Can Debt Spark a Revolution?
By David Graeber
The Nation
October 31, 2012
The idea of the “99 percent” managed to do something that no
one has done in the United States since the Great Depression:
revive the concept of social class as a political issue.
What made this possible was a subtle change in the very nature
of class power in this country, which, I have come to realize,
has everything to do with debt.
As a member of the team that came up with the slogan “We
Are the 99 Percent,” I can attest that we weren’t thinking of
inequality or even simply class but specifically of class power.
It’s now clear that the 1 percent are the creditors: those who are
able to turn their wealth into political influence and their political
influence back into wealth again.
The overriding imperative of government policy is to do whatever
it takes, using all available tools fiscal, monetary, political, even
military to keep stock prices from falling.
The most powerful empire on earth seems to exist first and
foremost to guarantee the stream of wealth flowing into
the hands of that tiny proportion of its population who hold
financial assets.
This allows an ever-increasing amount of wealth to flow back
into the system of legalized bribery that American politics has
effectively become.
When we were organizing the Wall Street occupation in August of
2011, we really didn’t have any clear idea who, if anyone, would
actually show up. But almost immediately we noticed a pattern.
The overwhelming majority of Occupiers were, in one way
or another, refugees of the American debt system.
At first, that meant student debt: the typical complaint was
“I worked hard and played by the rules, and now I can’t find
a job to pay my student loans, while the financial criminals
who trashed the economy got themselves bailed out.”
What was remarkable wasn’t so much the fact that the camp
began to fill with so many debt refugees, but how much their
plea resonated across the political spectrum.
In the 1960s or early ’80s, the plight of a college graduate juggling
loans wasn’t the sort of thing most likely to wring the hearts of
transit or sanitation workers.
But Occupy received warmth and solidarity from organized labor.
Something clearly had changed. We had come to see ourselves as
members of the same indebted class.
This was possible only because of a number of changes in the very
nature of American capitalism.
For decades now, we’ve been hearing about the “financialization
of capitalism.”
But this is always framed as an abstract process, almost akin to
magic, whereby Wall Street no longer needs to extract most of
its profits from the fruits of commerce or industry because it
has figured out a way to produce wealth from sheer speculation.
Meanwhile, the financial industry actively discourages us from
scrutinizing the actual social relations on which its wealth is
based.
What happens on Wall Street is supposed to be too complicated
and advanced for regular people
to comprehend.
The rise of OWS allowed us to start seeing the system for what
it is: an enormous engine of debt extraction.
Debt is how the rich extract wealth from the rest of us, at home
and abroad.
Internally, it has become a matter of manipulating the country’s
legal structure to ensure that more and more people fall deeper
and deeper into debt.
As I write, roughly three out of four Americans are in some form
of debt, and a whopping one in seven is being pursued by debt
collectors.
There’s no way to know just what percentage of the average
household’s income is now directly expropriated by the financial
services industry in the form of interest payments, fees and
penalties.
What statistical information is available suggests it is somewhere
between 15 and 20 percent and, of course, if you factor out the
quarter of the population who are either too rich or too poor to
owe anything, it becomes considerably more.
“Financialization,” then, is not just the manipulation of money.
Ultimately, it’s the ability to manipulate state power to extract
a portion of other people’s incomes.
Wall Street and Washington, in other words, have become one.
Financialization, securitization and militarization are all
different aspects of the same process.
And the endless multiplication, in cities across America, of
gleaming bank offices, spotless stores selling nothing while
armed security guards stand by, is just the most immediate
and visceral symbol for what we, as a nation, have become.
Most revolutions, revolts and insurrections in world history have
revolved, at least to some degree, around debt, from the uprisings
that created the Greek democracies to the American Revolution or
pretty much any other anti-colonial revolt.
We may be standing on the brink of a similar juncture.
Yet history shows it’s notoriously difficult to assemble debtors into
a coherent movement; indebtedness is isolating by nature, and the
very feelings of anxiety and humiliation it sparks have made it a
potent ideological tool.
But history also reveals that when such movements do form,
the results tend to be explosive.
What are the prospects for Occupy if it evolves into an explicit
movement of debt resistance?
If that happens, the battle will not be won by proposing policy
changes.
The power of Occupy was always that of De-Legitimization:
An appeal to the profound feeling, shared by so many Americans,
that our political class is so corrupted that it’s no longer capable
of addressing the problems faced by ordinary citizens, let alone
the world.
To create a genuinely democratic system could only mean
starting over entirely.
The financial system isn’t really any different.
The first step is to state the problem clearly:
Our current economic arrangements can barely even be called
“capitalism,” unless it’s some form of Mafia capitalism based
on loan-sharking, extortion and fixed casino games.
The second is to hammer home just how much the system’s
illegitimacy undermines the moral force that debt still holds
over so many Americans, thus fostering a gradual withdrawal
of consent from the system.
Increasing numbers of us are already doing this by refusing
to pay our debts, whether out of necessity or by choice.
Even those at the top are increasingly willing to admit
in private that the current situation is untenable.
Debt cancellation of some sort is going to take place,
as we’ve already seen with the bailout of the big banks.
The real struggle will be over the form it takes above all,
whether it’s a last-ditch attempt to salvage the system
of Mafia capitalism or an effort to move us sharply in the
direction of something else perhaps taking a cue from
Iceland’s forgiveness of loans held by more than a quarter
of its population.
A debt jubilee, after all, affords the possibility not just of
economic renewal, but of intellectual and spiritual renewal
as well.
Even imagining such a possibility opens the door to an
understanding that debts are simply a kind of promise
we make to one another, and that a true democracy is
one in which everyone weighs in on the broader questions.
What kind of promises do we want to make as a society?
Seen in this light, the problem economists like to call “debt
overhang” (when debt levels are too high to permit access
to credit even for smart investments) is far more profound.
The debt we collectively hold obligates us to make promises
we cannot keep.
We continue to increase the rate of production, the level of
exploitation and hence, as an inevitable consequence, the
pace of ecological devastation at just the point where even
present levels are clearly
unsustainable—all to pay interest
to the creditor class.
At this moment, what could be more obviously insane?
This is why organizing a movement of mass resistance is so
important. Our leaders have long since demonstrated that
they are no longer capable of thinking big.
Technocratic tinkering will get us nowhere.
Only a social movement can change our moral and political horizons
of possibility, and those horizons desperately need to change.
Occupy was right to resist the temptation to issue concrete
demands.
But if I were to frame a demand today, it would be for as broad
a cancellation of debt as possible, followed by a mass reduction
of working hours, say to a five-hour workday or a guaranteed
five-month vacation.
If such a suggestion seems outrageous, even inconceivable, it’s
just a measure of the degree to which our horizons have shrunk.
After all, only fifty years ago many people assumed we would
have gotten to such a point by now.
It is only by breaking the power of the engines of extraction
that we can once again begin to think on a scale and grandeur
appropriate to the times.
Mr. David Graeber, is a reader in social anthropology at Goldsmiths,
University of London, is the author of Debt: The First Five Thousand
Years.
http://www.thenation.com/article/169759/can-debt-spark-
revolution#
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
On Us vs. Them
On Us vs. Them
By Eric Peters
Lew Rockwell.com
October 29, 2012
The movie, The Matrix, explains a great deal.
Most people are brought up from birth within the system
“the matrix” and psychologically and socially and culturally
conditioned to accept it as their world and more, the world
as it is supposed to be.
What separates people like those here from everyone else?
Somehow, for whatever reason, we questioned and we saw
a flaw in the pattern (the green screen with zeros and ones,
if you like, as in the movie).
Something clicked and we knew. The curtain fell away.
We began to realize how thoroughly we’d been lied to about
almost everything and saw the fundamental violence of the
system.
The lie behind the facade of “democracy” and “consent of
the governed.”
Once you see, you cannot unsee.
The pattern becomes obvious, transparant and all of sudden,
things make sense.
A bleak sort of sense, to be sure, but for the first time, you truly
understand.
But the downside is you are now an outlier, more or less alienated
from the society in which you live.
Other people are like zombies – because in a way they are.
Just as in the movie. As in real life.
I have noticed two qualities that separate the people like us
here from the Clovers out there.
First, the habit of conceptual thought and of reasoning from
and accepting the necessary consequences of principles.
Thus, we understand why it is so profoundly dangerous to
countenance such things as “safety” checkpoints in order
to (ostensibly) “get dangerous drunks” off the road.
Because it follows that if the state arrogates unto itself the
power to detain (that is, to arrest) people and search and
interrogate them (no matter how cursorily) for no specific
reason, without actual probable cause, then a principle has
been accepted, ceded and much more and worse will inevitably
follow.
Clovers cannot grasp this. They only see “safety” and “getting dangerous drunks off the road.”
The same point can be applied almost universally. For instance, “taxes.”
A Clover will turn up his nose at a person who stuffs a Snickers
bar in his pants at a 7-11 and walks out the door with it.
He sees this as theft, which it is.
But he does not see that it is also theft when he (and others like
him) band together at the ballot box and vote to take much more
than merely someone else’s Snicker’s bar.
The Clover mind is unable to make the conceptual connection.
Theft is somehow transformed into not-theft when it is done
under the auspices of the state.
Second, Clovers have an under-developed (or crippled) sense
of empathy.
Though superficially, they often posture as the caring benefactors
of their fellow men, in truth they have more in common with
sociopaths who, like them, view other people as cardboard cutouts
to be manipulated and controlled.
The proof that they do in fact think this way is revealed by the fact
that they will not or cannot confront the violence that is always at
the end of their professed benefactions.
The gun pointed at someone else’s head. The rough men in
costumes who will come.
Even the most petty-seeming failure to Submit and Obey will
inevitably result in violence – possibly, lethal violence – being
applied.
What sort of human being countenances that?
A human being who has lost or never developed the capacity
for empathy.
True empathy. Not the faux empathy of “helping” by controlling
and threatening.
An empathetic man sees a fellow human being having difficulty
and offers to help himself.
A Clover points a gun at someone else (or has men in costumes
do it on his behalf) and forces that someone else to “help” in
the manner the Clover deems appropriate.
In this way, the Clover satisfies his urge to control and direct to
apply force and do to so under the guise of the humanitarian,
even as his victims feel the boot on their throat, hear the handcuffs
being locked.
They are asleep or evil. There is no middle ground.
Empathetic humans see others suffering and feel terrible about it,
but they feel even more terrible about the idea of official, state-
sanctioned predation violence codified and legitimized.
The utter perversion of the concept of “help” which flows from
the barrel of a gun. The utter perversion of humanity thereby.
The warping of natural instinct – of goodwill – into something
corrosive and yes, evil.
Because what else can be said of people who pit man against man,
group against group?
It is either – or.
Either you take the position that no person has the right to use
violence against another except in self-defense and all that follows
from that principle.
Or, you take the position that it is acceptable to use violence
against other people for reasons you deem appropriate.
The trouble with that, of course, is that your fellow Clovers will
have their own ideas as to what constitutes “appropriate” reasons
for restraining and controlling other people you included with
violence or its threat.
And the result of that is what we have a hell on earth in which
mutual parasatism is the essence of our politics.
In which no one is secure, either in their persons or their effects
let alone their property because all these things are subject to
“the will of the majority” as expressed by the vote of Clovers,
the representatives of Clovers or the duly constituted agencies
and bureaucracies of Clovers.
That is our Matrix.
A few can see it. Most cannot.
But some can be awakened and that is where our efforts should
be concentrated.
Because if enough of them can be awakened, the Matrix will lose
its power and then it will lose its control.
And that day, when it finally arrives, will be the day of humanity’s
liberation.
It’s a goal worth working for – even if none of us now alive will live
to see it.
http://lewrockwell.com/peters-e/peters-e254.html
By Eric Peters
Lew Rockwell.com
October 29, 2012
The movie, The Matrix, explains a great deal.
Most people are brought up from birth within the system
“the matrix” and psychologically and socially and culturally
conditioned to accept it as their world and more, the world
as it is supposed to be.
What separates people like those here from everyone else?
Somehow, for whatever reason, we questioned and we saw
a flaw in the pattern (the green screen with zeros and ones,
if you like, as in the movie).
Something clicked and we knew. The curtain fell away.
We began to realize how thoroughly we’d been lied to about
almost everything and saw the fundamental violence of the
system.
The lie behind the facade of “democracy” and “consent of
the governed.”
Once you see, you cannot unsee.
The pattern becomes obvious, transparant and all of sudden,
things make sense.
A bleak sort of sense, to be sure, but for the first time, you truly
understand.
But the downside is you are now an outlier, more or less alienated
from the society in which you live.
Other people are like zombies – because in a way they are.
Just as in the movie. As in real life.
I have noticed two qualities that separate the people like us
here from the Clovers out there.
First, the habit of conceptual thought and of reasoning from
and accepting the necessary consequences of principles.
Thus, we understand why it is so profoundly dangerous to
countenance such things as “safety” checkpoints in order
to (ostensibly) “get dangerous drunks” off the road.
Because it follows that if the state arrogates unto itself the
power to detain (that is, to arrest) people and search and
interrogate them (no matter how cursorily) for no specific
reason, without actual probable cause, then a principle has
been accepted, ceded and much more and worse will inevitably
follow.
Clovers cannot grasp this. They only see “safety” and “getting dangerous drunks off the road.”
The same point can be applied almost universally. For instance, “taxes.”
A Clover will turn up his nose at a person who stuffs a Snickers
bar in his pants at a 7-11 and walks out the door with it.
He sees this as theft, which it is.
But he does not see that it is also theft when he (and others like
him) band together at the ballot box and vote to take much more
than merely someone else’s Snicker’s bar.
The Clover mind is unable to make the conceptual connection.
Theft is somehow transformed into not-theft when it is done
under the auspices of the state.
Second, Clovers have an under-developed (or crippled) sense
of empathy.
Though superficially, they often posture as the caring benefactors
of their fellow men, in truth they have more in common with
sociopaths who, like them, view other people as cardboard cutouts
to be manipulated and controlled.
The proof that they do in fact think this way is revealed by the fact
that they will not or cannot confront the violence that is always at
the end of their professed benefactions.
The gun pointed at someone else’s head. The rough men in
costumes who will come.
Even the most petty-seeming failure to Submit and Obey will
inevitably result in violence – possibly, lethal violence – being
applied.
What sort of human being countenances that?
A human being who has lost or never developed the capacity
for empathy.
True empathy. Not the faux empathy of “helping” by controlling
and threatening.
An empathetic man sees a fellow human being having difficulty
and offers to help himself.
A Clover points a gun at someone else (or has men in costumes
do it on his behalf) and forces that someone else to “help” in
the manner the Clover deems appropriate.
In this way, the Clover satisfies his urge to control and direct to
apply force and do to so under the guise of the humanitarian,
even as his victims feel the boot on their throat, hear the handcuffs
being locked.
They are asleep or evil. There is no middle ground.
Empathetic humans see others suffering and feel terrible about it,
but they feel even more terrible about the idea of official, state-
sanctioned predation violence codified and legitimized.
The utter perversion of the concept of “help” which flows from
the barrel of a gun. The utter perversion of humanity thereby.
The warping of natural instinct – of goodwill – into something
corrosive and yes, evil.
Because what else can be said of people who pit man against man,
group against group?
It is either – or.
Either you take the position that no person has the right to use
violence against another except in self-defense and all that follows
from that principle.
Or, you take the position that it is acceptable to use violence
against other people for reasons you deem appropriate.
The trouble with that, of course, is that your fellow Clovers will
have their own ideas as to what constitutes “appropriate” reasons
for restraining and controlling other people you included with
violence or its threat.
And the result of that is what we have a hell on earth in which
mutual parasatism is the essence of our politics.
In which no one is secure, either in their persons or their effects
let alone their property because all these things are subject to
“the will of the majority” as expressed by the vote of Clovers,
the representatives of Clovers or the duly constituted agencies
and bureaucracies of Clovers.
That is our Matrix.
A few can see it. Most cannot.
But some can be awakened and that is where our efforts should
be concentrated.
Because if enough of them can be awakened, the Matrix will lose
its power and then it will lose its control.
And that day, when it finally arrives, will be the day of humanity’s
liberation.
It’s a goal worth working for – even if none of us now alive will live
to see it.
http://lewrockwell.com/peters-e/peters-e254.html
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Fear Itself
Fear Itself
By Dan & Shelia
The Daily Sheeple
October 28, 2012
If we were to pinpoint the one pervasive emotion in society
today, it would be fear.
People all around you are fearful of almost everything.
They fear the police. They fear the IRS, ATF, TSA and all the
other, “alphabet police”.
They fear losing their job. They fear loosing their house.
They fear their city or town government.
And they fear the mother of them all – fear of continuing life
without enough money to maintain their current lifestyle (or
at least the one they remember from a decade ago).
Most people rationalize these fears as normal because,
“everyone has them”.
We are trained from a very early age to act out of fear.
We fear our teachers wrath, so we do our homework. We fear
clergymen, for they decide if we go to heaven or hell, so we
say all the right prayers. We fear older children who may bully
us so we cross the street to avoid them.
Later on in life we fear the cost and hassle of a ticket, so we
fasten our seatbelts.
We fear losing our house so we work in a job that means nothing,
offers us no personal satisfaction other than just enough money to
keep us trying to reach the carrot on the stick.
Try this experiment… list all your obligations for the next 30 days
work, social and financial, then place a star beside those that cause
you any concern (fear).
Most people who do this discover there are multiple things in their immediate lives that cause them fear.
Today, in 2012, there is plenty outside of our daily lives to fear:
Will the world end on December 21st?
Will WWIII start in Iran?
Will the economy collapse?
Will the poles shift position?
Will the sun (or another country) send an EMP that knocks
out the electrical grid?
Will martial law be implemented?
Have we foolishly given the President of the United States
so much power that he can become a dictator?
Will food supplies run out?
Will the weather continue to be abnormal?
Will chemtrails ultimately poison us?
Will GMO crops take over all others?
Are you scared yet?
Many of these fears are constantly and purposely reinforced by
what I like to call, “the pop culture”.
Television is the greatest purveyor of fear, usually by embedding
feelings of inadequacy.
I recently read that the average American watches 34 hours and
39 minutes of TV per week. That’s a good deal more than it would
take to participate in a college course.
Like the college course, you are being instructed and trained by
the TV.
Edward Bernaise coined the term, “television programming” and
his rationale was crystal clear – television was designed to program
people into becoming happy consumers.
These happy consumers are being motivated to purchase garbage
by an external force that exploits feelings of inadequacy.
Every time we watch a commercial that shows the handsome man
with a real, “babe” sitting next to him in his shiny new car, in our
minds we feel inadequate for not having a new car, too.
These feelings of inadequacy open the door to fear, especially
when we are given nothing of real value to replace those desires.
Fear is the toolbox of, “The Powers That Be” (TPTB).
Fear is the lowest vibration humans can be affected by or give off.
It impedes our path to higher (vibratory) levels of consciousness
and ascension as human beings.
People who live in a constant state of fear are very manipulatable.
TPTB understand that if they can make people fearful, they can
make them do anything.
It is fear, manipulated fear, that makes us compliantly stand in
line to be groped before embarking on a plane, regardless of the
fact that no terrorist plot has ever been discovered nor stopped
by such action!
Although some who suffer through the TSA’s groping express
anger, the real motivation for compliance is fear.
The manipulators, TPTB, are fostering fear of everything.
The intensification of this fear began as a full-frontal assault
in the days immediately after 9-11.
It was fear that caused Americans to lay down not once, not
twice, but 3 times and approve and abide by the Patriot Act
and now NDAA.
It was fear, not patriotism that caused many of us to cheer the
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is manipulated fear that allows a once free society to accept
such a campaign such as, “see something/say something” fear
your neighbors, fear those who think the Constitution was a
pretty good document before it was overruled by executive
orders, fear those who are not dependent on, “the system”
for their lives, fear those who have a different opinion than
you do.
It is fear that keeps us from opening our mouths and saying,
“No” to those actions that we know are not right.
TPTB know this music very well and play it long and hard for
all it’s worth.
They are congratulating themselves, patting each other on the
back for causing 350 million people to be so fearful that they
consistently act against their own self-interest and against the
last vestiges of freedom.
Their jubilation is caused by knowing that 99.9% of you are easily
controllable and predictable.
Hitler’s, “final solution” required countless numbers of troops,
gestapo and SS to carry it out.
Today it is done with a TV ad campaign, shown in the aisles of
Wal-Mart.
Today TPTB brag that most will walk into what they know is their
own execution without even having to be told the lie that they are
going being de-loused.
How do we overcome this fear that has been instilled in us?
When I was a child and afraid of lightening and thunder, my mother
would pull out the encyclopedia and we read about thunderstorms,
about how the lightening was 1 mile away for every 5 second delay
before hearing the thunder. I was never afraid of a thunder storm
again.
Look at the reality of that which you fear.
Do we need to fear Al-qaeda because of 9-11 to the point of
fearing any Muslim person?
It wasn’t they who planned it out, they were simply the stooges
used to perpetrate an evil action against 3000 innocent Americans,
which action was at its essence an excuse to take Americans’
freedoms away.
There has been no secondary attack in the 11 years since that
horrific event. If they wanted to destroy us, wouldn’t they attack
when we were still reeling from the first one?
Do we need to fear a neighbor who might be having an exercised
conversation on his cellphone in a Wal-Mart to the point of calling
in a SWAT team?
Not if we take the time to take a walk passed our own house to our
neighbor’s to introduce ourselves and thereby learn who he or she
is.
Do we need to fear an 83 year old grandmother taking her final
flight to see her grandchildren to the point of humiliating her
before allowing her on a plane?
Or a 4 year old child screaming in terror? Or a business executive?
Or YOU?
What do they have to fear from you that they need to grab your
genitals as you run the gauntlet of TSA “agents”, wherever they
set up shop?
The truth is, they do fear you.
They fear that too many of us are waking up, thinking for
ourselves and replacing that fear with self-determination.
TPTB fear anyone who claims their own birthright to live
the life they choose that does not harm another, without
fear.
They need you to fear them, or their plans won’t work.
You can’t control 6 billion people with a whip, but you
can control them with fear.
It has worked since the days of Nimrod, who convinced
his people to store all their grain in his grain bin to keep
it safe from imagined attackers, “lurking” outside the city
walls.
Shed the fear.
Be kind to each other. Help each other. Love each other.
These actions leave less and less room for fear to take hold of you.
If this is a new concept for you, start small.
Start with your family, expand it to your co-workers, and then to
people you don’t even know.
Once you feel how good it is to not live in fear, it may become a
habit.
And wouldn’t that foil their plans?
Dan & Sheila are the authors of Surviving Survivalism – How to Avoid
Survivalism Culture Shock, and hosts of the podcast Still Surviving
with Dan & Sheila.
For questions about space in their Intentional Survivalist Community
or other survivalist issues they can be reached at surviving@lavabit.
com
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/fear-itself-2_102012
By Dan & Shelia
The Daily Sheeple
October 28, 2012
If we were to pinpoint the one pervasive emotion in society
today, it would be fear.
People all around you are fearful of almost everything.
They fear the police. They fear the IRS, ATF, TSA and all the
other, “alphabet police”.
They fear losing their job. They fear loosing their house.
They fear their city or town government.
And they fear the mother of them all – fear of continuing life
without enough money to maintain their current lifestyle (or
at least the one they remember from a decade ago).
Most people rationalize these fears as normal because,
“everyone has them”.
We are trained from a very early age to act out of fear.
We fear our teachers wrath, so we do our homework. We fear
clergymen, for they decide if we go to heaven or hell, so we
say all the right prayers. We fear older children who may bully
us so we cross the street to avoid them.
Later on in life we fear the cost and hassle of a ticket, so we
fasten our seatbelts.
We fear losing our house so we work in a job that means nothing,
offers us no personal satisfaction other than just enough money to
keep us trying to reach the carrot on the stick.
Try this experiment… list all your obligations for the next 30 days
work, social and financial, then place a star beside those that cause
you any concern (fear).
Most people who do this discover there are multiple things in their immediate lives that cause them fear.
Today, in 2012, there is plenty outside of our daily lives to fear:
Will the world end on December 21st?
Will WWIII start in Iran?
Will the economy collapse?
Will the poles shift position?
Will the sun (or another country) send an EMP that knocks
out the electrical grid?
Will martial law be implemented?
Have we foolishly given the President of the United States
so much power that he can become a dictator?
Will food supplies run out?
Will the weather continue to be abnormal?
Will chemtrails ultimately poison us?
Will GMO crops take over all others?
Are you scared yet?
Many of these fears are constantly and purposely reinforced by
what I like to call, “the pop culture”.
Television is the greatest purveyor of fear, usually by embedding
feelings of inadequacy.
I recently read that the average American watches 34 hours and
39 minutes of TV per week. That’s a good deal more than it would
take to participate in a college course.
Like the college course, you are being instructed and trained by
the TV.
Edward Bernaise coined the term, “television programming” and
his rationale was crystal clear – television was designed to program
people into becoming happy consumers.
These happy consumers are being motivated to purchase garbage
by an external force that exploits feelings of inadequacy.
Every time we watch a commercial that shows the handsome man
with a real, “babe” sitting next to him in his shiny new car, in our
minds we feel inadequate for not having a new car, too.
These feelings of inadequacy open the door to fear, especially
when we are given nothing of real value to replace those desires.
Fear is the toolbox of, “The Powers That Be” (TPTB).
Fear is the lowest vibration humans can be affected by or give off.
It impedes our path to higher (vibratory) levels of consciousness
and ascension as human beings.
People who live in a constant state of fear are very manipulatable.
TPTB understand that if they can make people fearful, they can
make them do anything.
It is fear, manipulated fear, that makes us compliantly stand in
line to be groped before embarking on a plane, regardless of the
fact that no terrorist plot has ever been discovered nor stopped
by such action!
Although some who suffer through the TSA’s groping express
anger, the real motivation for compliance is fear.
The manipulators, TPTB, are fostering fear of everything.
The intensification of this fear began as a full-frontal assault
in the days immediately after 9-11.
It was fear that caused Americans to lay down not once, not
twice, but 3 times and approve and abide by the Patriot Act
and now NDAA.
It was fear, not patriotism that caused many of us to cheer the
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is manipulated fear that allows a once free society to accept
such a campaign such as, “see something/say something” fear
your neighbors, fear those who think the Constitution was a
pretty good document before it was overruled by executive
orders, fear those who are not dependent on, “the system”
for their lives, fear those who have a different opinion than
you do.
It is fear that keeps us from opening our mouths and saying,
“No” to those actions that we know are not right.
TPTB know this music very well and play it long and hard for
all it’s worth.
They are congratulating themselves, patting each other on the
back for causing 350 million people to be so fearful that they
consistently act against their own self-interest and against the
last vestiges of freedom.
Their jubilation is caused by knowing that 99.9% of you are easily
controllable and predictable.
Hitler’s, “final solution” required countless numbers of troops,
gestapo and SS to carry it out.
Today it is done with a TV ad campaign, shown in the aisles of
Wal-Mart.
Today TPTB brag that most will walk into what they know is their
own execution without even having to be told the lie that they are
going being de-loused.
How do we overcome this fear that has been instilled in us?
When I was a child and afraid of lightening and thunder, my mother
would pull out the encyclopedia and we read about thunderstorms,
about how the lightening was 1 mile away for every 5 second delay
before hearing the thunder. I was never afraid of a thunder storm
again.
Look at the reality of that which you fear.
Do we need to fear Al-qaeda because of 9-11 to the point of
fearing any Muslim person?
It wasn’t they who planned it out, they were simply the stooges
used to perpetrate an evil action against 3000 innocent Americans,
which action was at its essence an excuse to take Americans’
freedoms away.
There has been no secondary attack in the 11 years since that
horrific event. If they wanted to destroy us, wouldn’t they attack
when we were still reeling from the first one?
Do we need to fear a neighbor who might be having an exercised
conversation on his cellphone in a Wal-Mart to the point of calling
in a SWAT team?
Not if we take the time to take a walk passed our own house to our
neighbor’s to introduce ourselves and thereby learn who he or she
is.
Do we need to fear an 83 year old grandmother taking her final
flight to see her grandchildren to the point of humiliating her
before allowing her on a plane?
Or a 4 year old child screaming in terror? Or a business executive?
Or YOU?
What do they have to fear from you that they need to grab your
genitals as you run the gauntlet of TSA “agents”, wherever they
set up shop?
The truth is, they do fear you.
They fear that too many of us are waking up, thinking for
ourselves and replacing that fear with self-determination.
TPTB fear anyone who claims their own birthright to live
the life they choose that does not harm another, without
fear.
They need you to fear them, or their plans won’t work.
You can’t control 6 billion people with a whip, but you
can control them with fear.
It has worked since the days of Nimrod, who convinced
his people to store all their grain in his grain bin to keep
it safe from imagined attackers, “lurking” outside the city
walls.
Shed the fear.
Be kind to each other. Help each other. Love each other.
These actions leave less and less room for fear to take hold of you.
If this is a new concept for you, start small.
Start with your family, expand it to your co-workers, and then to
people you don’t even know.
Once you feel how good it is to not live in fear, it may become a
habit.
And wouldn’t that foil their plans?
Dan & Sheila are the authors of Surviving Survivalism – How to Avoid
Survivalism Culture Shock, and hosts of the podcast Still Surviving
with Dan & Sheila.
For questions about space in their Intentional Survivalist Community
or other survivalist issues they can be reached at surviving@lavabit.
com
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/fear-itself-2_102012
Thursday, October 25, 2012
The Age of Hell
Entrenching Murder as the American Way
By Chris Floyd
Counter Punch
October 25, 2012
The Washington Post has just laid out, in horrifying, soul
slaughtering detail, the Obama Administration’s ongoing
effort to expand, entrench and “codify” the practice of
murder and terrorism by the United States government.
The avowed, deliberate intent of these sinister machinations
is to embed the use of death squads and drone terror attacks
into the policy apparatus of future administrations, so that
the killing of human beings outside all pretense of legal process
will go on, year after year after year, even when the Nobel Peace
Laureate has left office.
They have even come up with a new euphemism for state
murder: “disposition.”
The new “counterterrorism matrix” is “designed to go beyond
existing kill lists, mapping plans for the ‘disposition’ of suspects
beyond the reach of American drones,” the Post reports.
In other words, it involves expanding and varying the menu of
arbitrary murder, mixing the blunderbuss of drone blasts and
night raids with more selective “bullet-in-the-brain,” “bomb-
in-the-car-engine,” “polonium-in-the-pea-soup,” and “doping-
and-defenestration” approaches.
Arbitrary murder by unaccountable elites and their spies, paid for
by money taken from ordinary citizens, who have no say in and no
knowledge of what is being done in their names, and who will be
the victims of the inevitable blowback from the state terror and
murder campaign, this is now being “codified,” officially, formally,
as the American way.
To be fair and by all means, let us be fair with these butchers,
the term ‘disposition’ is also stretched to cover a multitude of
sins: kidnapping, rendition, indefinite detention, turning captives
over to proxy torturers.
But it is worth remembering that all of these dispositions including
the murders, wholesale and retail, involve “alleged” terrorists,
terrorist “suspects,” people who have found themselves, for
whatever reason (or no reason at all) on one of the innumerable
“lists” gathered by whatever method (or no method at all) by the
many fatly funded agencies now involved in “counter-terrorism.”
But that’s not all, not by a long shot.
These codified murders are also being inflicted on people who
are not on any list whatsoever: their names, affiliations, beliefs,
intentions, indeed their dispositions, are completely unknown to
those who kill them.
They are the faceless targets of “signature strikes,” which
allow American death squads to kill people based on “patterns
of activity” which may or may not signal some possible malign
intent or none, toward someone or no one, somewhere or
nowhere.
This rigorous process rests entirely on in the magical mind
reading abilities of drone jockeys ogling a computer screen.
If the armchair warrior doesn’t like the cut of someone’s jib,
then he squeezes his joystick and turns the stranger into “bug
splatter,” to use the term favored by our bold defenders of
civilization.
Like last year’s NY Times piece that first detailed the murder
racket being run directly out of the White House, the new
Washington Post story is replete with quotes from “senior
Administration officials” who have obviously been authorized
to speak.
Once again, this is a story that Obama and his team WANT
to tell.
They want you to know about the murder program and their
strenuous exertions to make it permanent; they are proud of
this, they think it makes them look good.
They want it to be part of their legacy, something they can pass
on to future generations: arbitrary, lawless, systematic murder.
Perhaps this fact should be borne in mind by all those anguished
progressives out there who keep telling themselves that Obama
will “be different, that he will “turn to the left,” if we can only
get him a second term.
No; the legacy of arbitrary, lawless, systematic murder is the
legacy he wants.
It is the legacy he has been building, with remarkable energy
and meticulous attention to detail, day after day, week after
week, for the past four years.
This is what he cares about.
And it is this, not jobs, not peace, not the environment, not
equal rights for women and ethnic and sexual minorities,
not the poor, not the middle class, not education, not
infrastructure, not science, not diplomacy, that he will apply
himself to in a second term, along with his only other political
passion, forging a “grand bargain” with Big Money to gut the
remaining shreds of the New Deal.
There is little point in going through the Post story and offering
detailed comment.
The sickening nature of this perpetual motion death machine
and the husk-like inhumanity of those who operate it and the
sycophants who applaud it are all too plain.
Just read the whole thing, and see for yourself.
See how these butchers, our bipartisan elites, our whole
respectable, self-righteous establishment, have trapped
us all in an Age of Hell.
Chris Floyd is an American writer and frequent contributor
to CounterPunch. His blog, Empire Burlesque, can be found
at www.chris-floyd.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/25/the-age-of-hell
By Chris Floyd
Counter Punch
October 25, 2012
The Washington Post has just laid out, in horrifying, soul
slaughtering detail, the Obama Administration’s ongoing
effort to expand, entrench and “codify” the practice of
murder and terrorism by the United States government.
The avowed, deliberate intent of these sinister machinations
is to embed the use of death squads and drone terror attacks
into the policy apparatus of future administrations, so that
the killing of human beings outside all pretense of legal process
will go on, year after year after year, even when the Nobel Peace
Laureate has left office.
They have even come up with a new euphemism for state
murder: “disposition.”
The new “counterterrorism matrix” is “designed to go beyond
existing kill lists, mapping plans for the ‘disposition’ of suspects
beyond the reach of American drones,” the Post reports.
In other words, it involves expanding and varying the menu of
arbitrary murder, mixing the blunderbuss of drone blasts and
night raids with more selective “bullet-in-the-brain,” “bomb-
in-the-car-engine,” “polonium-in-the-pea-soup,” and “doping-
and-defenestration” approaches.
Arbitrary murder by unaccountable elites and their spies, paid for
by money taken from ordinary citizens, who have no say in and no
knowledge of what is being done in their names, and who will be
the victims of the inevitable blowback from the state terror and
murder campaign, this is now being “codified,” officially, formally,
as the American way.
To be fair and by all means, let us be fair with these butchers,
the term ‘disposition’ is also stretched to cover a multitude of
sins: kidnapping, rendition, indefinite detention, turning captives
over to proxy torturers.
But it is worth remembering that all of these dispositions including
the murders, wholesale and retail, involve “alleged” terrorists,
terrorist “suspects,” people who have found themselves, for
whatever reason (or no reason at all) on one of the innumerable
“lists” gathered by whatever method (or no method at all) by the
many fatly funded agencies now involved in “counter-terrorism.”
But that’s not all, not by a long shot.
These codified murders are also being inflicted on people who
are not on any list whatsoever: their names, affiliations, beliefs,
intentions, indeed their dispositions, are completely unknown to
those who kill them.
They are the faceless targets of “signature strikes,” which
allow American death squads to kill people based on “patterns
of activity” which may or may not signal some possible malign
intent or none, toward someone or no one, somewhere or
nowhere.
This rigorous process rests entirely on in the magical mind
reading abilities of drone jockeys ogling a computer screen.
If the armchair warrior doesn’t like the cut of someone’s jib,
then he squeezes his joystick and turns the stranger into “bug
splatter,” to use the term favored by our bold defenders of
civilization.
Like last year’s NY Times piece that first detailed the murder
racket being run directly out of the White House, the new
Washington Post story is replete with quotes from “senior
Administration officials” who have obviously been authorized
to speak.
Once again, this is a story that Obama and his team WANT
to tell.
They want you to know about the murder program and their
strenuous exertions to make it permanent; they are proud of
this, they think it makes them look good.
They want it to be part of their legacy, something they can pass
on to future generations: arbitrary, lawless, systematic murder.
Perhaps this fact should be borne in mind by all those anguished
progressives out there who keep telling themselves that Obama
will “be different, that he will “turn to the left,” if we can only
get him a second term.
No; the legacy of arbitrary, lawless, systematic murder is the
legacy he wants.
It is the legacy he has been building, with remarkable energy
and meticulous attention to detail, day after day, week after
week, for the past four years.
This is what he cares about.
And it is this, not jobs, not peace, not the environment, not
equal rights for women and ethnic and sexual minorities,
not the poor, not the middle class, not education, not
infrastructure, not science, not diplomacy, that he will apply
himself to in a second term, along with his only other political
passion, forging a “grand bargain” with Big Money to gut the
remaining shreds of the New Deal.
There is little point in going through the Post story and offering
detailed comment.
The sickening nature of this perpetual motion death machine
and the husk-like inhumanity of those who operate it and the
sycophants who applaud it are all too plain.
Just read the whole thing, and see for yourself.
See how these butchers, our bipartisan elites, our whole
respectable, self-righteous establishment, have trapped
us all in an Age of Hell.
Chris Floyd is an American writer and frequent contributor
to CounterPunch. His blog, Empire Burlesque, can be found
at www.chris-floyd.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/25/the-age-of-hell
Monday, October 22, 2012
I Will
I Will
I will
I will always love you
I will always care
I will always remember you
I will always do my very best
I will create something
I will have will have it stolen from me
I will put up a fight
I will temporarily lose everything
I will be completely flat broke
I will be homeless
I will be without a job
I will be all alone
I will never lose my hope
I will never lose my vision
I will never surrender my faith
I will never surrender my creation
I will see life from the very bottom
I will see things that will absolutely break my heart
I will see things that make absolutely no sense
I will see things from a whole new perspective
I will never forget those who helped me
I will always remember those who did not
I will never forgot the promises I made
I will always remember the help that each of you gave
I will rebuild our company
I will now need all of your help
I will be ready to give each of you my all
I will promise to never be selfish or greedy
I will promise to always be fair and just
I will promise to always be open and honest
I will promise to always give everyone a chance
I will promise that the last shall now come first
I will call our company Expotera
I will now help build it from the very bottom up
I will have no fear for thou art with me
I will have no doubts because this is our way out
I will always be my brothers and my sisters keeper
I will never ever sell myself or my people out
I will go to my grave flat broke and penniless
I will still die the richest man in the world
I will never give up on bringing plenty out of lack
I will never give up on any of our hopes and dreams
I will never give up on the last girl or the last boy in line
I will never give up on God ever again
I will
I will
I will always love you
I will always care
I will always remember you
I will always do my very best
I will create something
I will have will have it stolen from me
I will put up a fight
I will temporarily lose everything
I will be completely flat broke
I will be homeless
I will be without a job
I will be all alone
I will never lose my hope
I will never lose my vision
I will never surrender my faith
I will never surrender my creation
I will see life from the very bottom
I will see things that will absolutely break my heart
I will see things that make absolutely no sense
I will see things from a whole new perspective
I will never forget those who helped me
I will always remember those who did not
I will never forgot the promises I made
I will always remember the help that each of you gave
I will rebuild our company
I will now need all of your help
I will be ready to give each of you my all
I will promise to never be selfish or greedy
I will promise to always be fair and just
I will promise to always be open and honest
I will promise to always give everyone a chance
I will promise that the last shall now come first
I will call our company Expotera
I will now help build it from the very bottom up
I will have no fear for thou art with me
I will have no doubts because this is our way out
I will always be my brothers and my sisters keeper
I will never ever sell myself or my people out
I will go to my grave flat broke and penniless
I will still die the richest man in the world
I will never give up on bringing plenty out of lack
I will never give up on any of our hopes and dreams
I will never give up on the last girl or the last boy in line
I will never give up on God ever again
I will
Friday, October 19, 2012
Obamney vs Robama: Statism, Sociopathy and Human Prosperity
Obamney vs Robama: Statism, Sociopathy and Human Prosperity
By Michael Suede
Libertarian News
October 19, 2012
Dear Democrats, what if I was to propose a “political” system
that could accomplish the following:
Drastically lower tuition costs
Drastically lower medical care costs
Eliminate foreign wars and foreign military bases
Drastically reduce “defense” spending
End the drug war entirely
Eliminate crony capitalism entirely
Eliminate the accumulation of wealth by the top 1%
Greatly increase the conservation of resources
And finally, bring a huge amount of manufacturing jobs
back to the U.S.
Dear Republicans, what if I was to propose a “political” system
that could accomplish the following:
Allow any private land owner to engage in energy exploration
on his own land
Eliminate the IRS and tax systems completely
Create a massive expansion of small businesses and general entrepreneurship
Drastically reduce the number of people receiving handouts
Eliminate inflation entirely
Eliminate the national debt entirely
Create internationally competitive businesses
Prevent the use of public funds from going toward abortions
Do away with the use of public funds to promote anti-religious
viewpoints
And finally, allow for complete consumer choice in education
Now ask yourself if the things you disagree with on either of
those lists are worth giving up the things you do agree with.
Indeed, such a system does exist.
It’s called Voluntarism, although I prefer to call it Anarchy.
In the absence of political coercion, total social and economic
freedom creates incredible levels of material wealth and prosperity.
This is a fact that has been proven over and over again
throughout history.
It’s easy to see that the worst human conditions are always
precipitated by violence, generally either by religious sects
or state actors.
The bottom line being that those who seek to impose their world
view onto others through the use of violence/coercion create a
worse state of being for everyone involved, including themselves.
Just step back and view our society as a space alien might view it.
If you’ve never run into human civilization before, what’s the first
thing to jump out at you?
The entire planet is covered with these entirely arbitrary
violent ruling classes of humans who call themselves states.
They draw imaginary lines on land, and then rob the people
who happen to be living in the territories that they control.
And they do it all while claiming its for their citizens own good!
I’d wager any intergalactic space-faring race would be mortified.
It takes an incredible lack of empathy to believe that the use
of coercion against people who have harmed no one, people
who have threatened no one, people who have damaged no
property and people who have stolen no property can lead to
superior states of being.
From my perspective, America has some real problems with materialism, morality and vainglory.
What I find humorous about this, is that everyone thinks it’s
the other side that has the “problems.”
People in our modern culture innately believe they are entitled to
impose their moral view of the world on to everyone else around
them.
”I will MAKE you support healthcare for the elderly!”, ”I will FORCE
you to pay for a war against drug users!”, “I will IMPOSE my rules
about how and where you can run your business!”
Such thought patterns are typically described by psychologists as
being sociopathic.
The DSM-IV-TR definition of sociopathy fits these beliefs quite
nicely, “…a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of,
the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence
and continues into adulthood.”
I like Jefferson’s definition of a right:
”Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent,
it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty
is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn
around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the
limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and
always so when it violates the right of an individual.”
Jefferson saw “rights” as being freedoms of action.
We have a “right” to do whatever we want, as long as whatever
it is we are doing isn’t hurting anyone else or damaging their
property.
This is the essence of voluntarism, and it is at the core of human
prosperity.
http://www.libertariannews.org/2012/10/18/obamney-vs-robama-
statism-sociopathy-and-human-prosperity/
By Michael Suede
Libertarian News
October 19, 2012
Dear Democrats, what if I was to propose a “political” system
that could accomplish the following:
Drastically lower tuition costs
Drastically lower medical care costs
Eliminate foreign wars and foreign military bases
Drastically reduce “defense” spending
End the drug war entirely
Eliminate crony capitalism entirely
Eliminate the accumulation of wealth by the top 1%
Greatly increase the conservation of resources
And finally, bring a huge amount of manufacturing jobs
back to the U.S.
Dear Republicans, what if I was to propose a “political” system
that could accomplish the following:
Allow any private land owner to engage in energy exploration
on his own land
Eliminate the IRS and tax systems completely
Create a massive expansion of small businesses and general entrepreneurship
Drastically reduce the number of people receiving handouts
Eliminate inflation entirely
Eliminate the national debt entirely
Create internationally competitive businesses
Prevent the use of public funds from going toward abortions
Do away with the use of public funds to promote anti-religious
viewpoints
And finally, allow for complete consumer choice in education
Now ask yourself if the things you disagree with on either of
those lists are worth giving up the things you do agree with.
Indeed, such a system does exist.
It’s called Voluntarism, although I prefer to call it Anarchy.
In the absence of political coercion, total social and economic
freedom creates incredible levels of material wealth and prosperity.
This is a fact that has been proven over and over again
throughout history.
It’s easy to see that the worst human conditions are always
precipitated by violence, generally either by religious sects
or state actors.
The bottom line being that those who seek to impose their world
view onto others through the use of violence/coercion create a
worse state of being for everyone involved, including themselves.
Just step back and view our society as a space alien might view it.
If you’ve never run into human civilization before, what’s the first
thing to jump out at you?
The entire planet is covered with these entirely arbitrary
violent ruling classes of humans who call themselves states.
They draw imaginary lines on land, and then rob the people
who happen to be living in the territories that they control.
And they do it all while claiming its for their citizens own good!
I’d wager any intergalactic space-faring race would be mortified.
It takes an incredible lack of empathy to believe that the use
of coercion against people who have harmed no one, people
who have threatened no one, people who have damaged no
property and people who have stolen no property can lead to
superior states of being.
From my perspective, America has some real problems with materialism, morality and vainglory.
What I find humorous about this, is that everyone thinks it’s
the other side that has the “problems.”
People in our modern culture innately believe they are entitled to
impose their moral view of the world on to everyone else around
them.
”I will MAKE you support healthcare for the elderly!”, ”I will FORCE
you to pay for a war against drug users!”, “I will IMPOSE my rules
about how and where you can run your business!”
Such thought patterns are typically described by psychologists as
being sociopathic.
The DSM-IV-TR definition of sociopathy fits these beliefs quite
nicely, “…a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of,
the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence
and continues into adulthood.”
I like Jefferson’s definition of a right:
”Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent,
it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty
is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn
around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the
limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and
always so when it violates the right of an individual.”
Jefferson saw “rights” as being freedoms of action.
We have a “right” to do whatever we want, as long as whatever
it is we are doing isn’t hurting anyone else or damaging their
property.
This is the essence of voluntarism, and it is at the core of human
prosperity.
http://www.libertariannews.org/2012/10/18/obamney-vs-robama-
statism-sociopathy-and-human-prosperity/
Sunday, October 14, 2012
On Wasting Your Vote
On Wasting Your Vote
By M. G. Piety
Counter Punch
October 14, 2012
A disturbing number of Americans are going to end up wasting
their votes in this next election.
They’re unhappy with the status quo, but instead of changing it,
they’re only going to reinforce it.
I’m not talking about democrats who are so unhappy with Obama
that they’re planning to vote third-party.
I’m talking about democrats who are unhappy with Obama, but
who are so afraid of Romney that they’re going to vote for Obama
anyway and justify that vote by invoking “the lesser of the two
evils” argument.
It’s about time someone pointed out that it’s the invocation of that
argument to defend otherwise indefensible political choices that
has driven us relentlessly into our current position between a rock
and a hard place.
Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that the greatest invention
in human history was compound interest. I beg to differ.
I think it’s the “lesser of two evils” argument. It’s brilliant.
Give people two options, neither of which they find appealing,
convince them that a third option, a genuinely attractive one,
is just not practicable and that they must thus choose between
the bad and the worse, and you’ll be able to get them to choose
something they would never otherwise choose.
You can get people to do anything that way.
You start by offering them a choice between something that is
just marginally unpleasant and something that is really repellent.
Once you’ve gotten them to choose the marginally unpleasant,
you raise the bar (just a little mind you, you don’t want them
to catch on to what you’re doing).
Now you offer them a choice between something to which
they have really strong objections and something that is
deeply offensive.
Most people, of course, will choose the former, if they think
it’s either that or the latter.
Now you offer people who’ve become inured to living
under objectionable conditions a choice between even
worse conditions and something that is truly unthinkable.
It’s not a mystery what they will choose.
There’s been a lot of angry posturing from Americans who think
of themselves as progressive about how the purported political
center in this country has been moving inexorably to the right,
yet it’s these very people who are directly responsible for the
shift.
If you vote for a candidate whose farther right than you would
prefer, well, then you’re shifting the political “center” to the
right.
Republicans aren’t responsible for the increasingly conservative
face of the democratic party. Democrats are responsible for it.
Democrats keep racing to the polls like lemmings being chased
by the boogeyman.
“This is not the election to vote for real change” runs the
democratic refrain.
We’re in a crisis! We must do whatever it takes to ensure that
the republicans don’t get in office even if that means voting for
a democrat whose policies we don’t really like and which are only
marginally distinguishable from those of the republican candidate.
That “margin” is important, we’re reminded again and again.
That little difference is going to make all the difference.
Even if that were true, which it ought to be clear by now it is not it
would still offer a very poor justification for voting for a candidate
one doesn’t really like.
Why? Because it is an expression of short-term thinking.
Thomas Hobbes argued that privileging short-term over long-term
goals was irrational, and yet that’s what we’ve been doing in this
country for as long as I can remember.
Americans are notoriously short-term oriented.
As Luc Sante noted in a piece in the New York Review of Books,
America is “the country of the perpetual present tense.”
Perhaps that’s part of the anti-intellectualism that Richard
Hofstadter wrote about.
“Just keep the republicans out of office for this election!” We’re
always commanded. “We can worry about real change later!”
Of course anyone who stopped to think about it ought to
realize that that mythical “later” is never going to come.
Our choices are getting worse not better, and if we keep invoking
the “lesser of the two evils” to justify them, we are in effect,
digging our own graves.
God is not going to deliver to us from the clouds the candidate of
our dreams, the candidate who despite his (or perhaps her) wildly
populist views somehow manages to win over the corporate powers
we have allowed, through our own incorrigible stupidity, to control
the political process in this country.
If we are ever going to see real political change of the sort
progressives purport to want, then we are going to have to
be brave enough to risk losing an election.
Which shouldn’t require all that much bravery when one
thinks about it, because real progressives have been losing
elections for as long as anyone can remember in that the
democrats haven’t been genuinely progressive for as long
as anyone can remember.
If you vote for a democrat because you think of yourself as
progressive you are wasting your vote because what you are
actually saying is that you are willing to support a candidate
who is not really progressive, that the democrats can continue
their relentless march to the right and that you will back them
all the way.
That is, if you vote for a democrat because you say you are
progressive, you are saying one thing and doing another.
But actions, as everyone knows, speak louder than words.
You can go on posturing about how progressive you are, but
if you vote for a democrat that posturing is empty.
If we are ever going to see real progressive political change in
this country we have to brave enough to openly risk defeat,
and we have to have faith that our fellow progressives will be
similarly brave.
William James makes this point very eloquently in his essay
“The Will to Believe.”
“A social organism,” he wrote, of any sort whatever, large or
small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own
duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously
do theirs.
Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of
many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure
consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those
immediately concerned.
A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college,
an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not
only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted.
A whole train of passengers (individually brave enough) will
be looted by a few highwaymen, simply because the latter
can count on one another, while each passenger fears that
if he makes a movement of resistance, he will be shot before
any one else backs him up.
If we believed that the whole car-full would rise at once with us,
we should each severally rise, and train-robbing would never even
be attempted.
There are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless
a preliminary faith exists in its coming.
Progressive political change will never be a fact unless we have
faith in its coming, unless we have faith that others will back us
up when we refuse to be forced to vote yet again for a candidate
we do not like.
I, for one, abhor cowardice.
I’m not going to be intimidated into voting for a candidate I don’t
like by threats of the “greater evil.”
I do not expect that my candidate will win the election.
I expect, however, that my vote will count for something and
not merely in the sense that it will allow me to preserve my
self respect.
I’m not afraid of being condemned as naively optimistic. Without
such optimism we’d never have had democracy in the first place.
Democracy, one of the crowning achievements of human history,
is precisely the product of the courage to act on one’s conscience
and that faith that others will do so as well.
If we’ve lost those things, then we will get the president we
deserve.
M.G. Piety teaches philosophy at Drexel University. She is the editor
and translator of Soren Kierkegaard’s Repetition and Philosophical
Crumbs. Her latest book is: Ways of Knowing: Kierkegaard’s
Pluralist Epistemology.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/12/on-wasting-your-vote/
By M. G. Piety
Counter Punch
October 14, 2012
A disturbing number of Americans are going to end up wasting
their votes in this next election.
They’re unhappy with the status quo, but instead of changing it,
they’re only going to reinforce it.
I’m not talking about democrats who are so unhappy with Obama
that they’re planning to vote third-party.
I’m talking about democrats who are unhappy with Obama, but
who are so afraid of Romney that they’re going to vote for Obama
anyway and justify that vote by invoking “the lesser of the two
evils” argument.
It’s about time someone pointed out that it’s the invocation of that
argument to defend otherwise indefensible political choices that
has driven us relentlessly into our current position between a rock
and a hard place.
Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that the greatest invention
in human history was compound interest. I beg to differ.
I think it’s the “lesser of two evils” argument. It’s brilliant.
Give people two options, neither of which they find appealing,
convince them that a third option, a genuinely attractive one,
is just not practicable and that they must thus choose between
the bad and the worse, and you’ll be able to get them to choose
something they would never otherwise choose.
You can get people to do anything that way.
You start by offering them a choice between something that is
just marginally unpleasant and something that is really repellent.
Once you’ve gotten them to choose the marginally unpleasant,
you raise the bar (just a little mind you, you don’t want them
to catch on to what you’re doing).
Now you offer them a choice between something to which
they have really strong objections and something that is
deeply offensive.
Most people, of course, will choose the former, if they think
it’s either that or the latter.
Now you offer people who’ve become inured to living
under objectionable conditions a choice between even
worse conditions and something that is truly unthinkable.
It’s not a mystery what they will choose.
There’s been a lot of angry posturing from Americans who think
of themselves as progressive about how the purported political
center in this country has been moving inexorably to the right,
yet it’s these very people who are directly responsible for the
shift.
If you vote for a candidate whose farther right than you would
prefer, well, then you’re shifting the political “center” to the
right.
Republicans aren’t responsible for the increasingly conservative
face of the democratic party. Democrats are responsible for it.
Democrats keep racing to the polls like lemmings being chased
by the boogeyman.
“This is not the election to vote for real change” runs the
democratic refrain.
We’re in a crisis! We must do whatever it takes to ensure that
the republicans don’t get in office even if that means voting for
a democrat whose policies we don’t really like and which are only
marginally distinguishable from those of the republican candidate.
That “margin” is important, we’re reminded again and again.
That little difference is going to make all the difference.
Even if that were true, which it ought to be clear by now it is not it
would still offer a very poor justification for voting for a candidate
one doesn’t really like.
Why? Because it is an expression of short-term thinking.
Thomas Hobbes argued that privileging short-term over long-term
goals was irrational, and yet that’s what we’ve been doing in this
country for as long as I can remember.
Americans are notoriously short-term oriented.
As Luc Sante noted in a piece in the New York Review of Books,
America is “the country of the perpetual present tense.”
Perhaps that’s part of the anti-intellectualism that Richard
Hofstadter wrote about.
“Just keep the republicans out of office for this election!” We’re
always commanded. “We can worry about real change later!”
Of course anyone who stopped to think about it ought to
realize that that mythical “later” is never going to come.
Our choices are getting worse not better, and if we keep invoking
the “lesser of the two evils” to justify them, we are in effect,
digging our own graves.
God is not going to deliver to us from the clouds the candidate of
our dreams, the candidate who despite his (or perhaps her) wildly
populist views somehow manages to win over the corporate powers
we have allowed, through our own incorrigible stupidity, to control
the political process in this country.
If we are ever going to see real political change of the sort
progressives purport to want, then we are going to have to
be brave enough to risk losing an election.
Which shouldn’t require all that much bravery when one
thinks about it, because real progressives have been losing
elections for as long as anyone can remember in that the
democrats haven’t been genuinely progressive for as long
as anyone can remember.
If you vote for a democrat because you think of yourself as
progressive you are wasting your vote because what you are
actually saying is that you are willing to support a candidate
who is not really progressive, that the democrats can continue
their relentless march to the right and that you will back them
all the way.
That is, if you vote for a democrat because you say you are
progressive, you are saying one thing and doing another.
But actions, as everyone knows, speak louder than words.
You can go on posturing about how progressive you are, but
if you vote for a democrat that posturing is empty.
If we are ever going to see real progressive political change in
this country we have to brave enough to openly risk defeat,
and we have to have faith that our fellow progressives will be
similarly brave.
William James makes this point very eloquently in his essay
“The Will to Believe.”
“A social organism,” he wrote, of any sort whatever, large or
small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own
duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously
do theirs.
Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of
many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure
consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those
immediately concerned.
A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college,
an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not
only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted.
A whole train of passengers (individually brave enough) will
be looted by a few highwaymen, simply because the latter
can count on one another, while each passenger fears that
if he makes a movement of resistance, he will be shot before
any one else backs him up.
If we believed that the whole car-full would rise at once with us,
we should each severally rise, and train-robbing would never even
be attempted.
There are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless
a preliminary faith exists in its coming.
Progressive political change will never be a fact unless we have
faith in its coming, unless we have faith that others will back us
up when we refuse to be forced to vote yet again for a candidate
we do not like.
I, for one, abhor cowardice.
I’m not going to be intimidated into voting for a candidate I don’t
like by threats of the “greater evil.”
I do not expect that my candidate will win the election.
I expect, however, that my vote will count for something and
not merely in the sense that it will allow me to preserve my
self respect.
I’m not afraid of being condemned as naively optimistic. Without
such optimism we’d never have had democracy in the first place.
Democracy, one of the crowning achievements of human history,
is precisely the product of the courage to act on one’s conscience
and that faith that others will do so as well.
If we’ve lost those things, then we will get the president we
deserve.
M.G. Piety teaches philosophy at Drexel University. She is the editor
and translator of Soren Kierkegaard’s Repetition and Philosophical
Crumbs. Her latest book is: Ways of Knowing: Kierkegaard’s
Pluralist Epistemology.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/12/on-wasting-your-vote/
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Weapons of Mass Distraction
Weapons of Mass Distraction
By Dennis Kucinich
Information Clearing House
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Ten years ago, on October 10, 2002, the United States House of
Representatives made one of the most calamitous mistakes of a generation.
Congress, with willful blindness, voted to attack, invade and occupy
a sovereign, oil-rich nation in the Middle East that did not attack us
and did not pose a threat to the American people.
The war in Iraq will ultimately cost the United States five trillion dollars.
Four thousand, four hundred, eighty eight Americans were killed.
Tens of thousands of Americans were injured.
At least one million innocent Iraqis were killed.
Iraq has become a home to Al Qaida which it certainly was not
before our intervention.
Resentment against the United States has made pursuing peace
more difficult.
And we still have thousands of armed contractors in Iraq -- paid
for by U.S. taxpayers.
Many are trying to rewrite the history of the Iraq war.
The people who led us into a war based on lies want us to believe
that the intelligence community was duped.
They don't want us to ask questions, because they don't want to
be held accountable.
Those repeating the myth that America was duped are perpetuating
one of the biggest lies in American history.
Iraq did not pose a threat to the United States.
Iraq had no Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.
We were not duped. We were not fooled.
It was obvious at the time.
The evidence was in publicly available reports for anyone who
cared to look.
I personally distributed this memo to Members of Congress.
In it I address the false justifications for war, point-by-point
and establish the truth.
I made the case in an hour-long presentation on the House floor.
133 Members of Congress were not duped; they voted against
going to war with Iraq.
The Bush Administration lied to the Congress and the American
people to sell its war.
The intelligence community wasn't duped, The American people
were duped and we are still paying the price.
Why did they lie?
After ten years, we have never held anyone accountable for the
lies.
Perhaps it would be useful to look at who benefited from the war.
The Neoconservatives in the Bush Administration wanted
to show the world American power by destroying an enemy.
They thought that American power and American bombs
could redraw the maps and ensure American hegemony
and American access to cheap oil for a new century.
Certainly the bomb makers and war profiteers have gained
from a decade of war.
The elite chattering class of State Department sponsored
spokespersons from so-called "independent" think tanks
have also benefited.
This professional chattering class receives funding and
attention by hyping threats and war.
Who else benefited from the war?
America needs a period of truth and reconciliation.
How can we avoid future wars if we don't understand
how consent was manufactured for a war against Iraq?
Dennis Kucinich is Congressman from Ohio
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32706.htm
By Dennis Kucinich
Information Clearing House
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Ten years ago, on October 10, 2002, the United States House of
Representatives made one of the most calamitous mistakes of a generation.
Congress, with willful blindness, voted to attack, invade and occupy
a sovereign, oil-rich nation in the Middle East that did not attack us
and did not pose a threat to the American people.
The war in Iraq will ultimately cost the United States five trillion dollars.
Four thousand, four hundred, eighty eight Americans were killed.
Tens of thousands of Americans were injured.
At least one million innocent Iraqis were killed.
Iraq has become a home to Al Qaida which it certainly was not
before our intervention.
Resentment against the United States has made pursuing peace
more difficult.
And we still have thousands of armed contractors in Iraq -- paid
for by U.S. taxpayers.
Many are trying to rewrite the history of the Iraq war.
The people who led us into a war based on lies want us to believe
that the intelligence community was duped.
They don't want us to ask questions, because they don't want to
be held accountable.
Those repeating the myth that America was duped are perpetuating
one of the biggest lies in American history.
Iraq did not pose a threat to the United States.
Iraq had no Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.
We were not duped. We were not fooled.
It was obvious at the time.
The evidence was in publicly available reports for anyone who
cared to look.
I personally distributed this memo to Members of Congress.
In it I address the false justifications for war, point-by-point
and establish the truth.
I made the case in an hour-long presentation on the House floor.
133 Members of Congress were not duped; they voted against
going to war with Iraq.
The Bush Administration lied to the Congress and the American
people to sell its war.
The intelligence community wasn't duped, The American people
were duped and we are still paying the price.
Why did they lie?
After ten years, we have never held anyone accountable for the
lies.
Perhaps it would be useful to look at who benefited from the war.
The Neoconservatives in the Bush Administration wanted
to show the world American power by destroying an enemy.
They thought that American power and American bombs
could redraw the maps and ensure American hegemony
and American access to cheap oil for a new century.
Certainly the bomb makers and war profiteers have gained
from a decade of war.
The elite chattering class of State Department sponsored
spokespersons from so-called "independent" think tanks
have also benefited.
This professional chattering class receives funding and
attention by hyping threats and war.
Who else benefited from the war?
America needs a period of truth and reconciliation.
How can we avoid future wars if we don't understand
how consent was manufactured for a war against Iraq?
Dennis Kucinich is Congressman from Ohio
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32706.htm
Monday, October 8, 2012
Voting For Death
Voting For Death
By Linh Dinh
Counter Punch
October 08, 2012
America, you have become a nation of enablers and apologists for
tyranny and mass murder.
You condemn the Nazi and gulag guards of times past even as you
celebrate your own mercenaries and torturers, even as you explain
away, if not outright cheer, the unspeakable crimes committed by
your sons and daughters.
You don’t care who you kill, as long as your soldiers are paid,
and your munitions, bomb and tank factories are humming.
Safely ensconced in academic luna parks, your leading intellectuals
lean slightly right or left, but never enough to rock this blazing
gunboat, lest they sour the cocktail parties or, god forbid, have
their tenure revoked.
Mouths stuffed with antipasti, they’re expert at sidestepping
Israel’s prolific crimes, 9/11, Bin Laden’s faux death or the
parasitic Federal Reserve, and as another joke election nears,
they’re all gung ho about candidates who back illegal wars and
banking frauds, since each is supposedly the lesser of two evils.
For the past five presidential elections, winning candidates have
won 52.9%, 50.7%, 47.9%, 49.2% and 43% of the popular votes
respectively.
So there hasn’t been an overwhelming mandate for any of them,
but with the runner ups from the other major party often close
behind, and in 2000, actually ahead in the popular vote count,
the two-party system has gotten a stranglehold on our public
life and pocketbooks.
As for our senators, only two are not Democrat or Republican.
An American election, then, is basically a rigged referendum for
this thoroughly corrupt and murderous system, and simply by
voting, you will give it the green light to go on killing and looting.
Every four years, we’re railroaded into sanctioning endless war
and bottomless corruption.
If disappointed, we’re then steered by our brainwashing and
dumbing down media to a near clone of our current rapist.
The Good Old Party spooks the upper and middle classes by
threatening, If you don’t vote for us, the Dems will take your
hard-earned cash and give it to the freeloaders, crackheads
and other miscellaneous losers.
While the Democrats, in turn, scare the lower rungs by snarling,
If you don’t vote for us, the Republicans will let your retired,
diapered ass rot under a bridge, on a piece of cardboard, but
lordy, lordy, lordy, it is already happening, but let us not sweat
the details.
It is fitting that as our most important vote has become nearly
meaningless, we’re offered myriad opportunities to vote for all
sorts of irrelevant acts and personalities, from singing oafs to
dancing buffoons, to steroid-charged sluggers.
Americans have never voted so much for so little.
Each party paints the other as the greater evil, though both are
equally whorish to a military banking complex that has wrought
so much grief and destruction worldwide, including here.
As they offshore your job, they may toss you a free cell phone
or allow you to wed your same sex lover, but isn’t time, seriously,
we demand that our money be spent responsibly, for our benefits?
But no, we can only beg for small change, instead of real ones,
and must vote, again, for proven liars and criminals, and hope,
against all evidence, that they won’t impale us this time.
So how does it feel to have so much evil, deceit and betrayal
hardening through the entire length of your being?
But what’s worst about this is that you yourself have allowed it to
happen, have enabled it, if only symbolically, by voting for one of
the two parties that are pro war and pro corruption.
They will likely get 99% of your votes, in fact, so America will have
endorsed overwhelmingly, again, an openly criminal agenda, and
the world will again be aghast.
With his cartoon dynamite, Netanyahu’s recent UN speech brings to
mind Powell and his phony chart before the Iraq invasion, but Bush
at least tried to convince that a war was necessary, whereas Obama
hasn’t even bothered.
Ignoring congress and the American public, he simply ordered
a massive bombing campaign against Libya, which he mockingly
dubbed a “kinetic military action,” unleashed lesser strikes
against Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, and sent terroristic proxies
into Syria, all without significant protest from our dozing public
or groveling intelligentsia.
Pumped with nonstop propaganda from our corporate media in this
mad house of mirrors, we neither see nor care how others perceive
us, for even as international protests mount, our flags burnt, our
soldiers killed by supposed allies and poll after poll shows us among
the most despised nations on earth, we still believe we’re loved
and admired worldwide.
Our politicians are only too glad to pander to this vanity.
Romney, “We have a moral responsibility to keep America the
strongest nation on earth, the hope of the earth, the shining
city on the hill.”
Obama, “Never bet against the United States. The United States
has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world
affairs.”
Only children believe in everlasting anything, but that’s how our
daddy and mommy politicians talk to us these days.
So the world will again be aghast, as will posterity, unless we can
prove that we’re not behind the winning criminal.
Already, nearly half of Americans don’t cast ballots in any election,
but we must make this abstention purposeful, as a clear sign of
protest and not an act of apathy.
The world must see that Americans aren’t all deranged and
hypnotized as those who cheer and vote for one lying criminal
after another.
We’re better than this, so let’s prove it.
Imagine thousands in public places, declaring, “NOT IN OUR NAME!”
The sooner we can effect a divorce between us and our rogue
government, the sooner we can get rid of it.
If nothing else, to resist this electoral farce is to wash our hands,
partially, at least, of the innocent blood being spilled.
It is the only moral decision.
Linh Dinh is the author of two books, five poems, and a novel,
Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape
through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/03/voting-for-death/
By Linh Dinh
Counter Punch
October 08, 2012
America, you have become a nation of enablers and apologists for
tyranny and mass murder.
You condemn the Nazi and gulag guards of times past even as you
celebrate your own mercenaries and torturers, even as you explain
away, if not outright cheer, the unspeakable crimes committed by
your sons and daughters.
You don’t care who you kill, as long as your soldiers are paid,
and your munitions, bomb and tank factories are humming.
Safely ensconced in academic luna parks, your leading intellectuals
lean slightly right or left, but never enough to rock this blazing
gunboat, lest they sour the cocktail parties or, god forbid, have
their tenure revoked.
Mouths stuffed with antipasti, they’re expert at sidestepping
Israel’s prolific crimes, 9/11, Bin Laden’s faux death or the
parasitic Federal Reserve, and as another joke election nears,
they’re all gung ho about candidates who back illegal wars and
banking frauds, since each is supposedly the lesser of two evils.
For the past five presidential elections, winning candidates have
won 52.9%, 50.7%, 47.9%, 49.2% and 43% of the popular votes
respectively.
So there hasn’t been an overwhelming mandate for any of them,
but with the runner ups from the other major party often close
behind, and in 2000, actually ahead in the popular vote count,
the two-party system has gotten a stranglehold on our public
life and pocketbooks.
As for our senators, only two are not Democrat or Republican.
An American election, then, is basically a rigged referendum for
this thoroughly corrupt and murderous system, and simply by
voting, you will give it the green light to go on killing and looting.
Every four years, we’re railroaded into sanctioning endless war
and bottomless corruption.
If disappointed, we’re then steered by our brainwashing and
dumbing down media to a near clone of our current rapist.
The Good Old Party spooks the upper and middle classes by
threatening, If you don’t vote for us, the Dems will take your
hard-earned cash and give it to the freeloaders, crackheads
and other miscellaneous losers.
While the Democrats, in turn, scare the lower rungs by snarling,
If you don’t vote for us, the Republicans will let your retired,
diapered ass rot under a bridge, on a piece of cardboard, but
lordy, lordy, lordy, it is already happening, but let us not sweat
the details.
It is fitting that as our most important vote has become nearly
meaningless, we’re offered myriad opportunities to vote for all
sorts of irrelevant acts and personalities, from singing oafs to
dancing buffoons, to steroid-charged sluggers.
Americans have never voted so much for so little.
Each party paints the other as the greater evil, though both are
equally whorish to a military banking complex that has wrought
so much grief and destruction worldwide, including here.
As they offshore your job, they may toss you a free cell phone
or allow you to wed your same sex lover, but isn’t time, seriously,
we demand that our money be spent responsibly, for our benefits?
But no, we can only beg for small change, instead of real ones,
and must vote, again, for proven liars and criminals, and hope,
against all evidence, that they won’t impale us this time.
So how does it feel to have so much evil, deceit and betrayal
hardening through the entire length of your being?
But what’s worst about this is that you yourself have allowed it to
happen, have enabled it, if only symbolically, by voting for one of
the two parties that are pro war and pro corruption.
They will likely get 99% of your votes, in fact, so America will have
endorsed overwhelmingly, again, an openly criminal agenda, and
the world will again be aghast.
With his cartoon dynamite, Netanyahu’s recent UN speech brings to
mind Powell and his phony chart before the Iraq invasion, but Bush
at least tried to convince that a war was necessary, whereas Obama
hasn’t even bothered.
Ignoring congress and the American public, he simply ordered
a massive bombing campaign against Libya, which he mockingly
dubbed a “kinetic military action,” unleashed lesser strikes
against Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, and sent terroristic proxies
into Syria, all without significant protest from our dozing public
or groveling intelligentsia.
Pumped with nonstop propaganda from our corporate media in this
mad house of mirrors, we neither see nor care how others perceive
us, for even as international protests mount, our flags burnt, our
soldiers killed by supposed allies and poll after poll shows us among
the most despised nations on earth, we still believe we’re loved
and admired worldwide.
Our politicians are only too glad to pander to this vanity.
Romney, “We have a moral responsibility to keep America the
strongest nation on earth, the hope of the earth, the shining
city on the hill.”
Obama, “Never bet against the United States. The United States
has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world
affairs.”
Only children believe in everlasting anything, but that’s how our
daddy and mommy politicians talk to us these days.
So the world will again be aghast, as will posterity, unless we can
prove that we’re not behind the winning criminal.
Already, nearly half of Americans don’t cast ballots in any election,
but we must make this abstention purposeful, as a clear sign of
protest and not an act of apathy.
The world must see that Americans aren’t all deranged and
hypnotized as those who cheer and vote for one lying criminal
after another.
We’re better than this, so let’s prove it.
Imagine thousands in public places, declaring, “NOT IN OUR NAME!”
The sooner we can effect a divorce between us and our rogue
government, the sooner we can get rid of it.
If nothing else, to resist this electoral farce is to wash our hands,
partially, at least, of the innocent blood being spilled.
It is the only moral decision.
Linh Dinh is the author of two books, five poems, and a novel,
Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape
through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/03/voting-for-death/
Friday, October 5, 2012
If The Price Is Right
If The Price Is Right
By David Glenn Cox
The Smirking Chimp
October 05, 2012
The United States of America was conceived in liberty and
dedicated to the proposition that everything is for sale —
if the price is right.
It is illusionary and fraudulent, it is a con job, and so, it becomes
abundantly clear that wealth equals freedom and poverty equals
slavery.
It makes both political parties transparent when Willard “Mitt”
Romney says he doesn’t want government to limit his freedom.
Well, there you have it.
I went to a job interview the other day; a second interview no less,
and for a good job.
I don’t think I will get the job because there are too many hurdles
to surmount, but the sales manager said to me:
“If we call you back for a third interview we will put an offer on
the table for you to consider.”
He meant a contract, which specified all aspects of my behavior
both on and off the job.
It sounded more like a real estate closing or buying a car, but that
is exactly the point I’m getting at.
Supposedly, we live in this land with mythical unicorn freedom in
a garden of earthly delights.
But this contract, which offers a monetary figure I’d be ashamed
to publicly admit wasn’t just for my services, it was for my soul.
I do hereby purchase one human worker for the sum of $xxxx
annually.
He or she agrees to live as we prescribe under penalty of instant
and grinding poverty.
Well, it’s nice to be invited to the prom even if you can’t dance.
My income would be directly dependant on the amount of
product I sold. If I didn’t sell enough product, I would be
fired.
My goal would be to sell as much product in any earthly way
possible.
On the surface I would be a guy in slacks, a dress shirt and
shiny shoes doing the capitalist thing, selling product, baby.
Actually, I would be no different than a prostitute getting
into a car at a bus stop.
I would be selling myself for my livelihood, or more correctly,
I would be selling myself for my employer’s livelihood.
This is how Capitalism operates — surreptitiously and insidiously.
Capitalism is the carrot on the stick to encourage the little burro
to pull the wagon.
Capitalism is a juicy promise which never quite meets the
expectation; a meal which smells good but does not satisfy.
It declares we make one more sales call, unload one more truck
or drive one more mile to make someone else more money.
The most important principle of Capitalism is the silent directive,
which is neither written down nor chiseled in stone:
The people must never know the truth; they must be misled and
propagandized.
Seal team six killed Osama Bin Laden, but who was Osama Bin
Laden?
What was the real reason Richard Nixon was removed from office?
The only thing we ever know for sure is that much of what we are
told consists of lies.
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/daveparts/45880/if-the-price-
is-right
By David Glenn Cox
The Smirking Chimp
October 05, 2012
The United States of America was conceived in liberty and
dedicated to the proposition that everything is for sale —
if the price is right.
It is illusionary and fraudulent, it is a con job, and so, it becomes
abundantly clear that wealth equals freedom and poverty equals
slavery.
It makes both political parties transparent when Willard “Mitt”
Romney says he doesn’t want government to limit his freedom.
Well, there you have it.
I went to a job interview the other day; a second interview no less,
and for a good job.
I don’t think I will get the job because there are too many hurdles
to surmount, but the sales manager said to me:
“If we call you back for a third interview we will put an offer on
the table for you to consider.”
He meant a contract, which specified all aspects of my behavior
both on and off the job.
It sounded more like a real estate closing or buying a car, but that
is exactly the point I’m getting at.
Supposedly, we live in this land with mythical unicorn freedom in
a garden of earthly delights.
But this contract, which offers a monetary figure I’d be ashamed
to publicly admit wasn’t just for my services, it was for my soul.
I do hereby purchase one human worker for the sum of $xxxx
annually.
He or she agrees to live as we prescribe under penalty of instant
and grinding poverty.
Well, it’s nice to be invited to the prom even if you can’t dance.
My income would be directly dependant on the amount of
product I sold. If I didn’t sell enough product, I would be
fired.
My goal would be to sell as much product in any earthly way
possible.
On the surface I would be a guy in slacks, a dress shirt and
shiny shoes doing the capitalist thing, selling product, baby.
Actually, I would be no different than a prostitute getting
into a car at a bus stop.
I would be selling myself for my livelihood, or more correctly,
I would be selling myself for my employer’s livelihood.
This is how Capitalism operates — surreptitiously and insidiously.
Capitalism is the carrot on the stick to encourage the little burro
to pull the wagon.
Capitalism is a juicy promise which never quite meets the
expectation; a meal which smells good but does not satisfy.
It declares we make one more sales call, unload one more truck
or drive one more mile to make someone else more money.
The most important principle of Capitalism is the silent directive,
which is neither written down nor chiseled in stone:
The people must never know the truth; they must be misled and
propagandized.
Seal team six killed Osama Bin Laden, but who was Osama Bin
Laden?
What was the real reason Richard Nixon was removed from office?
The only thing we ever know for sure is that much of what we are
told consists of lies.
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/daveparts/45880/if-the-price-
is-right
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Nothing More Evil
Nothing More Evil
By David Swanson
Information Clearing House
Wednesday, October 03, 2012
A writer at the Atlantic named Conor Friedersdorf recently noted
the level of evil many have been brought to support:
"Tell certain liberals and progressives that you can't bring yourself
to vote for a candidate who opposes gay rights, or who doesn't
believe in Darwinian evolution, and they'll nod along.
Say that you'd never vote for a politician caught using the 'n'-word,
even if you agreed with him on more policy issues than his
opponent, and the vast majority of left-leaning Americans would understand.
But these same people cannot conceive of how anyone can discern
Mitt Romney's flaws, which I've chronicled in the course of the
campaign, and still not vote for Obama.
Don't they see that Obama's transgressions are worse than any I've
mentioned?
I don't see how anyone who confronts Obama's record with clear
eyes can enthusiastically support him.
I do understand how they might concluded that he is the lesser of
two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I'd have thought more
people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties
and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers."
Not long ago, I attended a speech by Obama, along with thousands
of his adoring cheerleaders formerly known as citizens.
I asked him to stop killing people in Afghanistan, and the Secret
Service asked me to leave.
But, just now, I got a phone call from the local Obama office. They
had my name because I'd picked up a ticket to attend the speech.
The young woman wanted to know if I would come help phone
other people.
I asked if she was familiar with the president's kill list and his
policy of killing men, women, and children with drones.
She said she knew nothing about that but "respected my opinion."
She hung up.
Objecting to presidential murder is now an opinion, and willingness
to be aware of its existence is an appendage to the opinion.
If you don't object to presidential murder by Democrat, then you simply arrange not to know about it. Thus, in your opinion, it
doesn't exist.
Some of my friends at this moment are in Pakistan apologizing to
its government and its people for the endless murderous drone war
fought there by our country.
They're meeting with victims' families. They're speaking publicly in
opposition to the crimes of our government.
And my neighbors, living in some other universe, believe most
fundamentally, not that one candidate will save us, not that the
two parties are fundamentally opposed, not that a citizen's job
is to vote, not that war is all right if it's meant well -- although
they clearly believe all of those things -- but, most fundamentally,
they believe that unpleasant facts should simply be avoided.
So, in a spirit of afflicting the comfortable to comfort the afflicted,
here are a few from recent days:
WAR IS A LIE
We know that in the past "defensive" wars have been intentionally
launched by fraud or provocation.
We know that many in our government want a war with Iran.
We know that several years ago then-Vice President Dick Cheney
proposed disguising U.S. ships as Iranian and attacking other U.S.
ships with them.
We know that then-President George W. Bush proposed disguising a
plane as belonging to the United Nations, flying it low, and trying to
get Iraq to shoot at it.
We know that there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident, no evidence
that Spain attacked the Maine, no doubt that the weapons and
troops on board the Lusitania were public knowledge, no question
that FDR worked hard to provoke an attack by Japan, and so on.
And we know that Iran has not attacked another nation in
centuries.
So, it almost goes without saying that Washington warmongers
are contemplating ways to get Iran to make the "first move."
Assassinating scientists hasn't worked, blowing up buildings doesn't
seem to do it, cyber-war isn't blossoming into real war, sanctions
are not sanctioning armed resistance, and dubious accusations of
Iranian terrorism aren't sticking.
Exactly what do we have to do to get ourselves innocently attacked
by the forces of evil?
Crisis initiation is really tough. And it's very hard for me to see how
the United States president can get us to war with Iran.
The traditional way America gets to war is what would be best for
U.S. interests.
Some people might think that Mr. Roosevelt wanted to get us into
World War II. You may recall, we had to wait for Pearl Harbor.
Some people might think Mr. Wilson wanted to get us into World
War I. You may recall that he had to wait for the Lusitania episode.
Some people might think that Mr. Johnson wanted to send troops
to Vietnam. You may recall he had to wait for the Gulf of Tonkin episode.
We didn't go to war with Spain until the Maine exploded.
And Mr. Lincoln did not feel he could call out the federal army until
Fort Sumter was attacked, which is why he ordered the commander
at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing which the South Carolinians
had said would cause an attack.
So, if in fact the Iranians aren't going to compromise, it would
be best if somebody else started the war.
This is serious advocacy for manufacturing a "defensive" and
"humanitarian" war.
This is not a war critic or a Yes Men prankster.
The position of most elected officials in Washington, including
the President, fits well with this.
That position includes the ultimatum that Iran must cease
doing what U.S. National Intelligence Estimates say it is not
doing, namely building nuclear weapons.
The goal at the bottom of all of this is war.
The purpose of the war is not related to any of the excuses for it.
The purpose is something else entirely.
But it's ugly, so it's easier not to look.
HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION
We often forget that war is the worst thing there is.
Hence our government's shift in policy back to outsourcing a lot of
the torture and insourcing the "cleaner" approach of assassination without torture.
Hence, also, our common fantasy that war can be used to solve a
problem that is somehow worse than war.
We also forget that torturing people can be crueler than
experimenting on them.
Torture has been given an acceptance in the United States during
the past decade that "human experimentation" has not.
So, we are still capable of a bit of shock when a story comes out
like this one:
During the 1950s and 1960s the U.S. Army sprayed zinc cadmium
sulfide, apparently including radioactive particles, in poor
neighborhoods in St. Louis and other cities, to test the results on
the people who unknowingly breathed it.
At the end of World War II, the U.S. military's Operation Paperclip
brought nearly 500 Nazi scientists to the United States to work on
U.S. weaponry.
Many view their influence on the nascent military industrial
complex as critical to its sadistic and sociopathic tendencies
ever since.
In fairness to the Nazis, it's possible that they simply fit in well,
serving the military of a nation with a long history of genocide,
slavery, torture, and public deception.
I came across a member of Veterans For Peace this week who's
been struggling many years as a result of experimental vaccines
and drugs given to hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers during
the Gulf War.
We also learned this week that every prisoner in the Guantanamo
death camp has been given experimental drugs without their
knowledge or at least without their consent.
And then there's this: "Congressional Probe Reveals Cover-Up
of 'Auschwitz-Like' Conditions at US-Funded Afghan Hospital":
"A congressional investigation has revealed a top U.S. general in
Afghanistan sought to stall an investigation into abuse at a U.S.
funded hospital in Kabul that kept patients in, quote, 'Auschwitz-
like' conditions.
Army whistleblowers revealed photographs taken in 2010 which
show severely neglected, starving patients at Dawood Hospital,
considered the crown jewel of the Afghan medical system,
where the country's military personnel are treated.
The photos show severely emaciated patients, some suffering
from gangrene and maggot-infested wounds.
For TV viewers of Democracy Now!, please be warned: these
images are extremely graphic and may be disturbing."
NOTHING MORE EVIL
Here's what I'm trying to get at.
If you try to think of something more evil than what we
are now doing, you'll fail.
Name your evil: destroying the earth's climate?
President Barack Obama flew to Copenhagen to single-handedly
derail any process for protecting the earth's atmosphere.
The only way in which to fantasize about greater evil is
quantitative, not qualitative.
We could drop more bombs.
We could starve more children.
We could experiment on more prisoners.
In fact, this is what Lesser Evilism amounts to.
A Lesser Evilist today is not choosing less evil policies, but the
same policies in what he or she hopes will be lesser amounts.
That might be a rational calculation within a polling place.
But living it prior to and after an election, apologizing and cheering
for one of two teams, as if self-governance were a spectator sport,
is nothing other than complicity in the most hideous forms of
cruelty and murder.
That complicity is insidious.
Evil begins to look like something else, because the Lesser Evilist,
within his or her own mind, comes to view the Lesser Evil forces
as good, if not glorious, if not saintly.
David L. Swanson is an American Activist, Author and Blogger at,
warisacrime.org
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32606.htm
By David Swanson
Information Clearing House
Wednesday, October 03, 2012
A writer at the Atlantic named Conor Friedersdorf recently noted
the level of evil many have been brought to support:
"Tell certain liberals and progressives that you can't bring yourself
to vote for a candidate who opposes gay rights, or who doesn't
believe in Darwinian evolution, and they'll nod along.
Say that you'd never vote for a politician caught using the 'n'-word,
even if you agreed with him on more policy issues than his
opponent, and the vast majority of left-leaning Americans would understand.
But these same people cannot conceive of how anyone can discern
Mitt Romney's flaws, which I've chronicled in the course of the
campaign, and still not vote for Obama.
Don't they see that Obama's transgressions are worse than any I've
mentioned?
I don't see how anyone who confronts Obama's record with clear
eyes can enthusiastically support him.
I do understand how they might concluded that he is the lesser of
two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I'd have thought more
people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties
and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers."
Not long ago, I attended a speech by Obama, along with thousands
of his adoring cheerleaders formerly known as citizens.
I asked him to stop killing people in Afghanistan, and the Secret
Service asked me to leave.
But, just now, I got a phone call from the local Obama office. They
had my name because I'd picked up a ticket to attend the speech.
The young woman wanted to know if I would come help phone
other people.
I asked if she was familiar with the president's kill list and his
policy of killing men, women, and children with drones.
She said she knew nothing about that but "respected my opinion."
She hung up.
Objecting to presidential murder is now an opinion, and willingness
to be aware of its existence is an appendage to the opinion.
If you don't object to presidential murder by Democrat, then you simply arrange not to know about it. Thus, in your opinion, it
doesn't exist.
Some of my friends at this moment are in Pakistan apologizing to
its government and its people for the endless murderous drone war
fought there by our country.
They're meeting with victims' families. They're speaking publicly in
opposition to the crimes of our government.
And my neighbors, living in some other universe, believe most
fundamentally, not that one candidate will save us, not that the
two parties are fundamentally opposed, not that a citizen's job
is to vote, not that war is all right if it's meant well -- although
they clearly believe all of those things -- but, most fundamentally,
they believe that unpleasant facts should simply be avoided.
So, in a spirit of afflicting the comfortable to comfort the afflicted,
here are a few from recent days:
WAR IS A LIE
We know that in the past "defensive" wars have been intentionally
launched by fraud or provocation.
We know that many in our government want a war with Iran.
We know that several years ago then-Vice President Dick Cheney
proposed disguising U.S. ships as Iranian and attacking other U.S.
ships with them.
We know that then-President George W. Bush proposed disguising a
plane as belonging to the United Nations, flying it low, and trying to
get Iraq to shoot at it.
We know that there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident, no evidence
that Spain attacked the Maine, no doubt that the weapons and
troops on board the Lusitania were public knowledge, no question
that FDR worked hard to provoke an attack by Japan, and so on.
And we know that Iran has not attacked another nation in
centuries.
So, it almost goes without saying that Washington warmongers
are contemplating ways to get Iran to make the "first move."
Assassinating scientists hasn't worked, blowing up buildings doesn't
seem to do it, cyber-war isn't blossoming into real war, sanctions
are not sanctioning armed resistance, and dubious accusations of
Iranian terrorism aren't sticking.
Exactly what do we have to do to get ourselves innocently attacked
by the forces of evil?
Crisis initiation is really tough. And it's very hard for me to see how
the United States president can get us to war with Iran.
The traditional way America gets to war is what would be best for
U.S. interests.
Some people might think that Mr. Roosevelt wanted to get us into
World War II. You may recall, we had to wait for Pearl Harbor.
Some people might think Mr. Wilson wanted to get us into World
War I. You may recall that he had to wait for the Lusitania episode.
Some people might think that Mr. Johnson wanted to send troops
to Vietnam. You may recall he had to wait for the Gulf of Tonkin episode.
We didn't go to war with Spain until the Maine exploded.
And Mr. Lincoln did not feel he could call out the federal army until
Fort Sumter was attacked, which is why he ordered the commander
at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing which the South Carolinians
had said would cause an attack.
So, if in fact the Iranians aren't going to compromise, it would
be best if somebody else started the war.
This is serious advocacy for manufacturing a "defensive" and
"humanitarian" war.
This is not a war critic or a Yes Men prankster.
The position of most elected officials in Washington, including
the President, fits well with this.
That position includes the ultimatum that Iran must cease
doing what U.S. National Intelligence Estimates say it is not
doing, namely building nuclear weapons.
The goal at the bottom of all of this is war.
The purpose of the war is not related to any of the excuses for it.
The purpose is something else entirely.
But it's ugly, so it's easier not to look.
HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION
We often forget that war is the worst thing there is.
Hence our government's shift in policy back to outsourcing a lot of
the torture and insourcing the "cleaner" approach of assassination without torture.
Hence, also, our common fantasy that war can be used to solve a
problem that is somehow worse than war.
We also forget that torturing people can be crueler than
experimenting on them.
Torture has been given an acceptance in the United States during
the past decade that "human experimentation" has not.
So, we are still capable of a bit of shock when a story comes out
like this one:
During the 1950s and 1960s the U.S. Army sprayed zinc cadmium
sulfide, apparently including radioactive particles, in poor
neighborhoods in St. Louis and other cities, to test the results on
the people who unknowingly breathed it.
At the end of World War II, the U.S. military's Operation Paperclip
brought nearly 500 Nazi scientists to the United States to work on
U.S. weaponry.
Many view their influence on the nascent military industrial
complex as critical to its sadistic and sociopathic tendencies
ever since.
In fairness to the Nazis, it's possible that they simply fit in well,
serving the military of a nation with a long history of genocide,
slavery, torture, and public deception.
I came across a member of Veterans For Peace this week who's
been struggling many years as a result of experimental vaccines
and drugs given to hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers during
the Gulf War.
We also learned this week that every prisoner in the Guantanamo
death camp has been given experimental drugs without their
knowledge or at least without their consent.
And then there's this: "Congressional Probe Reveals Cover-Up
of 'Auschwitz-Like' Conditions at US-Funded Afghan Hospital":
"A congressional investigation has revealed a top U.S. general in
Afghanistan sought to stall an investigation into abuse at a U.S.
funded hospital in Kabul that kept patients in, quote, 'Auschwitz-
like' conditions.
Army whistleblowers revealed photographs taken in 2010 which
show severely neglected, starving patients at Dawood Hospital,
considered the crown jewel of the Afghan medical system,
where the country's military personnel are treated.
The photos show severely emaciated patients, some suffering
from gangrene and maggot-infested wounds.
For TV viewers of Democracy Now!, please be warned: these
images are extremely graphic and may be disturbing."
NOTHING MORE EVIL
Here's what I'm trying to get at.
If you try to think of something more evil than what we
are now doing, you'll fail.
Name your evil: destroying the earth's climate?
President Barack Obama flew to Copenhagen to single-handedly
derail any process for protecting the earth's atmosphere.
The only way in which to fantasize about greater evil is
quantitative, not qualitative.
We could drop more bombs.
We could starve more children.
We could experiment on more prisoners.
In fact, this is what Lesser Evilism amounts to.
A Lesser Evilist today is not choosing less evil policies, but the
same policies in what he or she hopes will be lesser amounts.
That might be a rational calculation within a polling place.
But living it prior to and after an election, apologizing and cheering
for one of two teams, as if self-governance were a spectator sport,
is nothing other than complicity in the most hideous forms of
cruelty and murder.
That complicity is insidious.
Evil begins to look like something else, because the Lesser Evilist,
within his or her own mind, comes to view the Lesser Evil forces
as good, if not glorious, if not saintly.
David L. Swanson is an American Activist, Author and Blogger at,
warisacrime.org
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32606.htm
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