government action (and not only from the obvious examples, like death camps or war) help perpetuate neurosis as the default condition of mankind. But speaking of death camps and war: how much emotional damage among the survivors resulted from more than a quarter-billion government murders in the Twentieth Century? That number is in addition to the deaths from war. All of those deaths are also in addition to the maimings and rapes and torture and years of unjust imprisonment (and so many other horrifying crimes) that governments and their agents inflicted upon innocents in the same period.
In short, the power wielded by government creates and exacerbates emotional damage (neurosis) in millions of people. In turn, this widespread neurosis ensures that government power is often put directly to evil use, and is sought after by the most ambitious and cruel among us. Governments are often run by outright psychopaths – Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Mao, and Saddam Hussein are only a few of the better-known examples from recent history; see any newspaper for more – and soon, these institutions of coercion will wield powers that are unimaginable today. For that matter, much of this power will be available to small groups and – as one scientist put it – “individual weirdos with the mindset of people who now design computer viruses.”
There is no doubt that the Hammer of Infinite Power is coming; the leading edge is already here. It smote Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. If the power to vaporize a city with a single bomb is not sufficiently god-like for you, just wait. As Ray Kurzweil and many others have pointed out, knowledge and the power it brings are advancing not linearly, but at an exponential rate. Fasten your seatbelt.
That leaves us with this: a world filled with emotionally damaged humans under the thumb of despots and coercive systems, on its way to near-infinite levels of technological power.
Many observers agree that we cannot expect a halt or even a slowing of the march to the Singularity (the term popularized by Kurzweil, Vinge, and others for, in particular, the coming of superhuman machine intelligence), so the question becomes: can we survive it? Can we refrain from destroying ourselves after grasping the Hammer of Infinite Power?
We will have a far better chance to survive if we can diminish the Two Great Evils beforehand.
Now or Never
We can no longer defer creating a more free and compassionate world. If we hope to survive, we must reduce government power and improve the lives of pregnant mothers, infants, and children. The reason is simple: a free and healthy world is the only world compatible with a human future.
The good news is that such a world is also exactly what we were born for.
The scent and sound and feel of this world, and the powerful need for it, slumbers within us, an eternal presence at the core of our being. As every newborn knows the need for its mother – not intellectually, but more deeply than intellect can reach – each of us also knows, and needs, the world I can only call Paradise .
Love, freedom, and connection with others are what we expect, what we crave, what we are born for. We spend our lives hiding from our own disappointment at their lack.
It is time to address that disappointment, by actually making the human world as we need it to be. Such dramatic change sounds impossible, but of course the world changes anyway. In any case, what purpose does the freedom movement have otherwise?
This may be less audacious than it sounds. Technology has already helped (as well as hindered) the creation of a more human and humane world; the dramatic reduction in death by infectious disease is an example of how the Hammer – or even its faint, incoming shadow – can dramatically improve the world. Other examples are all around us; the internet, to name only one, has helped people connect with one another, created dramatic market efficiencies, and both decentralized and expanded access to information, even as oppressive governments have worked to dim its power.
The guiding light for healthy choices in use of technology – and for healthy behavior generally – is emotional health, the more widespread the better. The social fabric that best enables healthy human choices is freedom infused with love and compassion; that is, a society that rigorously guards against the initiation of coercion (by government or otherwise) and which gives every new life the best possible chance to be treated with respect, love, and compassion.
Without enough love in society (without enough emotional health, in other words), no social or political structure can prevent evil from blossoming. When large numbers of people in a society are without a sense of connection to others, outright horrors become all too likely.
Love is necessary for another reason: the market requires and functions via love and respect. A healthy, honest market involves people dealing with each other on a voluntary basis, without coercion or substitutes for coercion such as fraud. Participants must respect each other as human beings for this to work; nothing, including laws, can long prevent criminal misbehavior among a group that lacks a widespread sense of empathy, compassion, and respect. Without love, it all falls apart.
Where does the love come from?
Once again: from the earliest time of life. People get a sense of compassion and connection to others during infancy and childhood, or not at all. This is why religions have largely failed: telling adults to “Love thy neighbor” can have only limited effectiveness.**
The freedom movement has failed for precisely the same reason: the movement has not fully grasped that love and freedom require each other, and that love requires proper and compassionate treatment of the young. Without both love and freedom at high levels in a society, neither quality survives for long.
Conclusion
For thousands of years, mankind has lived – often in great and needless misery – with what I have called the Two Great Evils: widespread emotional damage and initiated coercion.
I do not believe we will live with those evils much longer, because life itself (and certainly anything one might term “civilized life”) may be impossible when near-ubiquitous tyranny and emotional damage are empowered by extremely advanced technology. We are well into the early stages of such a disaster, and the pace will quicken dramatically from here.
Love and freedom are neither strangers nor at odds with each other. Love and freedom are the yin and yang that, together, will be our only salvation – if we understand this in time and act accordingly.
Notes:
* Machine intelligence will eventually be making most of the decisions about how “our” technological power is used. A healthier world would at least have a chance to program the forerunners of these machines in a manner more in tune with human survival. That may not be enough, but it’s no argument against working for a more free and healthy world now, while we still can.
** I believe that Jesus’ teachings about children and about love would have been enough to make Christianity far more successful in these terms, had Jesus’ followers only applied those teachings more consistently, especially in their treatment of the young. Consider Matthew 18:1 – 18:3 and Mark 10:13 – 10:15 about children, for example, and John 13:34 – 13:35 about the central importance of love.
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/allport/allport2.html
by Glen Allport
September 13, 2006
There are two great and ancient evils in this world, and the beginnings of a Power that will either amplify or help diminish them.
The first of these evils is widespread emotional damage (neurosis) – the underlying human cause of violence, addictions, racism, child abuse, intentional cruelty, inner misery, and inappropriate and damaging behavior of all types. Neurosis is also a major factor, directly and indirectly, in physical problems such as cancer and heart disease. The foundations of neurosis lie almost entirely in childhood, infancy, and even in the womb: “sensitive dependence on early conditions” is a powerful human reality. (The link is to an article by Dr. Vincent J. Felitti on the large Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, with eye-opening data, charts, and relevant insight on this topic; highly recommended. PDF).
The second evil is systematic initiated coercion, which means, for the most part, the State. When Lord Acton pointed out that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” he was talking about government, which is to say: about the widespread use of initiated coercion to run societies. All types of coercive government, including monarchy, democracy, socialism, communism, oligarchy, military dictatorship, etc., initiate coercion against individuals and justify this aggression with what can fairly be described as lies and fairy tales (“the divine right of kings,” “majority rule,” “will of the people,” “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and so on). Coercive governments can appear to work well for a time, but eventually the corruption and erosion of wealth inherent to such arrangements overwhelm even the benefits to favored groups, no matter how well-run or well-intentioned a government may be.
The Hammer of Infinite Power is, of course, 21st century technology, which will grow powerful and subtle enough in the next few decades that “infinite” will seem a reasonable description. Hammers can be used to create or to destroy, and how this hammer is used may determine whether humanity lives or dies. The coming of the Hammer is the reason scientists like Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, and Bill Joy are so worried about our future.
The Two Great Evils are connected, and feed upon each other.
The Hammer is indifferent to health or sickness, love or hate, freedom or tyranny; it merely exists, to be used as people decide.* How people decide to use technology (or anything else) depends largely upon how emotionally healthy people and societies are; health leads to healthy choices, sickness leads to unhealthy choices.
Unhealthy choices include war, death camps, and prison gulags; they include nuclear, biological, and (coming soon) nano weapons. Unhealthy choices also include the use of coercion to fund or implement otherwise positive goals and programs; the coercion (even if only for funding) causes harm, no matter what the intent. Emotional damage makes it more difficult to see such things clearly, because neurosis is, in a very real sense, the misperception of reality.
The second of the Great Evils (coercive government) helps to perpetuate and hugely empower the first. That is, government coercion – “violence in a latent state”, as Herbert Spencer put it – creates emotional damage in millions of victims and empowers emotional damage to create more harm by putting armies as well as coercively-funded judicial, police, and bureaucratic powers in the hands of people who are, almost by definition, power-hungry and otherwise emotionally damaged.
Systematic initiated coercion does nothing positive in return for all the harm it causes, because whatever needs doing can be done – better and more efficiently – by civilized, non-coercive means. Consider, for example, the starvation and famine so common in overly-controlled economies versus any American supermarket, or the corruption, expense, and danger of government regulation (such as the American USDA and FDA) versus the transparency and efficiency of market regulation (Underwriters Labs, for instance).
The wide swaths of emotional damage caused by government action (and not only from the obvious examples, like death camps or war) help perpetuate neurosis as the default condition of mankind. But speaking of death camps and war: how much emotional damage among the survivors resulted from more than a quarter-billion government murders in the Twentieth Century? That number is in addition to the deaths from war. All of those deaths are also in addition to the maimings and rapes and torture and years of unjust imprisonment (and so many other horrifying crimes) that governments and their agents inflicted upon innocents in the same period.
In short, the power wielded by government creates and exacerbates emotional damage (neurosis) in millions of people. In turn, this widespread neurosis ensures that government power is often put directly to evil use, and is sought after by the most ambitious and cruel among us. Governments are often run by outright psychopaths – Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Mao, and Saddam Hussein are only a few of the better-known examples from recent history; see any newspaper for more – and soon, these institutions of coercion will wield powers that are unimaginable today. For that matter, much of this power will be available to small groups and – as one scientist put it – “individual weirdos with the mindset of people who now design computer viruses.”
There is no doubt that the Hammer of Infinite Power is coming; the leading edge is already here. It smote Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. If the power to vaporize a city with a single bomb is not sufficiently god-like for you, just wait. As Ray Kurzweil and many others have pointed out, knowledge and the power it brings are advancing not linearly, but at an exponential rate. Fasten your seatbelt.
That leaves us with this: a world filled with emotionally damaged humans under the thumb of despots and coercive systems, on its way to near-infinite levels of technological power.
Many observers agree that we cannot expect a halt or even a slowing of the march to the Singularity (the term popularized by Kurzweil, Vinge, and others for, in particular, the coming of superhuman machine intelligence), so the question becomes: can we survive it? Can we refrain from destroying ourselves after grasping the Hammer of Infinite Power?
We will have a far better chance to survive if we can diminish the Two Great Evils beforehand.
Now or Never
We can no longer defer creating a more free and compassionate world. If we hope to survive, we must reduce government power and improve the lives of pregnant mothers, infants, and children. The reason is simple: a free and healthy world is the only world compatible with a human future.
The good news is that such a world is also exactly what we were born for.
The scent and sound and feel of this world, and the powerful need for it, slumbers within us, an eternal presence at the core of our being. As every newborn knows the need for its mother – not intellectually, but more deeply than intellect can reach – each of us also knows, and needs, the world I can only call Paradise .
Love, freedom, and connection with others are what we expect, what we crave, what we are born for. We spend our lives hiding from our own disappointment at their lack.
It is time to address that disappointment, by actually making the human world as we need it to be. Such dramatic change sounds impossible, but of course the world changes anyway. In any case, what purpose does the freedom movement have otherwise?
This may be less audacious than it sounds. Technology has already helped (as well as hindered) the creation of a more human and humane world; the dramatic reduction in death by infectious disease is an example of how the Hammer – or even its faint, incoming shadow – can dramatically improve the world. Other examples are all around us; the internet, to name only one, has helped people connect with one another, created dramatic market efficiencies, and both decentralized and expanded access to information, even as oppressive governments have worked to dim its power.
The guiding light for healthy choices in use of technology – and for healthy behavior generally – is emotional health, the more widespread the better. The social fabric that best enables healthy human choices is freedom infused with love and compassion; that is, a society that rigorously guards against the initiation of coercion (by government or otherwise) and which gives every new life the best possible chance to be treated with respect, love, and compassion.
Without enough love in society (without enough emotional health, in other words), no social or political structure can prevent evil from blossoming. When large numbers of people in a society are without a sense of connection to others, outright horrors become all too likely.
Love is necessary for another reason: the market requires and functions via love and respect. A healthy, honest market involves people dealing with each other on a voluntary basis, without coercion or substitutes for coercion such as fraud. Participants must respect each other as human beings for this to work; nothing, including laws, can long prevent criminal misbehavior among a group that lacks a widespread sense of empathy, compassion, and respect. Without love, it all falls apart.
Where does the love come from?
Once again: from the earliest time of life. People get a sense of compassion and connection to others during infancy and childhood, or not at all. This is why religions have largely failed: telling adults to “Love thy neighbor” can have only limited effectiveness.**
The freedom movement has failed for precisely the same reason: the movement has not fully grasped that love and freedom require each other, and that love requires proper and compassionate treatment of the young. Without both love and freedom at high levels in a society, neither quality survives for long.
Conclusion
For thousands of years, mankind has lived – often in great and needless misery – with what I have called the Two Great Evils: widespread emotional damage and initiated coercion.
I do not believe we will live with those evils much longer, because life itself (and certainly anything one might term “civilized life”) may be impossible when near-ubiquitous tyranny and emotional damage are empowered by extremely advanced technology. We are well into the early stages of such a disaster, and the pace will quicken dramatically from here.
Love and freedom are neither strangers nor at odds with each other. Love and freedom are the yin and yang that, together, will be our only salvation – if we understand this in time and act accordingly.
Notes:
* Machine intelligence will eventually be making most of the decisions about how “our” technological power is used. A healthier world would at least have a chance to program the forerunners of these machines in a manner more in tune with human survival. That may not be enough, but it’s no argument against working for a more free and healthy world now, while we still can.
** I believe that Jesus’ teachings about children and about love would have been enough to make Christianity far more successful in these terms, had Jesus’ followers only applied those teachings more consistently, especially in their treatment of the young. Consider Matthew 18:1 – 18:3 and Mark 10:13 – 10:15 about children, for example, and John 13:34 – 13:35 about the central importance of love.
One little, two little, three little Eichmanns
The serpent puppet masters try to make us evil and/or corrupt and weaken us in many ways, large and small: pornography, eating blood (meat), what we buy and much, much more! I'm a vegetarian and I have to read every label of everything I intake just to make sure there is no gelatine, glycine or other blood animal parts in it! This includes vitamins and medicine! I just found out that my bank 'invests' in arms manufacturers! It takes a lot of energy and watching to resist and refuse evil!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/One-little--two-little--th-by-Mickey-Z--080724-159.html
July 24, 2008
One little, two little, three little Eichmanns
By Mickey Z.
No, this is not a rehash of the Ward Churchill/Little Eichmann witch-hunt. But I have been contemplating the sentiment behind Churchill's original essay. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt wrote, "The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many wereneither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal." She wrote of a "new type of criminal," who "commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong." Raise your hand if this sounds frighteningly familiar. The time is long overdue for all of us to be actively and relentlessly reminding the criminals that they are criminals. Until we do, they have the freedom to live in denial.
I sent the above paragraph to Rosemarie Jackowski (RMJ) to start a conversation.
RMJ: All over the United States people are working at jobs that result in the deaths of innocent people. There are military contracts and sub-contracts in small towns and villages, big cities, etc. Any job that supports the war machine is a real problem. I understand why people take jobs like that, but it would be a much better world if everyone just made the decision to do no harm.
MZ: You know what that line will provoke...the inevitable "so what can we do?" question.
RMJ: I am not sure what we can do. Sometimes I feel that it is hopeless. A big part of the problem is 'the system'. Ever since the Black Budget was created by Congress in the 40s, we have had a secret government operating. Individual citizens can try to do as little harm as possible. As I say often, even buying a pair of socks does some harm because it supports the war economy. Think of it as a moral continuum. The shopper who buys the socks is doing a slight harm. The voter who votes for a member of Congress who votes to finance the war, well that voter might be closer to the maximum on the scale of evil. The military sharpshooter who kills a civilian and the guard who tortures a prisoner are enabled by irresponsible, uninformed voters. Are we becoming a culture that is totally devoid of compassion and empathy?
MZ: Becoming? Our culture views compassion and empathy as nothing more than masks, disguises to hide the harm we're all guilty of.
RMJ: Yes, it would be a big help if the average US citizen had an accurate understanding of history. Teachers could play an important role. Too many teach that the pursuit of war is an honorable career option. All students should see the Fisk War photos before they graduate from high school. The sanitized view of history that is taught leads to a culture of entitlement - 'it is our oil under their sand.' The perfect formula for creating a killer is to teach him that the US never does anything wrong, expose him to a lot of violence in the media, video games, etc., and then apply peer pressure. After that, it only takes a few weeks of basic training.
MZ: So we agree: Little Eichmanns do exist. But I'll bet if Ward Churchill had used a different term, he would have remained as obscure as ever. The way I usually phrase it in articles or talks is that with few exceptions, there are no innocent bystanders in America. Any closing thoughts?
RMj: Well, I disagree that Ward Churchill was obscure before, but the "E-word" did bring a lot of additional attention. I knew about him because he is a fellow member of Veterans for Peace. Churchill's use of the "E-word" and the controversy that resulted was a valuable national learning opportunity that was missed. The media attention was misdirected from the facts of history and what Churchill really said. Instead the media focus was directed toward ad hominem attacks on Churchill. It just happened again when Rev. Jeremiah Wright made his comments about US history. Instead of having a national discussion on the merits or flaws in what Wright said, the media was consumed with ad hominem attacks on him. Basically it boils down to this - in the US if you speak the truth you will pay a high price. Mickey, you make an important point. There are no innocent bystanders in the US. We are all complicit - every one of us.
MZ: And that goes double for anyone who has fallen for the Obama hype.
Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
Rosemarie Jackowski can be reached at: dissent@sover.net
http://www.opednews.com/articles/One-little--two-little--th-by-Mickey-Z--080724-159.html
July 24, 2008
One little, two little, three little Eichmanns
By Mickey Z.
No, this is not a rehash of the Ward Churchill/Little Eichmann witch-hunt. But I have been contemplating the sentiment behind Churchill's original essay. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt wrote, "The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many wereneither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal." She wrote of a "new type of criminal," who "commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong." Raise your hand if this sounds frighteningly familiar. The time is long overdue for all of us to be actively and relentlessly reminding the criminals that they are criminals. Until we do, they have the freedom to live in denial.
I sent the above paragraph to Rosemarie Jackowski (RMJ) to start a conversation.
RMJ: All over the United States people are working at jobs that result in the deaths of innocent people. There are military contracts and sub-contracts in small towns and villages, big cities, etc. Any job that supports the war machine is a real problem. I understand why people take jobs like that, but it would be a much better world if everyone just made the decision to do no harm.
MZ: You know what that line will provoke...the inevitable "so what can we do?" question.
RMJ: I am not sure what we can do. Sometimes I feel that it is hopeless. A big part of the problem is 'the system'. Ever since the Black Budget was created by Congress in the 40s, we have had a secret government operating. Individual citizens can try to do as little harm as possible. As I say often, even buying a pair of socks does some harm because it supports the war economy. Think of it as a moral continuum. The shopper who buys the socks is doing a slight harm. The voter who votes for a member of Congress who votes to finance the war, well that voter might be closer to the maximum on the scale of evil. The military sharpshooter who kills a civilian and the guard who tortures a prisoner are enabled by irresponsible, uninformed voters. Are we becoming a culture that is totally devoid of compassion and empathy?
MZ: Becoming? Our culture views compassion and empathy as nothing more than masks, disguises to hide the harm we're all guilty of.
RMJ: Yes, it would be a big help if the average US citizen had an accurate understanding of history. Teachers could play an important role. Too many teach that the pursuit of war is an honorable career option. All students should see the Fisk War photos before they graduate from high school. The sanitized view of history that is taught leads to a culture of entitlement - 'it is our oil under their sand.' The perfect formula for creating a killer is to teach him that the US never does anything wrong, expose him to a lot of violence in the media, video games, etc., and then apply peer pressure. After that, it only takes a few weeks of basic training.
MZ: So we agree: Little Eichmanns do exist. But I'll bet if Ward Churchill had used a different term, he would have remained as obscure as ever. The way I usually phrase it in articles or talks is that with few exceptions, there are no innocent bystanders in America. Any closing thoughts?
RMj: Well, I disagree that Ward Churchill was obscure before, but the "E-word" did bring a lot of additional attention. I knew about him because he is a fellow member of Veterans for Peace. Churchill's use of the "E-word" and the controversy that resulted was a valuable national learning opportunity that was missed. The media attention was misdirected from the facts of history and what Churchill really said. Instead the media focus was directed toward ad hominem attacks on Churchill. It just happened again when Rev. Jeremiah Wright made his comments about US history. Instead of having a national discussion on the merits or flaws in what Wright said, the media was consumed with ad hominem attacks on him. Basically it boils down to this - in the US if you speak the truth you will pay a high price. Mickey, you make an important point. There are no innocent bystanders in the US. We are all complicit - every one of us.
MZ: And that goes double for anyone who has fallen for the Obama hype.
Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
Rosemarie Jackowski can be reached at: dissent@sover.net
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?
I don't have to read the book to answer this question. People are being pressured to drink instead of smoke pot because the puppet masters don't want people thinking! Drinking keeps people from thinking whereas smoking pot helps people to think. Also, people do a lot of violence when they drink and the demonic serpent overlords want people to be violent and thus, evil. Pot mellows people out so they're not violent and evil wouldn't like that!
By Steve Fox and Paul Armentano and Mason Tvert, Chelsea Green Publishing
Posted on August 6, 2009, Printed on August 8, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141808/
The following is an excerpt from the just-released book, Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? by Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert (Chelsea Green, 2009).
Dateline: February 1, 2009. It’s Super Bowl Sunday and throughout the nation millions of Americans have stocked their shelves and refrigerators with alcohol for the big game. In living rooms across the country, guests will enjoy the libations and gawk at the humorous beer commercials sprinkled liberally throughout the telecast. Like the Fourth of July and fireworks, the Super Bowl and booze are an American tradition. There is no societal stigma associated with this excessive drinking. It is all part of the celebration. Like the old saying goes: “We don’t have a drinking problem. We drink. We get drunk. No problem.”
But as the day’s festivities build to a climax, the nation is thrown into turmoil. Internet headlines announce that Olympic swimming hero Michael Phelps, who months earlier had electrified audiences throughout the world by winning eight gold medals in Beijing, had been captured in full digital glory taking a bong hit at a private party. The horrors! How could he do such a thing?
Almost immediately online articles appear, replete with quotes of disillusionment from anyone with even a tangential connection to the world’s most decorated Olympian. Hours later, Phelps issues a public statement. He apologizes for his “regrettable” behavior and “bad judgment,” and promises “it will not happen again.” Was Phelps’s apology issued because he was reportedly also drunk and “obnoxious” at the same party? Of course not. Being drunk in public is not the sort of behavior that triggers public outrage and social condemnation.Taking a hit or two of marijuana, on the other hand, most certainly is.
In the days that followed, our society piled on the way it often does when someone famous is caught smoking grass. Predictably, there was mockery and derision. For example, one Huffington Post blogger posted a column with the headline, “Phelps Congratulates Cardinals on Super Bowl Win.”1 (The Arizona Cardinals lost the game on a last-minute touchdown, caught, ironically enough, by another recently outed marijuana smoker, Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Santonio Holmes.) The body of the essay included such “witticisms” as Phelps claiming to have missed the end of the game because of a “wicked attack of the munchies.” Naturally, the writer did not mock Phelps’s drunken behavior.
Several of Phelps’s corporate sponsors, while not immediately jumping off the financial gravy train, expressed their own sense of dismay. Michael Humphrey, chief executive of the PureSport beverage company, issued the following statement: “We applaud the fact that he (Michael Phelps) has taken full and immediate responsibility for his mistake and apologized to us, his fans and the public and we support him during this difficult time.” Similarly, a U.S. congressman from Phelps’s home state of Maryland, Elijah Cummings, appeared on television to express his deep concern and disappointment in this otherwise “great kid.”
By week’s end, America’s corporate establishment brought the hammer down upon Phelps. First, the Kellogg’s Company dropped the Olympic gold medalist as a spokesperson, explaining that his behavior was “not consistent with the image of Kellogg.” Soon thereafter, USA Swimming, the sport’s national governing body, suspended Phelps from competition for three months -- even though he had not violated any existing drug-testing policy. (Marijuana is not a prohibited substance during the off-season.) “[W]e decided to send a strong message to Michael,” the organization said, “because he disappointed so many people, particularly the hundreds of thousands of USA Swimming member kids who look up to him as a role model and a hero.”
Far from being outraged (at least publicly) about the decision, Phelps was contrite and repentant. According to USA Swimming, Phelps “voluntarily accepted this reprimand” and was “committed to earn[ing] back [their] trust.”
As if all of this wasn’t enough, Leon Lott, the sheriff in Richland County, South Carolina, where the bong hit heard round the world had occurred, launched a criminal investigation of the matter worthy of a hunt for a suspected terrorist. Several weeks following the incident, twelve armed deputies, with guns drawn, burst into the home where the party had taken place and arrested two residents. Cops also seized four laptops, a desktop computer, and an electronic storage device. They found less than six grams of marijuana in the home -- which is about what they would find in any off-campus apartment in the United States -- but they were hardly concerned about illegal contraband. Rather, the lawyers for the defendants said that the cops only wanted to know whether the two individuals had witnessed Phelps using marijuana. Richland County law enforcement officials later arrested six more individuals, all in an effort to weed out the nation’s most famous weed aficionado. Finally, after several weeks of this taxpayer-funded silliness, Sheriff Lott eventually announced that he had failed to find sufficient evidence to press criminal charges against Michael Phelps, or for that matter, anyone else.
Let’s review, shall we? The most successful Olympian in history attends a college party, pounds a few beers, and allegedly behaves like a drunken ass. At some point during the evening, he inhales a bit of marijuana. When all of this becomes public, he is run through the social, corporate, and legal wringer—but only for his suspected pot use. So what lesson has our champion swimmer learned? That’s simple. Next time he goes out in public, he should just stick to being drunk and obnoxious.
Michael Phelps’s story is hardly unique. Rather, it highlights the myriad ways that society intentionally steers citizens away from cannabis and toward the use of a more harmful substance, alcohol.
Sure, all Americans know that marijuana is illegal, and most are aware that the government purposely spreads misleading information about the drug’s allegedly adverse effects. But how many of you have stopped to think about the ways that other entities are directly or indirectly involved in maintaining cannabis prohibition? After all, the government could not uphold the status quo all by itself. It requires the assistance of private and public employers, athletic associations, and the mainstream media. Each of these groups, by acting according to (assumed) societal norms, their leaders’ own personal biases, or perhaps, as we discuss later, their own financial interests, take actions that reinforce the government’s criminalizing of cannabis.
While these coercive actions and public policies have certainly not eliminated the drug from our society, there is little doubt that collectively they have produced an artificially low level of marijuana use among U.S. adults.
Steve Fox is director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project. Paul Armentano is the deputy director of NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), and Mason Tvert is co-founder of Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER)They are the co-authors of the book Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink (2009, Chelsea Green).
By Steve Fox and Paul Armentano and Mason Tvert, Chelsea Green Publishing
Posted on August 6, 2009, Printed on August 8, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141808/
The following is an excerpt from the just-released book, Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? by Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert (Chelsea Green, 2009).
Dateline: February 1, 2009. It’s Super Bowl Sunday and throughout the nation millions of Americans have stocked their shelves and refrigerators with alcohol for the big game. In living rooms across the country, guests will enjoy the libations and gawk at the humorous beer commercials sprinkled liberally throughout the telecast. Like the Fourth of July and fireworks, the Super Bowl and booze are an American tradition. There is no societal stigma associated with this excessive drinking. It is all part of the celebration. Like the old saying goes: “We don’t have a drinking problem. We drink. We get drunk. No problem.”
But as the day’s festivities build to a climax, the nation is thrown into turmoil. Internet headlines announce that Olympic swimming hero Michael Phelps, who months earlier had electrified audiences throughout the world by winning eight gold medals in Beijing, had been captured in full digital glory taking a bong hit at a private party. The horrors! How could he do such a thing?
Almost immediately online articles appear, replete with quotes of disillusionment from anyone with even a tangential connection to the world’s most decorated Olympian. Hours later, Phelps issues a public statement. He apologizes for his “regrettable” behavior and “bad judgment,” and promises “it will not happen again.” Was Phelps’s apology issued because he was reportedly also drunk and “obnoxious” at the same party? Of course not. Being drunk in public is not the sort of behavior that triggers public outrage and social condemnation.Taking a hit or two of marijuana, on the other hand, most certainly is.
In the days that followed, our society piled on the way it often does when someone famous is caught smoking grass. Predictably, there was mockery and derision. For example, one Huffington Post blogger posted a column with the headline, “Phelps Congratulates Cardinals on Super Bowl Win.”1 (The Arizona Cardinals lost the game on a last-minute touchdown, caught, ironically enough, by another recently outed marijuana smoker, Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Santonio Holmes.) The body of the essay included such “witticisms” as Phelps claiming to have missed the end of the game because of a “wicked attack of the munchies.” Naturally, the writer did not mock Phelps’s drunken behavior.
Several of Phelps’s corporate sponsors, while not immediately jumping off the financial gravy train, expressed their own sense of dismay. Michael Humphrey, chief executive of the PureSport beverage company, issued the following statement: “We applaud the fact that he (Michael Phelps) has taken full and immediate responsibility for his mistake and apologized to us, his fans and the public and we support him during this difficult time.” Similarly, a U.S. congressman from Phelps’s home state of Maryland, Elijah Cummings, appeared on television to express his deep concern and disappointment in this otherwise “great kid.”
By week’s end, America’s corporate establishment brought the hammer down upon Phelps. First, the Kellogg’s Company dropped the Olympic gold medalist as a spokesperson, explaining that his behavior was “not consistent with the image of Kellogg.” Soon thereafter, USA Swimming, the sport’s national governing body, suspended Phelps from competition for three months -- even though he had not violated any existing drug-testing policy. (Marijuana is not a prohibited substance during the off-season.) “[W]e decided to send a strong message to Michael,” the organization said, “because he disappointed so many people, particularly the hundreds of thousands of USA Swimming member kids who look up to him as a role model and a hero.”
Far from being outraged (at least publicly) about the decision, Phelps was contrite and repentant. According to USA Swimming, Phelps “voluntarily accepted this reprimand” and was “committed to earn[ing] back [their] trust.”
As if all of this wasn’t enough, Leon Lott, the sheriff in Richland County, South Carolina, where the bong hit heard round the world had occurred, launched a criminal investigation of the matter worthy of a hunt for a suspected terrorist. Several weeks following the incident, twelve armed deputies, with guns drawn, burst into the home where the party had taken place and arrested two residents. Cops also seized four laptops, a desktop computer, and an electronic storage device. They found less than six grams of marijuana in the home -- which is about what they would find in any off-campus apartment in the United States -- but they were hardly concerned about illegal contraband. Rather, the lawyers for the defendants said that the cops only wanted to know whether the two individuals had witnessed Phelps using marijuana. Richland County law enforcement officials later arrested six more individuals, all in an effort to weed out the nation’s most famous weed aficionado. Finally, after several weeks of this taxpayer-funded silliness, Sheriff Lott eventually announced that he had failed to find sufficient evidence to press criminal charges against Michael Phelps, or for that matter, anyone else.
Let’s review, shall we? The most successful Olympian in history attends a college party, pounds a few beers, and allegedly behaves like a drunken ass. At some point during the evening, he inhales a bit of marijuana. When all of this becomes public, he is run through the social, corporate, and legal wringer—but only for his suspected pot use. So what lesson has our champion swimmer learned? That’s simple. Next time he goes out in public, he should just stick to being drunk and obnoxious.
Michael Phelps’s story is hardly unique. Rather, it highlights the myriad ways that society intentionally steers citizens away from cannabis and toward the use of a more harmful substance, alcohol.
Sure, all Americans know that marijuana is illegal, and most are aware that the government purposely spreads misleading information about the drug’s allegedly adverse effects. But how many of you have stopped to think about the ways that other entities are directly or indirectly involved in maintaining cannabis prohibition? After all, the government could not uphold the status quo all by itself. It requires the assistance of private and public employers, athletic associations, and the mainstream media. Each of these groups, by acting according to (assumed) societal norms, their leaders’ own personal biases, or perhaps, as we discuss later, their own financial interests, take actions that reinforce the government’s criminalizing of cannabis.
While these coercive actions and public policies have certainly not eliminated the drug from our society, there is little doubt that collectively they have produced an artificially low level of marijuana use among U.S. adults.
Steve Fox is director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project. Paul Armentano is the deputy director of NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), and Mason Tvert is co-founder of Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER)They are the co-authors of the book Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink (2009, Chelsea Green).
The Windows Are Closing To Fix the Financial System and Health Care
When evil has something in its grips that makes enormous profits for its henchmen (elite psychopaths), it will not allow change. Sometimes the face to something will change, but the thing remains evil. There's still too many people in America who are so brain washed that they won't fight the corruption and evil in front of them. That's what the evil politicians count on! Only when people really start to fall into the gutter or die do they want to do something, but then it's too late...
Published on Friday, August 7, 2009 by Open Left
The Window Is Closing
by Mike Lux
Arianna Huffington's spot-on post yesterday about our country's broken financial system led with the sentence "The window for reform is closing." Which is word for word what Elizabeth Warren said to me in a conversation we had a few days ago. For all of the incredible power Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase have, their Achilles heel is momentarily exposed because of the incredibly anger the American public justifiably has at them right now, and there is a window for at least some progress on this.
There is, ironically, another reason for urgency as well: as Arianna and I and others have noted in multiple articles in recent weeks, the big Wall St. traders are back to their old tricks, business as usual pure and simple. And those tricks are exactly what brought down our financial system over the last couple of years. With our economy in such fragile shape, their recklessness endangers us greatly. I've heard people say that if we don't fix the problem, we could be in danger of another financial meltdown 10 or 20 years from now, but that way understates the problem. With our economy as weak as it is, we could see another financial crisis next year, not 10 or 20 years from now.
The remarkable thing about all this is that the reforms the White House has proposed are so modest. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency is a commonsense, reasonable proposal that even the Republicans I know from the financial industry think makes perfect sense. For an old lefty populist like myself, I don't think it goes nearly far enough. But even this moderate policy is running into a violent assault by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and the American Bankers Association. If something this reasonable is opposed by these guys, it's a sign of how far out on the ledge these companies have gone in pursuit of making billions by unregulated gambling and chicanery.
The window is closing on financial reform, and the window is closing on health care reform. These are easily the biggest political tests of Obama's Presidency, those that will determine whether his Presidency is going to be a success. A President can come back politically from early failures on big issues, as Bill Clinton did, but if they lose the big early battles, they generally don't try to do anything big or ambitious again.
I wrote in my book The Progressive Revolution about how the pattern of American history is that every so often, the window to create big change comes open for a while, that the combination of crisis, leadership, and political movement make it possible to really make big positive changes in our country. That window is open right now, and President Obama, to his credit, is trying to keep it open by doing some big and important things. But if he gives up the fight and caves in to special interest lobbyists, or if Democrats in Congress don't back his play, or if the reform movements on these big issues can't deliver grassroots strength, then the window will slam shut. That would be an immense tragedy, because this country desperately needs some big changes, and because the Republican opposition to Obama is going down such a dark path.
This country has been very lucky for much of its history. But if we can't fight through the special interest muck and deliver big change soon, I fear that our luck could run out. The economic and political storm are gathering in the sky, and we can't afford to do nothing to change the dynamics.
© 2009 Open Left
Mike Lux is the author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be.
Published on Friday, August 7, 2009 by Open Left
The Window Is Closing
by Mike Lux
Arianna Huffington's spot-on post yesterday about our country's broken financial system led with the sentence "The window for reform is closing." Which is word for word what Elizabeth Warren said to me in a conversation we had a few days ago. For all of the incredible power Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase have, their Achilles heel is momentarily exposed because of the incredibly anger the American public justifiably has at them right now, and there is a window for at least some progress on this.
There is, ironically, another reason for urgency as well: as Arianna and I and others have noted in multiple articles in recent weeks, the big Wall St. traders are back to their old tricks, business as usual pure and simple. And those tricks are exactly what brought down our financial system over the last couple of years. With our economy in such fragile shape, their recklessness endangers us greatly. I've heard people say that if we don't fix the problem, we could be in danger of another financial meltdown 10 or 20 years from now, but that way understates the problem. With our economy as weak as it is, we could see another financial crisis next year, not 10 or 20 years from now.
The remarkable thing about all this is that the reforms the White House has proposed are so modest. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency is a commonsense, reasonable proposal that even the Republicans I know from the financial industry think makes perfect sense. For an old lefty populist like myself, I don't think it goes nearly far enough. But even this moderate policy is running into a violent assault by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and the American Bankers Association. If something this reasonable is opposed by these guys, it's a sign of how far out on the ledge these companies have gone in pursuit of making billions by unregulated gambling and chicanery.
The window is closing on financial reform, and the window is closing on health care reform. These are easily the biggest political tests of Obama's Presidency, those that will determine whether his Presidency is going to be a success. A President can come back politically from early failures on big issues, as Bill Clinton did, but if they lose the big early battles, they generally don't try to do anything big or ambitious again.
I wrote in my book The Progressive Revolution about how the pattern of American history is that every so often, the window to create big change comes open for a while, that the combination of crisis, leadership, and political movement make it possible to really make big positive changes in our country. That window is open right now, and President Obama, to his credit, is trying to keep it open by doing some big and important things. But if he gives up the fight and caves in to special interest lobbyists, or if Democrats in Congress don't back his play, or if the reform movements on these big issues can't deliver grassroots strength, then the window will slam shut. That would be an immense tragedy, because this country desperately needs some big changes, and because the Republican opposition to Obama is going down such a dark path.
This country has been very lucky for much of its history. But if we can't fight through the special interest muck and deliver big change soon, I fear that our luck could run out. The economic and political storm are gathering in the sky, and we can't afford to do nothing to change the dynamics.
© 2009 Open Left
Mike Lux is the author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be.
Friday, July 31, 2009
The Rise of Gonzo Porn Is the Latest Sign of America's Cultural Apocalypse
The Purpose of this 'Mother' Blog and it's sibling blogs is to teach people about evil so they can not only avoid it (so they won't be corrupted by it) but also to fight it so we can live in a non-psychopathic, non-pornographic world. Children should be protected and it should make you angry like it makes angry when they become a 'market' for pornography. Chris Hedges is one of my favorite authors and this is an excellent article about the corruption of culture plus the abuse of children by pornography. MRC
The Rise of Gonzo Porn Is the Latest Sign of America's Cultural Apocalypse
By Chris Hedges, Nation Books
Posted on July 31, 2009, Printed on July 31, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141675/
I reported in my new book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle from the ringside of professional wrestling bouts at Madison Square Garden, from Las Vegas where I wrote about the pornographic film industry, from academic conferences held by positive psychologists -- who claim to be able to engineer happiness – and from the campuses of universities to chronicle our terrifying flight as a culture into a state of illusion. I looked at the array of mechanisms used to divert us from confronting the economic, political and moral collapse around us. I examined the fantasy that if we draw on our inner resources and strengths, if we realize that we are truly exceptional, we can have everything we desire.
The childish idea that we can always prevail, that reality is never an impediment to what we want, is the central motif of illusion peddled on popular talk shows, by the Christian Right, by Hollywood, in corporate retreats, by the news industry and by self-help gurus. Reality can always be overcome. The future will always be glorious. And held out to keep us amused and entertained are spectacles and celebrities who have become idealized versions of ourselves and who, we are assured, we can all one day become.
The cultural embrace of illusion, and the celebrity culture that has risen up around it, have accompanied the awful hollowing out of the state. We have shifted from a culture of production to a culture of consumption. We have been sold a system of casino capitalism, with its complicated and unregulated deals of turning debt into magical assets, to create fictional wealth for us and vast wealth for our elite. We have internalized the awful ethic of corporatism -- one built around the cult of the self and consumption as an inner compulsion -- to believe that living is about our own advancement and our own happiness at the expense of others. Corporations, behind the smoke screen, have ruthlessly dismantled and destroyed our manufacturing base and impoverished our working class. The free market became our god and government was taken hostage by corporations, the same corporations that entice us daily with illusions though the mass media, the entertainment industry and popular culture.
The more we sever ourselves from a literate, print-based world, a world of complexity and nuance, a world of ideas, for one informed by comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans and a celebration of violence the more we implode. We ask, like the wrestling fans or those who confuse love with pornography, to be fed lies. We demand lies. The skillfully manufactured images and slogans that flood the airwaves and infect our political discourse mask reality. And we do not protest. The lonely Cassandras who speak the truth about our misguided imperial wars, the global economic meltdown and the imminent danger of multiple pollutions that are destroying the eco-system that sustains the human species, are drowned out by arenas full of fans chanting "Slut! Slut! Slut!" or television audiences chanting "Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!" The worse reality becomes, the less a beleaguered population wants to hear about it and the more it distracts itself with squalid pseudo-events of celebrity breakdowns, gossip and trivia.
A culture that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion dies. And we are dying now. We will wake from our state of induced childishness, one where trivia and gossip pass for news and information, one where our goal is not justice by an elusive and unattainable happiness, to confront the stark limitations before us or we will continue our headlong retreat into fantasy. Those who do not grow up in times of despair and turmoil inevitably turn to demagogues and charlatans to entertain and reassure them. And these demagogues, as they have throughout history, lead the crowd, blinded and amused, towards despotism.
The following is an excerpt from Chapter II of Empire of Illusion, where Hedges attends an enormous porn convention in Las Vegas:
The largest users of internet porn, which is slowly draining away profits from magazines and DVD sales because so much of it is free, are between the ages of 12 and 17. And porn producers know their market is increasingly underage. "The age demographic has moved downwards, especially in the UK and Europe," explained Steve Honest, the European director of production for Bluebird Films. "Porn is the new rock and roll. Young people and women are embracing porn and making purchases. Porn targets the mid-teens to the mid-twenties and up."
There are some 13,000 porn films made in the United States a year. According to the Internet Filter Review, worldwide porn revenues, including in-room movies at hotels, sex clubs and the ever-expanding E-sex world, topped $97 billion in 2006. That's more than the revenues of the leading technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink. Annual sales in the United States are estimated at $ 10 billion or higher. There is no agency that does precise monitoring of the porn industry. And porn is very lucrative to some of the nation's largest corporations. General Motors, for example, owns DirectTV, which distributes over forty million streams of porn into American homes every month. AT&T Broadband and Comcast Cable are the currently biggest American companies accommodating porn users with The Hot Network, Adult Pay-Per-View and similarly themed services. AT&T and GM rake in approximately 80 percent of all porn dollars spent by consumers.
Ariana Jollee, 21, is sitting in a motel room, beside a particleboard desk and a bare white wall giving a pre-film interview for the DVD 65 Guy Cream Pie, a gangbang film produced in 2004 by Devil's Film. In the film she has sex with 65 men who stand in two lines, their pants unzipped, on either side of her. She is smiling at the camera. Jollee has sleek dark hair with bangs, a tribal armband tattoo around one bicep, and wears jeans and a loose black tank top. She has rounded arms, full cheeks and a slightly heavy chin. Jollee started doing porn in 2003 when she was 20 in a film called Nasty Girls 30. She has done hundreds of films and is one of the industry's premier "gonzo" girls, purportedly enjoying extreme abuse. Jollee tells her audience that she performed in a 21-man gangbang on her 21st birthday. She says she is looking forward to doing the same now with 50 men, although this number climbs to 65 on the set. "Cream pie" refers in the world of porn to men ejaculating on a woman's anus or vagina, rather than ejaculating into her mouth or on her body.
"I'll be banging fifty guys - fifty, fifty, fifty! Maybe more even. That'd be cool. So I'm like really excited."
She laughs and plays with her hair. "And it just so happens that all these guys are going to be coming IN me." She looks coyly at the camera. "In the ass and pussy," she grins, wrinkling her nose. "See I like it in the ass the best. I wanna find the biggest pervert and get him to suck all fifty loads out and spit it in my mouth." She reaches up and fiddles with her bangs. "That'd be so good. That'd be fucking hot. It'd be disgusting." She giggles. "I get off on that." She runs her fingers through her hair, fanning it out behind her.
"It's a big, big fantasy, always been a big fantasy of mine to be with more than one guy at a time. Many women have that fantasy" Her voice drops to a whisper. She wrinkles her nose and narrows her eyes. "You have all these men, and they all wanna fuck you, and they're all there, and it's just like, cock, holy shit. It's so good. So good. Now I'm getting wet," she complains, giggling. Her feet are up on the seat of her chair, and the camera pans down briefly to the exposed crotch of her jeans. She demurely pops her thumb in her mouth, still smiling, gazing at the camera.
"If you're watching this before the scene, you're in for a fucking treat. Each one of those motherfuckers is gonna, you know, it's gonna be the ride of their lives." She nods thoughtfully. "But, who knows," she throws her hands in the air, "maybe they'll fuck me up. Maybe they'll really, like, teach me a lesson." She throws a small smile at the camera. She scratches her knee absently. "We'll just have to wait and see. Maybe I'm not as insatiable as I think I am. We'll see. I'm excited."
She concedes that when it is over she will "look like shit" but will be "well fucked." The interviewer asks what condition her vagina and anus will be after having sex with that many men. She speaks of her body parts in the third person: "They can take it. They want it. They like it. They go back to size after. Pussy's tight. She always goes back to size." The degradation she endures has turned her body into something she no longer consciously recognizes as herself.
She talks briefly about her private life in the interview. She says that before she did gangbangs in films she once had sex with 12 men on a fire truck. She does not say how old she was at the time, but her remarks suggest she was a teenager. "It was so good," he says. "I will thank that man who took me there every day for the rest of my life. I still talk to him; he's a really good friend of mine. He's a pervert but I love perverts. I like free people."
Her enthusiasm, as she relates this story on the fire truck, momentarily fades. There is a brief tremor that crosses her face, an almost imperceptible sign of ambiguity or doubt. The fleeting impression when she falls out of character is that the experience of being taken to a fire house by a friend who is "a pervert" and having sex with 12 men on a truck was not sexy or exciting, that for a teenage girl the experience was perhaps not the result of being free or the product of sexual desire. She quickly snaps back into the pornographic facade. She says "I hope everyone gets off. I plan on cumming."
Copyright 2009 -- Nation Books: Reprinted with permission.
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, is a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute. His latest book is Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians.
The Rise of Gonzo Porn Is the Latest Sign of America's Cultural Apocalypse
By Chris Hedges, Nation Books
Posted on July 31, 2009, Printed on July 31, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141675/
I reported in my new book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle from the ringside of professional wrestling bouts at Madison Square Garden, from Las Vegas where I wrote about the pornographic film industry, from academic conferences held by positive psychologists -- who claim to be able to engineer happiness – and from the campuses of universities to chronicle our terrifying flight as a culture into a state of illusion. I looked at the array of mechanisms used to divert us from confronting the economic, political and moral collapse around us. I examined the fantasy that if we draw on our inner resources and strengths, if we realize that we are truly exceptional, we can have everything we desire.
The childish idea that we can always prevail, that reality is never an impediment to what we want, is the central motif of illusion peddled on popular talk shows, by the Christian Right, by Hollywood, in corporate retreats, by the news industry and by self-help gurus. Reality can always be overcome. The future will always be glorious. And held out to keep us amused and entertained are spectacles and celebrities who have become idealized versions of ourselves and who, we are assured, we can all one day become.
The cultural embrace of illusion, and the celebrity culture that has risen up around it, have accompanied the awful hollowing out of the state. We have shifted from a culture of production to a culture of consumption. We have been sold a system of casino capitalism, with its complicated and unregulated deals of turning debt into magical assets, to create fictional wealth for us and vast wealth for our elite. We have internalized the awful ethic of corporatism -- one built around the cult of the self and consumption as an inner compulsion -- to believe that living is about our own advancement and our own happiness at the expense of others. Corporations, behind the smoke screen, have ruthlessly dismantled and destroyed our manufacturing base and impoverished our working class. The free market became our god and government was taken hostage by corporations, the same corporations that entice us daily with illusions though the mass media, the entertainment industry and popular culture.
The more we sever ourselves from a literate, print-based world, a world of complexity and nuance, a world of ideas, for one informed by comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans and a celebration of violence the more we implode. We ask, like the wrestling fans or those who confuse love with pornography, to be fed lies. We demand lies. The skillfully manufactured images and slogans that flood the airwaves and infect our political discourse mask reality. And we do not protest. The lonely Cassandras who speak the truth about our misguided imperial wars, the global economic meltdown and the imminent danger of multiple pollutions that are destroying the eco-system that sustains the human species, are drowned out by arenas full of fans chanting "Slut! Slut! Slut!" or television audiences chanting "Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!" The worse reality becomes, the less a beleaguered population wants to hear about it and the more it distracts itself with squalid pseudo-events of celebrity breakdowns, gossip and trivia.
A culture that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion dies. And we are dying now. We will wake from our state of induced childishness, one where trivia and gossip pass for news and information, one where our goal is not justice by an elusive and unattainable happiness, to confront the stark limitations before us or we will continue our headlong retreat into fantasy. Those who do not grow up in times of despair and turmoil inevitably turn to demagogues and charlatans to entertain and reassure them. And these demagogues, as they have throughout history, lead the crowd, blinded and amused, towards despotism.
The following is an excerpt from Chapter II of Empire of Illusion, where Hedges attends an enormous porn convention in Las Vegas:
The largest users of internet porn, which is slowly draining away profits from magazines and DVD sales because so much of it is free, are between the ages of 12 and 17. And porn producers know their market is increasingly underage. "The age demographic has moved downwards, especially in the UK and Europe," explained Steve Honest, the European director of production for Bluebird Films. "Porn is the new rock and roll. Young people and women are embracing porn and making purchases. Porn targets the mid-teens to the mid-twenties and up."
There are some 13,000 porn films made in the United States a year. According to the Internet Filter Review, worldwide porn revenues, including in-room movies at hotels, sex clubs and the ever-expanding E-sex world, topped $97 billion in 2006. That's more than the revenues of the leading technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink. Annual sales in the United States are estimated at $ 10 billion or higher. There is no agency that does precise monitoring of the porn industry. And porn is very lucrative to some of the nation's largest corporations. General Motors, for example, owns DirectTV, which distributes over forty million streams of porn into American homes every month. AT&T Broadband and Comcast Cable are the currently biggest American companies accommodating porn users with The Hot Network, Adult Pay-Per-View and similarly themed services. AT&T and GM rake in approximately 80 percent of all porn dollars spent by consumers.
Ariana Jollee, 21, is sitting in a motel room, beside a particleboard desk and a bare white wall giving a pre-film interview for the DVD 65 Guy Cream Pie, a gangbang film produced in 2004 by Devil's Film. In the film she has sex with 65 men who stand in two lines, their pants unzipped, on either side of her. She is smiling at the camera. Jollee has sleek dark hair with bangs, a tribal armband tattoo around one bicep, and wears jeans and a loose black tank top. She has rounded arms, full cheeks and a slightly heavy chin. Jollee started doing porn in 2003 when she was 20 in a film called Nasty Girls 30. She has done hundreds of films and is one of the industry's premier "gonzo" girls, purportedly enjoying extreme abuse. Jollee tells her audience that she performed in a 21-man gangbang on her 21st birthday. She says she is looking forward to doing the same now with 50 men, although this number climbs to 65 on the set. "Cream pie" refers in the world of porn to men ejaculating on a woman's anus or vagina, rather than ejaculating into her mouth or on her body.
"I'll be banging fifty guys - fifty, fifty, fifty! Maybe more even. That'd be cool. So I'm like really excited."
She laughs and plays with her hair. "And it just so happens that all these guys are going to be coming IN me." She looks coyly at the camera. "In the ass and pussy," she grins, wrinkling her nose. "See I like it in the ass the best. I wanna find the biggest pervert and get him to suck all fifty loads out and spit it in my mouth." She reaches up and fiddles with her bangs. "That'd be so good. That'd be fucking hot. It'd be disgusting." She giggles. "I get off on that." She runs her fingers through her hair, fanning it out behind her.
"It's a big, big fantasy, always been a big fantasy of mine to be with more than one guy at a time. Many women have that fantasy" Her voice drops to a whisper. She wrinkles her nose and narrows her eyes. "You have all these men, and they all wanna fuck you, and they're all there, and it's just like, cock, holy shit. It's so good. So good. Now I'm getting wet," she complains, giggling. Her feet are up on the seat of her chair, and the camera pans down briefly to the exposed crotch of her jeans. She demurely pops her thumb in her mouth, still smiling, gazing at the camera.
"If you're watching this before the scene, you're in for a fucking treat. Each one of those motherfuckers is gonna, you know, it's gonna be the ride of their lives." She nods thoughtfully. "But, who knows," she throws her hands in the air, "maybe they'll fuck me up. Maybe they'll really, like, teach me a lesson." She throws a small smile at the camera. She scratches her knee absently. "We'll just have to wait and see. Maybe I'm not as insatiable as I think I am. We'll see. I'm excited."
She concedes that when it is over she will "look like shit" but will be "well fucked." The interviewer asks what condition her vagina and anus will be after having sex with that many men. She speaks of her body parts in the third person: "They can take it. They want it. They like it. They go back to size after. Pussy's tight. She always goes back to size." The degradation she endures has turned her body into something she no longer consciously recognizes as herself.
She talks briefly about her private life in the interview. She says that before she did gangbangs in films she once had sex with 12 men on a fire truck. She does not say how old she was at the time, but her remarks suggest she was a teenager. "It was so good," he says. "I will thank that man who took me there every day for the rest of my life. I still talk to him; he's a really good friend of mine. He's a pervert but I love perverts. I like free people."
Her enthusiasm, as she relates this story on the fire truck, momentarily fades. There is a brief tremor that crosses her face, an almost imperceptible sign of ambiguity or doubt. The fleeting impression when she falls out of character is that the experience of being taken to a fire house by a friend who is "a pervert" and having sex with 12 men on a truck was not sexy or exciting, that for a teenage girl the experience was perhaps not the result of being free or the product of sexual desire. She quickly snaps back into the pornographic facade. She says "I hope everyone gets off. I plan on cumming."
Copyright 2009 -- Nation Books: Reprinted with permission.
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, is a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute. His latest book is Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
The Man in the Mirror
The Man in the Mirror
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090713_the_man_in_the_mirror/
Posted on Jul 13, 2009
By Chris Hedges
In celebrity culture we destroy what we worship. The commercial exploitation of Michael Jackson’s death was orchestrated by the corporate forces that rendered Jackson insane. Jackson, robbed of his childhood and surrounded by vultures that preyed on his fears and weaknesses, was so consumed by self-loathing he carved his African-American face into an ever-changing Caucasian death mask and hid his apparent pedophilia behind a Peter Pan illusion of eternal childhood. He could not disentangle his public and his private self. He became a commodity, a product, one to be sold, used and manipulated. He was infected by the moral nihilism and personal disintegration that are at the core of our corporate culture. And his fantasies of eternal youth, delusions of majesty, and desperate, disfiguring quests for physical transformation were expressions of our own yearning. He was a reflection of us in the extreme.
His memorial service—a variety show with a coffin—had an estimated 31.1 million television viewers. The ceremony, which featured performances or tributes from Stevie Wonder, Brooke Shields and other celebrities, was carried live on 19 networks, including the major broadcast and cable news outlets. It was the final episode of the long-running Michael Jackson series. And it concluded with Jackson’s daughter, Paris, being prodded to stand in front of a microphone to speak about her father. Janet Jackson, before the girl could get a few words out, told Paris to “speak up.” As the child broke down, the adults around her adjusted the microphone so we could hear the sobs. The crowd clapped. It was a haunting echo of what destroyed her father.
The stories we like best are “real life” stories—early fame, wild success and then a long, bizarre and macabre emotional train wreck. O.J Simpson offered a tamer version of the same plot. So does Britney Spears. Jackson, by the end, was heavily in debt and had weathered a $22 million out-of-court settlement payment to Jordy Chandler, as well as seven counts of child sexual abuse and two counts of administering an intoxicating agent in order to commit a felony. We fed on his physical and psychological disintegration, especially since many Americans are struggling with their own descent into overwhelming debt, loss of status and personal disintegration.
The lurid drama of Jackson’s personal life meshed perfectly with the ongoing dramas on television, in movies and in the news. News thrives on “real life” stories, especially those involving celebrities. News reports on television are mini-dramas complete with a star, a villain, a supporting cast, a good-looking host and a dramatic, if often unexpected, ending. The public greedily consumed “news” about Jackson, especially in his exile and decline, which often outdid most works of fiction. In “Fahrenheit 451,” Ray Bradbury’s novel about a future dystopia, people spend most of the day watching giant television screens that show endless scenes of police chases and criminal apprehensions. Life, Bradbury understood, once it was packaged, scripted, given a narrative and filmed, became the most compelling form of entertainment. And Jackson was a great show. He deserved a great finale.
Those who created Jackson’s public persona and turned him into a piece of property, first as a child and finally as a corpse encased in a $15,000 gold-plated casket, are the agents, publicists, marketing people, promoters, script writers, television and movie producers, advertisers, video technicians, photographers, bodyguards, recording executives, wardrobe consultants, fitness trainers, pollsters, public announcers and television news personalities who create the vast stage of celebrity for profit. They are the puppet masters. No one achieves celebrity status, no cultural illusion is swallowed as reality, without these armies of cultural enablers and intermediaries. The producers at the Staples Center in Los Angeles made sure the 18,000 attendees and the television audience (even the BBC devoted three hours to the tribute) watched a funeral that was turned into another maudlin form of uplifting popular entertainment.
The memorial service for Jackson was a celebration of celebrity. There was the queasy sight of groups of children, including his own, singing over the coffin. Magic Johnson put in a plug for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Shields, fighting back tears, recalled how she and a 33-year-old Jackson—who always maintained that he was straight—broke into Elizabeth Taylor’s room the night before her last wedding to “get the first peek of the [wedding] dress.” Shields and Jackson, at Taylor’s wedding, then joked that they were “the mother and father of the bride.”
“Yes, it may have seemed very odd to the outside,” Shields said, “but we made it fun and we made it real.”
There were photo montages in which a shot of Jackson shaking hands with Nelson Mandela was immediately followed by one of him with Kermit the Frog. Fame reduces all of the famous to the same level. Fame is its own denominator. And every anecdote seemed to confirm that when you spend your life as a celebrity, you have no idea who you are.
We measure our lives by these celebrities. We seek to be like them. We emulate their look and behavior. We escape the messiness of real life through the fantasy of their stardom. We, too, long to attract admiring audiences for our grand, ongoing life movie. We try to see ourselves moving through our lives as a camera would see us, mindful of how we hold ourselves, how we dress, what we say. We invent movies that play inside our heads with us as stars. We wonder how an audience would react. Celebrity culture has taught us, almost unconsciously, to generate interior personal screenplays. We have learned ways of speaking and thinking that grossly disfigure the way we relate to the world and those around us. Neal Gabler, who has written wisely about this, argues that celebrity culture is not a convergence of consumer culture and religion so much as a hostile takeover of religion by consumer culture.
Jackson desperately feared growing old. He believed he could control race and gender. He transformed himself through surgery and perhaps female hormones from a brown-skinned African-American male to a chalk-faced androgynous ghoul with no clear sexual identity. And while he pushed these boundaries to the extreme, he did only what many Americans do. There were 12 million cosmetic plastic surgery procedures performed last year in the United States. They were performed because, in America, most human beings, rich and poor, famous and obscure, have been conditioned to view themselves as marketable commodities. They are objects, like consumer products. They have no intrinsic value. They must look fabulous and live on fabulous sets. They must remain young. They must achieve notoriety and money, or the illusion of it, to be a success. And it does not matter how they get there.
The moral nihilism of our culture licenses a dark voyeurism into other people’s humiliation, pain, weakness and betrayal. Education, building community, honesty, transparency and sharing are qualities that will see you, in a gross perversion of democracy and morality, ridiculed and voted off any reality show. Fellow competitors for prize money and a chance for fleeting fame elect to “disappear” the unwanted. In the final credits of the reality show “America’s Next Top Model,” a picture of the woman expelled during the episode vanishes from the group portrait on the screen. Those cast aside become, at least to the television audience, nonpersons. Celebrities who can no longer generate publicity, good or bad, vanish. Life, these shows teach, is a brutal world of unadulterated competition and constant quest for notoriety and attention. And life is about the personal humiliation of those who oppose us. Those who win are the best. Those who lose deserve to be erased. Those who fail, those who are ugly or poor, are belittled and mocked. Human beings are used, betrayed and discarded in a commodity culture, which is pretty much the story of Jackson’s life, although he experienced the equivalent of celebrity resurrection. This has been very good for his music sales and perhaps for his father’s new recording company, which Joe Jackson made sure to plug at public events after his son’s death. Compassion, competence, intelligence and solidarity are useless assets when human beings are commodities. Those who do not achieve celebrity status, who do not win the prize money or make millions in Wall Street firms, deserve their fate.
The cult of self, which Jackson embodied, dominates our culture. This cult shares within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. Jackson, from his phony marriages to his questionable relationships with young boys, had all these qualities. This is also the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. It is the celebration of image over substance.
We have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. It is this perverted ethic that gave us Wall Street banks and investment houses that willfully trashed the nation’s economy, stole money from tens of millions of small shareholders who had bought stocks to finance their retirement or the college expenses of their children. The heads of these corporations, like the winners on a reality television program who lied and manipulated others to succeed, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation and bonuses. The ethic of Wall Street is the ethic of celebrity.
The saturation coverage of Jackson’s death is an example of our collective flight into illusion. The obsession with the trivia of his life conceals the despair, meaninglessness and emptiness of our own lives. It deflects the moral questions arising from mounting social injustice, growing inequalities, costly imperial wars, economic collapse and political corruption. The wild pursuit of status, wealth and fame has destroyed our souls, as it destroyed Jackson, and it has destroyed our economy.
The fame of celebrities masks the identities of those who possess true power—corporations and the oligarchic elite. And as we sink into an economic and political morass, as we barrel toward a crisis that will create more misery than the Great Depression, we are controlled, manipulated and distracted by the celluloid shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave. The fantasy of celebrity culture is not designed simply to entertain. It is designed to drain us emotionally, confuse us about our identity, make us blame ourselves for our predicament, condition us to chase illusions of fame and happiness and keep us from fighting back. And in the end, that is all the Jackson coverage was really about, another tawdry and tasteless spectacle to divert a dying culture from the howling wolf at the gate.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090713_the_man_in_the_mirror/
Posted on Jul 13, 2009
By Chris Hedges
In celebrity culture we destroy what we worship. The commercial exploitation of Michael Jackson’s death was orchestrated by the corporate forces that rendered Jackson insane. Jackson, robbed of his childhood and surrounded by vultures that preyed on his fears and weaknesses, was so consumed by self-loathing he carved his African-American face into an ever-changing Caucasian death mask and hid his apparent pedophilia behind a Peter Pan illusion of eternal childhood. He could not disentangle his public and his private self. He became a commodity, a product, one to be sold, used and manipulated. He was infected by the moral nihilism and personal disintegration that are at the core of our corporate culture. And his fantasies of eternal youth, delusions of majesty, and desperate, disfiguring quests for physical transformation were expressions of our own yearning. He was a reflection of us in the extreme.
His memorial service—a variety show with a coffin—had an estimated 31.1 million television viewers. The ceremony, which featured performances or tributes from Stevie Wonder, Brooke Shields and other celebrities, was carried live on 19 networks, including the major broadcast and cable news outlets. It was the final episode of the long-running Michael Jackson series. And it concluded with Jackson’s daughter, Paris, being prodded to stand in front of a microphone to speak about her father. Janet Jackson, before the girl could get a few words out, told Paris to “speak up.” As the child broke down, the adults around her adjusted the microphone so we could hear the sobs. The crowd clapped. It was a haunting echo of what destroyed her father.
The stories we like best are “real life” stories—early fame, wild success and then a long, bizarre and macabre emotional train wreck. O.J Simpson offered a tamer version of the same plot. So does Britney Spears. Jackson, by the end, was heavily in debt and had weathered a $22 million out-of-court settlement payment to Jordy Chandler, as well as seven counts of child sexual abuse and two counts of administering an intoxicating agent in order to commit a felony. We fed on his physical and psychological disintegration, especially since many Americans are struggling with their own descent into overwhelming debt, loss of status and personal disintegration.
The lurid drama of Jackson’s personal life meshed perfectly with the ongoing dramas on television, in movies and in the news. News thrives on “real life” stories, especially those involving celebrities. News reports on television are mini-dramas complete with a star, a villain, a supporting cast, a good-looking host and a dramatic, if often unexpected, ending. The public greedily consumed “news” about Jackson, especially in his exile and decline, which often outdid most works of fiction. In “Fahrenheit 451,” Ray Bradbury’s novel about a future dystopia, people spend most of the day watching giant television screens that show endless scenes of police chases and criminal apprehensions. Life, Bradbury understood, once it was packaged, scripted, given a narrative and filmed, became the most compelling form of entertainment. And Jackson was a great show. He deserved a great finale.
Those who created Jackson’s public persona and turned him into a piece of property, first as a child and finally as a corpse encased in a $15,000 gold-plated casket, are the agents, publicists, marketing people, promoters, script writers, television and movie producers, advertisers, video technicians, photographers, bodyguards, recording executives, wardrobe consultants, fitness trainers, pollsters, public announcers and television news personalities who create the vast stage of celebrity for profit. They are the puppet masters. No one achieves celebrity status, no cultural illusion is swallowed as reality, without these armies of cultural enablers and intermediaries. The producers at the Staples Center in Los Angeles made sure the 18,000 attendees and the television audience (even the BBC devoted three hours to the tribute) watched a funeral that was turned into another maudlin form of uplifting popular entertainment.
The memorial service for Jackson was a celebration of celebrity. There was the queasy sight of groups of children, including his own, singing over the coffin. Magic Johnson put in a plug for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Shields, fighting back tears, recalled how she and a 33-year-old Jackson—who always maintained that he was straight—broke into Elizabeth Taylor’s room the night before her last wedding to “get the first peek of the [wedding] dress.” Shields and Jackson, at Taylor’s wedding, then joked that they were “the mother and father of the bride.”
“Yes, it may have seemed very odd to the outside,” Shields said, “but we made it fun and we made it real.”
There were photo montages in which a shot of Jackson shaking hands with Nelson Mandela was immediately followed by one of him with Kermit the Frog. Fame reduces all of the famous to the same level. Fame is its own denominator. And every anecdote seemed to confirm that when you spend your life as a celebrity, you have no idea who you are.
We measure our lives by these celebrities. We seek to be like them. We emulate their look and behavior. We escape the messiness of real life through the fantasy of their stardom. We, too, long to attract admiring audiences for our grand, ongoing life movie. We try to see ourselves moving through our lives as a camera would see us, mindful of how we hold ourselves, how we dress, what we say. We invent movies that play inside our heads with us as stars. We wonder how an audience would react. Celebrity culture has taught us, almost unconsciously, to generate interior personal screenplays. We have learned ways of speaking and thinking that grossly disfigure the way we relate to the world and those around us. Neal Gabler, who has written wisely about this, argues that celebrity culture is not a convergence of consumer culture and religion so much as a hostile takeover of religion by consumer culture.
Jackson desperately feared growing old. He believed he could control race and gender. He transformed himself through surgery and perhaps female hormones from a brown-skinned African-American male to a chalk-faced androgynous ghoul with no clear sexual identity. And while he pushed these boundaries to the extreme, he did only what many Americans do. There were 12 million cosmetic plastic surgery procedures performed last year in the United States. They were performed because, in America, most human beings, rich and poor, famous and obscure, have been conditioned to view themselves as marketable commodities. They are objects, like consumer products. They have no intrinsic value. They must look fabulous and live on fabulous sets. They must remain young. They must achieve notoriety and money, or the illusion of it, to be a success. And it does not matter how they get there.
The moral nihilism of our culture licenses a dark voyeurism into other people’s humiliation, pain, weakness and betrayal. Education, building community, honesty, transparency and sharing are qualities that will see you, in a gross perversion of democracy and morality, ridiculed and voted off any reality show. Fellow competitors for prize money and a chance for fleeting fame elect to “disappear” the unwanted. In the final credits of the reality show “America’s Next Top Model,” a picture of the woman expelled during the episode vanishes from the group portrait on the screen. Those cast aside become, at least to the television audience, nonpersons. Celebrities who can no longer generate publicity, good or bad, vanish. Life, these shows teach, is a brutal world of unadulterated competition and constant quest for notoriety and attention. And life is about the personal humiliation of those who oppose us. Those who win are the best. Those who lose deserve to be erased. Those who fail, those who are ugly or poor, are belittled and mocked. Human beings are used, betrayed and discarded in a commodity culture, which is pretty much the story of Jackson’s life, although he experienced the equivalent of celebrity resurrection. This has been very good for his music sales and perhaps for his father’s new recording company, which Joe Jackson made sure to plug at public events after his son’s death. Compassion, competence, intelligence and solidarity are useless assets when human beings are commodities. Those who do not achieve celebrity status, who do not win the prize money or make millions in Wall Street firms, deserve their fate.
The cult of self, which Jackson embodied, dominates our culture. This cult shares within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. Jackson, from his phony marriages to his questionable relationships with young boys, had all these qualities. This is also the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. It is the celebration of image over substance.
We have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. It is this perverted ethic that gave us Wall Street banks and investment houses that willfully trashed the nation’s economy, stole money from tens of millions of small shareholders who had bought stocks to finance their retirement or the college expenses of their children. The heads of these corporations, like the winners on a reality television program who lied and manipulated others to succeed, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation and bonuses. The ethic of Wall Street is the ethic of celebrity.
The saturation coverage of Jackson’s death is an example of our collective flight into illusion. The obsession with the trivia of his life conceals the despair, meaninglessness and emptiness of our own lives. It deflects the moral questions arising from mounting social injustice, growing inequalities, costly imperial wars, economic collapse and political corruption. The wild pursuit of status, wealth and fame has destroyed our souls, as it destroyed Jackson, and it has destroyed our economy.
The fame of celebrities masks the identities of those who possess true power—corporations and the oligarchic elite. And as we sink into an economic and political morass, as we barrel toward a crisis that will create more misery than the Great Depression, we are controlled, manipulated and distracted by the celluloid shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave. The fantasy of celebrity culture is not designed simply to entertain. It is designed to drain us emotionally, confuse us about our identity, make us blame ourselves for our predicament, condition us to chase illusions of fame and happiness and keep us from fighting back. And in the end, that is all the Jackson coverage was really about, another tawdry and tasteless spectacle to divert a dying culture from the howling wolf at the gate.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Aiding the World's Worst Dictators Only Makes the World More Evil
Tyrants are psychopaths. When they are supported, psychopathy is supported.
http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_14_01_2_coyne.pdf
With Friends Like These,
Who Needs Enemies?
Aiding the World’s Worst Dictators
CHRISTOPHER J. COYNE AND MATT E. RYAN
On April 2, 2008, the Zimbabwe Election Committee publicly confirmed
that President Robert Mugabe and his par ty, the Zimbabwe African
National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), had lost control of the
Parliament to the main opposition par ty, the Movement for Democratic Change,
and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai. At the time, Mugabe had been the leader of
Zimbabwe since 1980, first as the country’s prime minister (1980–87) and then as
president (1987–present). During his reign, he acquired a reputation as one of the
world’s most brutal dictators. The reputation was well deser ved because his govern-
ment engaged in a wide array of human rights violations (see Human Rights Watch
2007, 4, 10, 171–77). As one would expect from someone of Mugabe’s ilk, he
refused to respect the election results and cede his power. Instead, he and his
followers responded by arresting and violently brutalizing his opposition.
Despite claims of victor
Tsvangirai and his party, the ruling ZANU-PF
announced on April 4 that a runof f election would determine the winner. On May
2, among claims of vote fraud and manipulation, the Zimbabwe Election Committee
seconded the calls for a runof f between Mugabe and Tsvangirai. Although the runoff
did take place in late June, Tsvangirai was not present because he had been forced
to flee the country owing to threats against his life. His suppor ters were likewise
threatened by violence, imprisoned, or killed by Mugabe’s supporters. In late June
2008, Mugabe won the sham runoff, which in reality was a one-person race.
Leaders around the world quickly denounced Mugabe for his actions during the
election process. Yet, despite denouncing him and his brutality, governments of
developed countries have provided billions of dollars in aid (a combination of of ficial
development assistance [ODA] and militar y aid) to his government during his reign.
This aid has ironically contributed to his ability to stay in power, even though his
regime is the antithesis of liberal democracy and is characterized by widespread
corruption and brutality against Zimbabwe’s citizens, as illustrated by his actions in
the recent election.
Mugabe is not the only dictator to receive significant aid from the governments
of developed countries. Indeed, a consideration of the world’s worst dictators indi-
cates that world leaders, even while publicly condemning these dictators’ gross viola-
tions of basic civil, human, and political rights, have been generous with foreign aid
to the most brutal dictators. As in the case of Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the aid allows
these dictators to consolidate their positions, remain in power, and sustain their
brutal and corrupt methods. This assistance ultimately imposes significant costs on
ordinary citizens in the countries these dictators rule. As Mugabe’s case illustrates,
dictators tend to rule through brute force. They also make few, if any, investments in
their citizens and their countries. Therefore, citizens suffer not only through the
constant threat of physical violence, but also through continued economic stagnation
and underdevelopment.
In this article, we review and analyze the foreign aid delivered to the world’s top
living dictators. Also considered is why aid to these dictators fails to generate change
for the better. At least rhetorically, the governments of developed countries provide
aid to poor countries to facilitate development and movement toward liberal institu-
tions that protect basic rights. Despite these good intentions, aid has failed to gener-
ate sustainable change in the countries that the world’s worst dictators rule.
The tyrants we consider are the worst of the worst. They are corrupt and engage
in gross violations of basic civil, property, and political rights. They rule through
violence and are subject to few, if any, constraints on their behavior. As such, they
impose significant costs on the citizens of the countries they rule and provide few, if
any, benefits. Fur ther, even though leaders of developed countries around the world
are ver y aware of these regimes’ brutal and oppressive nature and speak out strongly
against their actions, they continue to send development assistance and militar y aid
to them. This aid not only rewards the dictators’ behavior, but freezes the status quo
and prevents change. If the governments of developed countries are truly committed
to spreading liberal values and institutions (that is, economic, social, and political
institutions), an important step in doing so is to stop providing aid to the world’s
worst dictators.1
Calls for increased foreign aid have long been motivated by a desire to generate
change in economic, social, and political institutions, with the related goal of spread-
ing liberal values. Most recently, U.S. president George W. Bush stated: “[I]t is the
policy of the United States to seek and suppor t the growth of democratic movements
and institutions in ever y nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny
in our world.”2 Governments and international organizations around the world (for
example, the International Monetar y Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations,
and regional development banks) voice similar suppor t for the spread of liberal
democracy and freedom. Despite this rhetoric, deliver y of foreign aid to the world’s
worst dictators has instead actually undercut the goal of spreading liberal values and
institutions. Instead of making the world safe for liberalism, the provision of aid has
made many countries safe for autocracy.
We begin by considering the ODA and military aid that members of the Organi-
zation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assis-
tance Committee (DAC) provide to the worst dictators in the world. The DAC is the
main body through which OECD members interact with developing countries. It
allows bilateral donors to coordinate their assistance to developing countries in order
to maximize the return on those ef for ts. Not all OECD members belong to the DAC.
The committee currently has twenty-three members, including the European Com-
mission, which holds full membership rights on the committee, although it is not a
member state. All committee members except the European Commission are members
of the OECD, and the World Bank classified each of these countries as a “high-income
countr y” in 2006. Table 1 lists the DAC members as well as their dates of membership.
We focus on the DAC because it includes governments from developed
countries around the world. These governments are typically both the strongest
advocates, at least rhetorically, of the spread of liberal values and institutions as well
as the largest aid presence within these developing nations.
The general goals of DAC efforts include focusing on “how international devel-
opment cooperation contributes to the capacity of developing countries to par tici-
pate in the global economy, and the capacity of people to overcome pover ty and
par ticipate fully in their societies.”3 Along these lines, the DAC seeks to foster a wide
array of rights (civil, political, and so forth), equality of the sexes, political par ticipa-
tion, economic development, and pover ty reduction. On the face of it, these goals
seem noble. However, DAC members are undermining their organization’s broader
goals by providing aid to the world’s worst dictators.
To compile a list of dictators, we utilized Parade magazine’s annual list of the
“world’s worst dictators.” A dictator is defined as a head of state who cannot be
removed from power through the legal system. These rankings are based on a variety
of factors, including the protection of human rights, individual as well as civil and
media freedoms, the right to a fair trial, freedom to criticize the government, and
freedom to choose elected representatives. Also taken into account is the brutality
dictators use against citizens and political opponents (Wallechinsky 2006). We com-
bined the lists for 2006 and 2007 for a total of twenty-three dictators, although, of
course, there is much overlap between the two years.
Table 1
DAC Members and Year of Membership
DAC Member Member Since
Australia 1966
Austria 1965
Belgium 1961
Canada 1961
Denmark 1963
Finland 1975
France 1961
Germany 1961
Greece 1999
Ireland 1985
Italy 1961
Japan 1961
Luxembourg 1992
Netherlands 1961
New Zealand 1973
Nor way 1962
Portugal Joined in 1961, withdrew in 1974,
and rejoined in 1991
Spain 1991
Sweden 1965
Switzerland 1968
United Kingdom 1961
United States 1961
Commission of the European Communities 1961
Although one might take issue with certain aspects of the methodology used in
the annual Parade sur vey, it would be dif ficult to argue that the dictators listed are
not among the worst in the world. Further, we are not concerned with the ordinal
relationship between the dictators presented by Parade; number five may or may not
be a “worse dictator” than number fifteen, however judged, but both names are of
equal value to us. We are simply interested in an independent listing of the world’s
worst dictators to utilize for our analysis.
Table 2 lists the ODA that all DAC members have provided to dictators
during their respective reigns. We consider net disbursements as well as total
commitments. Detailed data descriptions and sources for these categories appear
in appendix 1. Net disbursements provide one measure of assistance to date,
whereas commitments provide an indication of continued future suppor t. The
commitments indicate that the governments of developed counties, besides having
assisted the world’s worst dictators in the past, plan to continue to suppor t them
in the future as well. For each dictator, the ODA figure reflects the total amount
of funding received from DAC members from the year he initially assumed power
through 2006. As table 2 indicates, DAC members supplied in total nearly $105
billion in net disbursements and made almost $144 billion in total commitments
to the world’s worst dictators.
Table 3 presents a subset of the development and militar y aid provided to the
listed dictators specifically by the United States. The U.S. government has been
extremely vocal in condemning the worst dictators’ practices. This rhetoric has only
sharpened with the broader “war on terror,” the Dar fur tragedy, and the aforemen-
tioned elections in Zimbabwe. However, despite claims of support for liberal values
and institutions, the U.S. government continues to provide significant aid to these
dictators. As table 3 indicates, the United States has provided in total nearly $36
billion in net disbursements and almost $53 billion in total commitments to these
men. Fur ther, it has provided more than $46 billion in militar y aid. Of this total, the
greater part has been given to Egypt and Pakistan for strategic purposes. One con-
sequence of this militar y aid is that it has allowed two of the world’s worst dictators
to consolidate their positions and remain in power. Other dictators on our list have
received much less militar y aid, but given their reliance on brutality and oppression
to remain in power, any positive amount of militar y aid imposes some cost on the
citizens of the countr y and its region. Unfor tunately, data on militar y aid from all
DAC countries to the world’s worst dictators are not available. The amount of U.S.
provision of such aid provides a lower bound, however, and, if anything, one would
expect total militar y aid from DAC members to be greater than this amount.
Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir
To shed light on the type of dictators being supported by DAC aid, we consider in
detail the case of Omar al-Bashir, the current president of Sudan. We focus on him
because he has many of the characteristics of all the other dictators on the Parade list.
He is corrupt and relies on violence against both political opponents and citizens in
general to maintain his position of power (Human Rights Watch 2007, 158–64).
Moreover, although the al-Bashir government’s methods are widely known, it has
received significant aid from the governments of developed countries.
Sudan has a long histor y of war and conflict, and this pattern continued with
al-Bashir’s rise to power. Before becoming president of Sudan, he had a career in the
Table 2
Total DAC Of ficial Development Assistance (ODA, 2006$, millions):
From Year Dictator Assumed Power Through 2006
Countr y Dictator
Year, Power
Assumed*
ODA, Net
Disbursements
ODA, Total
Commitments
Belarus Aleksandr
Lukashenko
1994 71.9 79.3
Burma
(Myanmar)
Than Shwe 1992 1,141.2 1,296.4
Cameroon Paul Biya 1982 9,341.6 11,811.1
China Hu Jintao 2002 6,802.5 10,947.8
Cuba Fidel Castro 1959–2008 865.7 796.5
Egypt Hosni Mubarak 1981 41,715.0 60,592.6
Equatorial
Guinea
Teodoro Obiang
Nguema
1979 522.9 415.1
Eritrea Isayas Afewerki 1991 1,661.7 1,639.4
Ethiopia Meles Zenawi 1995 7,540.6 8,128.9
Iran Sayyid Ali Khamenei 1989 1,840.9 2,108.0
Laos Boungnang Vorachith 2001–2006 1,040.6 1,103.0
Libya Muammar al-Qaddafi 1969 176.8 170.9
Nor th Korea Kim Jong-il 1994 750.7 890.9
Pakistan Per vez Musharraf 1999–2008 5,579.0 12,765.8
Russia Vladimir Putin 1999 NA NA
Saudi Arabia King Abdullah 1995 143.0 163.1
Sudan Omar al-Bashir 1989 6,981.3 7,003.5
Swaziland King Mswati III 1986 416.4 471.5
Syria Bashar al-Assad 2000 253.7 653.5
Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov 1990–2006 210.1 242.9
Uzbekistan Islam Karimov 1989 1,474.8 2,082.4
Vietnam Tran Duc Luong 1997–2006 9,839.8 14,064.0
Zimbabwe Rober t Mugabe 1980 6,252.7 6,645.7
*
Dictator still in power unless ending date is provided.
Table 3
Total U.S. Of ficial Development Assistance and Military Assistance
(2006$, millions): Year Dictator Assumed Power Through 2006
Country Dictator
Year,
Power
Assumed*
U.S. Net
Disbursements
U.S. Total
Commitments
Militar y
Assistance
Belarus Aleksandr
Lukashenko
1994 6.2 25.6 1.1
Burma
(Myanmar)
Than Shwe 1992 38.3 62.6 1.5
Cameroon Paul Biya 1982 385.3 513.9 34.0
China Hu Jintao 2002 106.2 165.1 —
Cuba Fidel Castro 1959–2008 54.1 63.0 5.5
Egypt Hosni Mubarak 1981 25,075.2 39,099.8 44,283.0
Equatorial
Guinea
Teodoro
Obiang
Nguema
1979 15.4 16.9 3.3
Eritrea Isayas Afewerki 1991 524.8 519.4 24.3
Ethiopia Meles Zenawi 1995 2,591.7 3,018.2 40.2
Iran Sayyid Ali
Khamenei
1989 34.4 16.0 —
Laos Boungnang
Vorachith
2001–2006 35.0 36.8 —
Libya Muammar al-
Qaddafi
1969 26.2 26.4 2.0
Nor th Korea Kim Jong-il 1994 386.2 457.5 —
Pakistan Per vez
Musharraf
1999–2008 2,128.03 3,644.3 1,328.4
Russia Vladimir Putin 1999 NA NA 5.8
Saudi Arabia King Abdullah 1995 1.3 1.2 0.3
Sudan Omar al-Bashir 1989 2,714.8 2,969.4 318.8
Swaziland King Mswati III 1986 144.7 120.0 2.2
Syria Bashar al-Assad 2000 1.1 3.3 —
Turkmenistan Saparmurat
Niyazov
1990–2006 140.3 174.1 10.8
Uzbekistan Islam Karimov 1989 409.8 537.4 66.7
Vietnam Tran Duc
Luong
1997–2006 205.9 381.1 0.1
Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe 1980 854.9 988.3 9.0
*
Dictator still in power unless ending date is provided.
Sudanese military. Following a bloodless coup in 1989, he named himself chairman
of the fifteen-member Revolutionar y Command Council and signed a decree sus-
pending the Constitution and dismissing the country’s government. Then in the
name of national stability came the dissolution of all political parties and a ban against
all protests and demonstrations (Anderson 1999, 3–8; O’Ballance 2000, 165). In
1993, the Revolutionar y Command Council was dissolved, and al-Bashir was named
president.
Following his rise to power, al-Bashir moved to implement a radical Islamic
agenda influenced largely by Hassan al-Turabi, leader of the National Islamic Front.
Among the many laws passed was a mandatory six weeks of military training, which
includes indoctrination into radical Islam. Al-Bashir also implemented a penal code
that includes public flogging, amputations, and the death penalty. Women were
publicly beaten for violating strict dress codes. Western art, music, and other cultural
products were banned. In 1995, following a decree banning all alcohol, all medicines
containing alcohol were also banned, including drugs used to combat malaria, result-
ing in an epidemic of the disease (Wallechinsky 2006, 17).
The conflict in Sudan predates al-Bashir and has been caused mainly by ethnic
and religious dif ferences. The northern par t of the countr y is primarily Arab and
Muslim, and the southern par t is mainly African, Christian, and animist. Important
identity issues regarding the perception of what it means to be “Arab” also separate
the eastern and western parts of the countr y (de Waal 2005, 2007). Even within these
general categories, there is great diversity. For example, one census indicated fifty
different ethnic groups and 114 different languages in Sudan (Wallechinsky 2006, 9).
This ethnic and religious diversity is often noted as the cause of continued
conflict in the region. Although it is a source of tension, the broader problem is the
presence of weak and dysfunctional political institutions that fail to protect property
rights and instead engage in gross violations of those rights.4 The result has been
numerous wars, including two civil wars from 1955 to 1972 and from 1983 to 2005.
The onset of the second civil war weakened the central government and allowed
al-Bashir to take control.
Since assuming power, al-Bashir has done his part to continue the tradition of
conflict by exacerbating ethnic and religious differences. He took power amid an
ongoing war in southern Sudan between non-Muslim rebels and government troops.
During the war, the government brutalized the country’s citizens, prohibited the use
of local languages, and confiscated citizens’ land, relocating citizens to “peace vil-
lages,” where men were forced to be circumcised and children to attend Quranic
schools. Some obser vers claimed that the government military used citizens as hu-
man shields during the conflict. When government military recruitment numbers
began to drop, al-Bashir implemented a draft, making all males between the ages of
4. Easterly 2001a shows that good institutions, which protect against expropriation,
overcome the problems that ethnic fractionalization poses for economic development.
Eighteen and thirty eligible. Many recruits were physically dragged from their homes
and forced to join the government army (Wallechinsky 2006, 26).
In 1996, al-Bashir organized a sham election, using the ongoing war in the
south as an excuse to hand-select representatives for the region and restrict the
number of candidates allowed to compete in the election. The result of the election,
as one would expect after such manipulation, was a landslide victor y for al-Bashir. In
1999, he and al-Turabi had a falling out. Tension had always existed between them as
they vied for control and influence over the government, and in 1999 al-Turabi tried
to partner with one of the rebel groups against al-Bashir, who responded by having
him detained and placed under house arrest (Johnson 2003, 107–9; Wallechinsky
2006, 27–28). Once it was revealed to the public that al-Turabi had partnered with a
rebel group he had previously denounced, he lost his credibility and influence on
policy in Sudan (Johnson 2003, 108). While these events unfolded, the country’s
civil war raged on.
In 2003, peace talks began between the rebels and the government. The talks
continued through 2004, and a formal peace agreement was announced in 2005. The
peace, however, was short-lived. In 2003, while peace negotiations were being held
to end the civil war, another conflict was brewing in the western part of the countr y.
Even though al-Bashir’s regime received significant aid from the governments
of developed countries around the world, the average citizen in these countries was
unaware of Sudan’s histor y and of the current events unfolding there. This condition
changed in 2003 with the onset of the Dar fur crisis, which received global attention.
Although global leaders and the media called for an end to the humanitarian crisis,
they paid little attention to Omar al-Bashir and his role in the crisis.
Dar fur is located in the western part of Sudan. The British, who conquered
Sudan in the late 1800s, allowed Dar fur to remain independent until 1916, when
they invaded the region and merged it with Sudan (Prunier 2005, 8–24). The British
paid little attention to the Dar fur region, however, and the area’s people were
politically and economically marginalized. This marginalization continued after inde-
pendence as the Sudanese government not only neglected the region, but also used it
to house rebels fighters who engaged in battles with neighboring Libya and Chad
(Flint and De Waal 2005, 12–16; Prunier 2005, 42–47).
Drought and famine that had begun in the mid-1970s and continued for dec-
ades had a devastating impact on the region. Besides causing the deaths of tens of
thousands of inhabitants, the drought led Arab tribes to move into an area tradition-
ally occupied by non-Arab tribes (Wallechinsky 2006, 31), which in turn led to
increased conflicts over scarce natural resources. The Sudanese government contrib-
uted to these conflicts by actively seeking to undermine traditional mechanisms of
dispute resolution by “deliberate manipulation of the tribal administrative system to
augment the power of some groups at the expense of others” (De Waal 2007, 29).
Over the course of Dar fur’s history, numerous rebel groups have emerged in
the region. By 2003, two dominant rebel groups existed there: the Justice and
Equality Movement and the Sudanese Liberation Army (Flint and De Waal 2005,
70–73, 93–96). These groups accused al-Bashir’s government of neglecting Dar fur
and sought to gain control of the region.
Al-Bashir responded with a military campaign against these groups, including
bombing and ground attacks by the government-suppor ted Janjaweed militia
(Flint and De Waal 2005, 101–11). During these attacks, the Janjaweed were
responsible for the major human rights violations—including tor ture, murder,
and rape—repor ted by the mass media around the world (International Commis-
sion of Inquir y on Dar fur 2005). In addition to using physical violence against
Sudanese citizens, the Janjaweed also destroyed schools, houses, and the few
remaining sources of food and water in the region—all part of the Sudanese
government’s strategy to starve the opposition (Flint and De Waal 2005,
111–15). It is estimated that the war caused the deaths of approximately 180,000
people, and millions were driven from their homes into refugee camps (Flint and
De Waal 2005, 111; Wallechinsky 2006, 31).
During the conflict, al-Bashir’s government engaged in an active program to
suppress all public information regarding the government’s attacks on its citizens.
Domestic journalists were arrested for reporting negative stories, and international
journalists lost their access to the country. Human rights investigators and persons
af filiated with other nongovernmental organizations were expelled from the country
or denied visas to enter (Flint and De Waal 2005, 115–17).
Starting in 2002, the African Union facilitated peace talks between the rebel
groups and the Sudanese government. After numerous failed negotiations, a formal
peace agreement was signed in May 2006. However, the situation in Dar fur is
extremely fragile for several reasons. Only one of the rebel groups, the Sudanese
Liberation Army, signed the peace agreement. Further, the government-backed Jan-
jaweed forces are still in the region, and pockets of conflict have continued to
emerge. Finally, humanitarian issues associated with drought and star vation remain
real and significant. Aid agencies attempting to remedy these problems have limited
access and security in the region.
In addition to engaging in brutality against his own citizens, al-Bashir also has
connections to known terrorist organizations. The government reportedly has
provided sanctuary to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad, among other terrorist
groups (Wallechinsky 2006, 23). Al-Bashir also hosted Osama bin-Laden in Sudan in
the mid-1990s. In 1993, the U.S. government placed Sudan on its list of states that
sponsor international terrorism, where it remains to the present (O’Ballance 2000,
179–80).
The governments of developed countries have tried to have it both ways with
al-Bashir’s government: on the one hand, they have publicly denounced his govern-
ment and his actions against his own people, but, on the other, they have sent billions
of dollars of aid to his government. As table 2 indicates, total DAC development
assistance to al-Bashir from 1989 to 2006 amounted to nearly $7 billion in net
disbursements. Table 3 indicates that approximately 40 percent ($2.7 billion) of that
total development assistance has come from the U.S. government. Fur ther, DAC
members have made ODA commitments to Sudan for another $7 billion. Besides
ODA, the United States has also provided hundreds of millions of dollars in militar y
aid to Sudan, even though al-Bashir has used the countr y’s military against certain
segments of the Sudanese population.
Aid to Sudan’s various brutal, autocratic governments has a long history that
extends back even to the years before al-Bashir’s rise to power. During the 1980s, the
U.S. government sent hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Sudanese govern-
ment even while it violently persecuted the southern minority (Anderson 1999,
47–54). Likewise, the World Bank lent $800 million to the northern government
during the 1983–93 period. Since 1993, the Sudanese government has been the
world’s largest debtor to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Total aid to this government between 1960 and 2002 is estimated at $23 billion
(Easterly 2006b, 303; Wallechinsky 2006, 9).
In analyses of Sudanese politics and conflict, political scientists have put forth
two general theories to explain its situation (see De Waal 2007, 32–33). The “brute
cause” paradigm focuses on individual accountability and holds that those running
the government are criminals and thugs. This view concludes that bad leaders have
been the main cause of conflict and economic stagnation in Sudan. In contrast, the
“turbulent state” paradigm focuses on how Sudan’s economic, political, and social
institutions continue to generate one bad government after another. This theory
holds that changing leaders will not have a major impact unless coupled with funda-
mental structural changes in the country’s institutions.
Our goal here is not to adjudicate between these competing theories, but
instead to make a more fundamental point. No matter which paradigm is correct—
and each may be correct to some degree—developed countries have provided signifi-
cant aid that has actually allowed bad institutions to perpetuate themselves and brutal
thugs to take full advantage of what those perverse institutions have to offer.
It is difficult to argue that the significant aid provided to the Sudanese govern-
ment has had any positive impact. The country is still ruled by a brutal dictator, and
its political institutions remain unreformed. Fur ther, the government remains on the
U.S. State Department’s list of countries that sponsor international terrorism. To the
extent that peace exists, it is extremely fragile. Income per capita in 1994 was below
the level at Sudan’s independence in 1956. Further, life expectancy remains extreme-
ly low, as do investments in basic infrastructure (see Easterly 2006b, 305).
Although the specifics vary, the case of al-Bashir and Sudan is representative of
the other dictators on our list. In all cases, the dictator’s regime is characterized by a
mix of corruption, violence, and violations of basic rights. Nonetheless, he and the
world’s other worst dictators have received significant amounts of development
assistance and militar y aid. Perhaps worse, DAC members have committed billions
of dollars in future aid to the dictators on our list.
Can Foreign Aid Buy a Liberal Society?
Debate continues about the impor tance of foreign aid for economic and institu-
tional development. On the one side are those who call for drastic increases of aid
to fund a “big push” investment so that poor countries can escape the poverty trap
and reform economic, political, and social institutions for the better (Cassen 1986;
Riddell 1987; Sachs 2005; Collier and Hoef fler 2007). On the other side are those
who are skeptical that increased aid for economic development and reforms can
help in creating liberal institutions (Boone 1996; Bauer 2000; Easterly 2001b,
2006b). In addition to this academic debate, foreign aid is a central part of many
developed countries’ foreign policy. In 2005, countries around the world renewed
their commitment to significant reductions in global poverty through increased aid
as specified in the Millennium Development Goals, a new global effort to achieve
certain baseline goals by the year 2015, to be achieved by increased amounts
of aid.
Arguments that focus on the quantity of aid often overlook the issues of incen-
tives and allocation (Easterly 2001b, 2006b). Recipients of aid must have the incen-
tive to use the aid specifically for economic development and institutional reform.
Likewise, those who distribute aid must know how to allocate it so that it will be used
ef fectively. Absent the proper incentives and information, aid will be either ineffective
or counterproductive, no matter what the quantity.
It follows that countries whose leaders have weak incentives to use aid to achieve
the desired reforms or lack the knowledge to allocate aid effectively are likely to be
bad investments. Although this logic may seem straightfor ward, the countries that
appear to be the worst investments still in practice receive significant aid, as illustrated
in the case of Sudan and al-Bashir.
A common argument for the provision of aid to corrupt and dysfunctional
governments is that precisely these countries need aid the most to strengthen politi-
cal institutions. This argument holds that aid used to reform political institutions will
ultimately contribute to economic development. For example, Jeffrey Sachs contends
that African countries do not have bad governments considering their level of income
(2005, 311–14). In other words, the governments of African countries are no worse,
on average, than governments in other countries with similar levels of income. Sachs
calls for increased foreign aid to bolster development and income, which, he argues,
will lead to better government.
This line of reasoning fails to recognize, however, that the worst governments
typically have no incentive to reform. These governments tend to face few constraints
on their behavior and have little desire to establish mechanisms of accountability
because doing so would reduce the scope of their power. Hence, institutional
reforms fail to get of f the ground. In fact, where per verse incentives exist, aid is likely
to make the situation worse by providing continued support for dictators while
strengthening the status quo.
There is little empirical evidence that foreign aid improves political or policy
environments. In a well-known study of the connection between foreign aid and
growth, Craig Burnside and David Dollar (2000) conclude that aid’s impact on
growth is directly dependent on the incentives created by existing institutions. They
find that aid can benefit growth in countries with sound policies, but it does not
contribute in countries with poor political institutions and policies. This finding
indicates that aid is beneficial for growth only after political authorities adopt policies
conducive to growth. At the time of this article’s publication, the aid community
embraced its findings and shifted the focus to improving “governance” and the
adoption of good policies so that subsequent aid would be effective.
However, subsequent analysis has shown that the results of the Burnside
and Dollar study are fragile when the data set is expanded (Easterly, Levine, and
Roodman 2004) and when alternative definitions of growth, aid, and good policy are
used (Easterly 2003a). These more recent studies call into question aid’s effectiveness
for generating growth in good policy environments as well.
Other studies question the impact of aid on political institutions. For example,
Stephen Knack (2004a) finds that more aid lowers the quality of bureaucracy and
leads to more violations of the law. The underlying cause is that aid creates rents,
which foster corruption and illegal activity. Employing different measures of democ-
racy and aid intensity, Knack (2004b) finds that aid does not promote democracy.
Simeon Djankov, Jose Montalvo, and Marta Reynal-Querol (2007) find that high
levels of aid resulted in setbacks to democracy during the period from 1960 to 1999.
In sum, the empirical evidence indicates that foreign aid by itself does not lead
to improvements in development or political institutions. It fails for several reasons.
The first pertains to difficulties associated with monitoring the aid. Once aid is
delivered to a corrupt government, it is extremely difficult to monitor how it is
dispersed. As an example of this logic, consider the case of U.S. assistance to Nor th
Korea. In his January 2002 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush
listed North Korea as a member of the “Axis of Evil.” Further, as noted in table 2,
Kim Jong-il ranks among the world’s worst dictators. Nevertheless, the U.S. govern-
ment continues to provide aid (energy and humanitarian aid) to North Korea. In
theory, this aid is supposed to benefit the citizens of North Korea, who suffer under
Kim Jong-il. It is delivered directly to the North Korean government, however, even
though this government does not allow donors or aid agencies to operate inside the
country or to track the flow of their donations. We have good reason to believe that a
substantial portion of the aid never actually reaches its intended recipients.
Along these lines, a U.S. government report indicated that “[a] number of
sources have presented evidence that not all the food assistance going to North
Korea is reaching its intended recipients. . . . The numerous reports of donated food
being sold (at price levels far higher than the official, government-controlled prices)
in farmers’ markets are widely assumed to be signs that officials are stealing and
selling some of the aid for their own profit” (Manyin and Jun 2003, 15). If basic
humanitarian aid cannot be delivered effectively, it is easy to imagine how aid
intended to generate more complex outcomes, such as institutional reforms, is un-
likely to achieve the donor’s desired ends.
In general, aid is effective only to the extent that it reaches the intended
recipients. When it is delivered to corrupt governments to disperse to those in need,
we have little reason to believe that it will be effective. Like Nor th Korea, many
corrupt governments refuse to allow donor agencies and nongovernmental organiza-
tions into their country to administer and monitor the distribution of aid. With no
check on the recipient government, members of the government will steal the aid,
and ordinary citizens will continue to suffer.
A second reason why aid fails to generate institutional reform and economic
development relates to negative unintended consequences. Although the delivery of
aid may be grounded in the best of intentions, in reality it often makes things worse
and has significant negative impacts. Allan Drazen (1999) argues that where aid is
ineffective, the recipient government’s incompetence may be blamed. Continuing to
provide aid to such regimes makes reforms less likely because it contributes to the
inef fective regime’s continuation in power. He concludes that denying aid to such
governments is more likely to generate change in the future.
Besides solidifying the status quo, aid has other potential negative unintended
consequences. For example, Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler (2007) explore the
connection between foreign aid and militar y expenditures. In their model, a govern-
ment’s decision about its military expenditures is a function of aid received and the
level of spending by neighboring countries. These authors conclude that foreign aid
has the negative unintended consequence of fostering regional arms races. This effect
highlights aid’s fungibility. Provision of aid in one area may result in a transfer of
government expenditures to other areas. For example, food aid increases the amount
of money that governments can shift from the provision of food to expenditure in
other areas, including military outlays. This transfer may result in negative unintend-
ed outcomes.
A third reason why aid fails has to do with the nature of donor agencies
(Easterly 2003b, 2006a). Aid agencies are bureaucracies that suf fer from per verse
incentives and limited information of how to allocate resources ef fectively. Absent
profit-and-loss calculations, success tends to be measured by the size of the budget,
number of bureaucrats, and amount of aid dispersed. Hence, aid agencies have
little incentive to be “tough” against corrupt governments because they have an
interest in dispensing aid in order to exhaust their budgets. Along these lines, a
World Bank report on foreign aid notes that “[d]isbursements (of loans and grants)
were easily calculated and tended to become a critical output measure for develop-
ment institutions. Agencies saw themselves as being primarily in the business of
dishing out money” (1998, 23). Because aid recipients are aware of this situation,
they tend to renege on reform commitments or simply ignore the aid community’s
requests.
Problems arise not only within, but also across donor agencies. Each agency is
driven by its own agenda and goals. Although the agencies are supposed to work
together toward the common, overarching goal of economic and institutional devel-
opment, in reality they often pursue conflicting goals and agendas. Each agency is
driven by local politics, which shapes and influences its behavior. As William Easterly
notes, “[c]oordination is impossible under the current aid system, when every agency
reports to different bosses who have dif ferent agendas” (2006b, 191–92). Likewise,
a report by Transparency International (2006) on humanitarian aid concludes that a
fundamental problem in delivery of aid is that the humanitarian system contains so
many different bureaucratic layers and organizations (numerous governments, aid
agencies, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and so forth)
that it is extremely difficult to establish and maintain effective accountability within
agencies and across individuals.
Yet another argument proffered in favor of supplying aid to dictators is that it
allows the governments of developed countries to achieve other foreign-policy objec-
tives. In such instances, governments use dictators as middlemen to achieve broader
goals. For example, the U.S. government par tnered with Pakistani militar y dictator
and Islamic fundamentalist General Zia-ul-Huq in the 1980s in their Cold War ef fort
against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In this case, the U.S. government provided
aid to Zia, and in return he funneled U.S. weapons and monetary aid to the rebels
fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The argument might be made that
providing aid to Zia was far from an ideal solution, but still necessary to achieve the
U.S. goals in the broader Cold War. As mentioned previously, the U.S. government
likewise continues to provide significant amounts of military aid to Pakistan and
Egypt for similar strategic purposes.
Although provision of aid to dictators can contribute to broader goals, this line
of reasoning overlooks the real harms caused by supporting foreign dictators, even to
achieve other objectives. The U.S. partnership with Zia had several unintended con-
sequences, both in Pakistan and in its region. As Benazir Bhutto noted, “The United
States, fixated on defeating and humiliating the Soviets in Afghanistan, embraced Zia
and the ISI [Inter-Ser vices Intelligence] as surrogates; the United States’ attention
was riveted exclusively on Afghanistan, disregarding the war’s impact on internal
political factors in Pakistan” (2008, 193). The result was a political instability that
has continued there to this day. The U.S. inter vention in Afghanistan also had
negative unintended consequences, including the rise of the Taliban and the global
proliferation of U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles (Coyne and Ryan 2008).
In sum, the answer to the question “Can foreign aid buy a liberal society?” is a
resounding no. Aid agencies, policymakers, and academics have little knowledge of
how to fix the wide array of problems that plague the world’s poorest countries. The
existing empirical evidence indicates that the provision of foreign aid is not effective
in generating sustainable economic development and institutional change. In stark
contrast, aid can prevent changes in the status quo and even make things worse. The
arguments against provision of aid are even stronger for countries ruled by the
world’s worst dictators. These countries are plagued by the same problems as all
other poor countries, but they are also ruled by corrupt and brutal dictators. No
good arguments justify supporting these individuals’ behavior with developmental
and military aid.
Conclusion
In criticizing the aid community’s rhetoric, development economist P. T. Bauer
notes, “To call official wealth transfers ‘aid’ promotes an unquestioning attitude. It
disarms criticism, obscures realities, and prejudges results. Who can be against aid to
the less fortunate?” (2000, 42). Nowhere is Bauer’s critique more relevant than in
the continued delivery of foreign aid to the world’s worst dictators. We have little
evidence that this aid does any good, but clear indications that it causes real harm.
Never theless, the governments of developed countries continue to provide this aid to
the worst of the worst.
The bottom line is that if developed countries’ goal is to foster liberal economic,
political, and social institutions abroad, they should stop providing aid to the world’s
worst dictators. Development assistance and militar y aid solidify dictators in their
position of power and contribute to conflict through the politicization of daily life.
The associated costs fall mainly on the ordinary citizens living in these countries.
Although humanitarian aid is often motivated by the best of intentions, it tends to
fail to achieve the donors’ desired goals.
Nation-states tend to deal with other nation-states. In the realm of aid, these
dealings mean that donor governments tend to deliver aid to other governments
instead of directly to individuals. The world’s worst dictators typically refuse to
permit any checks on or monitoring of how they distribute this aid. The result is that
aid delivered for humanitarian purposes often fails to reach the intended recipients.
The failure of foreign aid to countries governed by the world’s worst dictators
indicates that alternatives must be considered. One potential alternative is the priva-
tization of aid. This change would entail allowing private citizens around the world
to decide where to send aid contributions, which would allow aid flows to circum-
vent the world’s world dictators. In such a scenario, private citizens would have an
incentive to donate to organizations they deem effective, and competitive pressures
would be put on recipients to deliver on their stated goals.
Although this alternative may seem extreme, recent experience shows that
private aid to mitigate humanitarian crises can be significant. For example, consider
the response of U.S. citizens and organizations following the tsunami that struck
Indonesia in 2004: they pledged more than $400 million and selected the organi-
zations to which they donated their aid (“A ‘Tsunami’ in Private Giving” 2005).
These private donations exceeded the total amount pledged by many national
governments. Likewise, private donations and humanitarian efforts have played a
central role in the recovery following Hurricane Katrina (Horwitz forthcoming).
Of course, private charity is no panacea, but none of its problems looms as large as
those associated with the continued delivery of billions of dollars of aid to the
world’s worst dictators.
See URL for References.
http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_14_01_2_coyne.pdf
With Friends Like These,
Who Needs Enemies?
Aiding the World’s Worst Dictators
CHRISTOPHER J. COYNE AND MATT E. RYAN
On April 2, 2008, the Zimbabwe Election Committee publicly confirmed
that President Robert Mugabe and his par ty, the Zimbabwe African
National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), had lost control of the
Parliament to the main opposition par ty, the Movement for Democratic Change,
and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai. At the time, Mugabe had been the leader of
Zimbabwe since 1980, first as the country’s prime minister (1980–87) and then as
president (1987–present). During his reign, he acquired a reputation as one of the
world’s most brutal dictators. The reputation was well deser ved because his govern-
ment engaged in a wide array of human rights violations (see Human Rights Watch
2007, 4, 10, 171–77). As one would expect from someone of Mugabe’s ilk, he
refused to respect the election results and cede his power. Instead, he and his
followers responded by arresting and violently brutalizing his opposition.
Despite claims of victor
Tsvangirai and his party, the ruling ZANU-PF
announced on April 4 that a runof f election would determine the winner. On May
2, among claims of vote fraud and manipulation, the Zimbabwe Election Committee
seconded the calls for a runof f between Mugabe and Tsvangirai. Although the runoff
did take place in late June, Tsvangirai was not present because he had been forced
to flee the country owing to threats against his life. His suppor ters were likewise
threatened by violence, imprisoned, or killed by Mugabe’s supporters. In late June
2008, Mugabe won the sham runoff, which in reality was a one-person race.
Leaders around the world quickly denounced Mugabe for his actions during the
election process. Yet, despite denouncing him and his brutality, governments of
developed countries have provided billions of dollars in aid (a combination of of ficial
development assistance [ODA] and militar y aid) to his government during his reign.
This aid has ironically contributed to his ability to stay in power, even though his
regime is the antithesis of liberal democracy and is characterized by widespread
corruption and brutality against Zimbabwe’s citizens, as illustrated by his actions in
the recent election.
Mugabe is not the only dictator to receive significant aid from the governments
of developed countries. Indeed, a consideration of the world’s worst dictators indi-
cates that world leaders, even while publicly condemning these dictators’ gross viola-
tions of basic civil, human, and political rights, have been generous with foreign aid
to the most brutal dictators. As in the case of Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the aid allows
these dictators to consolidate their positions, remain in power, and sustain their
brutal and corrupt methods. This assistance ultimately imposes significant costs on
ordinary citizens in the countries these dictators rule. As Mugabe’s case illustrates,
dictators tend to rule through brute force. They also make few, if any, investments in
their citizens and their countries. Therefore, citizens suffer not only through the
constant threat of physical violence, but also through continued economic stagnation
and underdevelopment.
In this article, we review and analyze the foreign aid delivered to the world’s top
living dictators. Also considered is why aid to these dictators fails to generate change
for the better. At least rhetorically, the governments of developed countries provide
aid to poor countries to facilitate development and movement toward liberal institu-
tions that protect basic rights. Despite these good intentions, aid has failed to gener-
ate sustainable change in the countries that the world’s worst dictators rule.
The tyrants we consider are the worst of the worst. They are corrupt and engage
in gross violations of basic civil, property, and political rights. They rule through
violence and are subject to few, if any, constraints on their behavior. As such, they
impose significant costs on the citizens of the countries they rule and provide few, if
any, benefits. Fur ther, even though leaders of developed countries around the world
are ver y aware of these regimes’ brutal and oppressive nature and speak out strongly
against their actions, they continue to send development assistance and militar y aid
to them. This aid not only rewards the dictators’ behavior, but freezes the status quo
and prevents change. If the governments of developed countries are truly committed
to spreading liberal values and institutions (that is, economic, social, and political
institutions), an important step in doing so is to stop providing aid to the world’s
worst dictators.1
Calls for increased foreign aid have long been motivated by a desire to generate
change in economic, social, and political institutions, with the related goal of spread-
ing liberal values. Most recently, U.S. president George W. Bush stated: “[I]t is the
policy of the United States to seek and suppor t the growth of democratic movements
and institutions in ever y nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny
in our world.”2 Governments and international organizations around the world (for
example, the International Monetar y Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations,
and regional development banks) voice similar suppor t for the spread of liberal
democracy and freedom. Despite this rhetoric, deliver y of foreign aid to the world’s
worst dictators has instead actually undercut the goal of spreading liberal values and
institutions. Instead of making the world safe for liberalism, the provision of aid has
made many countries safe for autocracy.
We begin by considering the ODA and military aid that members of the Organi-
zation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assis-
tance Committee (DAC) provide to the worst dictators in the world. The DAC is the
main body through which OECD members interact with developing countries. It
allows bilateral donors to coordinate their assistance to developing countries in order
to maximize the return on those ef for ts. Not all OECD members belong to the DAC.
The committee currently has twenty-three members, including the European Com-
mission, which holds full membership rights on the committee, although it is not a
member state. All committee members except the European Commission are members
of the OECD, and the World Bank classified each of these countries as a “high-income
countr y” in 2006. Table 1 lists the DAC members as well as their dates of membership.
We focus on the DAC because it includes governments from developed
countries around the world. These governments are typically both the strongest
advocates, at least rhetorically, of the spread of liberal values and institutions as well
as the largest aid presence within these developing nations.
The general goals of DAC efforts include focusing on “how international devel-
opment cooperation contributes to the capacity of developing countries to par tici-
pate in the global economy, and the capacity of people to overcome pover ty and
par ticipate fully in their societies.”3 Along these lines, the DAC seeks to foster a wide
array of rights (civil, political, and so forth), equality of the sexes, political par ticipa-
tion, economic development, and pover ty reduction. On the face of it, these goals
seem noble. However, DAC members are undermining their organization’s broader
goals by providing aid to the world’s worst dictators.
To compile a list of dictators, we utilized Parade magazine’s annual list of the
“world’s worst dictators.” A dictator is defined as a head of state who cannot be
removed from power through the legal system. These rankings are based on a variety
of factors, including the protection of human rights, individual as well as civil and
media freedoms, the right to a fair trial, freedom to criticize the government, and
freedom to choose elected representatives. Also taken into account is the brutality
dictators use against citizens and political opponents (Wallechinsky 2006). We com-
bined the lists for 2006 and 2007 for a total of twenty-three dictators, although, of
course, there is much overlap between the two years.
Table 1
DAC Members and Year of Membership
DAC Member Member Since
Australia 1966
Austria 1965
Belgium 1961
Canada 1961
Denmark 1963
Finland 1975
France 1961
Germany 1961
Greece 1999
Ireland 1985
Italy 1961
Japan 1961
Luxembourg 1992
Netherlands 1961
New Zealand 1973
Nor way 1962
Portugal Joined in 1961, withdrew in 1974,
and rejoined in 1991
Spain 1991
Sweden 1965
Switzerland 1968
United Kingdom 1961
United States 1961
Commission of the European Communities 1961
Although one might take issue with certain aspects of the methodology used in
the annual Parade sur vey, it would be dif ficult to argue that the dictators listed are
not among the worst in the world. Further, we are not concerned with the ordinal
relationship between the dictators presented by Parade; number five may or may not
be a “worse dictator” than number fifteen, however judged, but both names are of
equal value to us. We are simply interested in an independent listing of the world’s
worst dictators to utilize for our analysis.
Table 2 lists the ODA that all DAC members have provided to dictators
during their respective reigns. We consider net disbursements as well as total
commitments. Detailed data descriptions and sources for these categories appear
in appendix 1. Net disbursements provide one measure of assistance to date,
whereas commitments provide an indication of continued future suppor t. The
commitments indicate that the governments of developed counties, besides having
assisted the world’s worst dictators in the past, plan to continue to suppor t them
in the future as well. For each dictator, the ODA figure reflects the total amount
of funding received from DAC members from the year he initially assumed power
through 2006. As table 2 indicates, DAC members supplied in total nearly $105
billion in net disbursements and made almost $144 billion in total commitments
to the world’s worst dictators.
Table 3 presents a subset of the development and militar y aid provided to the
listed dictators specifically by the United States. The U.S. government has been
extremely vocal in condemning the worst dictators’ practices. This rhetoric has only
sharpened with the broader “war on terror,” the Dar fur tragedy, and the aforemen-
tioned elections in Zimbabwe. However, despite claims of support for liberal values
and institutions, the U.S. government continues to provide significant aid to these
dictators. As table 3 indicates, the United States has provided in total nearly $36
billion in net disbursements and almost $53 billion in total commitments to these
men. Fur ther, it has provided more than $46 billion in militar y aid. Of this total, the
greater part has been given to Egypt and Pakistan for strategic purposes. One con-
sequence of this militar y aid is that it has allowed two of the world’s worst dictators
to consolidate their positions and remain in power. Other dictators on our list have
received much less militar y aid, but given their reliance on brutality and oppression
to remain in power, any positive amount of militar y aid imposes some cost on the
citizens of the countr y and its region. Unfor tunately, data on militar y aid from all
DAC countries to the world’s worst dictators are not available. The amount of U.S.
provision of such aid provides a lower bound, however, and, if anything, one would
expect total militar y aid from DAC members to be greater than this amount.
Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir
To shed light on the type of dictators being supported by DAC aid, we consider in
detail the case of Omar al-Bashir, the current president of Sudan. We focus on him
because he has many of the characteristics of all the other dictators on the Parade list.
He is corrupt and relies on violence against both political opponents and citizens in
general to maintain his position of power (Human Rights Watch 2007, 158–64).
Moreover, although the al-Bashir government’s methods are widely known, it has
received significant aid from the governments of developed countries.
Sudan has a long histor y of war and conflict, and this pattern continued with
al-Bashir’s rise to power. Before becoming president of Sudan, he had a career in the
Table 2
Total DAC Of ficial Development Assistance (ODA, 2006$, millions):
From Year Dictator Assumed Power Through 2006
Countr y Dictator
Year, Power
Assumed*
ODA, Net
Disbursements
ODA, Total
Commitments
Belarus Aleksandr
Lukashenko
1994 71.9 79.3
Burma
(Myanmar)
Than Shwe 1992 1,141.2 1,296.4
Cameroon Paul Biya 1982 9,341.6 11,811.1
China Hu Jintao 2002 6,802.5 10,947.8
Cuba Fidel Castro 1959–2008 865.7 796.5
Egypt Hosni Mubarak 1981 41,715.0 60,592.6
Equatorial
Guinea
Teodoro Obiang
Nguema
1979 522.9 415.1
Eritrea Isayas Afewerki 1991 1,661.7 1,639.4
Ethiopia Meles Zenawi 1995 7,540.6 8,128.9
Iran Sayyid Ali Khamenei 1989 1,840.9 2,108.0
Laos Boungnang Vorachith 2001–2006 1,040.6 1,103.0
Libya Muammar al-Qaddafi 1969 176.8 170.9
Nor th Korea Kim Jong-il 1994 750.7 890.9
Pakistan Per vez Musharraf 1999–2008 5,579.0 12,765.8
Russia Vladimir Putin 1999 NA NA
Saudi Arabia King Abdullah 1995 143.0 163.1
Sudan Omar al-Bashir 1989 6,981.3 7,003.5
Swaziland King Mswati III 1986 416.4 471.5
Syria Bashar al-Assad 2000 253.7 653.5
Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov 1990–2006 210.1 242.9
Uzbekistan Islam Karimov 1989 1,474.8 2,082.4
Vietnam Tran Duc Luong 1997–2006 9,839.8 14,064.0
Zimbabwe Rober t Mugabe 1980 6,252.7 6,645.7
*
Dictator still in power unless ending date is provided.
Table 3
Total U.S. Of ficial Development Assistance and Military Assistance
(2006$, millions): Year Dictator Assumed Power Through 2006
Country Dictator
Year,
Power
Assumed*
U.S. Net
Disbursements
U.S. Total
Commitments
Militar y
Assistance
Belarus Aleksandr
Lukashenko
1994 6.2 25.6 1.1
Burma
(Myanmar)
Than Shwe 1992 38.3 62.6 1.5
Cameroon Paul Biya 1982 385.3 513.9 34.0
China Hu Jintao 2002 106.2 165.1 —
Cuba Fidel Castro 1959–2008 54.1 63.0 5.5
Egypt Hosni Mubarak 1981 25,075.2 39,099.8 44,283.0
Equatorial
Guinea
Teodoro
Obiang
Nguema
1979 15.4 16.9 3.3
Eritrea Isayas Afewerki 1991 524.8 519.4 24.3
Ethiopia Meles Zenawi 1995 2,591.7 3,018.2 40.2
Iran Sayyid Ali
Khamenei
1989 34.4 16.0 —
Laos Boungnang
Vorachith
2001–2006 35.0 36.8 —
Libya Muammar al-
Qaddafi
1969 26.2 26.4 2.0
Nor th Korea Kim Jong-il 1994 386.2 457.5 —
Pakistan Per vez
Musharraf
1999–2008 2,128.03 3,644.3 1,328.4
Russia Vladimir Putin 1999 NA NA 5.8
Saudi Arabia King Abdullah 1995 1.3 1.2 0.3
Sudan Omar al-Bashir 1989 2,714.8 2,969.4 318.8
Swaziland King Mswati III 1986 144.7 120.0 2.2
Syria Bashar al-Assad 2000 1.1 3.3 —
Turkmenistan Saparmurat
Niyazov
1990–2006 140.3 174.1 10.8
Uzbekistan Islam Karimov 1989 409.8 537.4 66.7
Vietnam Tran Duc
Luong
1997–2006 205.9 381.1 0.1
Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe 1980 854.9 988.3 9.0
*
Dictator still in power unless ending date is provided.
Sudanese military. Following a bloodless coup in 1989, he named himself chairman
of the fifteen-member Revolutionar y Command Council and signed a decree sus-
pending the Constitution and dismissing the country’s government. Then in the
name of national stability came the dissolution of all political parties and a ban against
all protests and demonstrations (Anderson 1999, 3–8; O’Ballance 2000, 165). In
1993, the Revolutionar y Command Council was dissolved, and al-Bashir was named
president.
Following his rise to power, al-Bashir moved to implement a radical Islamic
agenda influenced largely by Hassan al-Turabi, leader of the National Islamic Front.
Among the many laws passed was a mandatory six weeks of military training, which
includes indoctrination into radical Islam. Al-Bashir also implemented a penal code
that includes public flogging, amputations, and the death penalty. Women were
publicly beaten for violating strict dress codes. Western art, music, and other cultural
products were banned. In 1995, following a decree banning all alcohol, all medicines
containing alcohol were also banned, including drugs used to combat malaria, result-
ing in an epidemic of the disease (Wallechinsky 2006, 17).
The conflict in Sudan predates al-Bashir and has been caused mainly by ethnic
and religious dif ferences. The northern par t of the countr y is primarily Arab and
Muslim, and the southern par t is mainly African, Christian, and animist. Important
identity issues regarding the perception of what it means to be “Arab” also separate
the eastern and western parts of the countr y (de Waal 2005, 2007). Even within these
general categories, there is great diversity. For example, one census indicated fifty
different ethnic groups and 114 different languages in Sudan (Wallechinsky 2006, 9).
This ethnic and religious diversity is often noted as the cause of continued
conflict in the region. Although it is a source of tension, the broader problem is the
presence of weak and dysfunctional political institutions that fail to protect property
rights and instead engage in gross violations of those rights.4 The result has been
numerous wars, including two civil wars from 1955 to 1972 and from 1983 to 2005.
The onset of the second civil war weakened the central government and allowed
al-Bashir to take control.
Since assuming power, al-Bashir has done his part to continue the tradition of
conflict by exacerbating ethnic and religious differences. He took power amid an
ongoing war in southern Sudan between non-Muslim rebels and government troops.
During the war, the government brutalized the country’s citizens, prohibited the use
of local languages, and confiscated citizens’ land, relocating citizens to “peace vil-
lages,” where men were forced to be circumcised and children to attend Quranic
schools. Some obser vers claimed that the government military used citizens as hu-
man shields during the conflict. When government military recruitment numbers
began to drop, al-Bashir implemented a draft, making all males between the ages of
4. Easterly 2001a shows that good institutions, which protect against expropriation,
overcome the problems that ethnic fractionalization poses for economic development.
Eighteen and thirty eligible. Many recruits were physically dragged from their homes
and forced to join the government army (Wallechinsky 2006, 26).
In 1996, al-Bashir organized a sham election, using the ongoing war in the
south as an excuse to hand-select representatives for the region and restrict the
number of candidates allowed to compete in the election. The result of the election,
as one would expect after such manipulation, was a landslide victor y for al-Bashir. In
1999, he and al-Turabi had a falling out. Tension had always existed between them as
they vied for control and influence over the government, and in 1999 al-Turabi tried
to partner with one of the rebel groups against al-Bashir, who responded by having
him detained and placed under house arrest (Johnson 2003, 107–9; Wallechinsky
2006, 27–28). Once it was revealed to the public that al-Turabi had partnered with a
rebel group he had previously denounced, he lost his credibility and influence on
policy in Sudan (Johnson 2003, 108). While these events unfolded, the country’s
civil war raged on.
In 2003, peace talks began between the rebels and the government. The talks
continued through 2004, and a formal peace agreement was announced in 2005. The
peace, however, was short-lived. In 2003, while peace negotiations were being held
to end the civil war, another conflict was brewing in the western part of the countr y.
Even though al-Bashir’s regime received significant aid from the governments
of developed countries around the world, the average citizen in these countries was
unaware of Sudan’s histor y and of the current events unfolding there. This condition
changed in 2003 with the onset of the Dar fur crisis, which received global attention.
Although global leaders and the media called for an end to the humanitarian crisis,
they paid little attention to Omar al-Bashir and his role in the crisis.
Dar fur is located in the western part of Sudan. The British, who conquered
Sudan in the late 1800s, allowed Dar fur to remain independent until 1916, when
they invaded the region and merged it with Sudan (Prunier 2005, 8–24). The British
paid little attention to the Dar fur region, however, and the area’s people were
politically and economically marginalized. This marginalization continued after inde-
pendence as the Sudanese government not only neglected the region, but also used it
to house rebels fighters who engaged in battles with neighboring Libya and Chad
(Flint and De Waal 2005, 12–16; Prunier 2005, 42–47).
Drought and famine that had begun in the mid-1970s and continued for dec-
ades had a devastating impact on the region. Besides causing the deaths of tens of
thousands of inhabitants, the drought led Arab tribes to move into an area tradition-
ally occupied by non-Arab tribes (Wallechinsky 2006, 31), which in turn led to
increased conflicts over scarce natural resources. The Sudanese government contrib-
uted to these conflicts by actively seeking to undermine traditional mechanisms of
dispute resolution by “deliberate manipulation of the tribal administrative system to
augment the power of some groups at the expense of others” (De Waal 2007, 29).
Over the course of Dar fur’s history, numerous rebel groups have emerged in
the region. By 2003, two dominant rebel groups existed there: the Justice and
Equality Movement and the Sudanese Liberation Army (Flint and De Waal 2005,
70–73, 93–96). These groups accused al-Bashir’s government of neglecting Dar fur
and sought to gain control of the region.
Al-Bashir responded with a military campaign against these groups, including
bombing and ground attacks by the government-suppor ted Janjaweed militia
(Flint and De Waal 2005, 101–11). During these attacks, the Janjaweed were
responsible for the major human rights violations—including tor ture, murder,
and rape—repor ted by the mass media around the world (International Commis-
sion of Inquir y on Dar fur 2005). In addition to using physical violence against
Sudanese citizens, the Janjaweed also destroyed schools, houses, and the few
remaining sources of food and water in the region—all part of the Sudanese
government’s strategy to starve the opposition (Flint and De Waal 2005,
111–15). It is estimated that the war caused the deaths of approximately 180,000
people, and millions were driven from their homes into refugee camps (Flint and
De Waal 2005, 111; Wallechinsky 2006, 31).
During the conflict, al-Bashir’s government engaged in an active program to
suppress all public information regarding the government’s attacks on its citizens.
Domestic journalists were arrested for reporting negative stories, and international
journalists lost their access to the country. Human rights investigators and persons
af filiated with other nongovernmental organizations were expelled from the country
or denied visas to enter (Flint and De Waal 2005, 115–17).
Starting in 2002, the African Union facilitated peace talks between the rebel
groups and the Sudanese government. After numerous failed negotiations, a formal
peace agreement was signed in May 2006. However, the situation in Dar fur is
extremely fragile for several reasons. Only one of the rebel groups, the Sudanese
Liberation Army, signed the peace agreement. Further, the government-backed Jan-
jaweed forces are still in the region, and pockets of conflict have continued to
emerge. Finally, humanitarian issues associated with drought and star vation remain
real and significant. Aid agencies attempting to remedy these problems have limited
access and security in the region.
In addition to engaging in brutality against his own citizens, al-Bashir also has
connections to known terrorist organizations. The government reportedly has
provided sanctuary to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad, among other terrorist
groups (Wallechinsky 2006, 23). Al-Bashir also hosted Osama bin-Laden in Sudan in
the mid-1990s. In 1993, the U.S. government placed Sudan on its list of states that
sponsor international terrorism, where it remains to the present (O’Ballance 2000,
179–80).
The governments of developed countries have tried to have it both ways with
al-Bashir’s government: on the one hand, they have publicly denounced his govern-
ment and his actions against his own people, but, on the other, they have sent billions
of dollars of aid to his government. As table 2 indicates, total DAC development
assistance to al-Bashir from 1989 to 2006 amounted to nearly $7 billion in net
disbursements. Table 3 indicates that approximately 40 percent ($2.7 billion) of that
total development assistance has come from the U.S. government. Fur ther, DAC
members have made ODA commitments to Sudan for another $7 billion. Besides
ODA, the United States has also provided hundreds of millions of dollars in militar y
aid to Sudan, even though al-Bashir has used the countr y’s military against certain
segments of the Sudanese population.
Aid to Sudan’s various brutal, autocratic governments has a long history that
extends back even to the years before al-Bashir’s rise to power. During the 1980s, the
U.S. government sent hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Sudanese govern-
ment even while it violently persecuted the southern minority (Anderson 1999,
47–54). Likewise, the World Bank lent $800 million to the northern government
during the 1983–93 period. Since 1993, the Sudanese government has been the
world’s largest debtor to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Total aid to this government between 1960 and 2002 is estimated at $23 billion
(Easterly 2006b, 303; Wallechinsky 2006, 9).
In analyses of Sudanese politics and conflict, political scientists have put forth
two general theories to explain its situation (see De Waal 2007, 32–33). The “brute
cause” paradigm focuses on individual accountability and holds that those running
the government are criminals and thugs. This view concludes that bad leaders have
been the main cause of conflict and economic stagnation in Sudan. In contrast, the
“turbulent state” paradigm focuses on how Sudan’s economic, political, and social
institutions continue to generate one bad government after another. This theory
holds that changing leaders will not have a major impact unless coupled with funda-
mental structural changes in the country’s institutions.
Our goal here is not to adjudicate between these competing theories, but
instead to make a more fundamental point. No matter which paradigm is correct—
and each may be correct to some degree—developed countries have provided signifi-
cant aid that has actually allowed bad institutions to perpetuate themselves and brutal
thugs to take full advantage of what those perverse institutions have to offer.
It is difficult to argue that the significant aid provided to the Sudanese govern-
ment has had any positive impact. The country is still ruled by a brutal dictator, and
its political institutions remain unreformed. Fur ther, the government remains on the
U.S. State Department’s list of countries that sponsor international terrorism. To the
extent that peace exists, it is extremely fragile. Income per capita in 1994 was below
the level at Sudan’s independence in 1956. Further, life expectancy remains extreme-
ly low, as do investments in basic infrastructure (see Easterly 2006b, 305).
Although the specifics vary, the case of al-Bashir and Sudan is representative of
the other dictators on our list. In all cases, the dictator’s regime is characterized by a
mix of corruption, violence, and violations of basic rights. Nonetheless, he and the
world’s other worst dictators have received significant amounts of development
assistance and militar y aid. Perhaps worse, DAC members have committed billions
of dollars in future aid to the dictators on our list.
Can Foreign Aid Buy a Liberal Society?
Debate continues about the impor tance of foreign aid for economic and institu-
tional development. On the one side are those who call for drastic increases of aid
to fund a “big push” investment so that poor countries can escape the poverty trap
and reform economic, political, and social institutions for the better (Cassen 1986;
Riddell 1987; Sachs 2005; Collier and Hoef fler 2007). On the other side are those
who are skeptical that increased aid for economic development and reforms can
help in creating liberal institutions (Boone 1996; Bauer 2000; Easterly 2001b,
2006b). In addition to this academic debate, foreign aid is a central part of many
developed countries’ foreign policy. In 2005, countries around the world renewed
their commitment to significant reductions in global poverty through increased aid
as specified in the Millennium Development Goals, a new global effort to achieve
certain baseline goals by the year 2015, to be achieved by increased amounts
of aid.
Arguments that focus on the quantity of aid often overlook the issues of incen-
tives and allocation (Easterly 2001b, 2006b). Recipients of aid must have the incen-
tive to use the aid specifically for economic development and institutional reform.
Likewise, those who distribute aid must know how to allocate it so that it will be used
ef fectively. Absent the proper incentives and information, aid will be either ineffective
or counterproductive, no matter what the quantity.
It follows that countries whose leaders have weak incentives to use aid to achieve
the desired reforms or lack the knowledge to allocate aid effectively are likely to be
bad investments. Although this logic may seem straightfor ward, the countries that
appear to be the worst investments still in practice receive significant aid, as illustrated
in the case of Sudan and al-Bashir.
A common argument for the provision of aid to corrupt and dysfunctional
governments is that precisely these countries need aid the most to strengthen politi-
cal institutions. This argument holds that aid used to reform political institutions will
ultimately contribute to economic development. For example, Jeffrey Sachs contends
that African countries do not have bad governments considering their level of income
(2005, 311–14). In other words, the governments of African countries are no worse,
on average, than governments in other countries with similar levels of income. Sachs
calls for increased foreign aid to bolster development and income, which, he argues,
will lead to better government.
This line of reasoning fails to recognize, however, that the worst governments
typically have no incentive to reform. These governments tend to face few constraints
on their behavior and have little desire to establish mechanisms of accountability
because doing so would reduce the scope of their power. Hence, institutional
reforms fail to get of f the ground. In fact, where per verse incentives exist, aid is likely
to make the situation worse by providing continued support for dictators while
strengthening the status quo.
There is little empirical evidence that foreign aid improves political or policy
environments. In a well-known study of the connection between foreign aid and
growth, Craig Burnside and David Dollar (2000) conclude that aid’s impact on
growth is directly dependent on the incentives created by existing institutions. They
find that aid can benefit growth in countries with sound policies, but it does not
contribute in countries with poor political institutions and policies. This finding
indicates that aid is beneficial for growth only after political authorities adopt policies
conducive to growth. At the time of this article’s publication, the aid community
embraced its findings and shifted the focus to improving “governance” and the
adoption of good policies so that subsequent aid would be effective.
However, subsequent analysis has shown that the results of the Burnside
and Dollar study are fragile when the data set is expanded (Easterly, Levine, and
Roodman 2004) and when alternative definitions of growth, aid, and good policy are
used (Easterly 2003a). These more recent studies call into question aid’s effectiveness
for generating growth in good policy environments as well.
Other studies question the impact of aid on political institutions. For example,
Stephen Knack (2004a) finds that more aid lowers the quality of bureaucracy and
leads to more violations of the law. The underlying cause is that aid creates rents,
which foster corruption and illegal activity. Employing different measures of democ-
racy and aid intensity, Knack (2004b) finds that aid does not promote democracy.
Simeon Djankov, Jose Montalvo, and Marta Reynal-Querol (2007) find that high
levels of aid resulted in setbacks to democracy during the period from 1960 to 1999.
In sum, the empirical evidence indicates that foreign aid by itself does not lead
to improvements in development or political institutions. It fails for several reasons.
The first pertains to difficulties associated with monitoring the aid. Once aid is
delivered to a corrupt government, it is extremely difficult to monitor how it is
dispersed. As an example of this logic, consider the case of U.S. assistance to Nor th
Korea. In his January 2002 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush
listed North Korea as a member of the “Axis of Evil.” Further, as noted in table 2,
Kim Jong-il ranks among the world’s worst dictators. Nevertheless, the U.S. govern-
ment continues to provide aid (energy and humanitarian aid) to North Korea. In
theory, this aid is supposed to benefit the citizens of North Korea, who suffer under
Kim Jong-il. It is delivered directly to the North Korean government, however, even
though this government does not allow donors or aid agencies to operate inside the
country or to track the flow of their donations. We have good reason to believe that a
substantial portion of the aid never actually reaches its intended recipients.
Along these lines, a U.S. government report indicated that “[a] number of
sources have presented evidence that not all the food assistance going to North
Korea is reaching its intended recipients. . . . The numerous reports of donated food
being sold (at price levels far higher than the official, government-controlled prices)
in farmers’ markets are widely assumed to be signs that officials are stealing and
selling some of the aid for their own profit” (Manyin and Jun 2003, 15). If basic
humanitarian aid cannot be delivered effectively, it is easy to imagine how aid
intended to generate more complex outcomes, such as institutional reforms, is un-
likely to achieve the donor’s desired ends.
In general, aid is effective only to the extent that it reaches the intended
recipients. When it is delivered to corrupt governments to disperse to those in need,
we have little reason to believe that it will be effective. Like Nor th Korea, many
corrupt governments refuse to allow donor agencies and nongovernmental organiza-
tions into their country to administer and monitor the distribution of aid. With no
check on the recipient government, members of the government will steal the aid,
and ordinary citizens will continue to suffer.
A second reason why aid fails to generate institutional reform and economic
development relates to negative unintended consequences. Although the delivery of
aid may be grounded in the best of intentions, in reality it often makes things worse
and has significant negative impacts. Allan Drazen (1999) argues that where aid is
ineffective, the recipient government’s incompetence may be blamed. Continuing to
provide aid to such regimes makes reforms less likely because it contributes to the
inef fective regime’s continuation in power. He concludes that denying aid to such
governments is more likely to generate change in the future.
Besides solidifying the status quo, aid has other potential negative unintended
consequences. For example, Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler (2007) explore the
connection between foreign aid and militar y expenditures. In their model, a govern-
ment’s decision about its military expenditures is a function of aid received and the
level of spending by neighboring countries. These authors conclude that foreign aid
has the negative unintended consequence of fostering regional arms races. This effect
highlights aid’s fungibility. Provision of aid in one area may result in a transfer of
government expenditures to other areas. For example, food aid increases the amount
of money that governments can shift from the provision of food to expenditure in
other areas, including military outlays. This transfer may result in negative unintend-
ed outcomes.
A third reason why aid fails has to do with the nature of donor agencies
(Easterly 2003b, 2006a). Aid agencies are bureaucracies that suf fer from per verse
incentives and limited information of how to allocate resources ef fectively. Absent
profit-and-loss calculations, success tends to be measured by the size of the budget,
number of bureaucrats, and amount of aid dispersed. Hence, aid agencies have
little incentive to be “tough” against corrupt governments because they have an
interest in dispensing aid in order to exhaust their budgets. Along these lines, a
World Bank report on foreign aid notes that “[d]isbursements (of loans and grants)
were easily calculated and tended to become a critical output measure for develop-
ment institutions. Agencies saw themselves as being primarily in the business of
dishing out money” (1998, 23). Because aid recipients are aware of this situation,
they tend to renege on reform commitments or simply ignore the aid community’s
requests.
Problems arise not only within, but also across donor agencies. Each agency is
driven by its own agenda and goals. Although the agencies are supposed to work
together toward the common, overarching goal of economic and institutional devel-
opment, in reality they often pursue conflicting goals and agendas. Each agency is
driven by local politics, which shapes and influences its behavior. As William Easterly
notes, “[c]oordination is impossible under the current aid system, when every agency
reports to different bosses who have dif ferent agendas” (2006b, 191–92). Likewise,
a report by Transparency International (2006) on humanitarian aid concludes that a
fundamental problem in delivery of aid is that the humanitarian system contains so
many different bureaucratic layers and organizations (numerous governments, aid
agencies, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and so forth)
that it is extremely difficult to establish and maintain effective accountability within
agencies and across individuals.
Yet another argument proffered in favor of supplying aid to dictators is that it
allows the governments of developed countries to achieve other foreign-policy objec-
tives. In such instances, governments use dictators as middlemen to achieve broader
goals. For example, the U.S. government par tnered with Pakistani militar y dictator
and Islamic fundamentalist General Zia-ul-Huq in the 1980s in their Cold War ef fort
against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In this case, the U.S. government provided
aid to Zia, and in return he funneled U.S. weapons and monetary aid to the rebels
fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The argument might be made that
providing aid to Zia was far from an ideal solution, but still necessary to achieve the
U.S. goals in the broader Cold War. As mentioned previously, the U.S. government
likewise continues to provide significant amounts of military aid to Pakistan and
Egypt for similar strategic purposes.
Although provision of aid to dictators can contribute to broader goals, this line
of reasoning overlooks the real harms caused by supporting foreign dictators, even to
achieve other objectives. The U.S. partnership with Zia had several unintended con-
sequences, both in Pakistan and in its region. As Benazir Bhutto noted, “The United
States, fixated on defeating and humiliating the Soviets in Afghanistan, embraced Zia
and the ISI [Inter-Ser vices Intelligence] as surrogates; the United States’ attention
was riveted exclusively on Afghanistan, disregarding the war’s impact on internal
political factors in Pakistan” (2008, 193). The result was a political instability that
has continued there to this day. The U.S. inter vention in Afghanistan also had
negative unintended consequences, including the rise of the Taliban and the global
proliferation of U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles (Coyne and Ryan 2008).
In sum, the answer to the question “Can foreign aid buy a liberal society?” is a
resounding no. Aid agencies, policymakers, and academics have little knowledge of
how to fix the wide array of problems that plague the world’s poorest countries. The
existing empirical evidence indicates that the provision of foreign aid is not effective
in generating sustainable economic development and institutional change. In stark
contrast, aid can prevent changes in the status quo and even make things worse. The
arguments against provision of aid are even stronger for countries ruled by the
world’s worst dictators. These countries are plagued by the same problems as all
other poor countries, but they are also ruled by corrupt and brutal dictators. No
good arguments justify supporting these individuals’ behavior with developmental
and military aid.
Conclusion
In criticizing the aid community’s rhetoric, development economist P. T. Bauer
notes, “To call official wealth transfers ‘aid’ promotes an unquestioning attitude. It
disarms criticism, obscures realities, and prejudges results. Who can be against aid to
the less fortunate?” (2000, 42). Nowhere is Bauer’s critique more relevant than in
the continued delivery of foreign aid to the world’s worst dictators. We have little
evidence that this aid does any good, but clear indications that it causes real harm.
Never theless, the governments of developed countries continue to provide this aid to
the worst of the worst.
The bottom line is that if developed countries’ goal is to foster liberal economic,
political, and social institutions abroad, they should stop providing aid to the world’s
worst dictators. Development assistance and militar y aid solidify dictators in their
position of power and contribute to conflict through the politicization of daily life.
The associated costs fall mainly on the ordinary citizens living in these countries.
Although humanitarian aid is often motivated by the best of intentions, it tends to
fail to achieve the donors’ desired goals.
Nation-states tend to deal with other nation-states. In the realm of aid, these
dealings mean that donor governments tend to deliver aid to other governments
instead of directly to individuals. The world’s worst dictators typically refuse to
permit any checks on or monitoring of how they distribute this aid. The result is that
aid delivered for humanitarian purposes often fails to reach the intended recipients.
The failure of foreign aid to countries governed by the world’s worst dictators
indicates that alternatives must be considered. One potential alternative is the priva-
tization of aid. This change would entail allowing private citizens around the world
to decide where to send aid contributions, which would allow aid flows to circum-
vent the world’s world dictators. In such a scenario, private citizens would have an
incentive to donate to organizations they deem effective, and competitive pressures
would be put on recipients to deliver on their stated goals.
Although this alternative may seem extreme, recent experience shows that
private aid to mitigate humanitarian crises can be significant. For example, consider
the response of U.S. citizens and organizations following the tsunami that struck
Indonesia in 2004: they pledged more than $400 million and selected the organi-
zations to which they donated their aid (“A ‘Tsunami’ in Private Giving” 2005).
These private donations exceeded the total amount pledged by many national
governments. Likewise, private donations and humanitarian efforts have played a
central role in the recovery following Hurricane Katrina (Horwitz forthcoming).
Of course, private charity is no panacea, but none of its problems looms as large as
those associated with the continued delivery of billions of dollars of aid to the
world’s worst dictators.
See URL for References.
Monday, July 20, 2009
We need to hunt down and kill Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand.
http://dangerousintersection.org/2007/09/27/we-need-to-hunt-down-and-kill-adam-smith’s-invisible-hand/
September 27, 2007 | Erich Vieth
Why fear the Invisible Hand? Because the invisible hand is evil. As construed by those conservatives currently in power, it is the economic equivalent of the Devil.
This conclusion is going to come as a shock to many conservatives, because they give homage to the invisible hand as though it were the Fourth Person of the Holy Quartet.
Before going further, let’s consider the literary origin of “the invisible hand.” The phrase was coined by Adam Smith, as recounted by Wikipedia:
In The Wealth of Nations and other writings, Smith claims that, in capitalism, an individual pursuing his own self-interest tends to also promote the good of his community as a whole through a principle that he called “the invisible hand”. In detail, a free competitive market ensures that those goods and services perceived as most beneficial, efficient, or of highest quality will naturally be those that are most profitable. Thus, self-interest striving for profit has the side-effect of benefiting everyone by increasing standards. Smith saw the mechanism for this as being the free price system.
Conservatives have grabbed this metaphor of the invisible hand as though it were both descriptive and prescriptive. The current use of the phrase by conservatives is admittedly more expanded than Adam Smith’s original use. The modern conservative claim is not only that the invisible hand controls the economy. They also claim that the invisible hand should be in charge. They believe that millions of private purchasing decisions are automatically and deftly coordinated by the omniscient and omnipotent Invisible Hand. We do the bidding of the Hand. We benefit “the good of the community as a whole” when we buy our whiskey, our triple cheeseburgers, our stacks of gambling chips, our Barbie Dolls and our Hummers.
Conservatives are convinced that the Hand orchestrates all of our private local urges into decisions that are also “best” for our communities and our world. When we race out to buy anything at all, then, the Invisible Hand allegedly smiles Its approval. To violate the Will of the Invisible Hand would be to contravene the will of God, for conservatives. Lucky for us, however, even our most impulsive seemingly-irresponsible purchases cannot, by definition, violate the Will of the Invisible Hand. Everything we buy is pre-approved by the Invisible Hand. Foolishness is the equivalent of intelligence, by the grace of the Invisible Hand.
To be socially responsible (according to conservatives), we don’t need to give any thought to our purchase decisions. Nor does government need to regulate any industry. It’s all taken care of by the Hand. “The Free Market will take care of it,” conservatives assure me, “no matter what it is.” It is the Government that screws up the economy; the remedy is to stay out of the way of the healing powers of lassie faire, they say, i.e., kill government spending. When we stay out of the way (by not interfering with the Majesty of the Hand), the Invisible Hand watches out for us, takes care of us and solves all problems in an utterly perfect way. That’s what conservatives claim, even though they dramatically and irresponsibly increase government spending.
I disagree. It’s time to judge the Invisible Hand by the damage It has wrought. It’s time to be irreverent, even blasphemous. It’s time to mock the Hand and then kill it.
Under the Hand’s reign, we have seen our forests, soil and air contaminated. The Hand has repeatedly given Its approval when we frivolously waste non-renewable resources like oil and fresh water. The Hand has is conspicuosly silent now, however, in light of the total loss of commercial quality fish from most of the North Atlantic. The Hand approves that we are spending big money on foolishly while many of our schools are desperate for funds. The Hand has allowed pesticides and toxins spread far and wide, despite the fact that we have almost no idea how these chemicals are affecting the health of humans. Our individual spending decisions are making us fat and sick and stupid, but that’s all OK by the Hand.
All of this can only lead to one conclusion. The Invisible Hand is not benevolent. Based on the waste, pollution and reckless spending allowed by the Hand, it is clear that the Hand is evil. It’s time to publicly acknowledge the Hand’s evil and destructive intent so that we can make some big changes. What’s the biggest change?
We’re going to have to start thinking for ourselves when we make purchases.
We can’t depend on the Invisible Hand to keep us “helping” our communities in blissful ignorance anymore. No purchase should any longer simply be presumed to be beneficial–many purchases are damaging to the community and to our environment. There needs to be a counter-weight to private decisions to consume and confiscate. No purchase should any longer be considered completely local–many products have wide-ranging damaging effects. Nor should purchases any longer be presumed, in the absence of evidence, to be community-enhancing or amoral. Many private purchases are destructive and immoral. We need to acknowledge that dollars are not fungible and that every purchase has moral consequences.
We need to start thinking more when we make purchases, or else we will continue to crap up our planet to such an incredible extent that the next generation will curse us every day for our failure to think.
It’s time to kick the fiction of the Benevolent Invisible Hand out of our lexicon. But first, it is time to expose the Hand for what it has become for too many people who currently hold political power: The Invisible Hand is an excuse for our collective refusal to think, our failure to care about others and our failure to care about even our own future.
The current version of the Invisible Hand amounts to a total abdication of responsibility. It is a license to hurt others and destroy our own future. It’s time to kill the Hand before it kills us.
September 27, 2007 | Erich Vieth
Why fear the Invisible Hand? Because the invisible hand is evil. As construed by those conservatives currently in power, it is the economic equivalent of the Devil.
This conclusion is going to come as a shock to many conservatives, because they give homage to the invisible hand as though it were the Fourth Person of the Holy Quartet.
Before going further, let’s consider the literary origin of “the invisible hand.” The phrase was coined by Adam Smith, as recounted by Wikipedia:
In The Wealth of Nations and other writings, Smith claims that, in capitalism, an individual pursuing his own self-interest tends to also promote the good of his community as a whole through a principle that he called “the invisible hand”. In detail, a free competitive market ensures that those goods and services perceived as most beneficial, efficient, or of highest quality will naturally be those that are most profitable. Thus, self-interest striving for profit has the side-effect of benefiting everyone by increasing standards. Smith saw the mechanism for this as being the free price system.
Conservatives have grabbed this metaphor of the invisible hand as though it were both descriptive and prescriptive. The current use of the phrase by conservatives is admittedly more expanded than Adam Smith’s original use. The modern conservative claim is not only that the invisible hand controls the economy. They also claim that the invisible hand should be in charge. They believe that millions of private purchasing decisions are automatically and deftly coordinated by the omniscient and omnipotent Invisible Hand. We do the bidding of the Hand. We benefit “the good of the community as a whole” when we buy our whiskey, our triple cheeseburgers, our stacks of gambling chips, our Barbie Dolls and our Hummers.
Conservatives are convinced that the Hand orchestrates all of our private local urges into decisions that are also “best” for our communities and our world. When we race out to buy anything at all, then, the Invisible Hand allegedly smiles Its approval. To violate the Will of the Invisible Hand would be to contravene the will of God, for conservatives. Lucky for us, however, even our most impulsive seemingly-irresponsible purchases cannot, by definition, violate the Will of the Invisible Hand. Everything we buy is pre-approved by the Invisible Hand. Foolishness is the equivalent of intelligence, by the grace of the Invisible Hand.
To be socially responsible (according to conservatives), we don’t need to give any thought to our purchase decisions. Nor does government need to regulate any industry. It’s all taken care of by the Hand. “The Free Market will take care of it,” conservatives assure me, “no matter what it is.” It is the Government that screws up the economy; the remedy is to stay out of the way of the healing powers of lassie faire, they say, i.e., kill government spending. When we stay out of the way (by not interfering with the Majesty of the Hand), the Invisible Hand watches out for us, takes care of us and solves all problems in an utterly perfect way. That’s what conservatives claim, even though they dramatically and irresponsibly increase government spending.
I disagree. It’s time to judge the Invisible Hand by the damage It has wrought. It’s time to be irreverent, even blasphemous. It’s time to mock the Hand and then kill it.
Under the Hand’s reign, we have seen our forests, soil and air contaminated. The Hand has repeatedly given Its approval when we frivolously waste non-renewable resources like oil and fresh water. The Hand has is conspicuosly silent now, however, in light of the total loss of commercial quality fish from most of the North Atlantic. The Hand approves that we are spending big money on foolishly while many of our schools are desperate for funds. The Hand has allowed pesticides and toxins spread far and wide, despite the fact that we have almost no idea how these chemicals are affecting the health of humans. Our individual spending decisions are making us fat and sick and stupid, but that’s all OK by the Hand.
All of this can only lead to one conclusion. The Invisible Hand is not benevolent. Based on the waste, pollution and reckless spending allowed by the Hand, it is clear that the Hand is evil. It’s time to publicly acknowledge the Hand’s evil and destructive intent so that we can make some big changes. What’s the biggest change?
We’re going to have to start thinking for ourselves when we make purchases.
We can’t depend on the Invisible Hand to keep us “helping” our communities in blissful ignorance anymore. No purchase should any longer simply be presumed to be beneficial–many purchases are damaging to the community and to our environment. There needs to be a counter-weight to private decisions to consume and confiscate. No purchase should any longer be considered completely local–many products have wide-ranging damaging effects. Nor should purchases any longer be presumed, in the absence of evidence, to be community-enhancing or amoral. Many private purchases are destructive and immoral. We need to acknowledge that dollars are not fungible and that every purchase has moral consequences.
We need to start thinking more when we make purchases, or else we will continue to crap up our planet to such an incredible extent that the next generation will curse us every day for our failure to think.
It’s time to kick the fiction of the Benevolent Invisible Hand out of our lexicon. But first, it is time to expose the Hand for what it has become for too many people who currently hold political power: The Invisible Hand is an excuse for our collective refusal to think, our failure to care about others and our failure to care about even our own future.
The current version of the Invisible Hand amounts to a total abdication of responsibility. It is a license to hurt others and destroy our own future. It’s time to kill the Hand before it kills us.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Will Chromosome Y Go Bye-Bye?
The goal of evil is to control all parts of life, including spiritual, mental, emotional and physical. Evil and its psychopathic hell-pers plan for a future where people are artificially conceived and constructed. This is probably why the Y Chromosome is going away...
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=8104217
Will Chromosome Y Go Bye-Bye?
Is the End of Men Imminent?
By RADHA CHITALE
ABC News Medical Unit
July 17, 2009—
What makes a man a man? Socially, that is a complicated question. Genetically, however, it is as simple as a single Y chromosome.
But guys, that chromosome is in trouble.
In a new study, researchers say there is a dramatic loss of genes from the human Y chromosome that eventually could lead to its complete disappearance -- in the next few millennia. While the Y chromosome's degeneration has been known to geneticists and evolutionary biologists for decades, the study sheds new light on some of the evolutionary processes that may have contributed to its demise and posits that, as the degeneration continues, the Y chromosome could disappear from our genetic repertoire entirely.
"It's certainly possible, but it's difficult to predict when it will happen," said Kateryna Makova, an associate professor of biology at Penn State University, who led the study, which was published Thursday in the journal PLoS Genetics.
Although geneticists and evolutionary biologists agree that the Y chromosome is degenerating -- and far more rapidly than its X counterpart -- they reject the idea of a world far in the future where men are obsolete.
"The idea that the Y chromosome has just bailed out of an airplane without a parachute simply doesn't fit the facts," said Dr. David Page, director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., and a Y chromosome expert. "The evidence from studies on natural deletions of [genes on] the human Y chromosome shows there are consequences, especially for sperm production, that implies very strong natural selection against the loss of genes on the human Y chromosome."
Y Chromosomes Had Problems From the Start
Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes packed with genes that dictate every aspect of our biological functioning. Of these pairs, the sex chromosomes are different; women have two X chromosomes and men have an X and a Y chromosome. The Y chromosome contains essential blueprints for the male reproductive system, in particular those for sperm development.
But the Y chromosome, which once contained as many genes as the X chromosome, has deteriorated over time and now contains less than 80 functional genes compared to its partner, which contains more than 1,000 genes. Geneticists and evolutionary biologists determined that the Y chromosome's deterioration is due to accumulated mutations, deletions and anomalies that have nowhere to go because the chromosome doesn't swap genes with the X chromosome like every other chromosomal pair in our cells do.
Y Chromosomes Are Rapidly Losing Genes
However, Melissa Wilson, lead author of the study and graduate research fellow at Penn State University, pointed out that if there is no difference between a male who has lost a particular gene and one who still retains it, especially if both are still fertile, then that gene must be nonessential.
"Because they can lose [a gene] ... we conclude that it's on its way to dying in humans," she said.
Yet the Y chromosome perseveres, despite its rapid rate of deterioration.
"The key flaw in the logic [of Y chromosome deterioration] is the assumption that the Y chromosome can only lose genes," Page said. "But the human Y chromosome has gained genes not even on the X chromosome. Men who lose those genes do not transmit their Y chromosome."
Y Chromosome Can Gain Genes
Page pointed out that, while the Y chromosome may not share genetic material with the X chromosome, it can swap genes with other chromosomes as well as keep multiple copies of functional genes to increase their number on the Y chromosome. Makova and Wilson said that the increased rate of mutation on the Y chromosome could give rise to new genes that may prove beneficial and, therefore, remain on the chromosome.
Genetic change, whether by mutation, environmental stressors or by swapping bits of chromosomes, is the natural course of evolution, and evolution is weighted towards survival. Perhaps most importantly, Y chromosomes with defective male-specific genes, especially those involved in sperm production, are unlikely to reproduce and pass on those genes to their sons, which knocks highly defective chromosomes out of the gene pool. Genetic changes that do not favor reproduction are likely to get weeded out of the system.
"The most fundamental [principle] to all evolution is reproduction," said Dr. Ronald Crystal, chairman of the Department of Genetic Medicine at Weil Cornell Medical College. "No one knows why the Y chromosome has more pressures to evolve. It may be that the genes are irrelevant. ... But evolution figures out a way to maintain reproduction."
Reproduction Is Still Paramount for Evolution
Even if the Y chromosome becomes obsolete, reproduction will continue, in some form. Makova and Wilson said that new sex chromosomes may rise from non-sex chromosomes or that essential genes might move to other chromosomes, which has happened in some species of deer. "Presumably, we will have moved genes around," said Dr. Harry Ostrer, director of the Human Genetics program at the New York University School of Medicine. "But the reproductive structures will be well conserved."
In other words, men will not fade away, even if their Y chromosomes do.
Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=8104217
Will Chromosome Y Go Bye-Bye?
Is the End of Men Imminent?
By RADHA CHITALE
ABC News Medical Unit
July 17, 2009—
What makes a man a man? Socially, that is a complicated question. Genetically, however, it is as simple as a single Y chromosome.
But guys, that chromosome is in trouble.
In a new study, researchers say there is a dramatic loss of genes from the human Y chromosome that eventually could lead to its complete disappearance -- in the next few millennia. While the Y chromosome's degeneration has been known to geneticists and evolutionary biologists for decades, the study sheds new light on some of the evolutionary processes that may have contributed to its demise and posits that, as the degeneration continues, the Y chromosome could disappear from our genetic repertoire entirely.
"It's certainly possible, but it's difficult to predict when it will happen," said Kateryna Makova, an associate professor of biology at Penn State University, who led the study, which was published Thursday in the journal PLoS Genetics.
Although geneticists and evolutionary biologists agree that the Y chromosome is degenerating -- and far more rapidly than its X counterpart -- they reject the idea of a world far in the future where men are obsolete.
"The idea that the Y chromosome has just bailed out of an airplane without a parachute simply doesn't fit the facts," said Dr. David Page, director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., and a Y chromosome expert. "The evidence from studies on natural deletions of [genes on] the human Y chromosome shows there are consequences, especially for sperm production, that implies very strong natural selection against the loss of genes on the human Y chromosome."
Y Chromosomes Had Problems From the Start
Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes packed with genes that dictate every aspect of our biological functioning. Of these pairs, the sex chromosomes are different; women have two X chromosomes and men have an X and a Y chromosome. The Y chromosome contains essential blueprints for the male reproductive system, in particular those for sperm development.
But the Y chromosome, which once contained as many genes as the X chromosome, has deteriorated over time and now contains less than 80 functional genes compared to its partner, which contains more than 1,000 genes. Geneticists and evolutionary biologists determined that the Y chromosome's deterioration is due to accumulated mutations, deletions and anomalies that have nowhere to go because the chromosome doesn't swap genes with the X chromosome like every other chromosomal pair in our cells do.
Y Chromosomes Are Rapidly Losing Genes
However, Melissa Wilson, lead author of the study and graduate research fellow at Penn State University, pointed out that if there is no difference between a male who has lost a particular gene and one who still retains it, especially if both are still fertile, then that gene must be nonessential.
"Because they can lose [a gene] ... we conclude that it's on its way to dying in humans," she said.
Yet the Y chromosome perseveres, despite its rapid rate of deterioration.
"The key flaw in the logic [of Y chromosome deterioration] is the assumption that the Y chromosome can only lose genes," Page said. "But the human Y chromosome has gained genes not even on the X chromosome. Men who lose those genes do not transmit their Y chromosome."
Y Chromosome Can Gain Genes
Page pointed out that, while the Y chromosome may not share genetic material with the X chromosome, it can swap genes with other chromosomes as well as keep multiple copies of functional genes to increase their number on the Y chromosome. Makova and Wilson said that the increased rate of mutation on the Y chromosome could give rise to new genes that may prove beneficial and, therefore, remain on the chromosome.
Genetic change, whether by mutation, environmental stressors or by swapping bits of chromosomes, is the natural course of evolution, and evolution is weighted towards survival. Perhaps most importantly, Y chromosomes with defective male-specific genes, especially those involved in sperm production, are unlikely to reproduce and pass on those genes to their sons, which knocks highly defective chromosomes out of the gene pool. Genetic changes that do not favor reproduction are likely to get weeded out of the system.
"The most fundamental [principle] to all evolution is reproduction," said Dr. Ronald Crystal, chairman of the Department of Genetic Medicine at Weil Cornell Medical College. "No one knows why the Y chromosome has more pressures to evolve. It may be that the genes are irrelevant. ... But evolution figures out a way to maintain reproduction."
Reproduction Is Still Paramount for Evolution
Even if the Y chromosome becomes obsolete, reproduction will continue, in some form. Makova and Wilson said that new sex chromosomes may rise from non-sex chromosomes or that essential genes might move to other chromosomes, which has happened in some species of deer. "Presumably, we will have moved genes around," said Dr. Harry Ostrer, director of the Human Genetics program at the New York University School of Medicine. "But the reproductive structures will be well conserved."
In other words, men will not fade away, even if their Y chromosomes do.
Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Caged violence rises
Violence and extreme violence are tools of evil to make us spiritually sick...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/568c701a-71a0-11de-a821-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Caged violence rises from the canvas to land fistful of dollars
By Matthew Garrahan and Kenneth Li
July 16 2009 03:00
Michael Bisping did not know what hit him. The fighter from Manchester had just been floored by a stinging right hook from Dan Henderson a beefy, flat-nosed American who, for good measure, followed up with another violent blow to the face while Mr Bisping lay motionless on the mat.
It was a spectacle that many would have found sickening. But for the 13,000 screaming fans in the Mandalay Bay arena in Las Vegas, the brutality on display was what they had paid hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of dollars to see.
Welcome to the world of Ultimate Fighting Championship, a mixed martial arts (MMA) contest that last Saturday celebrated its 100th broadcast event. From relatively humble beginnings when it was shunned by media companies and attacked by politicians, UFC has become one of the US's fastest-growing media properties thanks to careful management of its broadcasting rights and a ruthlessly efficient promotions strategy.
Privately owned by three high school friends, the brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, and its president, Dana White, UFC has tapped into a growing public appetite for violent sport. Its marquee fights take place in a cage called the "Octagon" and are broadcast live in the US via pay-per-view on satellite and cable television, and regularly outstrip boxing title bouts.
Last Saturday's event is expected to have generated more than 1.3m pay-per-view sales, with each buyer paying $44.95 to watch three tightly contested bouts. It was broadcast live or nearly live in 70 countries.
UFC's success and the willingness of the public to pay for televised fights is in no small part due to Mr White, the company's president. Stocky, shaven-headed and prone to expletive-laden outbursts, the former amateur boxer owns 10 per cent of the company and is in charge of day-to-day operations.
Mr White is also UFC's public face, signing fighters to exclusive contracts, negotiating deals with an array of heavyweight sponsors that include brewer Anheuser-Busch, the US army and Harley-Davidson, and fronting The Ultimate Fighter , a weekly UFC reality television show on Spike, a Viacom-owned cable channel.
"We think this is going to be the biggest sport in the world," he told the Financial Times before the start of Saturday's event. "If you think about the NFL, there's nothing bigger in the US. They are spending so much money trying to grow it in Europe but no one in Europe cares [about American football]. We put two guys in the Octagon and it's something that everyone around the world understands. Fighting is in our DNA."
His confidence is borne out by UFC's meteoric growth. SNL Kagan, a research and consulting firm, estimates that UFC generated $40m in pay-per-view sales in 2005, increasing to $270m by 2008. Lorenzo Fertitta told the FT that he expects the company to generate revenues of more than $300m in 2009, with first quarter revenues up 41 per cent.
UFC also has one of live sporting events' highest average ticket prices of $276. Front row seats at UFC 100 were going for more than $10,000 a piece on the secondary market, although most tickets usually range from $75 to $1,000.
Deana Myers, a senior analyst with SNL Kagan, says UFC is the most lucrative pay-per-view property in the US, making more money each year than boxing. "They're generating a huge amount of pay-per-view buys compared with boxing," says Ms Myers. "Boxing doesn't have the talent that it used to have when Mike Tyson was around. UFC has positioned itself well and has a huge fan base."
Yet the competition came close to imploding in the years after it was launched in 1993. It achieved instant notoriety after its first contest, when one fighter was punched so hard that his teeth flew out of the cage. Senator John McCain, an early critic, called the sport "human cockfighting" and worked hard to have it banned.
Lacking legitimacy and commercial appeal, the brand began to struggle and in 2001 it was bought by the Fertitta brothers for a knock-down price of $2m.
Mr Fertitta says the first four years were "rough" and they have invested more than $40m since purchasing UFC. Mr White says the company had to secure legitimacy before it could grow commercially. "The old owners would put the fights on where there were no sanctions, so eventually Senator McCain went to the cable companies to get it banned," he says. "When we bought it we decided to do things differently. We ran towards regulation."
When Zuffa, the Fertitta-owned holding company, bought UFC, the competition was banned in 45 states. Mr White introduced new rules to shake off the infamous "no-holds barred" tag and now UFC is sanctioned in 40 states.
Embracing regulation was a sound commercial decision, adds Mr White. "This many people want to see a freak show," he says, holding his hands a short distance apart. Then he opens his arms wide. "But this many want to see a sport."
UFC may have been toned down from the days when anything was permissible apart from eye-gouging, but it is still a violent sport. Strikes with the knee and elbow are acceptable, as are choke holds that can render fighters unconscious.
There were plenty of fighters in need of medical treatment on Saturday: the first two bouts ended when the losing fighters passed out and needed to be revived. By the end of the evening, the mat in the Octagon was covered in blood.
The clash between Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir was the evening's most hotly anticipated fight. With a neck as thick as a tree trunk, Mr Lesnar, a former college wrestling champion, used his superior weight to pin Mr Mir to the mat while striking him in the face, a technique known as "ground and pound". By the fight's swift conclusion, Mr Mir's face was a bloody pulp.
Mr White argues that UFC is no more or less dangerous than other contact sports and he points out that no one has ever died fighting in UFC, unlike boxing.
The violence is also inherent to UFC's appeal, helping it defy the recession and steal fans from the fake theatrics of World Wrestling Entertainment.
"There has been a shift away from staged wrestling towards the realism of UFC," says Ms Myers.
The business model also differentiates the sport. Unlike boxing, where fight promoters work with broadcasters and arena owners, UFC has complete control over its commercial activities. This seems to have worked in its favour. "A boxing promoter like Don King will do the deal to get the fight staged and that's it," says Mr White. "The venue will stage the fight and sell the tickets and a TV company like HBO will sell it on pay-per-view. We rent the arena, we sell our own tickets, we put it on pay-per-view . . . we risk everything every time we put on a show."
Mr White controls UFC with an iron grip. He forced a chastened Mr Lesnar into a humiliating apology after Saturday's bout after the fighter said he would not be drinking Bud Light - one of the event's sponsors - "because they don't pay me nothin'".
Mr White's success with UFC has also spawned imitators. Elite XC, a rival MMA group, enjoyed a brief spell in the spotlight last year when it signed a deal to broadcast bouts on the CBS network. But the company burned through cash and despite attracting large audiences, it staged only three events for the network.
Akey moment was the 2005 launch of The Ultimate Fighter , which follows 16 fighters battling to win a six-figure UFC contract. Mr White calls the show UFC's "Trojan horse". Before it launched, UFC's pay-per-view fights would do well if they exceeded 100,000 sales. Thanks to the programme, interest has exploded.
"They have done a great job building a brand and awareness via their show on Spike," says Mark Cuban, owner of HDNet, which broadcasts rival MMA events. "They then leveraged that into an enormous following, which in turn led to the great pay-per-view numbers."
Mr Cubanadds that UFC "absorbed a lot of losses" to achieve its dominance. "It won't be easy for other promotions to compete with the UFC, but it's certainly possible," he says.
Rivals are also cropping up internationally - Japan, for example, is a hotbed of MMA. But UFC's international appeal is also growing, and fights have been held in the UK and Germany. One event last year in Montreal attracted 21,000 fans, the largest audience for an MMA fight in North America.
UFC is televised in 100 countries and broadbandexpansion could allow the group to broadcast global pay-per-view events using its own web-based platform.
"When everyone can watch TV on the internet, how many pay-per-view buys do you think we'll do?" says Mr White. "Four million? Five million? We can take this all over the world."
No groin attacks, head-butting or timidity
According to Dana White, president of UFC, one key to its commercial success has been the introduction of rules that have made the sport more palatable to state licensing authorities.
While it remains more violent than many other contact sports, according to UFC's website, foul play includes:
* Butting with the head
* Hair pulling
* Groin attacks of any kind
* Putting a finger into any orifice or into any cut or laceration on an opponent
* Small joint manipulation
* Striking the spine or back of the head
* Kicking or kneeing the head of a grounded opponent
* Using abusive language in the ring or fenced area
* Clawing, pinching or twisting the flesh
* Timidity, including, without limitation, avoiding contact with an opponent, intentionally or consistently dropping the mouthpiece or faking an injury
* Throwing in the towel during competition
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/568c701a-71a0-11de-a821-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Caged violence rises from the canvas to land fistful of dollars
By Matthew Garrahan and Kenneth Li
July 16 2009 03:00
Michael Bisping did not know what hit him. The fighter from Manchester had just been floored by a stinging right hook from Dan Henderson a beefy, flat-nosed American who, for good measure, followed up with another violent blow to the face while Mr Bisping lay motionless on the mat.
It was a spectacle that many would have found sickening. But for the 13,000 screaming fans in the Mandalay Bay arena in Las Vegas, the brutality on display was what they had paid hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of dollars to see.
Welcome to the world of Ultimate Fighting Championship, a mixed martial arts (MMA) contest that last Saturday celebrated its 100th broadcast event. From relatively humble beginnings when it was shunned by media companies and attacked by politicians, UFC has become one of the US's fastest-growing media properties thanks to careful management of its broadcasting rights and a ruthlessly efficient promotions strategy.
Privately owned by three high school friends, the brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, and its president, Dana White, UFC has tapped into a growing public appetite for violent sport. Its marquee fights take place in a cage called the "Octagon" and are broadcast live in the US via pay-per-view on satellite and cable television, and regularly outstrip boxing title bouts.
Last Saturday's event is expected to have generated more than 1.3m pay-per-view sales, with each buyer paying $44.95 to watch three tightly contested bouts. It was broadcast live or nearly live in 70 countries.
UFC's success and the willingness of the public to pay for televised fights is in no small part due to Mr White, the company's president. Stocky, shaven-headed and prone to expletive-laden outbursts, the former amateur boxer owns 10 per cent of the company and is in charge of day-to-day operations.
Mr White is also UFC's public face, signing fighters to exclusive contracts, negotiating deals with an array of heavyweight sponsors that include brewer Anheuser-Busch, the US army and Harley-Davidson, and fronting The Ultimate Fighter , a weekly UFC reality television show on Spike, a Viacom-owned cable channel.
"We think this is going to be the biggest sport in the world," he told the Financial Times before the start of Saturday's event. "If you think about the NFL, there's nothing bigger in the US. They are spending so much money trying to grow it in Europe but no one in Europe cares [about American football]. We put two guys in the Octagon and it's something that everyone around the world understands. Fighting is in our DNA."
His confidence is borne out by UFC's meteoric growth. SNL Kagan, a research and consulting firm, estimates that UFC generated $40m in pay-per-view sales in 2005, increasing to $270m by 2008. Lorenzo Fertitta told the FT that he expects the company to generate revenues of more than $300m in 2009, with first quarter revenues up 41 per cent.
UFC also has one of live sporting events' highest average ticket prices of $276. Front row seats at UFC 100 were going for more than $10,000 a piece on the secondary market, although most tickets usually range from $75 to $1,000.
Deana Myers, a senior analyst with SNL Kagan, says UFC is the most lucrative pay-per-view property in the US, making more money each year than boxing. "They're generating a huge amount of pay-per-view buys compared with boxing," says Ms Myers. "Boxing doesn't have the talent that it used to have when Mike Tyson was around. UFC has positioned itself well and has a huge fan base."
Yet the competition came close to imploding in the years after it was launched in 1993. It achieved instant notoriety after its first contest, when one fighter was punched so hard that his teeth flew out of the cage. Senator John McCain, an early critic, called the sport "human cockfighting" and worked hard to have it banned.
Lacking legitimacy and commercial appeal, the brand began to struggle and in 2001 it was bought by the Fertitta brothers for a knock-down price of $2m.
Mr Fertitta says the first four years were "rough" and they have invested more than $40m since purchasing UFC. Mr White says the company had to secure legitimacy before it could grow commercially. "The old owners would put the fights on where there were no sanctions, so eventually Senator McCain went to the cable companies to get it banned," he says. "When we bought it we decided to do things differently. We ran towards regulation."
When Zuffa, the Fertitta-owned holding company, bought UFC, the competition was banned in 45 states. Mr White introduced new rules to shake off the infamous "no-holds barred" tag and now UFC is sanctioned in 40 states.
Embracing regulation was a sound commercial decision, adds Mr White. "This many people want to see a freak show," he says, holding his hands a short distance apart. Then he opens his arms wide. "But this many want to see a sport."
UFC may have been toned down from the days when anything was permissible apart from eye-gouging, but it is still a violent sport. Strikes with the knee and elbow are acceptable, as are choke holds that can render fighters unconscious.
There were plenty of fighters in need of medical treatment on Saturday: the first two bouts ended when the losing fighters passed out and needed to be revived. By the end of the evening, the mat in the Octagon was covered in blood.
The clash between Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir was the evening's most hotly anticipated fight. With a neck as thick as a tree trunk, Mr Lesnar, a former college wrestling champion, used his superior weight to pin Mr Mir to the mat while striking him in the face, a technique known as "ground and pound". By the fight's swift conclusion, Mr Mir's face was a bloody pulp.
Mr White argues that UFC is no more or less dangerous than other contact sports and he points out that no one has ever died fighting in UFC, unlike boxing.
The violence is also inherent to UFC's appeal, helping it defy the recession and steal fans from the fake theatrics of World Wrestling Entertainment.
"There has been a shift away from staged wrestling towards the realism of UFC," says Ms Myers.
The business model also differentiates the sport. Unlike boxing, where fight promoters work with broadcasters and arena owners, UFC has complete control over its commercial activities. This seems to have worked in its favour. "A boxing promoter like Don King will do the deal to get the fight staged and that's it," says Mr White. "The venue will stage the fight and sell the tickets and a TV company like HBO will sell it on pay-per-view. We rent the arena, we sell our own tickets, we put it on pay-per-view . . . we risk everything every time we put on a show."
Mr White controls UFC with an iron grip. He forced a chastened Mr Lesnar into a humiliating apology after Saturday's bout after the fighter said he would not be drinking Bud Light - one of the event's sponsors - "because they don't pay me nothin'".
Mr White's success with UFC has also spawned imitators. Elite XC, a rival MMA group, enjoyed a brief spell in the spotlight last year when it signed a deal to broadcast bouts on the CBS network. But the company burned through cash and despite attracting large audiences, it staged only three events for the network.
Akey moment was the 2005 launch of The Ultimate Fighter , which follows 16 fighters battling to win a six-figure UFC contract. Mr White calls the show UFC's "Trojan horse". Before it launched, UFC's pay-per-view fights would do well if they exceeded 100,000 sales. Thanks to the programme, interest has exploded.
"They have done a great job building a brand and awareness via their show on Spike," says Mark Cuban, owner of HDNet, which broadcasts rival MMA events. "They then leveraged that into an enormous following, which in turn led to the great pay-per-view numbers."
Mr Cubanadds that UFC "absorbed a lot of losses" to achieve its dominance. "It won't be easy for other promotions to compete with the UFC, but it's certainly possible," he says.
Rivals are also cropping up internationally - Japan, for example, is a hotbed of MMA. But UFC's international appeal is also growing, and fights have been held in the UK and Germany. One event last year in Montreal attracted 21,000 fans, the largest audience for an MMA fight in North America.
UFC is televised in 100 countries and broadbandexpansion could allow the group to broadcast global pay-per-view events using its own web-based platform.
"When everyone can watch TV on the internet, how many pay-per-view buys do you think we'll do?" says Mr White. "Four million? Five million? We can take this all over the world."
No groin attacks, head-butting or timidity
According to Dana White, president of UFC, one key to its commercial success has been the introduction of rules that have made the sport more palatable to state licensing authorities.
While it remains more violent than many other contact sports, according to UFC's website, foul play includes:
* Butting with the head
* Hair pulling
* Groin attacks of any kind
* Putting a finger into any orifice or into any cut or laceration on an opponent
* Small joint manipulation
* Striking the spine or back of the head
* Kicking or kneeing the head of a grounded opponent
* Using abusive language in the ring or fenced area
* Clawing, pinching or twisting the flesh
* Timidity, including, without limitation, avoiding contact with an opponent, intentionally or consistently dropping the mouthpiece or faking an injury
* Throwing in the towel during competition
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
There's Enough Land, Water and Resources For Everyone On Earth
I highly recommend the video on this page as well.
http://www.thecrowhouse.com/ftnwo.html
...Wars do not have to be fought and children do NOT have to starve, and don't think people starve because the world is over populated. Don't believe what the Television tells you, the world isn't over populated at all. In fact, lets look at it realistically with a simple comparison of population versus land mass, and we can do a rough estimate and formulate a quick hypothetical to demonstrate this very easily.
There are approximately 6 billion people in the world and there is 2.97 million square miles of land in the Island continent of Australia. 2.97 million square miles breaks down to 1 billion, 900 million, 800,000 acres which then converts down to 7,603,200,000 quarter acre blocks of land. So we could hypothetically give every person in the world a quarter acre block of land and they would all fit into an area the size of Australia, each would have enough land that they could all have gardens and grow a substantial supply of their own food, and we would still have 1,603,200,000 quarter acre blocks, or an area roughly half the size of Queensland left over - plus the entire rest of the world. Now just pause to let that sink in to your brain for a second. ALL the people, that's every man woman and child on earth, would comfortably fit inside Australia, each individual person could have a quarter acre block of land and we would STILL have half of Queensland and the entire rest of the PLANET left totally unoccupied.
The world is not over populated at all. Its just very badly managed and and you need have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that this bad management is intentional, and it is methodical. It would however, be very simple to fix things. And all that is required is for people to wake up to how much they are being lied to and how much they are being scammed. And this goes for everyone...
...people really do need to open their eyes to see it right now because now that the world has been made smaller and now that all resources have been discovered and there are no frontiers left to conquer, the criminal elite intend to carry out a mass depoplulation of this world and their plan to do this is well underway. They are doing it in the middle east with war, in countries such as Africa through starvation and now in western countries through water additives, aerial spraying and through the introduction of toxic and nutrient deficient GM foods. This is to very soon be taken to the next level with the Global Implementation of Codex Alimentarius, an insidious set of food guidelines that are due to come into effect world wide on Dec. 31st 2009. But people are now beginning to wake and realize that all is not right and they are beginning to speak out...
http://www.thecrowhouse.com/ftnwo.html
...Wars do not have to be fought and children do NOT have to starve, and don't think people starve because the world is over populated. Don't believe what the Television tells you, the world isn't over populated at all. In fact, lets look at it realistically with a simple comparison of population versus land mass, and we can do a rough estimate and formulate a quick hypothetical to demonstrate this very easily.
There are approximately 6 billion people in the world and there is 2.97 million square miles of land in the Island continent of Australia. 2.97 million square miles breaks down to 1 billion, 900 million, 800,000 acres which then converts down to 7,603,200,000 quarter acre blocks of land. So we could hypothetically give every person in the world a quarter acre block of land and they would all fit into an area the size of Australia, each would have enough land that they could all have gardens and grow a substantial supply of their own food, and we would still have 1,603,200,000 quarter acre blocks, or an area roughly half the size of Queensland left over - plus the entire rest of the world. Now just pause to let that sink in to your brain for a second. ALL the people, that's every man woman and child on earth, would comfortably fit inside Australia, each individual person could have a quarter acre block of land and we would STILL have half of Queensland and the entire rest of the PLANET left totally unoccupied.
The world is not over populated at all. Its just very badly managed and and you need have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that this bad management is intentional, and it is methodical. It would however, be very simple to fix things. And all that is required is for people to wake up to how much they are being lied to and how much they are being scammed. And this goes for everyone...
...people really do need to open their eyes to see it right now because now that the world has been made smaller and now that all resources have been discovered and there are no frontiers left to conquer, the criminal elite intend to carry out a mass depoplulation of this world and their plan to do this is well underway. They are doing it in the middle east with war, in countries such as Africa through starvation and now in western countries through water additives, aerial spraying and through the introduction of toxic and nutrient deficient GM foods. This is to very soon be taken to the next level with the Global Implementation of Codex Alimentarius, an insidious set of food guidelines that are due to come into effect world wide on Dec. 31st 2009. But people are now beginning to wake and realize that all is not right and they are beginning to speak out...
Friday, July 10, 2009
Why Torture is Evil
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/188778-Why-Torture-is-Evil
Will Van Wagenen
Antiwar.com
Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:47 UTC
Most defenders of torture rely on the argument that torture saves (American) lives, and that torture is therefore justified and moral. Such defenders often cite fantastic scenarios similar to the following: Imagine a terrorist group is planning to detonate a nuclear bomb in the middle of a major US city. Now imagine that one of the terrorists is captured by the CIA. The terrorist won't reveal the information needed to stop the attack so he must be tortured until he gives up the information, allowing the CIA to stop the attack and save hundreds of thousands of lives. Such defenders then pose the question, "How could it be wrong to torture one evil person in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives?"
In other words such defenders cite as their "proof" that torture is moral an imaginary scenario which has never occurred and which has no basis in reality. In fact, US Supreme court justice Antonin Scalia defended the use of torture at a legal conference in Canada in this way by specifically referencing the popular television drama 24, in which the fictional US special agent Jack Bauer routinely tortures terror suspects to save American lives in situations similar to that described above. Scalia stated:
Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles... . He saved hundreds of thousands of lives... Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?... Say that criminal law is against him? "You have the right to a jury trial?" Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.
Recently, former Vice President Dick Cheney used essentially this rationale to defend the Bush administration's use of enhanced interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme temperatures, which the International Committee of the Red Cross says constitute torture. Cheney stated that, "I am convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives," by using such techniques and called the federal government's efforts to prevent terror attacks since 2001 "one of the greatest success stories of American intelligence."
Sadly, Cheney's claim about the virtues of torture is more no connected to reality than is Scalia's. Cheney's defense of torture rests on three false and/or highly questionable assumptions: Firstly, that saving lives was the Bush administration's primary purpose for introducing the use of torture; secondly that the intelligence gained by torture actually prevented attacks on the American homeland; thirdly, that torture actually saved American lives generally.
This first assumption is incorrect because much of the torture Cheney is now retrospectively defending had nothing to do with saving American lives, but rather with obtaining evidence that a link existed between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government. Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell, reports that:
Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 - well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion - its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda. So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qaeda-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop. There in fact were no such contacts.
Such a link was crucial to find in order to implicate the Iraqi regime in the 9/11 attacks, which could then provide a justification for the US to invade Iraq and install a new pro-US government, something which prominent members of the Bush administration had been advocating since at least 1998, and for reasons that had nothing to do with international Islamic terror groups.
Under duress of torture (where Egyptian interrogators also made him believe he would be buried alive), Al-Libi fabricated the story that the Iraqi government trained al-Qaeda operatives in chemical and biological warfare. This incorrect information was cited by President Bush in a speech on Oct 7, 2002 and by Secretary of State Colin Powell at his famous speech at the United Nations on February 5, 2003, and proved crucial in giving the Bush administration sufficient domestic and international support to launch the invasion of Iraq in mid-march 2003.
So torture after 9/11 had more to do with starting a new war in which further American lives would be lost than with saving Americans from future terror attacks.
The second assumption underlying Cheney's argument, that the intelligence gained by torture has prevented attacks against the American homeland, is highly questionable. Cheney claims that, "Every senior official who has been briefed on these classified matters knows of specific attacks that were in the planning stages and were stopped by the programs we put in place." However, a May 2004 report by the CIA inspector general contradicts this claim, noting that the enhanced interrogation program produced some useful information but that "it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks," according to a declassified Justice Department memo summarizing the report.
Additionally, Milton Bearden, former CIA station chief of the Pakistan, Nigeria, and Sudan offices, says that Cheney's claims are likely false, noting that if such proof did exist, "I cannot imagine that the system would not have leaked such a story. It would have been leaked in a New York minute." Until evidence to support Cheney's claim is produced, it is impossible to know that any attacks on the American homeland have been prevented.
What is clear and indisputable, however, is that Cheney's torture policy has directly led to the deaths of thousands of US servicemen and women, thus refuting the third assumption underlying Cheney's claim, namely that torture has saved American lives. Let me explain how this is the case: Once the US had successfully occupied Iraq, the US Army began to meet resistance from a variety of armed groups, whose stated goal was to expel the American occupiers. Rather than order the withdrawal of the US Army from Iraq and remove US troops from harm's way (the obvious choice if preserving American lives is one's priority), the Bush administration remained determined to establish a long-term military presence in the country. In order to defeat the fledgling Iraqi insurgency, which targeted US troops with road side bombs, mortars, and sniper fire, it now became crucial to gather intelligence that could prevent such attacks. Because US intelligence gathering was poor, the US military resorted to the wide-scale round up and interrogation of thousands of adult Iraqi males (as well as some women and children), 70% to 90% of which were arrested by mistake, according to US intelligence officials.
US interrogators in Iraq and Afghanistan soon began using many of the enhanced interrogation techniques pioneered in Guantánamo and the secret CIA prisons on these detainees. According to a report written by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, the "augmented techniques for Guantánamo migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq where they were neither limited nor safeguarded," resulting in the torture of Iraqi and Afghan detainees in a fashion far more brutal than the torture methods officially endorsed by top Bush Administration officials.
Methods of abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan have included stuffing a detainee into a sleeping bag, wrapping him with electrical cord, and suffocating him to death; covering a detainee's head with a plastic bag, then shackling him "in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe" until he died of asphyxiation, and until the guard on duty was surprised the detainees' arms "didn't pop out of their sockets;" beating a detainee "with a flashlight so severely that he eventually died from his injuries;" stripping detainees naked and forcing them to masturbate; "[b]reaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; [and] sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light."
US Army interrogator Tony Lagouranis, who served in various US prisons throughout Iraq, including in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, described how the rationale of torturing prisoners to save American lives led US interrogators to torture not only suspected insurgents, but also regular Iraqis known to be innocent as well:
Once introduced into war, torture will inevitably spread because the ticking bombs are everywhere. Each and every prisoner, without exception, has the potential to be the one that provides the information that will save American lives. So if you accept the logic that we have to perform torture to prevent deaths, each and every prisoner is deserving of torture. In a situation like Iraq, it wasn't just a few abstract lives that might be saved somewhere, at some future time. The mortars came almost every day. The life in question was my very own. Once we accepted that any prisoner might be holding information that could save lives, we gladly used everything in our tool box on everyone. This resulted in the expansion of the class of people who could be tortured. Now it included people who had been picked up for questioning but were not being suspected of being insurgents, and it included people who were picked up on hunches - people against whom we had no solid evidence - and it included relatives of our real targets. Again, I see the spread of torture to these groups as natural and inevitable. At the time, I barely noticed it happening (See Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogators Dark Journey Through Iraq, by Tony Lagouranis, pg. 245).
Public outrage among Iraqis, as well as Arabs from neighboring countries, as a result of the US use of torture, caused the ranks of those wishing to fight the American occupiers to swell. This in turn caused the number of attacks against US troops in Iraq to increase, leading to higher American casualties. Matthew Alexander, who led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006, and who was responsible for obtaining the intelligence which led to the US military killing the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, described how the use of torture contributed to an increase in US military deaths in Iraq:
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me - unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.
Alexander's view is reinforced by the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate (abbreviated as NIE, it is a report representing the consensus view of the 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA). The New York Times reported that the NIE concluded that "the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks," while previous drafts of the NIE "describe actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal."
So not only has torture not saved any American lives, it has actually led to more Americans being killed and increased the overall terrorist threat to America. But what was the alternative? After 9/11, did the Bush Administration have any other choice? Yes. Rather than announcing that the protections of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to US-held detainees and introducing enhanced interrogation techniques, thus opening the door to even more heinous forms of torture, Cheney and his colleagues could have dealt with the problem of terrorism by pursuing the criminals who carried out the 9/11 atrocities using the police and interrogation methods of the FBI. They could have refrained from invading Iraq, a country which had never attacked US soil and had no part in 9/11, and thereby avoided killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Even after the invasion of Iraq had taken place, the Bush administration could have withdrawn US troops from that country once resistance to the US occupation began, and after it became clear that most Iraqis did not welcome the US presence. Instead, they chose to impose their will on Iraqis by torture and violence, and put Americans in harms way in the process.
But what if you really could save hundreds of thousands of lives by torturing a terrorist, and thereby stop a massive, imminent attack on an American city? If such a scenario were to present itself, it would be reasonable to say that torturing that person would be moral. However, because such a scenario exists only in our imaginations, the question of whether the use of torture is moral in such a circumstance is irrelevant. Instead, we can be sure that anyone using such a rationale to endorse the use of torture in the real world is doing so to justify a policy that will, in reality, lead to the torture of hundreds if not thousands of innocents, as has actually occurred in Iraq. That is why torture is illegal under international law under all circumstances, and why Tony Lagouranis, the Army interrogator quoted above and who himself participated in torturing Iraqi detainees, feels that, "If you don't include torturing helpless prisoners in your definition of evil, your definition of evil is meaningless."
Will Van Wagenen
Antiwar.com
Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:47 UTC
Most defenders of torture rely on the argument that torture saves (American) lives, and that torture is therefore justified and moral. Such defenders often cite fantastic scenarios similar to the following: Imagine a terrorist group is planning to detonate a nuclear bomb in the middle of a major US city. Now imagine that one of the terrorists is captured by the CIA. The terrorist won't reveal the information needed to stop the attack so he must be tortured until he gives up the information, allowing the CIA to stop the attack and save hundreds of thousands of lives. Such defenders then pose the question, "How could it be wrong to torture one evil person in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives?"
In other words such defenders cite as their "proof" that torture is moral an imaginary scenario which has never occurred and which has no basis in reality. In fact, US Supreme court justice Antonin Scalia defended the use of torture at a legal conference in Canada in this way by specifically referencing the popular television drama 24, in which the fictional US special agent Jack Bauer routinely tortures terror suspects to save American lives in situations similar to that described above. Scalia stated:
Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles... . He saved hundreds of thousands of lives... Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?... Say that criminal law is against him? "You have the right to a jury trial?" Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.
Recently, former Vice President Dick Cheney used essentially this rationale to defend the Bush administration's use of enhanced interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme temperatures, which the International Committee of the Red Cross says constitute torture. Cheney stated that, "I am convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives," by using such techniques and called the federal government's efforts to prevent terror attacks since 2001 "one of the greatest success stories of American intelligence."
Sadly, Cheney's claim about the virtues of torture is more no connected to reality than is Scalia's. Cheney's defense of torture rests on three false and/or highly questionable assumptions: Firstly, that saving lives was the Bush administration's primary purpose for introducing the use of torture; secondly that the intelligence gained by torture actually prevented attacks on the American homeland; thirdly, that torture actually saved American lives generally.
This first assumption is incorrect because much of the torture Cheney is now retrospectively defending had nothing to do with saving American lives, but rather with obtaining evidence that a link existed between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government. Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell, reports that:
Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 - well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion - its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda. So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qaeda-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop. There in fact were no such contacts.
Such a link was crucial to find in order to implicate the Iraqi regime in the 9/11 attacks, which could then provide a justification for the US to invade Iraq and install a new pro-US government, something which prominent members of the Bush administration had been advocating since at least 1998, and for reasons that had nothing to do with international Islamic terror groups.
Under duress of torture (where Egyptian interrogators also made him believe he would be buried alive), Al-Libi fabricated the story that the Iraqi government trained al-Qaeda operatives in chemical and biological warfare. This incorrect information was cited by President Bush in a speech on Oct 7, 2002 and by Secretary of State Colin Powell at his famous speech at the United Nations on February 5, 2003, and proved crucial in giving the Bush administration sufficient domestic and international support to launch the invasion of Iraq in mid-march 2003.
So torture after 9/11 had more to do with starting a new war in which further American lives would be lost than with saving Americans from future terror attacks.
The second assumption underlying Cheney's argument, that the intelligence gained by torture has prevented attacks against the American homeland, is highly questionable. Cheney claims that, "Every senior official who has been briefed on these classified matters knows of specific attacks that were in the planning stages and were stopped by the programs we put in place." However, a May 2004 report by the CIA inspector general contradicts this claim, noting that the enhanced interrogation program produced some useful information but that "it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks," according to a declassified Justice Department memo summarizing the report.
Additionally, Milton Bearden, former CIA station chief of the Pakistan, Nigeria, and Sudan offices, says that Cheney's claims are likely false, noting that if such proof did exist, "I cannot imagine that the system would not have leaked such a story. It would have been leaked in a New York minute." Until evidence to support Cheney's claim is produced, it is impossible to know that any attacks on the American homeland have been prevented.
What is clear and indisputable, however, is that Cheney's torture policy has directly led to the deaths of thousands of US servicemen and women, thus refuting the third assumption underlying Cheney's claim, namely that torture has saved American lives. Let me explain how this is the case: Once the US had successfully occupied Iraq, the US Army began to meet resistance from a variety of armed groups, whose stated goal was to expel the American occupiers. Rather than order the withdrawal of the US Army from Iraq and remove US troops from harm's way (the obvious choice if preserving American lives is one's priority), the Bush administration remained determined to establish a long-term military presence in the country. In order to defeat the fledgling Iraqi insurgency, which targeted US troops with road side bombs, mortars, and sniper fire, it now became crucial to gather intelligence that could prevent such attacks. Because US intelligence gathering was poor, the US military resorted to the wide-scale round up and interrogation of thousands of adult Iraqi males (as well as some women and children), 70% to 90% of which were arrested by mistake, according to US intelligence officials.
US interrogators in Iraq and Afghanistan soon began using many of the enhanced interrogation techniques pioneered in Guantánamo and the secret CIA prisons on these detainees. According to a report written by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, the "augmented techniques for Guantánamo migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq where they were neither limited nor safeguarded," resulting in the torture of Iraqi and Afghan detainees in a fashion far more brutal than the torture methods officially endorsed by top Bush Administration officials.
Methods of abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan have included stuffing a detainee into a sleeping bag, wrapping him with electrical cord, and suffocating him to death; covering a detainee's head with a plastic bag, then shackling him "in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe" until he died of asphyxiation, and until the guard on duty was surprised the detainees' arms "didn't pop out of their sockets;" beating a detainee "with a flashlight so severely that he eventually died from his injuries;" stripping detainees naked and forcing them to masturbate; "[b]reaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; [and] sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light."
US Army interrogator Tony Lagouranis, who served in various US prisons throughout Iraq, including in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, described how the rationale of torturing prisoners to save American lives led US interrogators to torture not only suspected insurgents, but also regular Iraqis known to be innocent as well:
Once introduced into war, torture will inevitably spread because the ticking bombs are everywhere. Each and every prisoner, without exception, has the potential to be the one that provides the information that will save American lives. So if you accept the logic that we have to perform torture to prevent deaths, each and every prisoner is deserving of torture. In a situation like Iraq, it wasn't just a few abstract lives that might be saved somewhere, at some future time. The mortars came almost every day. The life in question was my very own. Once we accepted that any prisoner might be holding information that could save lives, we gladly used everything in our tool box on everyone. This resulted in the expansion of the class of people who could be tortured. Now it included people who had been picked up for questioning but were not being suspected of being insurgents, and it included people who were picked up on hunches - people against whom we had no solid evidence - and it included relatives of our real targets. Again, I see the spread of torture to these groups as natural and inevitable. At the time, I barely noticed it happening (See Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogators Dark Journey Through Iraq, by Tony Lagouranis, pg. 245).
Public outrage among Iraqis, as well as Arabs from neighboring countries, as a result of the US use of torture, caused the ranks of those wishing to fight the American occupiers to swell. This in turn caused the number of attacks against US troops in Iraq to increase, leading to higher American casualties. Matthew Alexander, who led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006, and who was responsible for obtaining the intelligence which led to the US military killing the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, described how the use of torture contributed to an increase in US military deaths in Iraq:
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me - unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.
Alexander's view is reinforced by the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate (abbreviated as NIE, it is a report representing the consensus view of the 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA). The New York Times reported that the NIE concluded that "the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks," while previous drafts of the NIE "describe actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal."
So not only has torture not saved any American lives, it has actually led to more Americans being killed and increased the overall terrorist threat to America. But what was the alternative? After 9/11, did the Bush Administration have any other choice? Yes. Rather than announcing that the protections of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to US-held detainees and introducing enhanced interrogation techniques, thus opening the door to even more heinous forms of torture, Cheney and his colleagues could have dealt with the problem of terrorism by pursuing the criminals who carried out the 9/11 atrocities using the police and interrogation methods of the FBI. They could have refrained from invading Iraq, a country which had never attacked US soil and had no part in 9/11, and thereby avoided killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Even after the invasion of Iraq had taken place, the Bush administration could have withdrawn US troops from that country once resistance to the US occupation began, and after it became clear that most Iraqis did not welcome the US presence. Instead, they chose to impose their will on Iraqis by torture and violence, and put Americans in harms way in the process.
But what if you really could save hundreds of thousands of lives by torturing a terrorist, and thereby stop a massive, imminent attack on an American city? If such a scenario were to present itself, it would be reasonable to say that torturing that person would be moral. However, because such a scenario exists only in our imaginations, the question of whether the use of torture is moral in such a circumstance is irrelevant. Instead, we can be sure that anyone using such a rationale to endorse the use of torture in the real world is doing so to justify a policy that will, in reality, lead to the torture of hundreds if not thousands of innocents, as has actually occurred in Iraq. That is why torture is illegal under international law under all circumstances, and why Tony Lagouranis, the Army interrogator quoted above and who himself participated in torturing Iraqi detainees, feels that, "If you don't include torturing helpless prisoners in your definition of evil, your definition of evil is meaningless."
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
DC Metro Crash: Who Will Die Next Because We Throw Money at Billionaries and Scrimp on the Public Good?
Human life should be the most important and valuable thing on the planet but the evil elite view any life outside their own sphere as expendable...
By Dave Zirin, The Nation
June 30, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140988/
Who will be the next to die because our cities spend money on sports stadiums instead of basic infrastructure?
Two years ago, my former college town, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, was the site of thirteen needless fatalities when the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed. The tragedy occurred the same month that ground was broken on a $500 million stadium. Now, a mere ten minute walk from my home, two Washington, DC, Metro trains collided, killing nine and sending more than seventy-five to the hospital.
I spent most of that evening on the phone, either assuring people that my family was safe or checking on friends to make sure no one was in the hospital or worse. My loved ones were all in one piece. The parents of my little girl's friends were secure, although several had been on the trains involved, shaken up for sure but not grievously injured. The relief was palpable, even physical. But then the stories started to be released in small doses, and relief turned to horror.
There were the families of the dead on television: the inconsolable loved ones of train operator Jeanice McMillan, 42; David and Ann Wherley, both 62; Mary Doolittle, 59; LaVonda King, 23; Veronica DuBose, 29; Cameron Williams, 37; Dennis Hawkins, 64, and Ana Fernandez, 40. A teacher, a young mother, a retired National Guard major general, a woman who cleaned office buildings while raising six children--all gone, leaving devastated friends and family behind.
Then there are victims like 14-year-old Lanice Beasley. The tendons in her legs were severed. While she waited for rescue, Lanice comforted a severely injured woman who ultimately perished right next to her on the ground.
From her hospital bed, Lanice spoke to the press in a fading voice and kept losing consciousness, but she managed to reveal details of the ordeal: "We were by a dumpster on the ground. I saw her die. She died right there."
This is just too much to bear. My shock became anger as it became clear that none of these people had to die, that no one had to be hurt. This accident was about as predictable as the setting sun. The wreckage by my house is not an accident site. It is a crime scene. And it happened for one reason: the twisted policies of the underfunded Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. The WMATA gets no dedicated federal funds despite the fact that it serves thousands of federal workers. In fact, it has no dedicated source of funds at all, depending on fares and ads for three-fifths of its budget.
The rest is a pittance from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, creating an underfunded, overstretched system called by the Brookings Institution "deficits by design."
All the dirty laundry that Metro riders catch whiffs of on their daily commutes is now in plain view. Employees have told the Washington Post that the first two cars of the striking train were two months overdue for maintenance on "braking components." In addition, the trains involved in the collision were recommended to be taken off the tracks altogether or significantly retrofitted back in 2006.
The Post also reported that Deborah Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board said, "They have not been able to do that and our recommendation was not addressed. So, it has been an unacceptable status." Even worse, we now know that Jeanice McMillan probably pressed the emergency brake and it did not respond.
The Metro has now become our broken levee: An utterly preventable tragedy if only people in government had the will to do the public good. And as in New Orleans, whose Superdome sucked up public money better spent on flood control, if publicly funded stadiums hadn't become a substitute for urban policy, we wouldn't be mourning today.
The boondoggle of government-funded stadiums is just one example from a society that provides handouts to billionaires at the expense of ordinary citizens' needs.
DC Mayor Adrian Fenty should be crawling under a rock right now. Instead Fenty sees this crisis, according to reports, as his Giuliani moment. In other words, as an opportunity for him to be some sort kind of strongman visionary in the wake of tragedy. There he is in front of every camera: the very image of an urban leader.
Spare us your ambition, Mr. Mayor. Instead, explain how we are going to get Metro funded. And while you are at it, explain why the District of Columbia is on the hook for a $700 million ballpark, where the city's last-place team in the National League's Eastern Division toils in front of their dozen or so biggest fans? Why, under your watch, does the DC government own skyboxes at all sporting venues? Why are you in discussion for more stadium spending -- on soccer, hoops and the mother of all stadium deals, the possible return of the Washington Redskins from suburban Maryland to the District?
Every billionaire sports owner has his hand out because Fenty has shown that he will turn his pockets inside out for them -- this despite the fact that Fenty became mayor on the strength of standing up to the Nationals stadium deal when he was on the City Council. The Nats are now owned by the multibillionaire Lerner family, which was essentially handed the stadium and continues to exact concessions from the city.
Fenty should by no means be the only political leader to feel the heat. The state governments in Maryland and Virginia should also be doing a perp walk. But the WMATA is the DC-area Metro. If Fenty wants to own this crisis, he needs to own his own accountability.
This is a question of priorities, plain and simple. But not our priorities. A majority of DC-area residents opposed the public funding of the stadiums. These are the priorities of power and they must be opposed at all costs. The advice of peace activist Sister Joan Chittister has some relevance here. "Anger is not bad," she has said. "Anger can be a very positive thing, the thing that moves us beyond the acceptance of evil." It's time to get angry. Or the next city may be your own.
Dave Zirin is the author of "What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States." Read more of his work at Edgeofsports.com.
By Dave Zirin, The Nation
June 30, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140988/
Who will be the next to die because our cities spend money on sports stadiums instead of basic infrastructure?
Two years ago, my former college town, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, was the site of thirteen needless fatalities when the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed. The tragedy occurred the same month that ground was broken on a $500 million stadium. Now, a mere ten minute walk from my home, two Washington, DC, Metro trains collided, killing nine and sending more than seventy-five to the hospital.
I spent most of that evening on the phone, either assuring people that my family was safe or checking on friends to make sure no one was in the hospital or worse. My loved ones were all in one piece. The parents of my little girl's friends were secure, although several had been on the trains involved, shaken up for sure but not grievously injured. The relief was palpable, even physical. But then the stories started to be released in small doses, and relief turned to horror.
There were the families of the dead on television: the inconsolable loved ones of train operator Jeanice McMillan, 42; David and Ann Wherley, both 62; Mary Doolittle, 59; LaVonda King, 23; Veronica DuBose, 29; Cameron Williams, 37; Dennis Hawkins, 64, and Ana Fernandez, 40. A teacher, a young mother, a retired National Guard major general, a woman who cleaned office buildings while raising six children--all gone, leaving devastated friends and family behind.
Then there are victims like 14-year-old Lanice Beasley. The tendons in her legs were severed. While she waited for rescue, Lanice comforted a severely injured woman who ultimately perished right next to her on the ground.
From her hospital bed, Lanice spoke to the press in a fading voice and kept losing consciousness, but she managed to reveal details of the ordeal: "We were by a dumpster on the ground. I saw her die. She died right there."
This is just too much to bear. My shock became anger as it became clear that none of these people had to die, that no one had to be hurt. This accident was about as predictable as the setting sun. The wreckage by my house is not an accident site. It is a crime scene. And it happened for one reason: the twisted policies of the underfunded Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. The WMATA gets no dedicated federal funds despite the fact that it serves thousands of federal workers. In fact, it has no dedicated source of funds at all, depending on fares and ads for three-fifths of its budget.
The rest is a pittance from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, creating an underfunded, overstretched system called by the Brookings Institution "deficits by design."
All the dirty laundry that Metro riders catch whiffs of on their daily commutes is now in plain view. Employees have told the Washington Post that the first two cars of the striking train were two months overdue for maintenance on "braking components." In addition, the trains involved in the collision were recommended to be taken off the tracks altogether or significantly retrofitted back in 2006.
The Post also reported that Deborah Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board said, "They have not been able to do that and our recommendation was not addressed. So, it has been an unacceptable status." Even worse, we now know that Jeanice McMillan probably pressed the emergency brake and it did not respond.
The Metro has now become our broken levee: An utterly preventable tragedy if only people in government had the will to do the public good. And as in New Orleans, whose Superdome sucked up public money better spent on flood control, if publicly funded stadiums hadn't become a substitute for urban policy, we wouldn't be mourning today.
The boondoggle of government-funded stadiums is just one example from a society that provides handouts to billionaires at the expense of ordinary citizens' needs.
DC Mayor Adrian Fenty should be crawling under a rock right now. Instead Fenty sees this crisis, according to reports, as his Giuliani moment. In other words, as an opportunity for him to be some sort kind of strongman visionary in the wake of tragedy. There he is in front of every camera: the very image of an urban leader.
Spare us your ambition, Mr. Mayor. Instead, explain how we are going to get Metro funded. And while you are at it, explain why the District of Columbia is on the hook for a $700 million ballpark, where the city's last-place team in the National League's Eastern Division toils in front of their dozen or so biggest fans? Why, under your watch, does the DC government own skyboxes at all sporting venues? Why are you in discussion for more stadium spending -- on soccer, hoops and the mother of all stadium deals, the possible return of the Washington Redskins from suburban Maryland to the District?
Every billionaire sports owner has his hand out because Fenty has shown that he will turn his pockets inside out for them -- this despite the fact that Fenty became mayor on the strength of standing up to the Nationals stadium deal when he was on the City Council. The Nats are now owned by the multibillionaire Lerner family, which was essentially handed the stadium and continues to exact concessions from the city.
Fenty should by no means be the only political leader to feel the heat. The state governments in Maryland and Virginia should also be doing a perp walk. But the WMATA is the DC-area Metro. If Fenty wants to own this crisis, he needs to own his own accountability.
This is a question of priorities, plain and simple. But not our priorities. A majority of DC-area residents opposed the public funding of the stadiums. These are the priorities of power and they must be opposed at all costs. The advice of peace activist Sister Joan Chittister has some relevance here. "Anger is not bad," she has said. "Anger can be a very positive thing, the thing that moves us beyond the acceptance of evil." It's time to get angry. Or the next city may be your own.
Dave Zirin is the author of "What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States." Read more of his work at Edgeofsports.com.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Torture: A Pattern of (Not Deviation From) the American Empire
Torture is evil. It produces nothing but suffering and lies under duress. Those who torture are demon people that I try to warn the world about.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/187098-Torture-A-Pattern-of-Not-Deviation-From-American-Empire
Torture: A Pattern of (Not Deviation From) the American Empire
Carl Boggs
CounterPunch
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:54 UTC
Bush-era episodes of torture have became almost daily hand ringing fare for establishment politicians and the media, calls for national soul-searching and reform arrive with a predictable litany of myths and illusions. Mainstream scrutiny peaked with the April release of incriminating "torture memos" issued by the Office of Legal Council spanning the years 2002 to 2005 - memos that involved clear violation of the Geneva and Torture Conventions. The issue has touched a raw nerve in the political culture, with government and military leaders - echoed by media pundits - quick to parrot two comforting discourses: abuses were the product of a few wayward (low-level) military personnel, a violation of sacred U.S. practices and values including the "rule of law". The first myth necessarily disappeared from view after several reports (including one conducted by the U.S. Army) had shown culpability extending all the way to the summits of power. But the fiction about torture being a radical departure from American traditions persists.
In a recent speech at UCLA, former NATO commander and 2004 presidential candidate General Wesley Clark denounced torture as an evil blight conflicting with the well-known American dedication to international rules and laws. "Law is sacred to the American system", pronounced Clark. "A retreat from Geneva means nothing less than abandoning American values." In the aftermath of the 2004 Abu Ghraib revelations, President George W. Bush said that prisoner abuse was an embarrassing exception to time-honored national precedents, for "that's not the way we do things in America" - a sentiment repeated by politicians and commentators across the ideological spectrum. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in December 2005, claimed: "With respect to detainees the United States government complies with its Constitution, its laws, and its treaty obligations. Acts of physical or mental torture are expressly prohibited. The United States government does not authorize or condone torture of detainees. Torture, and conspiracy to commit torture, are crimes under U.S. law, wherever they may occur in the world." She described atrocities at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib as sickening aberrations from the norm, thus unlikely to be repeated. More recently, Rice denied altogether that the U.S. practiced torture in a heated exchange with Stanford University students.
In the midst of these platitudes, liberals, more troubled by the Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib events, have simply added their own myths. Media figures like Rachel Maddow, Randi Rhodes, and Ron Reagan have denounced Bush-era crimes as counter to the American character: the torture of detainees is a uniquely wicked invention of Bush, Cheney, and the neocons. A major problem, according to the liberals, is that harsh interrogation methods "never work" since they undermine intelligence-gathering, eliciting nothing but false information. This contention only reveals a shallow understanding of how torture has historically "worked". Commenting on her April 22nd MSNBC show, Maddow roundly condemned torture carried out by the CIA and Pentagon, intoning "We have been doing things [torture] we have never done before in the United States. We never did that stuff before. How did that ever happen?" Human-rights abuses, like the doctrine of preemptive war, were the brainchild of the Bush clique. "It was the Republican Party that gave us torture as practiced by the U.S. government", Maddow informed her April 27th audience, adding "either we have a Constitution or we don't".
It takes little investigation to see that such views have little basis in actual U.S. history. Torture has always been a staple of U.S. military interventions, built into its very logic of imperial agendas. A nation that has launched warfare dozens of times, repeatedly attacked civilian populations, destroyed entire societies, used weapons of mass destruction, and deployed massive armed force to crush popular movements around the world - killing millions and displacing tens of millions more in the process - could hardly be expected to shy away from smaller-scale criminality in its pursuit of Manifest Destiny. Illegal detentions, denial of due process, kidnappings, assassinations, death-squad murders, and cruel interrogation techniques have long been just another valuable (if illegal) tool of imperial power. U.S. exterminationist policies against Native Americans throughout the nineteenth century, involving widespread torture, served as a prelude to later barbarism in the Philippines, Mexico, the Pacific Theater in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East. Decades of Indian Wars brought not only the Sand Creek, Washita, and Wounded Knee massacres but unspeakable acts of everyday brutality: beatings, scalpings, mutiliations, sexual assaults, kidnappings, prisoner mistreatment, and shootings, often along with larger-scale attacks on civilian encampments. Captives were often summarily executed, including women, children, and elderly. Dwellings were routinely burned to the ground, food stores destroyed, ponies and buffalo slaughtered by the thousands. Dying Indians were frequently tortured, killed, and mutilated. Such atrocities reached new heights when General George Armstrong Custer attacked a defenseless settlement of Cheyenne women and children at the Washita River in Oklahoma in 1868, a massacre solidifying Custer's credentials as heroic Indian fighter.
At Sand Creek, Colorado in 1864 the carnage wrought by the fanatically pious Colonel John Chivington was especially savage. Reflecting on Chivington's God-ordained massacre, a lieutenant from the New Mexico Volunteers wrote: "Of from five to six hundred souls [killed] the majority of which were women and children . . . I did not see a body of a man, woman, or child but was scalped, and in many instances their bodies were mutilated in a most horrible manner - men, women, and children's privates cut out. I heard one man say that he had cut out a woman's private parts and had them for exhibition on a stick. I heard another man say he had cut the fingers of an Indian to get the rings on the hand . . ." According to this and many similar reports, soldiers used knives to rip apart bodies, and none were spared. Torture, butchery, mutilation - there seemed to be no limits to U.S. military barbarism on the frontier. Those horrors were repeated time and again, culminating in the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 where hundreds of defenseless women and children were slaughtered, many tortured before the last fatal assaults.
Slavery? That was an institutionalized system of torture - indeed terrorism - from beginning to end. The "war to end slavery"? Well, the Civil War produced four years of unbelievable butchery and torture on both sides, both within and outside the many notorious prison camps maintained North and South.
As international law became refined since the early twentieth century, following the two Hague Conventions, prohibitions against torture and similar abuses were established and codified, but U.S. global behavior took no heed, persisting in its earlier criminal pattern. By the 1890s U.S. imperialism and outlawry was expanding outward, shifting its targets to Latin America, Asia, and later the Middle East. In World War II, the fabled "good war", torture became routine practice in the Pacific Theater were the U.S. carried out a war of attrition against the Japanese culminating in months of saturation bombing raids and two nuclear horrors. In what John Dower calls a "war without mercy" (on both sides) the Japanese were irredeemably evil, a monolithic race apart, so subhuman that the most extreme barbarism could be justified. Racial stereotypes of savage Asian hordes permeated U.S. media both in the military and home front, sustaining a racially-charged milieu in which rules of engagement were thrown to the wind. Aside from incendiary aerial bombardments of every Japanese city, repeated smaller atrocities were common: shooting of prisoners, torture, lifeboat strafings, attacks on hospitals, civilian abuse, wounded buried alive, mutilated corpses. When such criminality became known to general military and political circles, it was fiercely defended, even celebrated in an atmosphere of vengeful racial hatred.
In the aftermath of World War II and Korea (laden with even more atrocities), the Vietnam War produced near-total collapse moral and social constraints as U.S. criminality behavior achieved new records. Testimony of first-hand witnesses at the 1971 Winter Solider Hearings and elsewhere showed that rules of engagement applied only in military textbooks. There were no limits to the barbarism. Vietnamese running from combat, taking evasive action, or giving the "appearance" of combatants were regularly detained, kept captive, and more often than not tortured - when not immediately fired upon. American troops rarely tried to distinguish civilians from combatants, a difficult task in any event under conditions of guerrilla insurgency. The prevailing idea was that, in the midst of combat and "free-fire zones", any Vietnamese encountered was a "gook" who, by definition, was the enemy. The Vietnam brutality was never-ending - burning homes, mass killings, torture, rape, murder of wounded prisoners, beatings, destruction of animals and life-support systems, use of chemical weapons, all fueled by some combination of revenge, sadism, combat stress, intimidation, and in certain instances sexual pleasure. Such practices were routinely tolerated or even sanctioned at the very top of the command structure.
In Vietnam ordinary troops, as well as military intelligence personnel, soon became well-versed in methods of harassment, intimidation, and torture as they detained, questioned, and punished North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops in the field. Methods included throwing people out of helicopters, electric shock treatment, severe beatings, and mutilation. Prisoners were often taken for "flying lessons" or "half a helicopter ride" as interrogators kept throwing people out until someone "cooperated". Other creative torture methods were employed to break down possible informants. When a captive proved stubborn, according to one U.S. soldier, "the answer is invariable, you take a field telephone, wire it around a man's testicles, you ring him up and he always answers. It's known as the Bell Telephone Hour. You won't find it in the curriculum." Torture could be randomly used, the assumption being that civilians were likely to be "VC supporters" or at least hostile to American troops. Those captured were tortured not only to gain information but more often out of hatred, sadism, or sexual pleasure. No U.S. military figure in Vietnam was likely to argue that torture somehow "didn't work".
Rape became a medium of combining sex and violence. According to one macabre account: " . . . maybe four or five of us would go into a village and take a girl and bring her out to the jungle. . . . Explain to her to lie on the ground and don't scream, otherwise she'll be killed immediately, and however many guys there are - well, they all do what they want. And if the guys are in a good mood, they let her go. If not they kill her." Sexual assault was often followed by torture. According to widespread testimony and reports, some women were burned to death after gasoline was poured over their body and troops stood around and sadistically watched. Routine sexual encounters between GIs and Vietnamese women frequently grew violent, leading to rapes, beatings, and murder.
None of this could be dismissed as the isolated or aberrant behavior of a few undisciplined soldiers, nor was it related manly to intelligence operations. Recycling racist imagery that gave wars against Native Americans, Japanese, and Koreans added savagery, military leaders called the Vietnamese gooks, thugs, and vermin, with General William Westmoreland preferring the label "worthless termites" - the same "termites", presumably, that were to be given the blessings of freedom and democracy. Extreme racist attitudes permeated the military culture from top to bottom, as would later be the case in Iraq. According to one participant in the field, "the voices of authority in the company - the platoon sergeants and officers - acknowledged that [executing prisoners] was a proper way to behave. Who were the grunts to disagree with it? We supported it . . ."
By late 1960s the CIA Phoenix Program had been responsible for the illegal detention and torture of untold thousands of captives. Under this program U.S. operatives assassinated an estimated 21,000 Vietnamese officials in the South. As the war expanded, Navy SEALs and other units mounted raids to destroy homes, capture and torture people, and conduct summary executions at random. Many hundreds of thousands (mostly civilians) were rounded up, detained, and subjected to unspeakable brutality - all condoned or at least ignored all the way to the top of the military and government leadership.
The U.S. criminal record in Central America, while perhaps less egregious than that in Asia, spans a lengthier historical period during which the CIA, Pentagon, and U.S. proxy groups detained, tortured, and killed tens of thousands of people in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, and Nicaragua. Such atrocities flowed from official policies at a time when U.S.-supported corporate and oligarchical interests were being challenged or overturned by popular forces. As Jennifer Harbury shows in her well-researched study of torture across Central America, Truth, Torture, and the American Way: "A review of the materials leads relentlessly to just one conclusion: that the CIA and related U.S. intelligence agencies have since their inception engaged in the widespread practice of torture, either directly or through well-paid proxies." Counterinsurgency campaigns gave rise to regular kidnappings, detentions, torture, and executions. The U.S., often through its infamous School of the Americas and other domestic military bases, provided finances, training, logistics, and weapons - the work of mostly secret projects organized by the CIA. In Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua local atrocities reach their peak during the 1980s as the linkage between the U.S. and Central American agencies of death and destruction intensified, leading to a wave of abductions, torture, and murder.
As in Vietnam, torture and related atrocities in Central America were rarely the outgrowth of excesses, mistakes, or the work of a few renegade troops; nor were they usually motivated by the quest for reliable intelligence. They were rooted in the logic of control and repression. What was understood as necessary "dirty work" took years to plan and refine, much of it carried over from the Vietnam experience. Such methods as solitary confinement, beatings, electric shocks, stress positions, and sexual humiliation - to be replicated later at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib - had been de rigeur in Vietnam. One difference in Central America was that the U.S. chose to work through local military units and death squads, that is by proxy, so that atrocities could never be traced by the the guilty Washington operatives. Still, as Harbury points out, there were few doubts in the field as to who was calling the shots: "The Yankees in the torture cells were not working for local military officials at all. To the contrary, they were very much in charge, and had clear authority over the torturers themselves. The Americans were not taking orders, they were giving them. At times they were even supervising the entire torture session."
The postwar years witnessed a wide U.S. legacy of illegal detentions, torture, assassination, and other mayhem as tried-and-proven instruments of imperial power, from Latin American to Indonesia, Iran, Central Asia, and the Balkans as well as Korea and Vietnam - not only through the CIA but Special Forces units, Navy SEALs, Delta Force operatives, and other military actions. "Harsh interrogation methods" were always just one facet of this worldwide terror apparatus.
The events at Abu Ghraib were thus simply one more episode in the overall trajectory of U.S. imperialism, subordinate to a brutal military occupation bringing endless horrors to the Iraqi population. Prison abuse was built into the general mosaic of domination, set up in Washington and pursued with cruel rationality in the field where U.S. troops, as in Vietnam, were constantly surrounded by "enemies" or "terrorists". Not only detention centers but homes, checkpoints, urban neighborhoods, and roadways served as arenas of armed combat, leading to recurrent arrests, beatings, home invasions, shootings, bombings, and massacres (as at Hadditha in 2006). Reports of U.S. military officers ordering beatings of Iraqis were common from the 2003 invasion onward. Troops were ordered to "crank up the violence level" in the struggle to quell insurgency - violence that included assaults, torture, and random killings, both in and out of the many prisons - little of it designed to secure "intelligence". Following a procedure called "dead-checking", it was a recurring practice for American troops to murder wounded Iraqis according to the maxim "if somebody is worth shooting once, they're worth shooting twice."
One instigator of the Abu Ghraib torture, Pfc. Lynndie England, said in an interview that such practices were essentially business-as-usual - just troops behaving "normally" in a combat environment filled with stress,anger, and fear. No moral scruples or rules of engagement entered the picture. Others described the events as a matter of bored soldiers simply passing time, having fun. That so many prisoners were stripped naked, sexually intimidated or violated, beaten, hooded, shackled, handcuffed, and forced into stress positions - not to mention sleep and food deprived - provoked little if any outrage at the scene.
In the film Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, one convicted soldier, Specialist Sabrine Harman, spoke at length about the atrocities as if she were describing a movie or tennis match: it was all in a day's work, nothing special. Photographed laughing next to an Iraqi corpse, she was unapologetic, explaining that she always liked to smile for photos. What emerges from Abu Ghraib and other U.S. gulags like Guantanamo and Baghram Air Base in Afghanistan is a bleak and frightening picture of sadistic military behavior devoid of moral, legal, or social restraints, with virtually nothing to do with procuring information. (The CIA and military did try to force some prisoners to supply "information", under duress, that would justify the fraudulent basis of U.S. intervention in Iraq - a miserable failure - but that is another tale. Accused terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed recently admitted that he had lied to the CIA after being harshly treated.) Still, recent atrocities at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib - waterboarding, sleep and food deprivation, sensory abuses - hardly compare to the routine barbarism practiced in Vietnam and earlier U.S. wars.
History shows that present-day U.S. torture and other similar outlawry has deep roots in the past, the byproduct of an ever-expanding imperial apparatus of control and repression. In hundreds of pages of long-classified but recently-disclosed files, CIA documents alone describe an immense variety of illegal activities: secret holding cells around the world, unlawful detentions without due process, vast surveillance, plots to assassinate foreign leaders, severe interrogation methods. Such outrages are outgrowth of established patterns rather than deviations from (romanticized) historical norms, integral to the far greater savagery of aggressive warfare. U.S. militarism has routinely embraced criminal behavior sanctioned, more often than not, at the highest levels of Washington officialdom. The CIA torture networks in place across several decades, but only recently a focus of mainstream political concern, represents just one cornerstone of U.S. imperial efforts to maximize its global surveillance, intelligence, and control potential.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/187098-Torture-A-Pattern-of-Not-Deviation-From-American-Empire
Torture: A Pattern of (Not Deviation From) the American Empire
Carl Boggs
CounterPunch
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:54 UTC
Bush-era episodes of torture have became almost daily hand ringing fare for establishment politicians and the media, calls for national soul-searching and reform arrive with a predictable litany of myths and illusions. Mainstream scrutiny peaked with the April release of incriminating "torture memos" issued by the Office of Legal Council spanning the years 2002 to 2005 - memos that involved clear violation of the Geneva and Torture Conventions. The issue has touched a raw nerve in the political culture, with government and military leaders - echoed by media pundits - quick to parrot two comforting discourses: abuses were the product of a few wayward (low-level) military personnel, a violation of sacred U.S. practices and values including the "rule of law". The first myth necessarily disappeared from view after several reports (including one conducted by the U.S. Army) had shown culpability extending all the way to the summits of power. But the fiction about torture being a radical departure from American traditions persists.
In a recent speech at UCLA, former NATO commander and 2004 presidential candidate General Wesley Clark denounced torture as an evil blight conflicting with the well-known American dedication to international rules and laws. "Law is sacred to the American system", pronounced Clark. "A retreat from Geneva means nothing less than abandoning American values." In the aftermath of the 2004 Abu Ghraib revelations, President George W. Bush said that prisoner abuse was an embarrassing exception to time-honored national precedents, for "that's not the way we do things in America" - a sentiment repeated by politicians and commentators across the ideological spectrum. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in December 2005, claimed: "With respect to detainees the United States government complies with its Constitution, its laws, and its treaty obligations. Acts of physical or mental torture are expressly prohibited. The United States government does not authorize or condone torture of detainees. Torture, and conspiracy to commit torture, are crimes under U.S. law, wherever they may occur in the world." She described atrocities at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib as sickening aberrations from the norm, thus unlikely to be repeated. More recently, Rice denied altogether that the U.S. practiced torture in a heated exchange with Stanford University students.
In the midst of these platitudes, liberals, more troubled by the Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib events, have simply added their own myths. Media figures like Rachel Maddow, Randi Rhodes, and Ron Reagan have denounced Bush-era crimes as counter to the American character: the torture of detainees is a uniquely wicked invention of Bush, Cheney, and the neocons. A major problem, according to the liberals, is that harsh interrogation methods "never work" since they undermine intelligence-gathering, eliciting nothing but false information. This contention only reveals a shallow understanding of how torture has historically "worked". Commenting on her April 22nd MSNBC show, Maddow roundly condemned torture carried out by the CIA and Pentagon, intoning "We have been doing things [torture] we have never done before in the United States. We never did that stuff before. How did that ever happen?" Human-rights abuses, like the doctrine of preemptive war, were the brainchild of the Bush clique. "It was the Republican Party that gave us torture as practiced by the U.S. government", Maddow informed her April 27th audience, adding "either we have a Constitution or we don't".
It takes little investigation to see that such views have little basis in actual U.S. history. Torture has always been a staple of U.S. military interventions, built into its very logic of imperial agendas. A nation that has launched warfare dozens of times, repeatedly attacked civilian populations, destroyed entire societies, used weapons of mass destruction, and deployed massive armed force to crush popular movements around the world - killing millions and displacing tens of millions more in the process - could hardly be expected to shy away from smaller-scale criminality in its pursuit of Manifest Destiny. Illegal detentions, denial of due process, kidnappings, assassinations, death-squad murders, and cruel interrogation techniques have long been just another valuable (if illegal) tool of imperial power. U.S. exterminationist policies against Native Americans throughout the nineteenth century, involving widespread torture, served as a prelude to later barbarism in the Philippines, Mexico, the Pacific Theater in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East. Decades of Indian Wars brought not only the Sand Creek, Washita, and Wounded Knee massacres but unspeakable acts of everyday brutality: beatings, scalpings, mutiliations, sexual assaults, kidnappings, prisoner mistreatment, and shootings, often along with larger-scale attacks on civilian encampments. Captives were often summarily executed, including women, children, and elderly. Dwellings were routinely burned to the ground, food stores destroyed, ponies and buffalo slaughtered by the thousands. Dying Indians were frequently tortured, killed, and mutilated. Such atrocities reached new heights when General George Armstrong Custer attacked a defenseless settlement of Cheyenne women and children at the Washita River in Oklahoma in 1868, a massacre solidifying Custer's credentials as heroic Indian fighter.
At Sand Creek, Colorado in 1864 the carnage wrought by the fanatically pious Colonel John Chivington was especially savage. Reflecting on Chivington's God-ordained massacre, a lieutenant from the New Mexico Volunteers wrote: "Of from five to six hundred souls [killed] the majority of which were women and children . . . I did not see a body of a man, woman, or child but was scalped, and in many instances their bodies were mutilated in a most horrible manner - men, women, and children's privates cut out. I heard one man say that he had cut out a woman's private parts and had them for exhibition on a stick. I heard another man say he had cut the fingers of an Indian to get the rings on the hand . . ." According to this and many similar reports, soldiers used knives to rip apart bodies, and none were spared. Torture, butchery, mutilation - there seemed to be no limits to U.S. military barbarism on the frontier. Those horrors were repeated time and again, culminating in the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 where hundreds of defenseless women and children were slaughtered, many tortured before the last fatal assaults.
Slavery? That was an institutionalized system of torture - indeed terrorism - from beginning to end. The "war to end slavery"? Well, the Civil War produced four years of unbelievable butchery and torture on both sides, both within and outside the many notorious prison camps maintained North and South.
As international law became refined since the early twentieth century, following the two Hague Conventions, prohibitions against torture and similar abuses were established and codified, but U.S. global behavior took no heed, persisting in its earlier criminal pattern. By the 1890s U.S. imperialism and outlawry was expanding outward, shifting its targets to Latin America, Asia, and later the Middle East. In World War II, the fabled "good war", torture became routine practice in the Pacific Theater were the U.S. carried out a war of attrition against the Japanese culminating in months of saturation bombing raids and two nuclear horrors. In what John Dower calls a "war without mercy" (on both sides) the Japanese were irredeemably evil, a monolithic race apart, so subhuman that the most extreme barbarism could be justified. Racial stereotypes of savage Asian hordes permeated U.S. media both in the military and home front, sustaining a racially-charged milieu in which rules of engagement were thrown to the wind. Aside from incendiary aerial bombardments of every Japanese city, repeated smaller atrocities were common: shooting of prisoners, torture, lifeboat strafings, attacks on hospitals, civilian abuse, wounded buried alive, mutilated corpses. When such criminality became known to general military and political circles, it was fiercely defended, even celebrated in an atmosphere of vengeful racial hatred.
In the aftermath of World War II and Korea (laden with even more atrocities), the Vietnam War produced near-total collapse moral and social constraints as U.S. criminality behavior achieved new records. Testimony of first-hand witnesses at the 1971 Winter Solider Hearings and elsewhere showed that rules of engagement applied only in military textbooks. There were no limits to the barbarism. Vietnamese running from combat, taking evasive action, or giving the "appearance" of combatants were regularly detained, kept captive, and more often than not tortured - when not immediately fired upon. American troops rarely tried to distinguish civilians from combatants, a difficult task in any event under conditions of guerrilla insurgency. The prevailing idea was that, in the midst of combat and "free-fire zones", any Vietnamese encountered was a "gook" who, by definition, was the enemy. The Vietnam brutality was never-ending - burning homes, mass killings, torture, rape, murder of wounded prisoners, beatings, destruction of animals and life-support systems, use of chemical weapons, all fueled by some combination of revenge, sadism, combat stress, intimidation, and in certain instances sexual pleasure. Such practices were routinely tolerated or even sanctioned at the very top of the command structure.
In Vietnam ordinary troops, as well as military intelligence personnel, soon became well-versed in methods of harassment, intimidation, and torture as they detained, questioned, and punished North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops in the field. Methods included throwing people out of helicopters, electric shock treatment, severe beatings, and mutilation. Prisoners were often taken for "flying lessons" or "half a helicopter ride" as interrogators kept throwing people out until someone "cooperated". Other creative torture methods were employed to break down possible informants. When a captive proved stubborn, according to one U.S. soldier, "the answer is invariable, you take a field telephone, wire it around a man's testicles, you ring him up and he always answers. It's known as the Bell Telephone Hour. You won't find it in the curriculum." Torture could be randomly used, the assumption being that civilians were likely to be "VC supporters" or at least hostile to American troops. Those captured were tortured not only to gain information but more often out of hatred, sadism, or sexual pleasure. No U.S. military figure in Vietnam was likely to argue that torture somehow "didn't work".
Rape became a medium of combining sex and violence. According to one macabre account: " . . . maybe four or five of us would go into a village and take a girl and bring her out to the jungle. . . . Explain to her to lie on the ground and don't scream, otherwise she'll be killed immediately, and however many guys there are - well, they all do what they want. And if the guys are in a good mood, they let her go. If not they kill her." Sexual assault was often followed by torture. According to widespread testimony and reports, some women were burned to death after gasoline was poured over their body and troops stood around and sadistically watched. Routine sexual encounters between GIs and Vietnamese women frequently grew violent, leading to rapes, beatings, and murder.
None of this could be dismissed as the isolated or aberrant behavior of a few undisciplined soldiers, nor was it related manly to intelligence operations. Recycling racist imagery that gave wars against Native Americans, Japanese, and Koreans added savagery, military leaders called the Vietnamese gooks, thugs, and vermin, with General William Westmoreland preferring the label "worthless termites" - the same "termites", presumably, that were to be given the blessings of freedom and democracy. Extreme racist attitudes permeated the military culture from top to bottom, as would later be the case in Iraq. According to one participant in the field, "the voices of authority in the company - the platoon sergeants and officers - acknowledged that [executing prisoners] was a proper way to behave. Who were the grunts to disagree with it? We supported it . . ."
By late 1960s the CIA Phoenix Program had been responsible for the illegal detention and torture of untold thousands of captives. Under this program U.S. operatives assassinated an estimated 21,000 Vietnamese officials in the South. As the war expanded, Navy SEALs and other units mounted raids to destroy homes, capture and torture people, and conduct summary executions at random. Many hundreds of thousands (mostly civilians) were rounded up, detained, and subjected to unspeakable brutality - all condoned or at least ignored all the way to the top of the military and government leadership.
The U.S. criminal record in Central America, while perhaps less egregious than that in Asia, spans a lengthier historical period during which the CIA, Pentagon, and U.S. proxy groups detained, tortured, and killed tens of thousands of people in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, and Nicaragua. Such atrocities flowed from official policies at a time when U.S.-supported corporate and oligarchical interests were being challenged or overturned by popular forces. As Jennifer Harbury shows in her well-researched study of torture across Central America, Truth, Torture, and the American Way: "A review of the materials leads relentlessly to just one conclusion: that the CIA and related U.S. intelligence agencies have since their inception engaged in the widespread practice of torture, either directly or through well-paid proxies." Counterinsurgency campaigns gave rise to regular kidnappings, detentions, torture, and executions. The U.S., often through its infamous School of the Americas and other domestic military bases, provided finances, training, logistics, and weapons - the work of mostly secret projects organized by the CIA. In Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua local atrocities reach their peak during the 1980s as the linkage between the U.S. and Central American agencies of death and destruction intensified, leading to a wave of abductions, torture, and murder.
As in Vietnam, torture and related atrocities in Central America were rarely the outgrowth of excesses, mistakes, or the work of a few renegade troops; nor were they usually motivated by the quest for reliable intelligence. They were rooted in the logic of control and repression. What was understood as necessary "dirty work" took years to plan and refine, much of it carried over from the Vietnam experience. Such methods as solitary confinement, beatings, electric shocks, stress positions, and sexual humiliation - to be replicated later at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib - had been de rigeur in Vietnam. One difference in Central America was that the U.S. chose to work through local military units and death squads, that is by proxy, so that atrocities could never be traced by the the guilty Washington operatives. Still, as Harbury points out, there were few doubts in the field as to who was calling the shots: "The Yankees in the torture cells were not working for local military officials at all. To the contrary, they were very much in charge, and had clear authority over the torturers themselves. The Americans were not taking orders, they were giving them. At times they were even supervising the entire torture session."
The postwar years witnessed a wide U.S. legacy of illegal detentions, torture, assassination, and other mayhem as tried-and-proven instruments of imperial power, from Latin American to Indonesia, Iran, Central Asia, and the Balkans as well as Korea and Vietnam - not only through the CIA but Special Forces units, Navy SEALs, Delta Force operatives, and other military actions. "Harsh interrogation methods" were always just one facet of this worldwide terror apparatus.
The events at Abu Ghraib were thus simply one more episode in the overall trajectory of U.S. imperialism, subordinate to a brutal military occupation bringing endless horrors to the Iraqi population. Prison abuse was built into the general mosaic of domination, set up in Washington and pursued with cruel rationality in the field where U.S. troops, as in Vietnam, were constantly surrounded by "enemies" or "terrorists". Not only detention centers but homes, checkpoints, urban neighborhoods, and roadways served as arenas of armed combat, leading to recurrent arrests, beatings, home invasions, shootings, bombings, and massacres (as at Hadditha in 2006). Reports of U.S. military officers ordering beatings of Iraqis were common from the 2003 invasion onward. Troops were ordered to "crank up the violence level" in the struggle to quell insurgency - violence that included assaults, torture, and random killings, both in and out of the many prisons - little of it designed to secure "intelligence". Following a procedure called "dead-checking", it was a recurring practice for American troops to murder wounded Iraqis according to the maxim "if somebody is worth shooting once, they're worth shooting twice."
One instigator of the Abu Ghraib torture, Pfc. Lynndie England, said in an interview that such practices were essentially business-as-usual - just troops behaving "normally" in a combat environment filled with stress,anger, and fear. No moral scruples or rules of engagement entered the picture. Others described the events as a matter of bored soldiers simply passing time, having fun. That so many prisoners were stripped naked, sexually intimidated or violated, beaten, hooded, shackled, handcuffed, and forced into stress positions - not to mention sleep and food deprived - provoked little if any outrage at the scene.
In the film Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, one convicted soldier, Specialist Sabrine Harman, spoke at length about the atrocities as if she were describing a movie or tennis match: it was all in a day's work, nothing special. Photographed laughing next to an Iraqi corpse, she was unapologetic, explaining that she always liked to smile for photos. What emerges from Abu Ghraib and other U.S. gulags like Guantanamo and Baghram Air Base in Afghanistan is a bleak and frightening picture of sadistic military behavior devoid of moral, legal, or social restraints, with virtually nothing to do with procuring information. (The CIA and military did try to force some prisoners to supply "information", under duress, that would justify the fraudulent basis of U.S. intervention in Iraq - a miserable failure - but that is another tale. Accused terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed recently admitted that he had lied to the CIA after being harshly treated.) Still, recent atrocities at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib - waterboarding, sleep and food deprivation, sensory abuses - hardly compare to the routine barbarism practiced in Vietnam and earlier U.S. wars.
History shows that present-day U.S. torture and other similar outlawry has deep roots in the past, the byproduct of an ever-expanding imperial apparatus of control and repression. In hundreds of pages of long-classified but recently-disclosed files, CIA documents alone describe an immense variety of illegal activities: secret holding cells around the world, unlawful detentions without due process, vast surveillance, plots to assassinate foreign leaders, severe interrogation methods. Such outrages are outgrowth of established patterns rather than deviations from (romanticized) historical norms, integral to the far greater savagery of aggressive warfare. U.S. militarism has routinely embraced criminal behavior sanctioned, more often than not, at the highest levels of Washington officialdom. The CIA torture networks in place across several decades, but only recently a focus of mainstream political concern, represents just one cornerstone of U.S. imperial efforts to maximize its global surveillance, intelligence, and control potential.
Is the evolution of our species now hopelessly bogged down in evil?
By W. Christopher Epler (Bill)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Is-the-evolution-of-our-sp-by-W-Christopher-Epl-090618-347.html
Karl Sagan, author and astrophysicist from Cornell, used to wonder if atomic weaponry would be the nemesis of most "advanced species".
A flight of fancy of sorts since whales and elephants are certainly advanced species but don't feel the need for technology (and should we patronize them for this since they aren't rapidly destroying the planet?). Is it possible that much of science and technology are actually synonyms of self destructive stupidity? A kind of short sighted greed, perhaps.
In any event, what has now TOTALLY blocked the evolution of the human species is pure evil. The Israeli lunatic right wing fringe of astronomically rich sociopaths is the absolute outer limit of evil. Similarly, so do all mentally ill religious fanatics poison the march of human civilization. And, probably most of all, the Earth's Paris Hilton's and astronomically rich parasites (and vampires -- remember, it's all really OUR wealth), necessitate convoluted social/financial structures and processes which are the "crown of thorns" or highway to hell (or your metaphor of choice) for Homo sapiens.
Maybe the wrong species got killed off during the demise of the Neanderthals.
Remember, "human" is a generic word that evolution has experimented with in actually a great many forms -- we're just the form that is still standing.
But what's the problem? Not a candy ass "religious" problem or a candy ass "political" problem but THE problem? Why is our species well on its way to going extinct? Indeed, why is it a near certainly that Home sapiens are going bye bye in the relatively near future (and taking countless "innocent by stander" species with us in the process)?
Well, the afore mentioned right wing billionaire religious nut cases would be a good place to begin, because probably no place else on the planet can you find such a marriage in hell between infinitely righteous religious sociopaths and astronomically rich elites.
However, alas, they are just a sample of evil, since evil is as omnipresent as our breath.
But what IS evil? Well, we don't have to get particularly metaphysical about this. Evil is a function of human society. It has to do with the interactions of quantities of us (or probably any advanced life form).
So there's a decidedly "quantitative" variable here. As our numbers increase, so does the complexity of our social infrastructure. And that seems to be the rub, since invisibly and insidiously the "social game rules" are conditioned into our vulnerable, biological brains.
And just here is the door to hell. This dimension can be called "consensus reality" and it's an admixture of language (always language!), the past, memory (not always our friend), and the miscellaneous conditionings of our time, place, and families (often profoundly dysfunctional).
More openly, here are the programmed religions, laws, constitutions, and "theories" we so love to worship.
In short, here is the stopping point of our species. Not atomic weapons, but the accumulated programming of years of social/psychological conditioning.
The "operational definition" of all of the above is THOUGHT, because consensus realty IS thought; hence the thing the human race does best is think itself to death.
On a positive note, words like liberation, transcendence, and Enlightenment are "mystical" (the shoe fits) alternatives to this "swallowed whole" existence. The intelligence limitations of our species are still sublimely unknown, but whatever pragmatic value consensus reality may offer, our lives don't even BEGIN until we get straight that this fire storm of conditioning that has become the "mind set" of the entire human race (indeed, the very "God” of the human race), is fundamentally, radically, and biologically arbitrary and random.
In the context of this piece, what this means that the SOCIAL GAME RULES that perpetuate the "Have's", that justify their astronomical wealth and power, and that (worst of all!) give an obscene "righteousness" to deranged right wing lunatics who so love to commit genocide for the glory of God, aren't worth the toilet paper they are printed on.
And exactly here is where our species is probably doomed since many are called but few are chosen when it comes to being true to your birthright self and finding a reality/creativity/intelligence center that trivializes millennia of evil-perpetuating conditioning. Remember phrases like, "Might makes right", "Manifest Destiny", "survival of the fittest" (translation, survival of the wealthiest), and the loathsomely hypocritical "Divine Right".
Of course these sayings (and even laws) are merely the tip of the iceberg. The dungeon is elsewhere. It is deep within the infrastructure of the collective human mind. Do we know that it is infinitely unjust that the elites spend more money on their wardrobes than most of us spend on our families in an entire lifetime? Do we know it is evil when religious fanatics try to steal an entire country and turn the lives of the people who have been living there for centuries into a WW2 concentration camp?
One response to these questions could be that we're not sure if these things are evil, but almost certainly the world DOES know these things are filthy, evil, and infinitely unjust.
However, you can know things on the "surface" of your mind that you play games with in the depths of your mind. The tragedy is that the world basically turns the other way from these evils and injustices because in the depths of our conditioning we are historically programmed to accept them. Hence, it is the deep, collective mind set that permits and justifies evil. We know better, but our "unconscious" (to use that word) "accepts" evil because we have been programmed to adapt to it for millennia.
The literally unimaginable suffering that NECESSARILY goes with the existence of Greek God like elites would make Jesus weep, but we accept The Haves (the evil) – indeed, most of us probably envy them. This is the paradox of evil. If we didn’t “accept” evil, it couldn’t exist! But since literally billions of us DO accept evil that makes us an evil species.
This is not intellectualizing or empty theory. If the HUMAN RACE said no to “The Beast”, to the “Have’s”, to genocidal religious fanatics, to the Rockefeller’s, to the Rothschild’s, to the Bush’s, to murder in the name of God subhuman filth, to Saudi Princes, etc., etc., we could destroy them in a week. And I mean “non theoretically” destroy them in a week. Remove them from the planet as in cease to exist -- now you see them, now you don’t! There are times in life you must be limitlessly aggressive. We can either watch The Beast destroy Mother Nature and our children’s future, or WE can destroy the beast. Remember, we know exactly who they are and we know exactly where they are. So what in the name of truth, beauty, and goodness are we waiting for? Certainly not for the paper bullets of religion and politics. ULTIMATE hardball is the name of this game.
Hence, looked at one way, there is great hope. Looked at another way, it is hopeless.
It all comes down to how EACH OF US deals with a lifetime of conditioning. Liberation is transcending the box. The world IS the box.
So consensus reality (the home of evil) can be left. This is called being true to ourselves, or perhaps even Enlightenment.
However, as a species, the probability that we will leave the box in sufficient percentages to "eliminate" evil is probably very, very small.
Fortunately, even though our paralyzed and conditioned species continues to equate life with a moronically defective consensus mind set, each of us is still able to stretch our intelligence/spiritual eagle wings and leave this evil box forever.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: we're the dogs -- never the tails.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Is-the-evolution-of-our-sp-by-W-Christopher-Epl-090618-347.html
Karl Sagan, author and astrophysicist from Cornell, used to wonder if atomic weaponry would be the nemesis of most "advanced species".
A flight of fancy of sorts since whales and elephants are certainly advanced species but don't feel the need for technology (and should we patronize them for this since they aren't rapidly destroying the planet?). Is it possible that much of science and technology are actually synonyms of self destructive stupidity? A kind of short sighted greed, perhaps.
In any event, what has now TOTALLY blocked the evolution of the human species is pure evil. The Israeli lunatic right wing fringe of astronomically rich sociopaths is the absolute outer limit of evil. Similarly, so do all mentally ill religious fanatics poison the march of human civilization. And, probably most of all, the Earth's Paris Hilton's and astronomically rich parasites (and vampires -- remember, it's all really OUR wealth), necessitate convoluted social/financial structures and processes which are the "crown of thorns" or highway to hell (or your metaphor of choice) for Homo sapiens.
Maybe the wrong species got killed off during the demise of the Neanderthals.
Remember, "human" is a generic word that evolution has experimented with in actually a great many forms -- we're just the form that is still standing.
But what's the problem? Not a candy ass "religious" problem or a candy ass "political" problem but THE problem? Why is our species well on its way to going extinct? Indeed, why is it a near certainly that Home sapiens are going bye bye in the relatively near future (and taking countless "innocent by stander" species with us in the process)?
Well, the afore mentioned right wing billionaire religious nut cases would be a good place to begin, because probably no place else on the planet can you find such a marriage in hell between infinitely righteous religious sociopaths and astronomically rich elites.
However, alas, they are just a sample of evil, since evil is as omnipresent as our breath.
But what IS evil? Well, we don't have to get particularly metaphysical about this. Evil is a function of human society. It has to do with the interactions of quantities of us (or probably any advanced life form).
So there's a decidedly "quantitative" variable here. As our numbers increase, so does the complexity of our social infrastructure. And that seems to be the rub, since invisibly and insidiously the "social game rules" are conditioned into our vulnerable, biological brains.
And just here is the door to hell. This dimension can be called "consensus reality" and it's an admixture of language (always language!), the past, memory (not always our friend), and the miscellaneous conditionings of our time, place, and families (often profoundly dysfunctional).
More openly, here are the programmed religions, laws, constitutions, and "theories" we so love to worship.
In short, here is the stopping point of our species. Not atomic weapons, but the accumulated programming of years of social/psychological conditioning.
The "operational definition" of all of the above is THOUGHT, because consensus realty IS thought; hence the thing the human race does best is think itself to death.
On a positive note, words like liberation, transcendence, and Enlightenment are "mystical" (the shoe fits) alternatives to this "swallowed whole" existence. The intelligence limitations of our species are still sublimely unknown, but whatever pragmatic value consensus reality may offer, our lives don't even BEGIN until we get straight that this fire storm of conditioning that has become the "mind set" of the entire human race (indeed, the very "God” of the human race), is fundamentally, radically, and biologically arbitrary and random.
In the context of this piece, what this means that the SOCIAL GAME RULES that perpetuate the "Have's", that justify their astronomical wealth and power, and that (worst of all!) give an obscene "righteousness" to deranged right wing lunatics who so love to commit genocide for the glory of God, aren't worth the toilet paper they are printed on.
And exactly here is where our species is probably doomed since many are called but few are chosen when it comes to being true to your birthright self and finding a reality/creativity/intelligence center that trivializes millennia of evil-perpetuating conditioning. Remember phrases like, "Might makes right", "Manifest Destiny", "survival of the fittest" (translation, survival of the wealthiest), and the loathsomely hypocritical "Divine Right".
Of course these sayings (and even laws) are merely the tip of the iceberg. The dungeon is elsewhere. It is deep within the infrastructure of the collective human mind. Do we know that it is infinitely unjust that the elites spend more money on their wardrobes than most of us spend on our families in an entire lifetime? Do we know it is evil when religious fanatics try to steal an entire country and turn the lives of the people who have been living there for centuries into a WW2 concentration camp?
One response to these questions could be that we're not sure if these things are evil, but almost certainly the world DOES know these things are filthy, evil, and infinitely unjust.
However, you can know things on the "surface" of your mind that you play games with in the depths of your mind. The tragedy is that the world basically turns the other way from these evils and injustices because in the depths of our conditioning we are historically programmed to accept them. Hence, it is the deep, collective mind set that permits and justifies evil. We know better, but our "unconscious" (to use that word) "accepts" evil because we have been programmed to adapt to it for millennia.
The literally unimaginable suffering that NECESSARILY goes with the existence of Greek God like elites would make Jesus weep, but we accept The Haves (the evil) – indeed, most of us probably envy them. This is the paradox of evil. If we didn’t “accept” evil, it couldn’t exist! But since literally billions of us DO accept evil that makes us an evil species.
This is not intellectualizing or empty theory. If the HUMAN RACE said no to “The Beast”, to the “Have’s”, to genocidal religious fanatics, to the Rockefeller’s, to the Rothschild’s, to the Bush’s, to murder in the name of God subhuman filth, to Saudi Princes, etc., etc., we could destroy them in a week. And I mean “non theoretically” destroy them in a week. Remove them from the planet as in cease to exist -- now you see them, now you don’t! There are times in life you must be limitlessly aggressive. We can either watch The Beast destroy Mother Nature and our children’s future, or WE can destroy the beast. Remember, we know exactly who they are and we know exactly where they are. So what in the name of truth, beauty, and goodness are we waiting for? Certainly not for the paper bullets of religion and politics. ULTIMATE hardball is the name of this game.
Hence, looked at one way, there is great hope. Looked at another way, it is hopeless.
It all comes down to how EACH OF US deals with a lifetime of conditioning. Liberation is transcending the box. The world IS the box.
So consensus reality (the home of evil) can be left. This is called being true to ourselves, or perhaps even Enlightenment.
However, as a species, the probability that we will leave the box in sufficient percentages to "eliminate" evil is probably very, very small.
Fortunately, even though our paralyzed and conditioned species continues to equate life with a moronically defective consensus mind set, each of us is still able to stretch our intelligence/spiritual eagle wings and leave this evil box forever.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: we're the dogs -- never the tails.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Little picture, big picture
http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/little-picture-big-picture/2009/01/08/1231004194072.html?page=fullpage
Michael Leunig
The Age
Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:49 UTC
When we walk away from cruelty and rationalise it in the scheme of things, we do ourselves an invisible injury.
A citizen walking in his neighbourhood one night sees a woman being assaulted by a group of men. Instinctively, and in spite of his 72 years on earth, the man intervenes to protect her and is beaten to the ground and kicked savagely by the assailants.
Yet amazingly, the citizen has been successful. The men flee and the woman, a mother of three, is safe and unharmed. Days later, she recounts the incident and tells of how she had feared for her life until the man acted to save her.
"I'd like to thank him for daring to help," she says. "He's a very brave man; a good man. There's not many of them around any more."
With her simple words, the unhappy story immediately deepens in sadness and darkness, as the age-old anxiety is aroused: the eternal fear that good men are disappearing and bad men are on the rise.
***
The brave man in question had been a famous football player in his younger days: still admired with great affection in the community, not only for his behaviour as a sportsman, but also for his decency and warmth in the wider world - an intelligent man with a big heart; indeed an uncommon man. It was no surprise to anyone who knew of Ron Barassi that he had risked his neck to go it alone and come to the aid of a helpless stranger in trouble.
If he got any sleep that night, Barassi would no doubt have woken up next morning to much pain, distress and a turmoil of mixed emotions and burning questions. Anger, disgust, abject sorrow, dismay - justice, injustice and the dark state of humankind; these thoughts and feelings could have hurt him more than any bruise. We can only imagine.
We may however be certain that somewhere beneath all this violation and confusing misfortune, his conscience must have been in reasonable shape - and his masculine honour (can I still use such words?), that rare and ancient treasure in the minds and lives of men, would have been as strong and deeply held as ever - although I doubt that such thoughts would have been in his mind at the time. Whether he realised it or not, and in spite of all, I dare say that something vital to the health of the planet was very much alive and well in Ron Barassi when he rose painfully to face the world again.
***
We should now consider the wake-ups of the other men who had been on the street that night (and there were many such men): those who witnessed the cowardly assault upon the woman - the men who saw it and walked away in fear or denial.
Snug and unbruised no doubt, they lay in their beds next morning reflecting upon the nocturnal drama; the best of them racked by feelings of shame, anger and impotence, and the rest of them feeling nothing much at all perhaps, having shrugged, argued or twisted the event out of consideration. It is likely that some could have even sat up in bed watching television films about loner heroes who, against all odds, stood up for the oppressed.
They might not realise it, but these unfortunate men now must carry a small internal scar - or perhaps we can call it an ulcer of the spirit - for alas, whenever, in body or mind, we walk away from cruelty and injustice, and rationalise and accommodate it into our scheme of things, we do ourselves an invisible injury. The spirit is a little more crushed each time we do it. The repression of virtuous instinct in the modern world is an incremental tragedy. Repress one instinct and you repress many; other parts of consciousness go down also. Integrity is an ecosystem. Thus we lose consciousness.
Yet turn and walk away we often must - simply because the forces of modern life are so overwhelming that a mere mortal feels utterly powerless in the face of it all. Resistance seems increasingly futile and absurdly foolish.
Modern man is probably a more humiliated and depressed creature than he dares to know. He has become too dishonourable, and deep in his heart he suspects it. Not only is he unable to face the forces and injustices that threaten his society, he dares not even face himself because he is too ashamed and too disillusioned by the man in the mirror. He is depressed because he is living a lie.
Yet even more pathetically, he fantasises that he can survive this dishonour and somehow outsmart his way to prosperity and be a winner. Clever modern man is so witless that he thinks moral silence and empty conscience are an advantage. Conscience, morality and honour sound somehow medieval to him. He can't imagine that this inner vacuum will one day implode and make him disappear. He doesn't know that if you bite your tongue enough, it will fall off.
As weak and worm-like as such men could be considered in more valiant and mythological times, we can hardly condemn or blame those who turned away - that would be pitiless and pious. Too many decent men have been killed for their altruism and innocent courage.
Many, who would like to help, simply know they are not strong enough to handle the consequences, while others have no empathy or concern for strangers whatsoever. Who can understand or blame? We may only sigh and lament and forgive - feeling relief that it was not us being presented with the call to moral and physical duty - as we fidget nervously with our conscience and ego, and consider the question, "What would I have done?" It is hard to live with seeing helpless people harmed.
***
As this small unfortunate event was taking place in the suburban street, a massacre was in progress on the other side of the world. Israeli aircraft were bombing Gaza - the tormented little punishment space of one-and-a-half million desperate and helpless Palestinian refugees, half of them children. The Palestinians were being crushed yet again in the most cynical, ruthless and brutal way - and as if this was not appalling enough, the government of Israel was also trying to tell the world that this chaotic mire of blood and rubble and burnt human flesh was a legitimate and necessary procedure in the making of civilisation and a better world. One cannot help but think the Israeli Government a bunch of amateurs in the business of nationhood.
***
Modern military conflict should no longer be called "warfare". It is more like mass industrial killing than combat. It is coercive homicide posing as defence, and is radically uneven - or "asymmetrical" as the militarists like to say. In the Western calculation it means that we do the killing and they do the dying. The children, the mothers, the elderly and the poor do the dying in particular: those not-quite-white people, born in distant, unfortunate lands - they do all the wailing and the suffering.
To witness this as a moral being, albeit at a distance, is to be made sick and aghast, and driven half mad with a bewildering mix of sorrow, anger and shame. It is the strong abusing the weak. It is what conscience, justice and honour cannot abide.
Yet if there is such a distinguishing change in war, there is also a change in the overriding effect it has upon the earth and its people - regardless of so-called winners and losers. We are stupid if we do not know this, but there are reasons to believe that with the advancement of fiendish military technology, there has been an equivalent advancement of universal consciousness about the meanings of war and those who drive and control it.
Humanity, although oppressed and tormented by militarism and its abuses, now seems to instinctively understand that something is fundamentally different about the meaning of military might, and that modern war in a modern world makes victory increasingly irrelevant and tragically absurd.
It is the very practice of military violence that is now most significant, because of the psychological cancer it creates in the world - a condition that eventually affects us all. Nobody escapes. Even those who shrug and turn away will find this complex spread of depression and chaotic perversity arriving mysteriously in their homes and among their families sooner or later. We have much to learn about the universal ecosystems of the psyche.
War makes death, but even worse it creates living death, a complex and painful new disease, distributed slowly and evenly to the rich and the poor around the world. It poisons all and makes borders meaningless. Humanity is being united by this common heartbreaking, life-wrecking despair. No armies, no weapons can stop it.
It's just simply too late for the promised land - the earth is what's urgently at stake now, and the world is sick and in revulsion. Atrocity is atrocity, injustice is injustice and enough is enough.
Michael Leunig
The Age
Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:49 UTC
When we walk away from cruelty and rationalise it in the scheme of things, we do ourselves an invisible injury.
A citizen walking in his neighbourhood one night sees a woman being assaulted by a group of men. Instinctively, and in spite of his 72 years on earth, the man intervenes to protect her and is beaten to the ground and kicked savagely by the assailants.
Yet amazingly, the citizen has been successful. The men flee and the woman, a mother of three, is safe and unharmed. Days later, she recounts the incident and tells of how she had feared for her life until the man acted to save her.
"I'd like to thank him for daring to help," she says. "He's a very brave man; a good man. There's not many of them around any more."
With her simple words, the unhappy story immediately deepens in sadness and darkness, as the age-old anxiety is aroused: the eternal fear that good men are disappearing and bad men are on the rise.
***
The brave man in question had been a famous football player in his younger days: still admired with great affection in the community, not only for his behaviour as a sportsman, but also for his decency and warmth in the wider world - an intelligent man with a big heart; indeed an uncommon man. It was no surprise to anyone who knew of Ron Barassi that he had risked his neck to go it alone and come to the aid of a helpless stranger in trouble.
If he got any sleep that night, Barassi would no doubt have woken up next morning to much pain, distress and a turmoil of mixed emotions and burning questions. Anger, disgust, abject sorrow, dismay - justice, injustice and the dark state of humankind; these thoughts and feelings could have hurt him more than any bruise. We can only imagine.
We may however be certain that somewhere beneath all this violation and confusing misfortune, his conscience must have been in reasonable shape - and his masculine honour (can I still use such words?), that rare and ancient treasure in the minds and lives of men, would have been as strong and deeply held as ever - although I doubt that such thoughts would have been in his mind at the time. Whether he realised it or not, and in spite of all, I dare say that something vital to the health of the planet was very much alive and well in Ron Barassi when he rose painfully to face the world again.
***
We should now consider the wake-ups of the other men who had been on the street that night (and there were many such men): those who witnessed the cowardly assault upon the woman - the men who saw it and walked away in fear or denial.
Snug and unbruised no doubt, they lay in their beds next morning reflecting upon the nocturnal drama; the best of them racked by feelings of shame, anger and impotence, and the rest of them feeling nothing much at all perhaps, having shrugged, argued or twisted the event out of consideration. It is likely that some could have even sat up in bed watching television films about loner heroes who, against all odds, stood up for the oppressed.
They might not realise it, but these unfortunate men now must carry a small internal scar - or perhaps we can call it an ulcer of the spirit - for alas, whenever, in body or mind, we walk away from cruelty and injustice, and rationalise and accommodate it into our scheme of things, we do ourselves an invisible injury. The spirit is a little more crushed each time we do it. The repression of virtuous instinct in the modern world is an incremental tragedy. Repress one instinct and you repress many; other parts of consciousness go down also. Integrity is an ecosystem. Thus we lose consciousness.
Yet turn and walk away we often must - simply because the forces of modern life are so overwhelming that a mere mortal feels utterly powerless in the face of it all. Resistance seems increasingly futile and absurdly foolish.
Modern man is probably a more humiliated and depressed creature than he dares to know. He has become too dishonourable, and deep in his heart he suspects it. Not only is he unable to face the forces and injustices that threaten his society, he dares not even face himself because he is too ashamed and too disillusioned by the man in the mirror. He is depressed because he is living a lie.
Yet even more pathetically, he fantasises that he can survive this dishonour and somehow outsmart his way to prosperity and be a winner. Clever modern man is so witless that he thinks moral silence and empty conscience are an advantage. Conscience, morality and honour sound somehow medieval to him. He can't imagine that this inner vacuum will one day implode and make him disappear. He doesn't know that if you bite your tongue enough, it will fall off.
As weak and worm-like as such men could be considered in more valiant and mythological times, we can hardly condemn or blame those who turned away - that would be pitiless and pious. Too many decent men have been killed for their altruism and innocent courage.
Many, who would like to help, simply know they are not strong enough to handle the consequences, while others have no empathy or concern for strangers whatsoever. Who can understand or blame? We may only sigh and lament and forgive - feeling relief that it was not us being presented with the call to moral and physical duty - as we fidget nervously with our conscience and ego, and consider the question, "What would I have done?" It is hard to live with seeing helpless people harmed.
***
As this small unfortunate event was taking place in the suburban street, a massacre was in progress on the other side of the world. Israeli aircraft were bombing Gaza - the tormented little punishment space of one-and-a-half million desperate and helpless Palestinian refugees, half of them children. The Palestinians were being crushed yet again in the most cynical, ruthless and brutal way - and as if this was not appalling enough, the government of Israel was also trying to tell the world that this chaotic mire of blood and rubble and burnt human flesh was a legitimate and necessary procedure in the making of civilisation and a better world. One cannot help but think the Israeli Government a bunch of amateurs in the business of nationhood.
***
Modern military conflict should no longer be called "warfare". It is more like mass industrial killing than combat. It is coercive homicide posing as defence, and is radically uneven - or "asymmetrical" as the militarists like to say. In the Western calculation it means that we do the killing and they do the dying. The children, the mothers, the elderly and the poor do the dying in particular: those not-quite-white people, born in distant, unfortunate lands - they do all the wailing and the suffering.
To witness this as a moral being, albeit at a distance, is to be made sick and aghast, and driven half mad with a bewildering mix of sorrow, anger and shame. It is the strong abusing the weak. It is what conscience, justice and honour cannot abide.
Yet if there is such a distinguishing change in war, there is also a change in the overriding effect it has upon the earth and its people - regardless of so-called winners and losers. We are stupid if we do not know this, but there are reasons to believe that with the advancement of fiendish military technology, there has been an equivalent advancement of universal consciousness about the meanings of war and those who drive and control it.
Humanity, although oppressed and tormented by militarism and its abuses, now seems to instinctively understand that something is fundamentally different about the meaning of military might, and that modern war in a modern world makes victory increasingly irrelevant and tragically absurd.
It is the very practice of military violence that is now most significant, because of the psychological cancer it creates in the world - a condition that eventually affects us all. Nobody escapes. Even those who shrug and turn away will find this complex spread of depression and chaotic perversity arriving mysteriously in their homes and among their families sooner or later. We have much to learn about the universal ecosystems of the psyche.
War makes death, but even worse it creates living death, a complex and painful new disease, distributed slowly and evenly to the rich and the poor around the world. It poisons all and makes borders meaningless. Humanity is being united by this common heartbreaking, life-wrecking despair. No armies, no weapons can stop it.
It's just simply too late for the promised land - the earth is what's urgently at stake now, and the world is sick and in revulsion. Atrocity is atrocity, injustice is injustice and enough is enough.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Same Dark Spirit at Work
Finally! Some people are starting to get it...
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Same-Dark-Spirit-at-Work-by-Andrew-Bard-Schmoo-090501-92.html
May 1, 2009
Same Dark Spirit at Work
By Andrew Bard Schmookler
This is the second installment of a series. The first installment of that "Craziness in America" series --"Obama Has to Address It"-- can be found at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Rising-Craziness-in-Americ-by-Andrew-Bard-Schmoo-090421-641.html
*********************
THE "SPIRIT" AS VAST PATTERNS SHAPING HUMAN AFFAIRS
It is now four and a half years since I first felt called, or pulled, into confronting the darkness that had taken control of America in the form of the Bushite regime.
In those years, there have arisen innumerable issues, and events, and players warranting comment and discussion. But beneath all the particulars, I have consistently felt, this American drama is best understood as being enacted at a more basic level-- one that might be called, for want of a better word, spiritual.
And that spiritual drama could be summed up in the ancient phrase, "the battle between good and evil" or --inasmuch as I see these in naturalistic terms, as involving the interplay of vast patterns that operate in cultural systems across the generations-- the struggle between the forces of Wholeness and those of Brokenness.
The place where I develop that idea in greatest depth is "The Concept of Evil: Why It is Intellectually Valid and Politically and Spiritually Important" (written in 2005, and posted at click here But in dozens of other essays I've continually made reference to this deeper perspective, using phrases such as "the same dark spirit" to call attention to this deep level of the human drama: the level where patterns of brokenness (or wholeness) act "as if" animated by intent, operating opportunistically so as to give the appearance that --more fundamentally than it is human beings governing events to achieve their own purposes-- it is the "spirit" that's using human beings to achieve its own destructive ends.
That notion of "the same dark spirit" seems especially relevant now. It is in this perspective that this new "rise of craziness" on the right in America can best be understood.
WHY ARE THE REPUBLICANS DIGGING THEMSELVES INTO THIS HOLE?
In recent weeks, I've come across perhaps ten commentators who have wondered out loud about the apparent folly of the course the Republicans have been taking. Why be so extreme, so obstructionist, so purely negative, so divisive, so focused on arousing their diminishing base, diminishing themselves into a regional party, making themselves so unattractive to the independent voters who will decide future elections, and so forth? Why do they seem so bent upon a path that will only compound the erosion of their political fortunes?
All good questions.
We are accustomed to looking at human action, and the conduct of professional political actors in particular, as motivated by rational calculations of how best to serve one's self-interest. Seen through that prism, the whipping up of this craziness may indeed make no sense.
But if we see these actors not so much as self-governing and rational agents but more as being (in some sense) possessed by a spirit of brokenness, this apparently self-destructive course becomes more explicable.
I wish to admit that when I speak of these "dark spirits," and of the notion of people becoming "possessed" by them, I am less than crystal clear just how these ideas are to be understood. These are dimension of our reality that, as I said in "The Concept of Evil," "are at once so difficult for us to grasp on the basis of our immediate and mundane experience [but also] so vital to understanding what’s happening in our world..."
But let's set aside the difficulties of comprehension and see how well it works to see things in this way.
THE SHADOWS CAST BY THE DARK SPIRIT
First, as I just suggested, postulating this deeper spiritual level offers a solution to the mystery of the apparently self-defeating nature of the current strategy of the Republicans. It may well be that pursuing the course of whipping up craziness will condemn the Republicans to the status of a minority party for years to come.
(It's even possible that the Republican Party could be thrown onto the ash-heap of history, as has not happened to a major American political party since, a century and a half ago, the Whig Party disappeared, and was replaced by the Republicans who gained the presidency, under Lincoln, in only their second time out. Which, if that happens, the Republicans would richly deserve-- they, who gave us the most destructive, the most dishonest, the most lawless presidency in the nation's history.)
But this self-destructive behavior nonetheless serves the cause of the spirit of brokenness-- just as did the self-destructiveness of the Bushite evil.
This is part of the pattern of evil (see "Evil Leaders Destroy What They Claim To Love" at click here The Bushite evil was true to form, destroying the very things that the actors claim to be serving: in trying to assert an imperial U.S. dominance on the planet, they eroded American power more rapidly than any presidency I can recall; in trying to facilitate the wealth-grabbing greed of corporate America, they set the stage for the greatest loss of corporate wealth since the Great Depression; in trying to create a "permanent" Republican majority (their equivalent of the 1000 Year Reich), they've put the Republicans on a path toward ever diminishing power; etc.
I had some hopes that with the departure of the Bushite leadership, the Republicans might come out from under the influence of the darkness that had worked through the likes of Bush and Cheney. (The image I've used is the liberation of the monkey-minions of the Wicked Witch of the West after Dorothy's bucket of water has melted her and all her "lovely wickedness.") But instead, it seems that America's right wing remains a channel (or vessel, or container) for the same dark spirit that worked through that presidency.
Self-destructiveness is but part of this shared pattern between the Bushite regime and the current craziness. It is useful to look at other such shared patteerns, because these patterns represent the "shadows," as it were, that this "spirit" cast upon our visible reality, and thus allow us to infer the underlying spiritual reality that we cannot see directly.
While there are many such patterns in common between the Bushite presidency and the present anti-Obama virulence --one could add "divisiveness" and "dishonesty" to the pattern of destructiveness-- there's one particular pattern I want to emphasize.
ONLY MY WILL, MY POWER, CAN BE ACCEPTED
Look at the evils of the Bushite regime: trampling on the law and the Constitution with torture and warrantless wiretapping etc.; signing statements and claims of the Unitary Executive; using bogus claims of executive privilege to block Congress from functioning as a check and balance; expanding the "commander-in-chief" role to usurp power and place it beyond any check from legislative or judicial branches; dismantling regulation for the corporate powers embedded in its power system; etc.
What all these have in common is A REFUSAL TO ACKNOWLEDGE ANY LEGITIMATE POWER THAT RUNS COUNTER TO ITS WILL.
Now, look at the craziness that's arisen on the right in the wake of Obama's election. The craziness can be boiled down to this: IT IS A REFUSAL TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THEY LOST A LEGITIMATE ELECTION, AND THAT THEY ARE NOW SUBJECT TO A LEGITIMATE POWER, FROM THE OTHER SIDE, TO WHICH THEY ARE OPPOSED.
(This is the second straight time --the other being 1992-- when A substantial part of the right has refused to accept the legitimacy of the assumption of power by their opposition. This was not true, so far as I know, in any other presidential election --not in 1976, not in 1960, not in 1932, etc.-- and from this we can perhaps date just when it was that the right became possessed by this dark power: i.e., some time between 1976 and 1992.)
These right-wingers make Obama out to be unAmerican, to be threatening everything the country stands for, to be a power-grabber. They're talking about secession, about a Second American Revolution, about resistance, about becoming "armed and dangerous."
What they are not doing is ACCEPTING that in a democracy everyone wins some and loses some, and that when one loses one must SUBMIT to the rule of the legally constituted powers, selected by the means agreed upon in our "social contract," the Constitution.
At the human level, one can conjecture about the kind of brokenness that feeds this refusal to submit to any power that is not of one's Me or Us, and whose will might run contrary to one's own.
The pattern suggests traumatic experience from being on the receiving end of injurious power, presumably in a very vulnerable situation (such as childhood). Most likely, this experience of injurious power would have been during the process of being socialized into the family and culture of one's origin-- a process in which what was felt to be an alien and hostile power or authority required one to submit to what felt like intolerable demands. The conscious mind henceforth identifies with that injurious culture and authority, but at the same time the unconscious mind must still deal with the residual fear and rage. And the culture provides an outlet by teaching one to direct that antipathy against acceptance and subordination toward any power that is not an extention of the sacred "Us."
(I have explored this human dynamic in various essays here, including "Here’s the puzzle: How is it that many remarkably decent people can support leaders who are remarkable precisely for their lack of such decency?" which can be found at click here />
But at the level of the spirit, one can see that this kind of enraged rebellious spirit, this refusal to submit to the not-Me and not-Us, is a powerful strategy for the dark spirit, whose project is the destruction of Wholeness.
The connection between this refusal to submit to a will not Mine/Ours and the dynamics of evil connects with the mythology of western religion in which Lucifer, thereafter Satan, is the angel that rebels against God.
Wholeness is about the contribution of the parts to the harmony and health of the larger system in which they are embedded. The insistence that only My Will (e.g. Dick Cheney) or Our Will (e.g. today's right-wing refuseniks) can be allowed reflects the pattern of the rejection of Wholeness in favor of the breakdown into unbridled parts.
This, of course, is the path of war. It is at the heart of destruction.
The dark spirit that is working in the American right is a spirit that creates division. By working through the brokenness of human individuals --the resentments, the lust for revenge, the hatred of what is not the Self-- it systematically dismantles the Whole.
The battle between good and evil in the American system continues. The Bushite regime has been struck down, but the spirit that animates it has adopted a new opportunistic strategy to inflict maximal destruction: as the now-subordinate power in the legal political system, this dark spirit now works to inflame passions to work outside the legal framework.
We are at a moment like at the end of so many monster movies: the monster seems for a moment to have been struck down, but we have only been lulled into thinking that it has been defeated. It rises up again still more full of rage from its wounds for one final lashing out.
In the films, the heroes stand their ground and succeed at last in adminstering the truly mortal blows. Although with dark spirits such as this, there is no final death, we too must stand our ground and continue the fight until this monstrous force that has risen up in America is truly defeated and moves back underground, unable to impede us further in rebuilding the Wholeness of our damaged natio
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Same-Dark-Spirit-at-Work-by-Andrew-Bard-Schmoo-090501-92.html
May 1, 2009
Same Dark Spirit at Work
By Andrew Bard Schmookler
This is the second installment of a series. The first installment of that "Craziness in America" series --"Obama Has to Address It"-- can be found at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Rising-Craziness-in-Americ-by-Andrew-Bard-Schmoo-090421-641.html
*********************
THE "SPIRIT" AS VAST PATTERNS SHAPING HUMAN AFFAIRS
It is now four and a half years since I first felt called, or pulled, into confronting the darkness that had taken control of America in the form of the Bushite regime.
In those years, there have arisen innumerable issues, and events, and players warranting comment and discussion. But beneath all the particulars, I have consistently felt, this American drama is best understood as being enacted at a more basic level-- one that might be called, for want of a better word, spiritual.
And that spiritual drama could be summed up in the ancient phrase, "the battle between good and evil" or --inasmuch as I see these in naturalistic terms, as involving the interplay of vast patterns that operate in cultural systems across the generations-- the struggle between the forces of Wholeness and those of Brokenness.
The place where I develop that idea in greatest depth is "The Concept of Evil: Why It is Intellectually Valid and Politically and Spiritually Important" (written in 2005, and posted at click here But in dozens of other essays I've continually made reference to this deeper perspective, using phrases such as "the same dark spirit" to call attention to this deep level of the human drama: the level where patterns of brokenness (or wholeness) act "as if" animated by intent, operating opportunistically so as to give the appearance that --more fundamentally than it is human beings governing events to achieve their own purposes-- it is the "spirit" that's using human beings to achieve its own destructive ends.
That notion of "the same dark spirit" seems especially relevant now. It is in this perspective that this new "rise of craziness" on the right in America can best be understood.
WHY ARE THE REPUBLICANS DIGGING THEMSELVES INTO THIS HOLE?
In recent weeks, I've come across perhaps ten commentators who have wondered out loud about the apparent folly of the course the Republicans have been taking. Why be so extreme, so obstructionist, so purely negative, so divisive, so focused on arousing their diminishing base, diminishing themselves into a regional party, making themselves so unattractive to the independent voters who will decide future elections, and so forth? Why do they seem so bent upon a path that will only compound the erosion of their political fortunes?
All good questions.
We are accustomed to looking at human action, and the conduct of professional political actors in particular, as motivated by rational calculations of how best to serve one's self-interest. Seen through that prism, the whipping up of this craziness may indeed make no sense.
But if we see these actors not so much as self-governing and rational agents but more as being (in some sense) possessed by a spirit of brokenness, this apparently self-destructive course becomes more explicable.
I wish to admit that when I speak of these "dark spirits," and of the notion of people becoming "possessed" by them, I am less than crystal clear just how these ideas are to be understood. These are dimension of our reality that, as I said in "The Concept of Evil," "are at once so difficult for us to grasp on the basis of our immediate and mundane experience [but also] so vital to understanding what’s happening in our world..."
But let's set aside the difficulties of comprehension and see how well it works to see things in this way.
THE SHADOWS CAST BY THE DARK SPIRIT
First, as I just suggested, postulating this deeper spiritual level offers a solution to the mystery of the apparently self-defeating nature of the current strategy of the Republicans. It may well be that pursuing the course of whipping up craziness will condemn the Republicans to the status of a minority party for years to come.
(It's even possible that the Republican Party could be thrown onto the ash-heap of history, as has not happened to a major American political party since, a century and a half ago, the Whig Party disappeared, and was replaced by the Republicans who gained the presidency, under Lincoln, in only their second time out. Which, if that happens, the Republicans would richly deserve-- they, who gave us the most destructive, the most dishonest, the most lawless presidency in the nation's history.)
But this self-destructive behavior nonetheless serves the cause of the spirit of brokenness-- just as did the self-destructiveness of the Bushite evil.
This is part of the pattern of evil (see "Evil Leaders Destroy What They Claim To Love" at click here The Bushite evil was true to form, destroying the very things that the actors claim to be serving: in trying to assert an imperial U.S. dominance on the planet, they eroded American power more rapidly than any presidency I can recall; in trying to facilitate the wealth-grabbing greed of corporate America, they set the stage for the greatest loss of corporate wealth since the Great Depression; in trying to create a "permanent" Republican majority (their equivalent of the 1000 Year Reich), they've put the Republicans on a path toward ever diminishing power; etc.
I had some hopes that with the departure of the Bushite leadership, the Republicans might come out from under the influence of the darkness that had worked through the likes of Bush and Cheney. (The image I've used is the liberation of the monkey-minions of the Wicked Witch of the West after Dorothy's bucket of water has melted her and all her "lovely wickedness.") But instead, it seems that America's right wing remains a channel (or vessel, or container) for the same dark spirit that worked through that presidency.
Self-destructiveness is but part of this shared pattern between the Bushite regime and the current craziness. It is useful to look at other such shared patteerns, because these patterns represent the "shadows," as it were, that this "spirit" cast upon our visible reality, and thus allow us to infer the underlying spiritual reality that we cannot see directly.
While there are many such patterns in common between the Bushite presidency and the present anti-Obama virulence --one could add "divisiveness" and "dishonesty" to the pattern of destructiveness-- there's one particular pattern I want to emphasize.
ONLY MY WILL, MY POWER, CAN BE ACCEPTED
Look at the evils of the Bushite regime: trampling on the law and the Constitution with torture and warrantless wiretapping etc.; signing statements and claims of the Unitary Executive; using bogus claims of executive privilege to block Congress from functioning as a check and balance; expanding the "commander-in-chief" role to usurp power and place it beyond any check from legislative or judicial branches; dismantling regulation for the corporate powers embedded in its power system; etc.
What all these have in common is A REFUSAL TO ACKNOWLEDGE ANY LEGITIMATE POWER THAT RUNS COUNTER TO ITS WILL.
Now, look at the craziness that's arisen on the right in the wake of Obama's election. The craziness can be boiled down to this: IT IS A REFUSAL TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THEY LOST A LEGITIMATE ELECTION, AND THAT THEY ARE NOW SUBJECT TO A LEGITIMATE POWER, FROM THE OTHER SIDE, TO WHICH THEY ARE OPPOSED.
(This is the second straight time --the other being 1992-- when A substantial part of the right has refused to accept the legitimacy of the assumption of power by their opposition. This was not true, so far as I know, in any other presidential election --not in 1976, not in 1960, not in 1932, etc.-- and from this we can perhaps date just when it was that the right became possessed by this dark power: i.e., some time between 1976 and 1992.)
These right-wingers make Obama out to be unAmerican, to be threatening everything the country stands for, to be a power-grabber. They're talking about secession, about a Second American Revolution, about resistance, about becoming "armed and dangerous."
What they are not doing is ACCEPTING that in a democracy everyone wins some and loses some, and that when one loses one must SUBMIT to the rule of the legally constituted powers, selected by the means agreed upon in our "social contract," the Constitution.
At the human level, one can conjecture about the kind of brokenness that feeds this refusal to submit to any power that is not of one's Me or Us, and whose will might run contrary to one's own.
The pattern suggests traumatic experience from being on the receiving end of injurious power, presumably in a very vulnerable situation (such as childhood). Most likely, this experience of injurious power would have been during the process of being socialized into the family and culture of one's origin-- a process in which what was felt to be an alien and hostile power or authority required one to submit to what felt like intolerable demands. The conscious mind henceforth identifies with that injurious culture and authority, but at the same time the unconscious mind must still deal with the residual fear and rage. And the culture provides an outlet by teaching one to direct that antipathy against acceptance and subordination toward any power that is not an extention of the sacred "Us."
(I have explored this human dynamic in various essays here, including "Here’s the puzzle: How is it that many remarkably decent people can support leaders who are remarkable precisely for their lack of such decency?" which can be found at click here />
But at the level of the spirit, one can see that this kind of enraged rebellious spirit, this refusal to submit to the not-Me and not-Us, is a powerful strategy for the dark spirit, whose project is the destruction of Wholeness.
The connection between this refusal to submit to a will not Mine/Ours and the dynamics of evil connects with the mythology of western religion in which Lucifer, thereafter Satan, is the angel that rebels against God.
Wholeness is about the contribution of the parts to the harmony and health of the larger system in which they are embedded. The insistence that only My Will (e.g. Dick Cheney) or Our Will (e.g. today's right-wing refuseniks) can be allowed reflects the pattern of the rejection of Wholeness in favor of the breakdown into unbridled parts.
This, of course, is the path of war. It is at the heart of destruction.
The dark spirit that is working in the American right is a spirit that creates division. By working through the brokenness of human individuals --the resentments, the lust for revenge, the hatred of what is not the Self-- it systematically dismantles the Whole.
The battle between good and evil in the American system continues. The Bushite regime has been struck down, but the spirit that animates it has adopted a new opportunistic strategy to inflict maximal destruction: as the now-subordinate power in the legal political system, this dark spirit now works to inflame passions to work outside the legal framework.
We are at a moment like at the end of so many monster movies: the monster seems for a moment to have been struck down, but we have only been lulled into thinking that it has been defeated. It rises up again still more full of rage from its wounds for one final lashing out.
In the films, the heroes stand their ground and succeed at last in adminstering the truly mortal blows. Although with dark spirits such as this, there is no final death, we too must stand our ground and continue the fight until this monstrous force that has risen up in America is truly defeated and moves back underground, unable to impede us further in rebuilding the Wholeness of our damaged natio
Friday, May 1, 2009
The Global Pandemic Coincidence
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Global-Pandemic-Coinci-by-Grant-Lawrence-090428-740.html
April 30, 2009
The Global Pandemic Coincidence
By Grant Lawrence
Now the world seems to be in a grip of a pandemic. I find it somewhat coincidental that the swine flu pandemic would arise just as the world is in the grip of a fantastic economic downturn that economists used to call depression.
At this point, know one knows for sure if the flu will be somewhat tame or kill millions of people.
But there are a couple of points worth noting.
In the future, it will be very difficult for the world to sustain a growing human population that is already approaching 7 billion people. To our present global power structure, people are looked upon as resources, just like minerals, plants, and animals. That means that to the global elite that control much of the world, people are not looked upon in terms of caring and human feeling. Rather, decisions are made in terms of costs and benefits.
The global power elite surely has done a cost-benefit analysis on the benefit of keeping so many people around and they have likely come to some understanding that there is no longer the need for that much cheap labor. The downturn in the economy means that there will no longer be a great demand for sweat shop and near slave labor, even when that labor comes at such a small cost.
In fact, a large pool of global labor will no longer be needed to be exploited now or in the long term future when there is such a decline in economic consumption. The cost-benefit analysis has likely shown the owners of the world that a large mass of people are eating more than they are worth. Or to borrow a phrase from Henry Kissinger, billions of people in an economic downturn means that we have a lot of "useless eaters" in the eyes of the global power structure.
Also technology means that less workers are needed for manufacturing, farming, and other formerly labor intensive enterprises. With a bit more ingenuity, technology can be used to make many occupations all but obsolete. This point, I am sure, has not gone unnoticed to the globalists that have mapped out their New World Order.
The solution.
I think that like any good businessmen, the power structure will follow their own cost-benefit analysis and act to reduce the human population.
Now if humanity had a somewhat enlightened and humane leadership, the masters of our world would enact certain governmental policies to help reduce human numbers. An enlightened world elite would enact sweeping social and political agendas to gradually and humanely reduce the numbers of people on the planet. Propaganda techniques would be employed to condition people to act in their own self interest and have less children. The media as well as our so-called religious leaders could be made to join in the movement for greater birth control. The power elite could make it economically difficult for people to have more than a few children. The owners of the world could enact massive education and cultural programs to demonstrate the dangers of a large human population to human survival.
Unfortunately, humanity has a ruthless, greedy, and malevolent leadership that is likely looking to gain greater power, meet their objections in a brutish way, and profit from a crisis.
That is why I am a little suspicious of this likely pandemic. It comes at a time when the world doesn't need the labor and the environmental stress of human activity is degrading the possibilities of planetary survival.
As we have seen for nearly a century, human suffering is big business and there is always a lot of money to be made in it. We have seen how our own military industrial complex has made obscene fortunes off war and war preparation. Nearly half of all of American tax dollars go to pay for past, present, and future wars, war industry, and war readiness. That is a lot of money going into the hands of the bankers and the war profiteers that run the economic machine of globalization or global empire. We have seen an intentional policy of creating and encouraging enemies so that an endless game of war and war preparedness can continue to build a vast wealth for those in power.
It is this same power structure, the military industrial complex, that controls the pharmaceutical and medical establishment. A good pandemic could not only help to reduce the population a bit but it would also be good for the bottom line. The people of the world would be needing vaccines, medicines, supplies, and medical technology to help ease the crisis. All of this would mean more profit for a very limited few.
Nearly a decade ago, a number of microbiologists began dying at an alarming rate and under strange circumstances. This could have all been coincidence, but it could have had something to do with their level of expertise and knowledge. They might have known too much and for that they may have paid for their knowledge with their lives. Perhaps their skill and knowledge would have been greatly needed during a pandemic or perhaps some helped to develop a strain of virus that could kill millions.
Of course, some of this is conjecture. But what isn't conjecture is that there is a systematic policy by world leaders to exploit and kill for profit. That is what we have seen happening to humanity through our present New World Empire and its economic arm globalization.
During the last century, we have seen around 70 million people killed in wars. Most of this massive human suffering tremendously profited those in positions of power such as the capitalist robber barons and bankers. This power structure has controlled much of human activity and affairs of state for centuries.
I don't think it is too much of stretch to think that the world's power elite would like to see a good pandemic to go with their murderous wars, their exploitive labor, and their environmental degradation for maximum profit.
I guess I am cynical or a bit conspiratorial but when there is money to be made, goals to be met, and greater power to be gained then I have little trust in the present killing machine that runs much of the world. A pandemic might be highly useful to them and they may someday help initiate one. Maybe they did just that down in Mexico City.
Author's Website: http://grantlawrence.blogspot.com/
April 30, 2009
The Global Pandemic Coincidence
By Grant Lawrence
Now the world seems to be in a grip of a pandemic. I find it somewhat coincidental that the swine flu pandemic would arise just as the world is in the grip of a fantastic economic downturn that economists used to call depression.
At this point, know one knows for sure if the flu will be somewhat tame or kill millions of people.
But there are a couple of points worth noting.
In the future, it will be very difficult for the world to sustain a growing human population that is already approaching 7 billion people. To our present global power structure, people are looked upon as resources, just like minerals, plants, and animals. That means that to the global elite that control much of the world, people are not looked upon in terms of caring and human feeling. Rather, decisions are made in terms of costs and benefits.
The global power elite surely has done a cost-benefit analysis on the benefit of keeping so many people around and they have likely come to some understanding that there is no longer the need for that much cheap labor. The downturn in the economy means that there will no longer be a great demand for sweat shop and near slave labor, even when that labor comes at such a small cost.
In fact, a large pool of global labor will no longer be needed to be exploited now or in the long term future when there is such a decline in economic consumption. The cost-benefit analysis has likely shown the owners of the world that a large mass of people are eating more than they are worth. Or to borrow a phrase from Henry Kissinger, billions of people in an economic downturn means that we have a lot of "useless eaters" in the eyes of the global power structure.
Also technology means that less workers are needed for manufacturing, farming, and other formerly labor intensive enterprises. With a bit more ingenuity, technology can be used to make many occupations all but obsolete. This point, I am sure, has not gone unnoticed to the globalists that have mapped out their New World Order.
The solution.
I think that like any good businessmen, the power structure will follow their own cost-benefit analysis and act to reduce the human population.
Now if humanity had a somewhat enlightened and humane leadership, the masters of our world would enact certain governmental policies to help reduce human numbers. An enlightened world elite would enact sweeping social and political agendas to gradually and humanely reduce the numbers of people on the planet. Propaganda techniques would be employed to condition people to act in their own self interest and have less children. The media as well as our so-called religious leaders could be made to join in the movement for greater birth control. The power elite could make it economically difficult for people to have more than a few children. The owners of the world could enact massive education and cultural programs to demonstrate the dangers of a large human population to human survival.
Unfortunately, humanity has a ruthless, greedy, and malevolent leadership that is likely looking to gain greater power, meet their objections in a brutish way, and profit from a crisis.
That is why I am a little suspicious of this likely pandemic. It comes at a time when the world doesn't need the labor and the environmental stress of human activity is degrading the possibilities of planetary survival.
As we have seen for nearly a century, human suffering is big business and there is always a lot of money to be made in it. We have seen how our own military industrial complex has made obscene fortunes off war and war preparation. Nearly half of all of American tax dollars go to pay for past, present, and future wars, war industry, and war readiness. That is a lot of money going into the hands of the bankers and the war profiteers that run the economic machine of globalization or global empire. We have seen an intentional policy of creating and encouraging enemies so that an endless game of war and war preparedness can continue to build a vast wealth for those in power.
It is this same power structure, the military industrial complex, that controls the pharmaceutical and medical establishment. A good pandemic could not only help to reduce the population a bit but it would also be good for the bottom line. The people of the world would be needing vaccines, medicines, supplies, and medical technology to help ease the crisis. All of this would mean more profit for a very limited few.
Nearly a decade ago, a number of microbiologists began dying at an alarming rate and under strange circumstances. This could have all been coincidence, but it could have had something to do with their level of expertise and knowledge. They might have known too much and for that they may have paid for their knowledge with their lives. Perhaps their skill and knowledge would have been greatly needed during a pandemic or perhaps some helped to develop a strain of virus that could kill millions.
Of course, some of this is conjecture. But what isn't conjecture is that there is a systematic policy by world leaders to exploit and kill for profit. That is what we have seen happening to humanity through our present New World Empire and its economic arm globalization.
During the last century, we have seen around 70 million people killed in wars. Most of this massive human suffering tremendously profited those in positions of power such as the capitalist robber barons and bankers. This power structure has controlled much of human activity and affairs of state for centuries.
I don't think it is too much of stretch to think that the world's power elite would like to see a good pandemic to go with their murderous wars, their exploitive labor, and their environmental degradation for maximum profit.
I guess I am cynical or a bit conspiratorial but when there is money to be made, goals to be met, and greater power to be gained then I have little trust in the present killing machine that runs much of the world. A pandemic might be highly useful to them and they may someday help initiate one. Maybe they did just that down in Mexico City.
Author's Website: http://grantlawrence.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
There are two basic reasons why people commit evil
"There are two basic reasons why people commit evil," wrote Fred E. Foldvary, in "The Origins of Evil." "Some people are simply amoral. They lack sympathy and don't think there is any morality. To them their victims are like rabbits. [Classic pysychopathic behavior]
They think, if someone is weak or foolish enough to be a victim, they deserve no better . . . But most evil is committed by people who believe they are doing good."
They think, if someone is weak or foolish enough to be a victim, they deserve no better . . . But most evil is committed by people who believe they are doing good."
The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/148141-The-Trick-of-the-Psychopath-s-Trade-Make-Us-Believe-that-Evil-Comes-from-Others
Silvia Cattori
SoTT.net
Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:55 UT
After reading the book Political Ponerology, A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes by Andrzej Łobaczewski, I wished to interview the author. However, given that he was sick, he was unable to respond to my questions except in the shortest way, a single paragraph. Fortunately, I was able to interview Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Henry See, editors of the book who discussed the questions with him via telephone and were thus able to speak on his behalf.
I think everyone should read this book because it provides the keys necessary for understanding events that we often can't comprehend. The book describes the origins of "Evil", its true nature, and illustrates how it spreads throughout soci
Silvia Cattori
SoTT.net
Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:55 UT
After reading the book Political Ponerology, A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes by Andrzej Łobaczewski, I wished to interview the author. However, given that he was sick, he was unable to respond to my questions except in the shortest way, a single paragraph. Fortunately, I was able to interview Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Henry See, editors of the book who discussed the questions with him via telephone and were thus able to speak on his behalf.
I think everyone should read this book because it provides the keys necessary for understanding events that we often can't comprehend. The book describes the origins of "Evil", its true nature, and illustrates how it spreads throughout soci