Uncommon Thought Journal

Beyond Orwell: The Electronic Police State, 2010

By rowan on March 17, 2010 8:33 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

By Tom Burghardt of Antifascist Calling.

A truism perhaps, but before resorting to brute force and open repression to halt the "barbarians at the gates," that would be us, the masters of declining empires (and the chattering classes who polish their boots) regale us with tales of "democracy on the march," "hope" and other banalities before the mailed fist comes crashing down.

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America's Permanent War Agenda

By rowan on March 15, 2010 7:10 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

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By Stephen Lendman. Republished from The Intelligence Daily.

Post-9/11, Dick Cheney warned of wars that won't end in our lifetime. Former CIA Director James Woolsey said America "is engaged in World War IV, and it could continue for years....This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us." GHW Bush called it a "New World Order" in his September 11, 1990 address to a joint session of Congress as he prepared the public for Operation Desert Storm.

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The Pentagon called it the "long war" in its 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), what past administrations waged every year without exception since the republic's birth, at home and abroad. Obama is just the latest of America's warrior presidents that included Washington, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, Wilson, F. Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, and GW Bush preceding him.

This article covers WW II and its aftermath history of imperial wars for unchallengeable global dominance throughout a period when America had and still has no enemies. Then why fight them? Read on.

Wars Without End

America glorifies wars in the name of peace, what historian Charles Beard (1874 - 1948) called "perpetual war for perpetual peace" in describing the Roosevelt and Truman administrations' foreign policies - what concerned the Federation of American Scientists when it catalogued about 200 post-1945 conflicts in which America was, and still is, the aggressor.

Historian Gore Vidal used Beard's phrase in titling his 2002 book, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace" and saying:

"our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own."

In his 2002 book "Dreaming War," he compared GW Bush's imperial ambitions to WW II and the 1947 Truman Doctrine's pledge:

"To support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

It was to keep Greece and Turkey from going communist, but it applied globally and initiated America's National Security State strategy that included:

- NATO in 1949 for offense, not defense;

- NSC-68 against Soviet Russia in 1950 to "contain" what was called an enemy "unlike previous aspirants to hegemony....animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own (wishing to) impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world" at a time America was the only global superpower, the Soviet Union lay in ruins, threatened no one, and needed years to regain normality.

Then came:

- Truman's instigated June 25, 1950 war after the DPRK retaliated in force following months of ROK provocations, what Americans call the Korean War, South Koreans the 6-2-5 War (meaning June 25), and the North its "fatherland liberation war" that left it in ruins, the South occupied to this day, and it was only the mid-century beginning as succeeding administrations continued an agenda for what's now called "full spectrum dominance" for global US hegemony.

It worried historian Harry Elmer Barnes (1889 - 1968) in his 1953 collection of leading historical revisionists' essays titled, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and It's Aftermath" in which he wrote in the preface:

"If trends continue as they have during the last fifteen years, we shall soon reach this point of no return, and can only anticipate interminable wars, disguised as noble gestures for peace. Such an era could only culminate in a third world war which might well, as Arnold J. Toynbee has suggested, leave only the pygmies in remote jungles, or even the apes and ants, to carry on 'the cultural traditions' of mankind."

He cited how America's "needless" entry into two world wars converted its pre-1914 dream "into a nightmare of fear, regimentation, destruction, insecurity, inflation, and ultimate insolvency." He debunked the cause and merits of WW I, "the folly of our entering it, and the disastrous results that followed." He cited "popular fictions" about WW II, the injustices to Germany and Austria that caused it, the war Roosevelt wanted early in the 1930s as captured Polish documents and the censored Forrestal Diaries confirmed.

Before it began, he wanted US neutrality legislation ended, then after September 1939, he dropped any pretense by supporting Britain and France and opposing peace efforts after Poland's defeat. His June 1940 "dagger in the back" address was a de facto act of war by beginning vast amounts of weapons and munitions shipments to Britain after Dunkirk, followed by the September 1940 (peacetime) Selective Service Act, the first in US history, in preparation for what close advisor Harry Hopkins told Churchill in January 1941 that:

"The President is determined that we shall win the war together. Make no mistake about it," followed by Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold Stark telling his fleet commanders that "The question of our entry into the war now seems to be when, and not whether."

Only a pretext was needed, first by trying and failing to provoke Germany, then deciding Japan would be attacked, whether or not it struck US ships, territory, or forces in the Pacific. In a July 4 radio broadcast, Roosevelt said:

"solemnly (understand) that the United States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of liberty surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship." Then his July 25 Executive Order froze Japanese assets, stating it was:
"....To prevent the use of the financial facilities of the United States in trade between Japan and the United States in ways harmful to national defense and American interests, to prevent the liquidation in the United States of assets obtained by duress or conquest, and to curb subversive activities in the United States."

Britain followed suit the next day, and Roosevelt nationalized the Philippines' armed forces "as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States" with dominion over its Asian colony.

As early as 1937, he planned a naval blockade, but dropped the idea after an adverse reaction. It resurfaced in 1938 because he knew strangling Japan economically assured war.

Throughout his administration, from 1933 through late 1941, he spurned Japanese peace overtures that would have protected all American interests in the Pacific. By November 25, the final die was cast. America chose war, and on that day, War Secretary Henry Stimson wrote in his diary that it depended only on how to maneuver Japan to attack with the lowest number of US casualties.

Tokyo had no other recourse, knowing it couldn't win, but hoping for a negotiated settlement to solidify whatever Asian control it could retain. It failed, lost the war, and remains an occupied US vassal state.

In the late 1930s, Roosevelt encouraged a Japanese attack by stationing the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor against the advice of two key admirals, James Richardson, Pacific Fleet commander and Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations until March 1942.

Selling arms to Japan's enemies and an embargo assured war, and US cable documentation confirmed it was coming. Breaking the Japanese code let Britain and Washington track its fleet from the Kurile Islands to its North Pacific refueling point en route to Pearl Harbor on or about December 7.

At a December 5 cabinet meeting, Navy Secretary Frank Knox said: "Well, you know Mr. President, we know where the Japanese fleet is?"

"Yes, I know," responded Roosevelt, saying "Well, you tell them what it is Frank," who explained where it was, where it was heading until Roosevelt interrupted adding that perfect information wasn't available in spite of navy reports confirming it in Pacific waters heading toward Hawaii. On December 6, officials awaited the attack until it came the next morning at 7:55AM Hawaii time.

It was a day of infamy and deceit, with Pearl Harbor's commander, Admiral HE Kimmel, denied crucial intelligence to let it proceed unimpeded, arouse public anger, and give FDR his war - one decoded Japanese messages showed they didn't want but Roosevelt gave them no choice.

Like other presidents, he lied the country into war against the wishes of 80% of the public, at a cost of millions of lives in both theaters, and a policy henceforth of perpetual wars for perpetual peace to achieve unchallengeable US dominance. In the modern era, FDR's foreign policy began it, leaving a bankrupted moral and political legacy active to this day.

Consider also what revisionist historians say about Lincoln - that he provoked the Fort Sumpter (in Charleston, SC harbor) attack and began the Civil War for economic reasons, not to end slavery.

Consider also that ordinary people and soldiers don't want war, just their leaders and commanders - to wit, Christmas 1914 during WW I when German and British troops stopped fighting, didn't know why they were doing it, then defied orders by fraternizing with each other for two weeks despite risking being court-martialed. Unable to stop them, their officers joined them in a celebratory pause that didn't stop another three years of carnage, millions of lost lives, and post-war policies that assured WW II.

The lesson is clear. All wars are immoral, unnecessary, and only happen when one side provokes the other for reasons unrelated to national security threats.

In his seminal book, "A Century of War," Gabriel Kolko called the 20th century:

"the bloodiest in all history. More than 170 million people were killed," 70% of whom in WW II were civilians, "mainly (from) the bombing of cities by Great Britain and America." There was nothing good about "the good war" nor any others.

In Kolko's later book "Another Century of War," he stressed how America contributes to much of the world's disorder through its interventions and as the world's largest arms producer and exporter. Post-WW II, the US became a global menace, today claiming "terrorism" as the main threat - a bogus fiction to justify militarism, perpetual wars heading the nation for moral, political and economic bankruptcy. According to Kolko:

"The way America's leaders are running the nation's foreign policy is not creating peace or security at home or stability abroad. The reverse is the case: its interventions have been counterproductive."

In his newest book, "The World in Crisis," Kolko believes that America's decline "began after the Korean War, was continued in relation to Cuba, and was greatly accelerated in Vietnam - but (GW Bush did) much to exacerbate it further." He also thinks:

- US power is declining everywhere;

- "the world is no longer dependent on its economic might" because other nations like China and India are growing and may some day equal or surpass America;

- after the Soviet Union's collapse, "the absence of identifiable foes has been a disaster, leaving the US aimless - (so) it picks and chooses enemies: rag-tag Afghan tribesmen, Iraqis or all sorts, perhaps China, perhaps Russia....South American caudillos," whatever bogus ones can be invented for imperial wars, but the justification is wearing thin, and the burgeoning cost unsustainable.

The result is that America's "century of domination is now ending."

America's Permanent War Economy

It's how Seymour Melman (1917 - 2004) characterized it in his books and frequents writings on America's military-industrial complex. One of his last articles was titled "In the Grip of a Permanent War Economy (CounterPunch, March 15, 2003) in which he said:

"at the start of the twenty-first century, every major aspect of American life is being shaped by our Permanent War Economy." He then examined the horrific toll:
- a de-industrialized nation, the result of decades of shifting production abroad leaving unions and communities "decimated;"

- government financing and promoting "every kind of war industry and foreign investing by US firms;" war priorities take precedence over essential homeland needs;

- America's "Permanent War Economy....has endured since the end of World War II....Since then the US has been at war - somewhere - every year, in Korea, Nicaragua, Vietnam, the Balkans, Afghanistan - all this to the accompaniment of shorter military forays in Africa, Chile, Grenada, Panama," and increasingly at home against its own people;

- "how to make war" takes precedence over everything leaving no "public space....on how to improve the quality of our lives;"

- "Shortages of housing have caused a swelling of the homeless population in every major city (because) State and city governments across the country have become trained to bend to the needs of the military....;" the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) currently estimates over 21,000 are on city streets nightly, and during winter months it's dangerous;

- the result is a nation of growing millions of poor, disadvantaged, uneducated, and "disconnected from society's mainstream, restless and unhappy, frustrated, angry, and sad;"

"State Capitalism" characterizes America's government - business partnership running a war economy for greater power and wealth at the expense of a nation in decline, corrupted leadership, lost industrialization, crumbling infrastructure, and suffering millions on their own, uncared for, unwanted, ignored, and forgotten.

Melman stressed that:

"Further evasion is out of order. We must come to grips with America's State Capitalism and its Permanent War Economy." Re-industrialization is essential "to restore jobs and production competence - industry by industry."
"Failing that, there is no hope for any constructive exit," for the nation or its people.

Dwight Eisenhower's January 17, 1961 Address to the Nation

It was his farewell address delivered 30 years to the day before Operation Desert Storm began in which he warned about the "military-industrial complex," citing the "grave implications" of a "coalition of the military and industrialists who profit by manufacturing arms and selling them to the government."

He stated "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence....by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

He also said that:

"Every gun that is made, every war ship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and not clothed," the result of what some analysts call the "iron triangle" of Congress, the Pentagon, and the defense industry that includes producers of sophisticated technology for digital age warfare of a kind Eisenhower never imagined.

In combination, they've addicted America to war, not for threats, but for the power and profits that result. In his book "The Political Economy of US Militarism," Professor Ismael Hossein-Zadeh refers to "parasitic military imperialism," consuming over 40% of the national tax revenue at the expense of unmet human needs.

Morality aside, it's not justified economically. It's wasteful, inefficient, comes at a great cost, and over time is ineffective and self-destructive.

"The control over huge amounts of national resources tends to lead to an undermining of democratic values, a perversion of republican principles and a reduction of civil freedoms, as well as to the political corruption at home and abroad." Moreover, "The constant need for international conflicts makes (America's) military imperialism....more dangerous than the imperial powers of the past."

It's made war-making a giant enterprise "not only for expansionism but, in fact, for the survival of this empire," yet consider the fallout Hossein-Zadeh examined in a July 10, 2007 article titled, "Parasitic Imperialism:"

- the redistribution of income and resources to the wealthy;

- the undermining of physical and human capital;

- the nation's increased vulnerability to natural disasters;

- economic and financial instability, the result of the growing national debt now totally out of control;

- less foreign market potential for non-military ventures;

- the undermining of civil liberties and democratic values; and

- "foster(ing) a dependence on or addiction to military spending, and, therefore....a spiraling vicious circle of (unsustainable) war and militarism" that's sucking the nation into decline.

America's Post-WW II Imperial Grand Strategy

Post-WW II, America emerged as the world's sole superpower - economically, politically and militarily, given the war's toll on East Asia, Europe and Soviet Russia. In his book, "The Cold War and the New Imperialism," Professor Henry Heller examined it with emphasis on the Cold War, America's containment policy, and its efforts against leftist forces in support of fascist elements on the right at both state and local levels.

The Soviet Union controlled Eastern and Central Europe while Mao's War of Liberation defeated Chiang Kai-Shek Nationalists. Cold War confrontation followed. It pitted US imperialism against an opposing ideology, the aim being which side would triumph or could both co-exist peacefully and avoid conflict.

War was never an option given each side's nuclear strength under a policy of "mutually assured destruction (MAD)". In addition, post-Stalinist Russia began reforms and expanded its sphere of influence. It wasn't to destroy the West, but to co-exist equally. America and Soviet Russia only competed for developing country allies to keep them from the opposing camp, so neither would be dominated by the other or more vulnerable to being isolated, marginalized, or shut out from world markets and influence.

US Imperialism Post-WW II

James Petras and others have said behind every imperial war is a great lie, the more often repeated the more likely to be believed because ordinary people want peace, not conflict, so it's vital to convince them.

In the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration overthrew two popularly elected governments in Iran and Guatemala, and sought greater influence in Africa and Southeast Asia as anti-colonial movements gained strength.

On January 1, 1959 Fidel Castro's socialist revolution ousted the US-backed Batista dictatorship. He then survived America's failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, but faced decades of US hostility, including an embargo, destabilization, intimidation, and hundreds of attempts to kill him, unsuccessful so Cuba is still free from US dominance, but hardly safe from its northern hegemon.

In the 1950s, America also backed French Southeast Asian imperialism until defeat at Dien Bien Phu drove them out. A repressive South Vietnamese client regime was established at the same time, supported by US military advisors teaching war and repression tactics. Unifying North and South elections were blocked, and direct intervention began in 1961. In 1958, Washington also subverted Laotian democracy and incited civil war. Cambodia as well was targeted but remained free.

Early in his administration, Kennedy intervened, but a new James Douglass book titled "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters" says without conviction because he opposed using force. After the Joint Chiefs demanded troops for Laos, he told his Geneva Conference representative, Averell Harriman:

"Did you understand? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don't want to put troops in."

He wouldn't agree to using nuclear weapons in Berlin and Southeast Asia and refused to bomb or invade Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis, saying afterwards that "I never had the slightest intention of doing so."

In June 1963 (a few months before his assassination), he called for the abolition of nuclear weapons, ending the Cold War, and moving forward for "general and complete disarmament." In October 1963, he signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 to withdraw 1,000 US forces from Vietnam by year end and all of them by 1965. He said he wanted "to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." He wanted peace, not conflicts. It cost him his life, and future presidents got the message.

Johnson resumed Southeast Asian escalation to establish client regimes and military bases across East and South Asia, encircle China, and crush nationalist anti-imperial movements. The Indochinese war engulfed Cambodia and Laos as well under Johnson and Nixon. It killed three to four million, inflicted vast amounts of destruction, caused incalculable human suffering, got America to sign a peace treaty in January 1973, but war continued until its clients were defeated in April 1975.

Prior to Reagan's election, the "Vietnam syndrome" and easing Cold War tensions and disarmament efforts alarmed militarists to fear defense spending cuts detrimental to profits. A propaganda campaign exaggerated bogus threats, manipulated intelligence to heighten fear, and got the Reagan administration to approve large military spending increases to confront "Soviet expansionism" at a time it was transitioning from Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko to Gorbachev in 1985, followed by perestroika in 1986, glasnost in 1988, border openings and the Berlin Wall's collapse in 1989, then the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991 - a new threat militarists feared would bring large, not to be tolerated, defense budgets cuts.

In the late 1980s, however, leading figures, including Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, and Albert Wohlstetter alleged Third World conflicts threatened US interests in the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Western Pacific, and recommended deterrence to stop them. Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney agreed. Others wanted large defense cuts for a peace dividend, including Johnson's DOD chief Robert McNamara who proposed reductions up to 50%.

Throughout the 1989 - 1999 period, mostly under Bill Clinton, US-instigated provocations, sanctions, and armed insurrections support involved America in 134 military operations according to the Federation of American Scientists. The most egregious was Clinton's bombing and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, an act playwright Harold Pinter called:

"barbaric" and despicable, "another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using NATO as its missile" to consolidate "American domination of Europe." Worse was yet to come with the election of George Bush, America's worst president in a country that never had a good one and never will as it's now governed.

Long before 9/11, Middle East restructuring plans were based on bogus terrorist, rogue state, and "clash of civilizations" threats by hordes of Islamofascists, including the Palestinian resistance, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Saddam Hussein targeted in the 1990 - 91 Gulf War, followed by years of devastating sanctions, then ousted by GW Bush in 2003.

Iraq was destroyed, occupied and balkanized. Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran face similar threats, the common thread being dominating Eurasia through endless conflicts and increased military spending for war profiteering bounties. September 11 assured it, and got Michelle Ciarocca of the Arms Trade Resource Center, in September 2002 to say:

"The whole mind set of military spending changed on Sept. 11. The most fundamental thing about defense spending is that threats drive (it). It's now going to be easier to fund almost anything."

Hossein-Zadeh investigated the growing role of private contractors creating a "built-in propensity to war that makes the US military-industrial complex a menace to world peace and stability, a force of death and destruction," as virulent under Obama as George Bush.

The fallout includes a burgeoning national debt, loss of civil liberties and democratic freedoms, erosion of social services, collapse of the dollar, America already in decline, its coming loss of preeminence as a world power, its potential bankruptcy, perhaps demise in its present form. and the possibility of WW III.

America's Illegal Wars of Aggression - The "Supreme Crime"

All US post-WW II conflicts were premeditated wars of aggression against nations posing no threat to America - what Justice Robert Jackson at Nuremberg called:

the "supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Canadian Law Professor Michael Mandel explained America's guilt in his superb 2004 book, "How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage, and Crimes Against Humanity," his main theme being Jackson's Nuremberg "supreme crime" declaration, as relevant now as then.

Tragically, as Edward Herman observed in reviewing Mandel's book:

"The problem for the United States (and the world) has been that this country is now in the business of aggression and its commission of the "supreme crime" is standard policy, thereby bringing the "scourge of war" across the globe in direct violation of the UN charter."

Its Purposes and Principles state that:

"The Purposes of the United Nations are:

(1) To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace."

Conspiratorially with NATO and Israel, America willfully and repeatedly violates international and US laws, punishes its victims, absolves itself, and since WW II has directly or indirectly murdered millions of people globally, mostly civilian non-combatants.

Barack Obama - America's New Warrior President

America glorifies conflicts and the righteousness of waging them, packaged as liberating ones for democracy, freedom, justice, and the best of all possible worlds. Obama is just the latest in a long line of warrior leaders promising peace by waging war, justifying them by bogus threats, and calling pacifism unpatriotic to further an imperial agenda for greater wealth, power, and unchallengeable global dominance.

In opposition to his announced Afghanistan surge, peace activists gathered across from the White House on December 12 for an "Emergency Anti-Escalation Rally" organized by "End US Wars"- a new coalition of grassroots anti-war organizations.

Speakers included Kathy Kelly, David Swanson, Granny D (age 100 on January 24, 2010) former Senator Mike Gravel (1969 - 1981), and former Representative and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, among others.

This writer was asked to prepare a short commentary to be read to the crowd. Updated, it's reproduced below:

Obama's Permanent War Strategy

Disingenuously calling Afghanistan a "war of necessity, not choice," Obama ordered 30,000 more troops deployed over the next six months with perhaps many more to follow. In one of his most defining decisions, he's more than doubled the force count since taking office, angered a majority in the country, and continues his permanent war agenda while calling himself a man of peace.

Next target, Yemen, and its newest, occupied Haiti for plunder, exploitation, and very likely killing unwanted Haitians by neglect, starvation, disease, and face-to-face confrontations if they resist.

As a candidate, Obama campaigned against imperial militarism, promised limited escalation only, and pledged to remove all combat troops from Iraq by August 31, 2010. That was then. This is now, and consider what he has in mind - the permanent occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and more.

Besides the Afghan escalation, he's also destabilizing Pakistan to balkanize both countries, weakening them to control the Caspian Sea's oil and gas riches and their energy routes to secured ports for export. The strategy includes encircling Russia, China, and Iran, obstructing their solidarity and cohesion, defusing a feared geopolitical alliance, weakening the Iranian government, perhaps attacking its nuclear sites, eliminating Israel's main regional rival, and securing unchallenged Eurasian dominance over this resource rich part of the world that includes China, Russia, the Middle East, and Indian subcontinent.

Like George Bush, Obama plans permanent war and more military spending than all other nations combined at a time America has no enemies. He promised change and betrayed us. Grassroots activism must stop this madness and make America a nation again to be proud of. The alternative is too grim to imagine.

Over 50 years ago, Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970) warned:

"Shall we put an end to the human race, or shall mankind renounce war" and live in peace, because we have no other choice.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

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Democracy and theocracy - Part II - from communalism to occupation subjugation

By rowan on March 14, 2010 6:08 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

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By Jim Miles of the Palestinian Chronicle (Part i)

Part II - looks at how theological considerations, meritocracy, and the fear of social democracy influence perceptions on democratic values and influence actions justified as democratic, from Palestine and Israel through to U.S. actions around the globe.

This is perhaps the strangest relationship within this argument but it is within this context, from an article written by Ramzy Baroud about the ability of democracy to fit within the Muslim system of beliefs, that my original thoughts started. In the article Baroud argued that an "entire school of Muslim thought was in fact established around the concept that democracy and Islam are very much compatible." Continuing through his arguments on the values of democracy and their fit with Islam - with the awareness of the damage done by the U.S. occupations and invasions and their bringing of democracy through the barrel of a gun to the peoples of the Islamic world - he notes, "However, these idealized assumptions missed the fact that Western democracy was conditional. And unconditional democracy can only be a farce." [2] I can only concur.

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Most religions have within them the philosophical/moral basis for the establishment of a democracy.

Most would fit a social democracy or even true communal communism if beliefs accorded to family and community were respected and implemented. The discussions about the umma within Islam, the communalism within Christianity, and some of the Talmudic traditions within Judaism, all carry strong elements of democracy. Most importantly as will be discussed later, is the attention to the weak and the poor within society, as well as care for society in general and the environment - and at the opposite end, the kings and rulers were not above the law. Unfortunately many religions - and certain sects within all religions - become dogmatically structured around a patriarchal system, or become entangled in some political philosophy that denies the communal-democratic basis of the religion.

Volumes could be written arguing from this perspective on the ins and outs and validity of democracy versus church regulations versus theological interpretations but
there are two points I wish to make here. First is the concept of a Jewish and democratic state. Secondly, the semi-religious beliefs of Confucianism raise the idea of a meritocracy as a possible permutation of democracy.

A democratic and Jewish state?

Many problems occur around the idea of a state that determines its democracy on the basis of one particular religion. While Israel is not alone in this, it serves as an indicator of how far religious zealotry and dogma and political will based on that zealotry - through belief or simple utility - can deny democracy to its citizens and to citizens of areas that it controls.

It is obvious that there is nothing democratic about an occupation. Democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, both occupied countries, is essentially a farce. A government supported by foreign money, a country that has various war lords serving within its institutions, a government that would change dramatically if the occupiers withdrew cannot by any definition other than the lie of propaganda be considered a democracy. For Israel, its denial of Palestinian rights with the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel itself is a denial of democracy. It is a denial of democracy prejudiced upon a religious "holier than thou" belief system - in which the "thou" becomes homo sacer, the other, outside the law and thus subject to whatever treatment is accorded it without retort - and it is omnipresent in all areas of Israeli/Palestinian society.

The pure lie of democracy as a gift from the rulers, the elite, was fully demonstrated during the Palestinian elections in which Hamas emerged a surprise winner. This democratic victory was quickly denied by the U.S., Canada, and Israel, with the ongoing results being the continued subjugation of the Palestinian Authority to the Israeli political will and the demonization of Hamas and its enclave of Gaza, an enclave determined mainly by outside forces trying to entrap Hamas. Which is in effect what happened, again with results that demonstrate the full lack of democratic ideals of the Israeli government as it subjects the territory to ongoing containment - essentially a huge outdoor prison camp - and savage military attacks that are demonstrably against international law. Democracy has only been achieved by the people, the demos, standing up for their rights, fighting against the abuses of the elites and rulers - and that fight is at its most physical and savage in occupied territories such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and even more so in Palestine.

A democratic meritocracy?

With the rise of Chinese power through economic wealth, technological advancements, and increases in its military budget, most recent works on China as the rising power of the East contain arguments about the nature of Chinese society as influenced by its Confucian background.[3] While not truly a religion, its philosophical underpinnings and the manner in which it is used parallel in certain respects the philosophical structures of the other main religions. Part of the Confucian belief system is that of an ordered society, with a hierarchal structure, but it is not a completely rigid structure and is supported by the belief and application of the concept of merit as a means of advancement.

Historically the rulers and elites of Chinese society were supported by a bureaucracy that was determined theoretically by the merits of those doing the work. The merit was established by a series of examinations to determine the best candidates for the bureaucracy. The rulers themselves were perceived to be there on merit, and if they no longer deserved or earned the merit of the populace, they would be overthrown. These greatly simplified explanations give support to the concept of the intellectual rigor that the Chinese apply to their education. It can also in part help explain the demographic statistic indicating that the distribution of wealth within a meritocracy, in this case China, is not nearly as widespread as in the "democracies" - of which the U.S. has one of the largest spreads in the world. China's current economic growth is increasing the spread, but the idea of a meritocracy remains strongly within its societal structures.

It is hard to imagine a meritocracy in place in North America. Very few of our politicians would merit any of their positions or wealth if they had to pass tests in order to be in power. Many of our politicians are surprisingly ignorant of much of the world, its cultures and beliefs, its geography and life. Democracy in North America comes from the power of wealth and not from the power of common sense and merit. While a meritocracy is not necessarily democratic, it certainly has a level of appeal and would be a highly valid instrument to incorporate within a democracy. Perhaps China will become democratic after all, in a manner that most pundits observing China are not even capable of considering, a social democratic meritocracy.

Today's democracy

Another look at today's democracies and their achievement of wealth demonstrates that free enterprise had very little to do with that wealth creation. Rather, all countries that have harvested the world's wealth have done so by protecting their own industries and products at the expense of those from other countries. This applies to the British, French, Dutch, and Spanish empires, as well as to the American empire. It also applies to the current rise in the wealth of the Chinese. Protection can be afforded in many ways, from tariffs, to quotas, to tax laws, to rules and regulations imposed on imported goods. However it is achieved, most countries that have become wealthy have done so through some form of protectionism.

The authors of the books on China mentioned above relate how this is true of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, all but the latter being considered democratic and held up as exemplars of free trade capitalism. Neither concept holds. They all operate as quasi democracies, having succeeded economically with strong government support and interventions, while the democratic aspect is arguably much more in line with the Confucian meritocracy of China. Certainly the people vote, but it is the underlying bureaucracy and rules and regulations of business and the economy that truly determine the power of the government, not the people, the 'demos'.

Examined in that light, many other countries become nominal democracies as well, with that paragon of self -defined enlightenment and freedom, the United States, presenting many aspects of its political culture that deny democracy to its people. The U.S. along with many other western countries are more correctly a plutocracy or an oligarchy, where the wealthy control the power structures of the country.

An aspect of democracy that is singularly lacking in the western powers is that of the openness and transparency that they all call upon others to demonstrate. Corporations, as seen above are decidedly non-transparent, as are their military liaisons and their governmental cohorts. Corporate secrets, government secrets, are subject to tests under the Freedom of Information Laws extent in most democracies, yet it is increasingly more and more difficult to access full information without denial through classification or redaction.

It can be argued that the reasons for this secrecy have very little to do with intellectual property rights, or that the information is "too sensitive" to be dealt with by the public, or that the security of the country will be compromised. Governments and businesses keep secrets not for the protection of the business, the government and the state in face of dangers from abroad - except that, ironically that is exactly what it is for, because in a true democracy, if the people had all the information that they wanted through truly free requests, the revelations of government incompetence, culpability in various crimes (national and international), obeisance to various lobbying groups (think AIPAC), and disregard for people, their cultures, and the environments they live in would be glaringly obvious. Secrecy is not to protect the country, but to protect the people in power from the wrath of the citizens that they are manipulating.

So what becomes democracy?

The democratic ideal is difficult to achieve. Anything that is remotely related to a social democracy comes under the gun - literally - of the U.S. military. Most of South and Central America have experienced the interventions of the U.S. military in one form or another, either direct invasion, or covert operations, or not so covert support of the right wing business elites of the countries. From the "banana republics" of Central America - so called because of the dominance of United Fruit and its offspring, Chiquita, and Standard Fruit and its offspring Dole in co-opting much of the agricultural landscape - through to the southern state of Chile and the overthrow of the Allende government to be replaced by the militaristic Pinochet dictatorship, the Americas have suffered under the non-democratic and internationally criminal actions of the United States.

Further away, in Iran - with the overthrow of the Mossadegh social democracy, through to the invasion and massacre of millions of south-east Asians in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, to similar massacres of so-called communists in the Philippines and Indonesia - the U.S. record is consistently the denial of democracy when it comes in the form of a social democracy, wherein the people actually have or want to have some say in the government and its application of rules and regulations.

A associated directly with all this are the multinational corporations that harvest the wealth of the countries on the receiving end of these military adjustments. Combined, the two are, in spite of all their wonderful rhetoric of democracy and freedom, only interested in wealth accumulation with no interest in the people or the environment.

A social democracy attempts to protect its resources and use them for the well being of its own people, through carefully managing sales and extraction, by protecting the environment, protecting the health and well being of the people, by supporting health, welfare, and educational systems for the betterment of all, and finally to protect the environment and culture of the cultural and geographical systems of the country.

Would not most people of the world, given the chance to vote on it, tell their governments to provide health, education and welfare for all, to protect the environment, to provide for the aged, sick, and disabled? Would they not vote for clean water - the right to water which has been denied them in national and international rights? Would they not vote for local agriculture supplemented by fair trade for other agricultural products, at the same time maintaining the integrity and sustainability of the agricultural landscape by avoiding monocrop genetically modified agriculture supported by a few big businesses? Would they not vote to tell occupying forces, or any military foreign forces to go home and leave them in peace? Would they not vote to constrain the rights of corporations, to keep them responsible for environmental as well as personal damages and apply responsibilities and liabilities to the owners and managers?

Unless heavily inculcated with the dogma and rhetoric of military glory and economic survival through debt riddled consumerism, an educated public (remember the meritocracy argument?) would more than likely make choices that protect the cultural community as well as the agricultural and geographical resources. An informed public, informed through a critical media, informed by truly free access to government and corporate information, would certainly rule the nations differently than our current crop of secretive elites.

Sum

All these arguments are of course short versions of what could become chapters, books, on the various topics quickly over viewed. A true democracy would be ideal, but that ideal will not be realized until the armies of the world are constrained, until the corporations of the world are put back under control of the nations, until the nations are allowed to choose their own destinies through unhindered noninterfered-with truly free elections. True democracy, true people power, is a long way off in much of the world. It is to realize that and to understand all its permutations that will help bring it about as a reality, through the long slow process of education, protestation, agitation, and resistance.

Notes　

[1] These quotes are widely cited in a variety of sources active against the deservedly deceased MAI. Also quoted in Chomsky, Noam. "Hordes of Vigilantes", Profit Over People - Neoliberalism and Global Order. Seven Stories Press, N.Y. 1999. p. 163.

[2] Ramzy Baroud. "The Hypocrisy of Al-Demoqratia," December 12, 2009. Palestine Chronicle. http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=15605

[3] three useful recent works:
Eamon Fingleton. In the Jaws of the Dragon. Thomas Dunne Books, New York. 2008.
- a readily accessible read, a more 'dramatic' read than the others, but allies with Jacques' book.

Martin Jacques. When China Rules the World. Allen Lane (Penguin), London. 2009.
- a more academic read, a bit more difficult to follow, but supports the ideas presented in Fingleton. Very good at interpreting the Chinese representations of themselves.

Bill Emmott. Rivals. Mariner Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) , Boston. 2009.
- Emmott is an economist and thus argues grandly using many monetary statistics and is much more a western interpretation, based on some typical western stereotypes and interpretations of Chinese character.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

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Alternative Reading of the Al-Mabhouh Murder

By rowan on March 12, 2010 7:31 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

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By Ramzy Baroud

The killing of Palestinian activist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on January 19, 2010 was clearly a well-planned, violent and sadistic act, committed by Israeli assassins in the supposed safety of a sovereign country.

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Yes, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was a Palestinian activist. We have no reason to believe otherwise. He spent years of his life in Israeli prison - and one year in an Egyptian jail - for his political activism. This, however, gives no credibility to Israel's accusation that al-Mabhouh was a killer of Israelis. This assertion becomes even more problematic when considering that al-Mabhouh's assassination was, according to British media, ordered by accused Israeli war criminals and rightwing politicians.

According to the Sunday Times, Meir Dagan, the current director of Mossad briefed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the assassination plan during a meeting in early January. "The people of Israel trust you. Good luck," Netanyahu reportedly said at the end of this meeting.

It is disgraceful enough that the assassins used 'fraudulent' European passports, as well as credit cards linked to an American bank to carry out their plans. But more upsetting is the fact that this cruel and calculated action has inspired little more than expressions of 'outrage'. Have we become this resigned to Israeli impunity?

What about the sanctity of life, the sovereignty of nations and the respect for international law? Are these immediately disposable when the victim is Palestinian and the location of the crime an Arab country?

Al-Mabhouh has also been callously deprived of his own relevance to the story. We don't really know much about the man aside from what Israeli wants us to know - a senior Hamas operative who was responsible for the abduction and killings of two Israeli soldiers; one of the founders of the militant arm of Hamas, Izz al-Din al-Qassam; the middleman between Hamas in Gaza and al-Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran.

Who has weaved this fascinatingly reductionist account of al-Mabhouh's life in such a short span of time? His family? Hamas? The Palestinian media? No, none of these. The creator of this biography is Israel, the very country that assassinated him. Now that is truly outrageous: the murderer writes and convinces the world of the story of the murder victim. And the media gladly runs with it.

Expectedly, a Palestinian would tell al-Mabhouh's story in entirely different terms. He was born in Jabalia, one of Gaza's poorest and most crowded refugee camps. These key words alone - Gaza, poor, crowded, refugee - helps to unravel the real story of al-Mabhouh. It is the story shared by so many people who still live a life of utter anguish, poverty and resistance in the Gaza Strip - and elsewhere - which is under inhumane siege and successive wars by the world's fourth strongest army. The story is not about abducted occupation soldiers, but about millions of refugees, not about Iran, but about Gaza and Palestine, not about luxury hotels, but about horrifyingly desolate refugee camps.

But Palestinians - like many oppressed peoples around the world - have no right to their own narrative. Their story is negligible, if not wholly irrelevant. Israel commits the murder, Israel offers the explanation, and eventually Israel gets away with both the crime and the lie. Al-Mabhouh's murder might eventually inspire several documentaries that highlight the murderous nature of Palestinian militants, and the unequalled brilliance of Israeli retaliation. Another Steven Spielberg's Munich might already be in the making. The first scene of this would not be al-Mabhouh's family forced to flee their village in Palestinian after untold butchery by Zionist militants in 1948. Instead it might show a dark-skinned, menacing Palestinian slaughtering two helpless Israeli soldiers pleading for their lives.

We are, more or less, told to forget about al-Mabhouh. After all, his name is used along with Hamas and Iran in the same sentence. That should be enough to tell us that his life is dispensable - just like the lives of over 1,400 Palestinians who were killed by the Israeli army in Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009. Israel may well be preparing for yet another attack on the impoverished Strip. The tunnels that represent the lifeline for the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are being routinely blown up by Israeli warplanes, detonated by dynamites and blocked by an Egyptian steel wall. Gazans cannot be allowed any weapons to defend themselves either. The 'international community' has held many meetings to ensure that no weapons find their way to Gaza. The US in particular is utterly firm regarding this issue - although not at all firm about ensuring that food or medicine reach the Strip. Al-Mabhouh may have been killed due to Israel's belief he was arming the resistance. This partly explains why the 'international community' is not at all moved by the murder. Al-Mabhouh might have been involved in breaking the Western consensus on denying Gaza both food and arms.

The EU is only worried about its link to the story, and not the murder itself. An EU statement issued in Brussels on February 22 condemned the "fact that those involved in this action used fraudulent EU member-states passports." They didn't name Israel though. As the Financial Times resolved, "criticism of Israel was as strongly worded as the EU could manage, given that Germany, Italy and several other countries place great emphasis on close relations with Israel."

One can only imagine what would happen if Hamas decides to strike back, expanding the battleground from Gaza to the rest of the world. Would the EU express disapproval of Hamas' use of fraudulent passport, but then refrain from actually naming the group - due to a fear, say, of upsetting Muslim countries?

No. But when the victim is a Palestinian and the murderers are Israelis - 27 of them so far - it's an entirely different story, and an entirely different concept of justice.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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Obama's National Cybersecurity Initiative Puts NSA in the Driver's Seat

By rowan on March 11, 2010 7:35 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

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By Tom Burghardt of Antifascist Calling

On March 2, the Obama administration issued a sanitized version of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), releasing portions that discussed intrusion detection systems on federal networks.

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Democracy - Part I - "people's power" usurped by elites.

By rowan on March 10, 2010 7:01 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

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By Jim Miles of Palestinian Chronicles

Part I examines the business values - globalization, free trade, corporations and capitalism - that define the workings of our democracy today.

One of the many words in the mantra of the imperial apologists is that of democracy. From its Greek roots meaning "people" and "power" the word has travelled a long and convoluted journey but needs to be questioned as to whether it has achieved the real ideal. For the people, the "demos" to truly have power requires a system that acts considerably differently from actions by the global elites currently in power.

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I differentiate between democracy and freedoms. Having power for the people indicates that the people have an actual say in what the government is doing, and that the government, being of the people, by the people, for the people, responds to the wishes - and hopefully educated wishes - of the populace. Freedom, as present in our current society, represents the wide range from any kind of licentious but licit behaviour through the practical freedoms of the press and media up to the philosophical freedoms of religion and thought. It seldom represents responsibility towards society and its various parameters of poverty and the environment, or towards other less fortunate members of society. It does represent choice, choice to one form of behaviour or another, for the environment or against the environment, for the people, or for the corporation. Democracy and freedom are highly compatible but not necessarily the same thing.

The vote

Democracy as envisioned by most is encapsulated into the act of voting. Our grandfathers died for it in the First World War, "sacrificing" themselves for the empire in order to achieve it (either that or be shot as a traitor or deserter or for treason). The same mantra is brought forth every Remembrance Day, of our soldiers dying so that we have the freedom to vote. Consider that Soviet Russia had votes, Mugabe had votes, occupied Iraq and Afghanistan had votes, occupied Palestine had a vote, Cairo, Islamabad, Honduras, and Russia all had votes, yet the effect of those votes ranged from no democracy to only nominal democracy, or a nominal democracy invigorated with great helpings of violence.

In modern democracies, the psychological spin doctoring is so intense that a vote becomes a popularity contest, decked out in mudslinging, fear of the other, and so many outlandish promises (some call them lies) that votes are essentially bought on the rhetoric of uneducated platitudes to try and soothe the seething angst of the voter. The billions of dollars promised during an election, the great calls for more openness, clarity, and better communication, for more citizen participation are all forgotten once the election has been confirmed one way or another. The 'representatives' then head off to the seat of power to learn what they need to do in order to stay in power and to stay within the confines of the party they are nominally elected under and to not get kicked out of caucus. Foolishly the majority of citizens believe that what was talked about will be delivered (Did we want NAFTA? No, got it anyway.)

The real power, without the people, begins its work in the hallways and private rooms of the institutions that represent our democracy. The interplay between corporations, big business, government lobbyists, bureaucrats, and the military, is what truly runs our democracy. It is in these elite corridors of power that businessmen and women collude in private for a new world order, where decisions made will later be justified to the people under some manner of fear mongering or some well inculcated belief system ever present from the very first time a child watches television or runs a computer game.

Globalization and a not so flat world

The cry of globalization is frequently incorporated within the context of democracy, an almost supra-democracy wherein global communications, the internet, cell-phones and the laptop computer are making the world a level playing field. It encompasses the business world of Thomas Friedman's work of the same verbiage, to the exhortations of politicians and soft imperialists towards the coloured revolutions around the world. Certainly it has had its impact, but it is only technology, and one might as well describe the ubiquitous kalashnikov as a more effective leveller in the world of globalization.

The world remains bumpy and lumpy as the various contenders to power, or those trying to tame them, rise and fall within the technological capabilities of their most recent state of the art purchase. Whether it is big business, or big government, ranging through to subversive elements or insurrections against occupation, the technology has enabled the various players to continue making the world as uneven as possible, trying to tilt it entirely within their own favour. The ultimate bump that denies the level playing field are the computer nerds somewhere in the middle of U.S. playing their war games in real time as they control missile firing drones over the skies of Afghanistan and Pakistan blasting mostly civilians to shreds. No kalashnikov will ever be near them - and they call the insurgents cowards....

But globalization is much more the Friedman's technological wonders of communication. It is much more about the World Trade Organization (WTO) which is
"the place where governments collude in private against their domestic pressure groups," those pressure groups being environmental, labour, health, and other social organizations. Renato Ruggerio, former director of the WTO said, "We are writing the constitution of a single global economy."[1] Ironically, the credit goes to the internet for the destruction in 1998 of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) to which this quote refers. Globalization as envisioned by the WTO and the other members of the Washington consensus - the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund who have carried forward the effective work of the WTO and its MAI intentions - is completely non-democratic.

Its non-democracy comes from several factors. First and most obvious is that representatives to any of these institutions are not by election, not by representation, but through invitation. The representatives are appointed from international corporations, from banks, from lobbyists and other government institutions. Secondarily, the institutions from where these people are chosen - the business corporations and unelected members of government bureaucracies - are decidedly non-democratic as well. Thirdly, the "free trade" demanded under the WTO banner is anything but free.

The free trade espoused by these people and institutions is only free for the manipulation of wealth. Workers are not free to travel to wherever the pay and working conditions are better, but are constrained to their own geographical regions. The environment is not free although its resources are taken for free without too much concern about the long term negative results from pollution caused by extraction, transportation, consumption, and elimination through burning or waste dumping. And rather than being free trade, trade and commerce is bound up in multiple layers of rules and regulations that tend to over-ride national rules and regulations, especially pertaining to health, safety, education, and workers rights, entrapping the weaker governments into a cycle of democratic social welfare destruction. The overall result is wealth and resources rising to the dominant financial countries (ignoring momentarily the elites and their cronies within the weaker countries) while the weaker countries remain perpetually indebted to the member states of the Washington consensus.

Corporations and capitalism.

Corporations are probably the least democratic institution in the world, designed and purpose built to gather wealth, to avoid paying taxes, and more particularly to avoid the managers and shareholders from having any responsibility for institutional damages, either on the personal level or the global level. The corporation becomes a person under law, an invisible person, as the real people hide behind the legal barriers set up by corporate lawyers and accountants and MBAs and governments to protect their harnessing of wealth.

They have been around for a while, set up as a mechanism to harvest the wealth of the East Indies, of North America, and to transport that wealth back home. They have continued to receive government largesse in the form of favourable rules and regulations to the extent that they now are part and parcel of government and all too frequently are powerful enough to over-ride government constraints - until when things become really shaky because of their own manipulations, government steps in and bails them out - their own form of social welfare without the democracy aspect.

Corporations are decidedly non-democratic and their paramount place within the so called "capitalist" system (by whichever definition or permutation or purity of idealism it is defined to actually be) renders the capitalist system non-democratic as well. Economists rank about the lowest in my judgement of the range of careers available to anyone, working within a world of abstract perfection with mathematical models that are invented and created out of thin air without a connection to reality (all math should represent physical reality in some way as it does with chemistry and physics). Those economists who define themselves as supporters of capitalism are arguing for a world with its base mired in poverty and its peak in the giddy heights where the few control by far the most wealth of the world.

The underlying basis of capitalism necessitates unemployment in order to keep labour cheap and mobile (at least within a region or country). It necessitates poverty, if not for a motivator then for the same cheap labour. It requires consumption at all levels which because of the need for poverty and unemployment, also requires a complacent middle class to be the consumers of the world. Without a truly decent wage, with both parents working, with unending propaganda/advertising beating it into the consumers brain that they simply are not cool, sexy, articulate, or beautiful if a certain product is not purchased, the theoretical middle class drives itself - sometimes literally as our culture is based on the automobile - into ever increasing levels of debt. That debt is wealth to the corporations, as the consumer is trapped into an ever larger cycle of purchasing and debt creation.

The peaks of capitalism thrive on market control, elitism, cronyism and the ever revolving door between big business, government, and the military. It returns us to the world of globalization and the WTO and Washington consensus discussed above. Its reality is a world in which ten per cent of the population control over half of the global wealth, while half the global population controls only one per cent of the wealth - and really probably do not 'control' even that. From these vertiginous heights of wealth the world perspective is perhaps flat, the bottom layers being so dim and distant in view that we are all of equal powerlessness to the elites.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

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Understanding Toyota Sudden Acceleration

By rowan on March 9, 2010 7:53 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

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By Joel S. Hirschhorn

As a materials and manufacturing engineer with decades of experience with failure analysis of manufactured products, and as an owner of a Toyota vehicle, I am saddened by the lack of expertise and insight shared with Congress and the public about the sudden acceleration problem.

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When products fail due to a systemic design, materials or manufacturing flaw, large and statistically significant levels of problems emerge fairly rapidly. This is definitely not the case with the Toyota problem. With many millions of Toyota models on which even more millions of miles have been driven, if there had been an inherent materials or manufacturing design defect, then we would have seen untold thousands of cases of sudden acceleration. It literally would have been virtually a daily event happening all over the country in many Toyota models. But, in fact, little more than 1,000 Toyota and Lexus owners have reported since 2001 that their vehicles suddenly accelerated on their own. This is a tiny, minuscule percentage of Toyotas.

This infrequent runaway car problem is not analogous to a serious case of bacterial contamination of a major food product causing many thousands of cases of food poisoning in a relatively short period. It is even more difficult to find the cause of.

Understanding this nature of defects also means that the so-called solutions of replacing floor mats and gas pedals are sheer nonsense. Indeed, it did not surprise me to read today that there have already been cases of sudden acceleration in cars that had received fixes by Toyota. More than 60 Toyota owners have complained to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about cars already repaired under the two major Toyota recalls, saying they aren't fixed and their throttles can still race out of control.

While recognizing the agony and suffering of sudden acceleration accidents and deaths it is also necessary to appreciate the statistically rare occurrences of this problem. Only by doing so is it possible to understand that the ultimate explanation - and solution - to the sudden acceleration problem will be a non-systemic flaw or defect in a critical component. In other words, either a random defect in a material or some unusual and infrequent deviation in a manufacturing process of some critical component. Only such a situation can logically explain so few sudden acceleration problems in so many millions of cars being operated for many more millions of hours and miles.

In my professional opinion, the likely scenario is a defect in a semiconductor chip used in the electronic control system. A defect that was caused by some infrequent flaw in a raw material or manufacturing process that would not show up in routine quality control testing of raw materials or components. That so many different Toyota models over many years have been found defective signifies the likelihood of a particular problem component made in a specific factory that has been used for quite a while. Moreover, the defect obviously does not ordinarily impair vehicle performance but only manifests itself under some infrequent conditions, as yet undetermined.

Rita Taylor of Fort Worth, Texas experienced runaway acceleration, took her car to a Toyota dealer, and had the floor mats removed. A few months later she had another frightening runaway episode. Ditto for Eric Weiss in California, who also had a second episode months after the first one and after removing the mats. Others who have not died and kept using their Toyotas have also had repeat events. Thus, perfectly normal vehicle performance is possible between runaway events.

Make no mistake, the precise cause of such a sporadic event is incredibly difficult to pin down and even more difficult to remedy. An extremely intense and costly investigation is necessary. It is the classic needle-in-the-haystack problem.

If my thinking is correct, then it is sheer folly to believe that replacing floor mats or gas pedals can solve the sudden acceleration problem. However, there is one aspect to the sudden acceleration problem that also is crystal clear and, in some ways, even more aggravating than the acceleration problem. This is the absence of an override system that absolutely prevents fuel being fed to the engine when brakes are employed while a car is accelerating. It is gratifying that the federal government is seriously considering requiring such an override system in all vehicles. An effective override system might, in the long run, be a faster and more cost-effective solution than chasing-the-defect strategy, especially for retrofitting many millions of vehicles.

Alternatively, finding the cause of the sudden acceleration problem requires a standard failure analysis methodology, namely to obtain absolutely every Toyota vehicle that has experienced sudden acceleration. Then meticulously examine through microscopic and other types of analysis and testing all critical components of the electronic system (called by Toyota the Electronic Throttle Control System with intelligence). Think of it like an autopsy.

This does not appear to have been done. To the contrary, the firm hired by Toyota tested several ordinary vehicles and components. One of the primary authors of the Exponent report said they did not examine any vehicles or components that had the unintended accelerations. This makes no sense whatsoever if the defect is rare and, therefore, its finding that there was nothing wrong was meaningless. Worse, it was a deception and distraction.

[The author has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a consultant for many corporations, such as IBM, Texas Instruments, Polaroid, and RayOVac, and has served as an expert witness in many legal proceedings. He was a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of several nonfiction books and hundreds of articles.]

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Flexible Afghanistan War Objectives: And the Agony Grinds On

By rowan on March 5, 2010 7:06 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

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By Ramzy Baroud

Washington and its willing mouthpieces in the media have for years been trying to sell us the preposterous war in Afghanistan. While they attempt to convince us that the war is predicated on a faultless military logic and moral wisdom, it remains in fact a tragic adventure with no decipherable objectives, and involving several countries, private contractors, and all sorts of firms seeking to make a quick buck.

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The intellectual cowardice of some should not blind the majority to the fact that the war in Afghanistan is morally indefensible and militarily unwinnable.

The decision of the US to continue with its brutal military adventurism in Afghanistan can only be understood in terms of its limited and highly selfish political logic.

Let us start by ruling out some of the ridiculous assumptions that have permeated this war since it began in 2001. First, we were told that the war was aimed at eliminating al-Qaida. However, a retied CIA Station Chief who has served in the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff, has claimed that, "al-Qaida is finished in Afghanistan." He further argued that, "the Obama administration, like its predecessor, claims we are fighting terrorism there. That is simply not true. It is a pure counterinsurgency issue."

Indeed, even the most ardent war hawks are exerting little effort to delineate the link between Taliban and al-Qaida. If the link is infused, it is readily unleashed to demonstrate al-Qaida's links to Pakistan's tribal areas, thus urging 'action' in that part of the country, and not in Afghanistan.

Thanks to the random military 'strategy' of the US and its allies, al-Qaida has spread in all sorts of directions and branched off to many al-Qaida offshoots in various parts of the world. Without a centralized leadership in the military sense, al-Qaida inspired groups and individuals now are now working for localized sets of objectives and respond to different stimuli.

So if it's not al-Qaida that is inspiring the awesome, although largely futile firepower and military surges in Afghanistan, then what is? This is where the idealists come in. They talk of nation-building, Western-style democracy, regional security and so on. Some of them genuinely mean what they say, and some don't believe the present military surges and Gen. Stanley McChrystal's rural area fight to the death will yield its intended results. Still, they contribute to the illusion that good intentions - starting with the initial hype about saving Afghani women, then 'liberation' from foreign terrorists, then democracy and nation-building, and so on - had anything to do with this bloody war. With their insistence on using such positive terminology, they continue to provide Washington's political elites - and Kabul's as well - with the benefit of the doubt that while we may disagree with their methods, we still trust their overall intentions.

It behooves those democracy-inspired, nation-building enthusiasts to remember that Washington has done much to stifle genuine democracy movements around the world since its occupation of Afghanistan in 2001. Palestine and Lebanon remain the most obvious examples. As for nation-building, compare the astronomical amounts invested in financing the destructive war in Afghanistan and to prop up the corrupt puppet regime in Kabul, to the miniscule sums devoted to enhancing the country's stone-aged economic infrastructure. The US military budget for this year is set to exceed $693 billion, not counting the $42 billion set aside for Homeland Security. According to CostofWar.com, the financial cost of war in Afghanistan alone has exceeded the $256 billion; both wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are approaching the $1 trillion threshold.

The war in Afghanistan cannot possibly be defended on any moral grounds. The official death count of Afghani civilians in 2009 is estimated at 2,412. The actual death toll is probably far, far higher, as polls do not account for the many more who perished in distance villages across the south and east, areas that are not accessible to outsiders. The death of these innocent people alone should silence the few who still speak of ethics and morality in relation to the disastrous war.

But not everyone is so overtly misguided in their assessment of the war. Some fully understand that the war in Afghanistan is a self-seeking, political and strategic venture. Still, they giddily welcome it, including one Con Coughlin whose recent article in The Telegraph was tellingly entitled, 'India and Pakistan must bury the hatchet for the Taliban to be crushed.'

The India-Pakistan rapprochement is seen as beneficial only insofar as its potential to 'crush' someone else. And considering that that someone else is not a band of aimless terrorists, but a well-grounded, grass-roots, popular insurgency, the price of that "crushing" is likely to be tens of thousands of innocent people. Coughlin uses the same haughty and generalized language of "militant Islamist groups" to be crushed, failing to understand or appreciate the distinctiveness of each and every situation, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere else. Instead, Coughlin nonchalantly expresses concern about the danger these militants pose to "the survival of the ruling classes" in Islamabad. What a compelling reason to get Richard Holbrooke, Washington's special envoy to the region all fired up over the need to preserve the survival of the ruling classes, not just in Islamabad, but in Kabul and Delhi as well.

The war in Afghanistan has turned into find-an-objective-as-you-go military march to nowhere. It is proving futile and indefensible on every ground, be it political or military or moral. Moreover, as Haviland Smith concluded in his grim assessment, "it doesn't really matter that we think of ourselves as benevolent liberators, it only matters that Afghans think of us as foreigners occupiers." When will we all face up to this reality?

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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To Zion an Eye Looks

By rowan on March 4, 2010 7:44 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

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By Anwaar Hussain of Truth Spring

Way up on the shadowy ladder in the dark world of spooks comes the name of Mossad.

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Responsible mainly for intelligence collection and covert operations, including paramilitary activities, it is one of the three institutions in the Israeli Intelligence Community. The other two are known as Aman and Shin Bet tasked for military intelligence and internal security respectively. Together, these three agencies are responsible for a long string of covert operations including assassinations of opponents, spying on friends and foes alike and tracking down and killing the Nazis of the yore.

On January 19, 2010, life was snuffed out of one Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his hotel room in Dubai. Traveling without bodyguards, he was en route to Bangkok. Allegedly, Mossad was on his spoor from Damascus, tracking him finally to his hotel room in Dubai. A team of at least 27 suspects, carrying fake or fraudulently obtained passports from various nations, seven of which assumed the names of Israeli dual citizens, worked in tandem to carry out the hit. So professional was the hit that for days Mabhouh's death was ascribed to natural causes.

According to a detailed report in The Daily Mail on Sunday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had personally congratulated members of the Mossad team that allegedly killed Mabhouh ahead of their departure to Dubai.

The Mossad normally conducts its tasks flawlessly. Traces of its involvement usually do not surface for years. Not this time, however. The whole exercise, though successful, started stinking to high heavens within days.

UAE, a tiny oil rich emirate in whose city Dubai the hit was carried out, broke the news of the assassination and that forged Irish, British, German, Australian and French passports were used by some of the suspects in the slaying of the Hamas commander. The UAE, an otherwise pacifist country, has bared its teeth at Israel and continues to pull layers off the ugly deed with each passing day.

Israel neither confirms nor denies the killing. Mossad chief Meir Dagan, in the meanwhile, sees no reason to resign over assassination in Dubai, and Prime Minister Netanyahu is unlikely to ask him to, according to a close associate of the Israeli spymaster. World embassies, however, continue to reverberate from the incidence.

The British Embassy in Israel says a special police investigator has been flown in to meet with the dual British-Israeli nationals whose British passports were used in the assassination. Israeli ambassador to London Ron Prosor met the head of Britain's diplomatic service, Peter Ricketts, after being called to a meeting at the Foreign Office. Britain has publicly urged Israel to cooperate fully with its investigation into the apparent use of counterfeit British passports by suspected Israeli assassins.

Ireland followed Britain in summoning its Israeli ambassador to explain how passport details of three Irish citizens were used by an Israeli group of suspected assassins. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has condemned the assassination of Mabhouh and called for the truth about the killing to be established.

The suspected 27-person hit team also includes three individuals using allegedly fake Australian passports sparking an outrage among Australians. The Israeli ambassador to Australia was promptly sent for and reportedly warned that the Australian government expects Israel's full cooperation in the investigation. The Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith was quoted saying by The Australian newspaper, "I made it crystal clear to the [Israeli ambassador] that if the results of that investigation cause us to come to the conclusion that the abuse of Australian passports was in any way sponsored or condoned by Israeli officials, then Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend."

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd went a notch higher according to the local news media. He warned, "We will not be silent on this matter.....Any state that has been complicit in use or abuse of the Australian passport system, let alone for the conduct of an assassination, is treating Australia with contempt, and there will therefore be action by the Australian government in response."

With the assured backing of its time tested patron, the United States of America that shoots down UN resolutions even on bad wording for its protégé and for the moment stands silently by, whether or not Israel will heed these warnings is anybody's guess. According to anofficially acknowledged list, despite similar warnings in the past, Mossad's list of accomplished assassinations is rather long. Here are just a few prominent names on that list;

Abdel Wael Zwaiter, a Libyan embassy employee and a PLO representative was killed in Rome on Oct 16, 1972. Ghassan Kanafani a Palestinian writer was killed in Beirut that same year. Wadie Haddad, a PFLP (Polpular Front for Liberation of Israel) commander, was killed in Germany in 1978. Ali Hassan Salameh, a high-ranked PLO leader, was killed in 1979 by a car bomb in Beirut. Zuheir Mohsen, leader of the pro-Syria faction of the PLO, was shot in front of a casino in Cannes in 1979. Yehia El-Mashad , an Egyptian nuclear scientist, was killed by Mossad agents in his room at the Méridien Hotel in Paris in 1980. Mamoun Meraish, a senior PLO official, was shot in his car by Mossad agents from their motorcycle in Athens in 1983. Atef Bseiso, a Palestinian official, was shot several times in the head at point blank range by two Mossad gunmen in his hotel room in Paris in 1992.

Hatikva, Israel's national anthem, inspires millions of Jewish people the world over. Its first four lines read:

As long as deep in the heart, The soul of a Jew yearns, And forward to the East To Zion, an eye looks

Many eyes, some dead some still alive, now look to Zion and its patron to explain how one country can act as an international thug, take another people's land, kill them when they struggle to get a piece of it back, stop at virtually nothing, and, this time, draw five other countries into the bloody games of espionage that it plays and gets not a rap on the knuckles where a sledge hammer is long due.

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Finding a Cure for the Insidious Cancers of "Hope" and "Faith"

By rowan on March 3, 2010 6:09 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

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By Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth to Power

At the risk of being accused of declaring "I told ya so", I must admit that three online articles made my day today-two of which I posted in Truth to Power's Daily News Digest, and one which I posted on the website itself. The first was by one of my heroes, Chris Hedges, in which he stated "We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives." His article is a litany of how Barack Obama, using "hope" to get elected, has revealed himself as Bush III and how voting in national elections accomplishes nothing in a society rotting in putrifying political and moral corruption.

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Joe Bageant, a man after my own heart who's hunkering down in rural Mexico making tortillas, pens a scathing article, "Americans Are 'Hope Fiends' Because Honestly Looking At The Present Situation Would Destroy Just About Everything We Hold As Reality". In it he states that hope is political pablum for an infantilized nation. He too, reluctantly voted for Obama because he thought Obama just had to be better than Bush, but now Joe is crying on his tortillas and saying things like, "Hope is magical thinking, believing that somehow, some larger unknown force is in motion to set things right."

And a journalist for whom I hold the greatest respect, Robert Jensen, writes an article on getting rid of "hope" and "faith", inspired by his interview of Abe Osheroff, long-time activist and documentary film maker. It opens with a short vignette by Jensen:

After a recent talk about the struggle for social justice and the threats to the ecosystem, a student lingered, waiting to talk to me alone, as if he had something to confess.

"I feel so overwhelmed," he finally said, wondering aloud if political organizing could really make a difference. The young man said he often felt depressed, not about the circumstances of his own life but about the possibilities for change. Finally, he looked at me and asked, "Once you see what's happening -- I mean really see it -- how are you supposed to act like everything is going to be OK?"

Boy do I know this one. I lived with it regularly as a professor of college history and psychology as I laid out in molten lava the state of the world which they had been programmed to ignore while drowning in the propaganda of realizing the American dream through getting a college education.

Jensen proceeds in the article to talk about how unacceptable it is among progressives to be anything less than upbeat. And he continues:

Some organizers respond to such concerns with upbeat assurances that if we just get more people on board and work a little bit harder, the problems will be solved -- if not tomorrow, certainly within some reasonable period of time. I used to say things like that, but now I think it's more honest, and potentially effective, to acknowledge how massive the obstacles that need to be overcome really are. We must not only recognize that the world's resources distributed in a profoundly unjust way and the systems in which we live are fundamentally unsustainable ecologically, but also understand there's no guarantee that this state of affairs can be reversed or even substantially slowed down. There are, in fact, lots of reasons to suspect that many of our fundamental problems have no solutions, at least no solutions in any framework we currently understand.

Some have challenged me: Why give in to such despair? My response: If honest emotional responses based on rational assessments lead committed activists to feel despair, why try to bury that? It's better to grapple with those emotions and assessments than to respond with empty platitudes.

The damage to the ecosystem may mean that a large-scale human presence on the planet cannot continue much longer. The obsession with self-interest cultivated by capitalism may be so deeply woven into the fabric of contemporary identity that real solidarity in affluent societies is no longer possible. The deskilling and dependency that comes with a high-energy/high-technology society has eroded crucial traditional skills. Mass-media corporations have eroticized violence and commodified intimacy at an unprecedented level, globally.

None of this is crazy apocalypticism, but rather a sober assessment of the reality around us. Rather than deny the despair that flows from that assessment, we need to find a way to deal with it.

Jensen cites a couple of gems from Osheroff that must not be dismissed, such as, "But personally, I'm not hopeful because I think hope is a kind of religion, and religions don't work. If you're hopeful you're going to suffer disappointments, whether it's politics or your personal life. You can care about things, you can want things to happen, you can work to make things happen without being hopeful." Make things happen without hope?

So now we come down to the crux of the issue: What is the definition of "hope"? For an answer to this question, I'm reminded of James Howard Kunstler's incessant vitriol about hope. After he has thoroughly bashed the notion of hope, he usually moderates a bit and defines it as something that comes from within the person, rather than from the exterior. Similarly, in Jensen's interview of Osheroff, the latter notes the capacity of humans to be decent, kind, and compassionate. I've noted this as well in my 2009 review of Rebecca Solnit's book A Paradise Built In Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise In Disaster in which the author emphasizes that in crisis situations, humans more often tend to cooperate rather than resort to violent or destructive behavior.

I want to underscore this because I am repeatedly called "pessimistic", "fear-mongering", or my very favorite, "cynical." The latter is my favorite because I like to point out that the word "cynic" actually comes from a Greek word that referred to a dog chewing a bone for hours non-stop, the point being that the cynics in ancient Greece held onto an idea and "chewed" it incessantly until everyone except their fellow cynics were sick of them. Why is this important to me? Because the real cynics, in my opinion, are those joined at the hip with "hope" who refuse to look more deeply into the psychological and political history of a candidate like Barack Obama and as a result, are flummoxed in 2010 that he has become the reincarnation of George W. Bush, Jr. As I've said before, it's the "high definition" definition of insanity-following the same pattern which yields negative results ad infinitum but expecting that the next time, the result will be different.

And then there's "faith" which is a cousin to hope and also a cousin to religion. Faith is usually about violating one's rational mind in order to feel better or to appease the gods or some tyrannical human authority figure. It is erroneously used synonymously with "trust"-erroneous because trust is about relationship whereas faith is about obedience. Therefore, I must agree with Bageant that it is indeed infantilizing.

So what is the cure for hope and faith?

The first aspect of the cure, quite simply, is total honesty. The statements by Hedges, Jensen, Osheroff, and Bageant, are replete with white-hot honesty. And whenever we get brutally honest, we are confronted with emotions-most of which are unpleasant. That said, let's start with the most basic reality of all: Industrial civilization is in the process of collapsing which means that as a result, there is absolutely no return to normal, and our lives are also in the process of being permanently altered.

Recently, two subscribers to my website's news digest reported that when they took my book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse to their local public libraries to ask the libraries to order a free copy, the response was, "We just simply can't have a book like this in our collection." This is the response one might hear upon requesting that the libraries include pornography in their collections. Is my book pornographic? Yes! In this culture at this moment, naming and understanding the reality of the collapse of civilization is nothing less than pornographic in the minds of infantilized Americans.

And one even witnesses the empire-programmed addiction to hope in the most well-intentioned activists. Hope is not the same as having a vision, but I believe we must be cautious about confusing the two. As my readers know, I am deeply involved in the Transition movement which offers a vision of a positive future, but that vision will only become real as a result of our commitment to make it happen. Moreover, any vision of a positive future must be open to addressing and feeling the feelings around the consequences that so few wish to contemplate, namely, that the human race is committing suicide.

If we are willing to think with much more adult minds than the two library staff persons mentioned above, and if we are willing to grapple with the reality of collapse, with what attitude, mindset, or sensibility do we persevere in the face of it? And...is persevering the most important issue? If it isn't, what is?

I submit that after honesty comes the willingness to accept reality. That means stopping all pretense and delusion that we can prevent collapse. News flash: Collapse now has a life of its own, and I am convinced that whether it's 10 million activists in the streets of every country on earth or the hundredth monkey principle on steroids, collapse is an inevitable part of our future. It cannot be prevented because it is well underway. It has its own trajectory and its own velocity, but it can be slowed, and the effects can be lessened.

However, before we get distracted by how to slow it down, we need to deal with the next quandary which is much less appealing, namely, our despair. As Jensen states above, rather than deny or minimize our despair, we need to find a way to deal with it. But if you can't take a Joanna Macy "Despair and Empowerment" workshop, what can you do?

You can certainly read my book, Sacred Demise and complete all the exercises in it, but you can also read poetry, make art and music; you can not only talk about your feelings about collapse with other people, but talk about your values and priorities-what is important to you, what is your individual purpose in life, what is your shared purpose together? And of course you can keep doing what you're already probably doing if you're reading this article-getting deeply involved in your community to help it become resilient and self-sufficient.

Above all, you need to spend a significant chunk of time every day-I suggest a half hour twice a day-in contemplation. If you have a meditation practice, wonderful. If not, develop one. It should be a time of stillness and restoration. It should be a time of listening to the inner wisdom of the soul/psyche-a time when thoughts and feelings are not censored but simply allowed and witnessed-and perhaps later, journaled about. While it is true that no one can navigate collapse alone, it is also true that while navigating it, the relationship with oneself may be the most crucial of all.

Civilization has robbed us of an inner life to such an extent that most people in this culture are terrified of or perplexed by the notion of one. Yet no matter how many gorgeous organic gardens we can grow, no matter how much food and water we can store, no matter how much we re-skill ourselves, no matter how many dialog circles we sit in, no matter how well we raise our chickens, if we don't have an inner life, then we are perilously at risk of emotional and mental breakdown when the daunting stress of collapse is in our faces, and we won't be able to answer the most important question as we navigate it: Who am I and who do I want to be during this incredibly challenging time?

Finally, I highly recommend my upcoming online course "Navigating The Coming Chaos" at the Post Peak Living website which runs from April 24-May 15, and there is a significant discount for early registration. This course is an ideal venue for applying all of the options stated above and more.

In any event, it's time to become discerning, pro-active adults-forsaking our "hope" and "faith" in people and distant forces outside us to do for us what we can only do for ourselves and with others of like heart and mind whom we love and trust. The abject betrayal that most progressives in this nation are currently experiencing confirms that any hope that comes from outside us will most likely result in a force to be reckoned with that is much worse than the one our "hope" was intended to avoid.

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Uncommon Thought Journal

Providing analysis of the critical issues of our times

Beyond Orwell: The Electronic Police State, 2010

America's Permanent War Agenda

Democracy and theocracy - Part II - from communalism to occupation subjugation

Alternative Reading of the Al-Mabhouh Murder

Obama's National Cybersecurity Initiative Puts NSA in the Driver's Seat

Democracy - Part I - "people's power" usurped by elites.

Understanding Toyota Sudden Acceleration

Flexible Afghanistan War Objectives: And the Agony Grinds On

To Zion an Eye Looks

Finding a Cure for the Insidious Cancers of "Hope" and "Faith"

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