http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/edward_snowdens_moral_courage_20140223
Edward Snowden’s Moral Courage
I have been to war. I have seen physical courage. But this kind of courage is not moral courage. Very few of even the bravest warriors have moral courage. For moral courage means to defy the crowd, to stand up as a solitary individual, to shun the intoxicating embrace of comradeship, to be disobedient to authority, even at the risk of your life, for a higher principle. And with moral courage comes persecution.
The American Army pilot Hugh Thompson had moral courage. He landed his helicopter between a platoon of U.S. soldiers and 10 terrified Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre. He ordered his gunner to fire his M60 machine gun on the advancing U.S. soldiers if they began to shoot the villagers. And for this act of moral courage, Thompson, like Snowden, was hounded and reviled. Moral courage always looks like this. It is always defined by the state as treason—the Army attempted to cover up the massacre and court-martial Thompson. It is the courage to act and to speak the truth. Thompson had it. Daniel Ellsberg had it. Martin Luther King had it. What those in authority once said about them they say today about Snowden.
“My country, right or wrong” is the moral equivalent of “my mother, drunk or sober,” G.K. Chesterton reminded us.
So let me speak to you about those drunk with the power to sweep up all your email correspondence, your tweets, your Web searches, your phone records, your file transfers, your live chats, your financial data, your medical data, your criminal and civil court records and your movements, those who are awash in billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars, those who have banks of sophisticated computer systems, along with biosensors, scanners, face recognition technologies and miniature drones, those who have obliterated your anonymity, your privacy and, yes, your liberty.
There is no free press without the ability of the reporters to protect the confidentiality of those who have the moral courage to make public the abuse of power. Those few individuals inside government who dared to speak out about the system of mass surveillance have been charged as spies or hounded into exile. An omnipresent surveillance state—and I covered the East German Stasi state—creates a climate of paranoia and fear. It makes democratic dissent impossible. Any state that has the ability to inflict full-spectrum dominance on its citizens is not a free state. It does not matter if it does not use this capacity today; it will use it, history has shown, should it feel threatened or seek greater control. The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Hannah Arendt wrote, is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” The relationship between those who are constantly watched and tracked and those who watch and track them is the relationship between masters and slaves.
Those who wield this unchecked power become delusional. Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, hired a Hollywood set designer to turn his command center at Fort Meade into a replica of the bridge of the starship Enterprise so he could sit in the captain’s chair and pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, had the audacity to lie under oath to Congress. This spectacle was a rare glimpse into the absurdist theater that now characterizes American political life. A congressional oversight committee holds public hearings. It is lied to. It knows it is being lied to. The person who lies knows the committee members know he is lying. And the committee, to protect their security clearances, says and does nothing.
These voyeurs listen to everyone and everything. They bugged the conclave that elected the new pope. They bugged the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. They bugged most of the leaders of Europe. They intercepted the talking points of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ahead of a meeting with President Obama. Perhaps the esteemed opposition can enlighten us as to the security threats posed by the conclave of Catholic cardinals, the German chancellor and the U.N. secretary-general. They bugged business like the Brazilian oil company Petrobras and American law firms engaged in trade deals with Indochina for shrimp and clove cigarettes. They carried out a major eavesdropping effort focused on the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in 2007. They bugged their ex-lovers, their wives and their girlfriends. And the NSA stores our data in perpetuity.
I was a plaintiff before the Supreme Court in a case that challenged the warrantless wiretapping, a case dismissed because the court believed the government’s assertion that our concern about surveillance was “speculation.” We had, the court said, no standing ... no right to bring the case. And we had no way to challenge this assertion—which we now know to be a lie—until Snowden.
In the United States the Fourth Amendment limits the state’s ability to search and seize to a specific place, time and event approved by a magistrate. And it is impossible to square the bluntness of the Fourth Amendment with the arbitrary search and seizure of all our personal communications. Former Vice President Al Gore said, correctly, that Snowden disclosed evidence of crimes against the United States Constitution.
We who have been fighting against mass state surveillance for years—including my friend Bill Binney within the NSA—made no headway by appealing to the traditional centers of power. It was only after Snowden methodically leaked documents that disclosed crimes committed by the state that genuine public debate began. Elected officials, for the first time, promised reform. The president, who had previously dismissed our questions about the extent of state surveillance by insisting there was strict congressional and judicial oversight, appointed a panel to review intelligence. Three judges have, since the Snowden revelations, ruled on the mass surveillance, with two saying the NSA spying was unconstitutional and the third backing it. None of this would have happened—none of it—without Snowden.
Snowden had access to the full roster of everyone working at the NSA. He could have made public the entire intelligence community and undercover assets worldwide. He could have exposed the locations of every clandestine station and their missions. He could have shut down the surveillance system, as he has said, “in an afternoon.” But this was never his intention. He wanted only to halt the wholesale surveillance, which until he documented it was being carried out without our consent or knowledge.
No doubt we will hear from the opposition tonight all the ways Snowden should have made his grievances heard, but I can tell you from personal experience, as can Bill, that this argument is as cogent as the offer made by the March Hare during the Mad Tea Party in “Alice in Wonderland.”
“Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.
“I don’t see any wine,” she remarked.
“There isn’t any,” said the March Hare.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Saturday, February 22, 2014
SC121-13
http://www.globalresearch.ca/american-stasi-police-state-staring-us-in-the-face/5369558
American Stasi Police State Staring Us In The Face
American taxpayers have built an entire city in Virginia so that the Pentagon, can practice occupying American cities and putting down protests by US citizens.
This fake city is the training ground for the doctrine outlined in a leaked US Army document that describes how soldiers are to be trained to put down domestic disturbances and process prisoners through detainment camps where prisoners will be re-educated to appreciate US policies. In situations of “extreme necessity” the training embraces deadly force:
“Warning shot will not be fired. When a firearm is discharged it will be fired with the intent of rendering the person(s) at whom it is discharged incapable of continuing that activity or course of behavior.” Lecturers in the training courses describe constitutionalists as “domestic extremists.”
Does this make the President of the United States, whose oath of office is to defend the US Constitution against enemies domestic and foreign, a domestic extremist? Is the fear of arrest by Homeland Security as a domestic extremist the reason Obama refuses to defend the Constitution of the United States?
The Army is being trained for domestic police duties that are in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act that prevents the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, another indication that Washington has no respect for the country’s laws and that Obama and his “Justice” Department have no intention of enforcing the laws of the land or abiding by the Constitution.
Where is the media outcry? Where are the law schools? Where is Congress? A government that disregards the laws of the land is both treasonous and tyrannical. Yet, not a peep from “the free and the brave.”
The US government and its puppet auxiliary, the UK government, have turned with vengeance against whistleblowers and their attorneys. Bradley Manning is in prison, Julian Assange is confined to the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, and Edward Snowden is under Russian protection from a tyrannical US government. Jessellyn Radack, an attorney who represented Snowden was recently detained and questioned in an intimidating way at London’s Heathrow Airport. Washington has taught its British puppet state how to mimic Washington’s Gestapo ways.
The latest revelations of the criminal activities of the Amerikan National Stasi Agency comes from a leaked NSA document that shows that the Stasi agency considers WikiLeaks Julian Assange to be a “malicious foreign actor” and launched “an international effort to focus the legal element of national power upon non-state actor Assange, and the human network that supports WikiLeaks.” Clearly, the Gestapo is upon us.
RT reports:
“The NSA was not alone in its sweeping espionage on the whistle-blowing organization. It also enlisted its partners in the Five Eyes spying network (UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada) as well as other nations. In documents dating back from August 2010, the US urged 10 other countries with forces in Afghanistan to consider pressing criminal charges against Julian Assange — ‘founder of the rogue WikiLeaks internet website and responsible for the unauthorized publication of over 70,000 classified documents covering the war in Afghanistan.’” http://rt.com/news/wikileaks-assange-calls-prosecutor-526/
In other words, freedom of the press? We don’t need no stinking freedom of the press. We have the presstitute press–the TV networks, the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, and all the rest of the officially sanctioned state Ministry of Propaganda.
Julian Assange stated, correctly, “The NSA and its UK accomplices show no respect for the rule of law.”
WikiLeaks’ attorney, Judge Baltasar Garzon, the pursuer of Pinochet, had this to say:
“The paradox is that Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks organization are being treated as a threat instead of what they are: a journalist and a media organization that are exercising their fundamental right to receive and impart information in its original form, free from omission and censorship, free from partisan interests, free from economic or political pressure.”
What has happened that explains the transformation of the UK and all of its former English colonies–the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand–into Gestapo Stasi states?
These are the countries best known historically for their domestic civil liberties and rule of law, irrespective of their treatment of their indigenous populations and in the case of England her non-white colonies.
The original dispossession was of indigenous peoples. Now these governments have turned on their own.Today the governments of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (the Five Eyes) see civil liberty and the accountability of government to law as threats to themselves, and the governments are determined to stamp out the threats. The historical lands of liberty have abandoned liberty and become Stasi states.
What has occurred in the US and UK is that the criminal and treasonous acts of both governments have become so extreme that the governments must destroy civil liberty in order to protect themselves from exposure. Whenever you hear “national security” invoked, you know that government is covering up its crimes and its lies.
The criminal character of both US and UK governments is now recognized by the rest of the world, even by the bought-and-paid-for NATO puppet states, France and Germany. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande are discussing the creation of an European communication network in order to protect Europeans’ communications from the NSA and from Google, Facebook, and other US communication companies that shamelessly cooperate with NSA’s spy network as junior members of the Stasi. Brazil and South America are facing the same challenge of protecting their communications from Washington’s National Stasi Agency.
NSA spies on foreign companies for the benefit of American ones, and it spies on US law firms representing clients against the US government. The New York Times recently reported that the corrupt Australian puppet state has been working with NSA to steal the private communications of US lawyers with their clients in the Indonesian government involved in a trade dispute with Washington.” http://on.rt.com/vw8d8v In other words, NSA spying helps the US government to prevail in economic lawsuits against it, but the spying is justified in the name of the nonexistent “terrorist threat.” The terrorist is NSA.
And you thought Washington was only spying on “terrorists” to prevent them from “killing us over here.”
It is impossible to paint a picture of a more lawless government than Washington has painted of itself.
If it is not a hoax, it took a pop singer, Lorde, to declare in her Grammy Award acceptance speech last month that the emperor has no clothes:
“Planet Earth is run by psychopaths that hide behind slick marketing, ‘freedom’ propaganda and ‘economic growth’ rhetoric, while they construct a global system of corporatized totalitarianism.
As American journalist Chris Hedges has identified, a corporate totalitarian core thrives inside a fictitious democratic shell. This core yields an ‘inverted’ totalitarian state that few recognize because it does not look like the Orwellian world of Nineteen Eighty-four.
This corporate totalitarian core is spreading outward from America. Planet Earth is being rapidly militarized by the world’s major and significant states, including their police forces. Meanwhile, state surveillance is becoming universal and torture is outsourced to gulags.”
http://snoopman.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/lordes-suppressed-grammy-award-acceptance-speech-full-transcript-26-january-2014/
The TV channels censored her speech and cut it off by substituting pre-recorded content.
See also
http://snoopman.wordpress.com/author/snoopman/
and http://snoopman.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/royal-pencil-in-print-lordes-suppressed-grammy-speech-makes-front-page-news-in-far-flung-new-zealand/
This is a very large production for a hoax. An amazing amount of creativity and production effort went into it. Increasingly, our reality is composed of invented news, whether from the government or the Internet.
By cutting off Lorde’s speech, the media moguls are shown proving the truth of her words. Americans must not hear. The dolts might wake up.
Americans should take note that in fact the media is on guard, prepared at an instance’s notice to suppress free speech. Washington is ever so pleased to support protesters in Ukraine, who are witlessly helping Washington to subvert their country, but no protests at home thank you.
If the Lorde story is a hoax, it nevertheless captures the truth of the situation. And in more ways than one. As one reader put it, “the content of that non-speech may be truthful, but, you see, that is what ‘they’ do – conflate truth, fiction & satire all into one ball of wax so we look like fools and no longer know what to believe.”
With the Pentagon building fake cities for soldiers to demolish while practicing the unconstitutional occupation practices that are in store for us in the homeland, Alex Jones’ predictions move out of the realm of conspiracy theory. Washington has finally noticed that the result of moving middle class jobs offshore is an American population without a future. As Gerald Celente says, when people have nothing left to lose, they lose it. The US military is gearing up for when Americans can’t take it any more.
Meanwhile Washington continues the pretense of America as the land of “freedom and democracy” and “concern for human rights,” blah-blah-blah. People all over the world, with the exception of the paid protesters in western Ukraine, are no longer listening to the bullshit flowing from Washington and its presstitute media.
American Stasi Police State Staring Us In The Face
American taxpayers have built an entire city in Virginia so that the Pentagon, can practice occupying American cities and putting down protests by US citizens.
This fake city is the training ground for the doctrine outlined in a leaked US Army document that describes how soldiers are to be trained to put down domestic disturbances and process prisoners through detainment camps where prisoners will be re-educated to appreciate US policies. In situations of “extreme necessity” the training embraces deadly force:
“Warning shot will not be fired. When a firearm is discharged it will be fired with the intent of rendering the person(s) at whom it is discharged incapable of continuing that activity or course of behavior.” Lecturers in the training courses describe constitutionalists as “domestic extremists.”
Does this make the President of the United States, whose oath of office is to defend the US Constitution against enemies domestic and foreign, a domestic extremist? Is the fear of arrest by Homeland Security as a domestic extremist the reason Obama refuses to defend the Constitution of the United States?
The Army is being trained for domestic police duties that are in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act that prevents the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, another indication that Washington has no respect for the country’s laws and that Obama and his “Justice” Department have no intention of enforcing the laws of the land or abiding by the Constitution.
Where is the media outcry? Where are the law schools? Where is Congress? A government that disregards the laws of the land is both treasonous and tyrannical. Yet, not a peep from “the free and the brave.”
The US government and its puppet auxiliary, the UK government, have turned with vengeance against whistleblowers and their attorneys. Bradley Manning is in prison, Julian Assange is confined to the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, and Edward Snowden is under Russian protection from a tyrannical US government. Jessellyn Radack, an attorney who represented Snowden was recently detained and questioned in an intimidating way at London’s Heathrow Airport. Washington has taught its British puppet state how to mimic Washington’s Gestapo ways.
The latest revelations of the criminal activities of the Amerikan National Stasi Agency comes from a leaked NSA document that shows that the Stasi agency considers WikiLeaks Julian Assange to be a “malicious foreign actor” and launched “an international effort to focus the legal element of national power upon non-state actor Assange, and the human network that supports WikiLeaks.” Clearly, the Gestapo is upon us.
RT reports:
“The NSA was not alone in its sweeping espionage on the whistle-blowing organization. It also enlisted its partners in the Five Eyes spying network (UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada) as well as other nations. In documents dating back from August 2010, the US urged 10 other countries with forces in Afghanistan to consider pressing criminal charges against Julian Assange — ‘founder of the rogue WikiLeaks internet website and responsible for the unauthorized publication of over 70,000 classified documents covering the war in Afghanistan.’” http://rt.com/news/wikileaks-assange-calls-prosecutor-526/
In other words, freedom of the press? We don’t need no stinking freedom of the press. We have the presstitute press–the TV networks, the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, and all the rest of the officially sanctioned state Ministry of Propaganda.
Julian Assange stated, correctly, “The NSA and its UK accomplices show no respect for the rule of law.”
WikiLeaks’ attorney, Judge Baltasar Garzon, the pursuer of Pinochet, had this to say:
“The paradox is that Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks organization are being treated as a threat instead of what they are: a journalist and a media organization that are exercising their fundamental right to receive and impart information in its original form, free from omission and censorship, free from partisan interests, free from economic or political pressure.”
What has happened that explains the transformation of the UK and all of its former English colonies–the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand–into Gestapo Stasi states?
These are the countries best known historically for their domestic civil liberties and rule of law, irrespective of their treatment of their indigenous populations and in the case of England her non-white colonies.
The original dispossession was of indigenous peoples. Now these governments have turned on their own.Today the governments of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (the Five Eyes) see civil liberty and the accountability of government to law as threats to themselves, and the governments are determined to stamp out the threats. The historical lands of liberty have abandoned liberty and become Stasi states.
What has occurred in the US and UK is that the criminal and treasonous acts of both governments have become so extreme that the governments must destroy civil liberty in order to protect themselves from exposure. Whenever you hear “national security” invoked, you know that government is covering up its crimes and its lies.
The criminal character of both US and UK governments is now recognized by the rest of the world, even by the bought-and-paid-for NATO puppet states, France and Germany. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande are discussing the creation of an European communication network in order to protect Europeans’ communications from the NSA and from Google, Facebook, and other US communication companies that shamelessly cooperate with NSA’s spy network as junior members of the Stasi. Brazil and South America are facing the same challenge of protecting their communications from Washington’s National Stasi Agency.
NSA spies on foreign companies for the benefit of American ones, and it spies on US law firms representing clients against the US government. The New York Times recently reported that the corrupt Australian puppet state has been working with NSA to steal the private communications of US lawyers with their clients in the Indonesian government involved in a trade dispute with Washington.” http://on.rt.com/vw8d8v In other words, NSA spying helps the US government to prevail in economic lawsuits against it, but the spying is justified in the name of the nonexistent “terrorist threat.” The terrorist is NSA.
And you thought Washington was only spying on “terrorists” to prevent them from “killing us over here.”
It is impossible to paint a picture of a more lawless government than Washington has painted of itself.
If it is not a hoax, it took a pop singer, Lorde, to declare in her Grammy Award acceptance speech last month that the emperor has no clothes:
“Planet Earth is run by psychopaths that hide behind slick marketing, ‘freedom’ propaganda and ‘economic growth’ rhetoric, while they construct a global system of corporatized totalitarianism.
As American journalist Chris Hedges has identified, a corporate totalitarian core thrives inside a fictitious democratic shell. This core yields an ‘inverted’ totalitarian state that few recognize because it does not look like the Orwellian world of Nineteen Eighty-four.
This corporate totalitarian core is spreading outward from America. Planet Earth is being rapidly militarized by the world’s major and significant states, including their police forces. Meanwhile, state surveillance is becoming universal and torture is outsourced to gulags.”
http://snoopman.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/lordes-suppressed-grammy-award-acceptance-speech-full-transcript-26-january-2014/
The TV channels censored her speech and cut it off by substituting pre-recorded content.
See also
http://snoopman.wordpress.com/author/snoopman/
and http://snoopman.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/royal-pencil-in-print-lordes-suppressed-grammy-speech-makes-front-page-news-in-far-flung-new-zealand/
This is a very large production for a hoax. An amazing amount of creativity and production effort went into it. Increasingly, our reality is composed of invented news, whether from the government or the Internet.
By cutting off Lorde’s speech, the media moguls are shown proving the truth of her words. Americans must not hear. The dolts might wake up.
Americans should take note that in fact the media is on guard, prepared at an instance’s notice to suppress free speech. Washington is ever so pleased to support protesters in Ukraine, who are witlessly helping Washington to subvert their country, but no protests at home thank you.
If the Lorde story is a hoax, it nevertheless captures the truth of the situation. And in more ways than one. As one reader put it, “the content of that non-speech may be truthful, but, you see, that is what ‘they’ do – conflate truth, fiction & satire all into one ball of wax so we look like fools and no longer know what to believe.”
With the Pentagon building fake cities for soldiers to demolish while practicing the unconstitutional occupation practices that are in store for us in the homeland, Alex Jones’ predictions move out of the realm of conspiracy theory. Washington has finally noticed that the result of moving middle class jobs offshore is an American population without a future. As Gerald Celente says, when people have nothing left to lose, they lose it. The US military is gearing up for when Americans can’t take it any more.
Meanwhile Washington continues the pretense of America as the land of “freedom and democracy” and “concern for human rights,” blah-blah-blah. People all over the world, with the exception of the paid protesters in western Ukraine, are no longer listening to the bullshit flowing from Washington and its presstitute media.
SC121-12
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-21/the-peak-oil-crisis-a-winter-update
The Peak Oil Crisis: A Winter Update
As the years go by, those studying peak oil are beginning to develop a better understanding of what has been happening since the concept of limits to oil production came to widespread attention. First of all, it is important to understand that in one sense, production of what had been thought of as “conventional oil” really did peak back in 2005. While there has been growth in certain sectors of the “oil” industry in the last nine years it has come in what are known as “unconventional liquids"; and, as we shall see, the maintenance of existing conventional oil production has come at a very high price.
The recent growth in the “oil” production has been nowhere near what had been normal prior to the “Great Recession,” so that if anyone should wonder why our economy has been stagnant in recent years, one can take the price and availability of oil as a good starting point. US consumption has been falling at 1.5 percent a year since 2005 as opposed to a normal growth rate of 1.8 percent in prior years.
In the last decade global oil production grew by only 7.5 percent and not the 23 percent that would have been needed to support the growth in the world’s GDP at a rate we would have liked to have seen. Since 2005, total “oil” production has grown by 5.8 million b/d, of which 1.7 million consists of natural gas liquids (NGL). While NGL’s are valuable and a useful form of what we now call “oil” they do not contain the same energy as crude and have a more limited range of uses, thereby contributing less to economic growth.
US unconventional liquids (shale oil and NGL’s) are up by 5.1 million b/d since 2005. Along with an additional million b/d from the Canadian tar sands, North American non-conventional liquids constitute nearly all the growth in the world’s oil supply in recent years. Production of conventional crude has remained essentially flat during the period. Moreover, OPEC production has dropped by nearly two million b/d in the last three years largely due to wars, insurgencies, and embargoes, and another 1.7 million b/d of its “oil” production has been NGL’s and not crude.
The world’s existing fields are depleting at rate of circa 4 million b/d each year, so without constant drilling of new wells in new fields global production will quickly wither and prices will climb still more. A good estimate is that the oil which now costs about $110 a barrel will be at $140 or above by the end of the decade unless some major geopolitical upheaval sends it still higher.
To keep the oil flowing, the world’s oil companies have invested some $4 trillion in the last nine years to drill for oil. About $2.5 trillion of this was spent on simply replacing production from existing oil fields. Even this gigantic expenditure was not enough since conventional oil production fell by 1 million b/d during the period.
About $350 billion went to drill shale oil and gas wells in the US, and increase Canadian oil sands production. This was clearly a bargain as compared to maintaining conventional oil production which is now focused on ultra-expensive deep water wells.
Recent announcements by the major oil companies indicate that they have reached their limit. Profits and production are falling. Expenditures for finding and developing oil fields have tripled in the last decade and the return from these expenditures has not been enough to justify the costs. Nearly all of the major oil companies have announced major reductions in their exploration and drilling programs and several are selling off assets as they are caught in a trap between steady oil prices and rapidly rising operating costs.
Note that the major oil companies do not constitute the whole oil industry as most of the world’s oil production is now in the hands of state-owned companies and small independent producers. These firms are obviously facing the same problems as the large publicly traded companies, without as much publicity.
What is going to happen in the next few years? First, investments in future production are going down, meaning that in a few years depletion likely will overwhelm new production and output of conventional oil will drop.
Then we have the Middle East which, to put it mildly, is coming unglued. Oil exports from several countries have nearly disappeared and the spreading sectarian violence is likely to reduce exports from other countries before the decade is out.
Venezuela, from which the US still imports some 800,000 barrels of crude a day, is not transitioning to the post-Chavez era gracefully. The current student riots could easily morph into reduced oil exports.
With much of the growth in global oil production coming from US shale producers, a fair question is just how long fracked shale oil production will continue to grow. Opinions vary. Some foresee the possibility that growth will slow considerably this year, while others think there are two or three years of large production increases ahead. The three months of extremely cold and snowy weather we have had this winter is already hurting production, but most believe production will rebound in the spring.
Even though production of conventional oil peaked nine years ago, massive investment and a five-fold increase in oil prices has allowed the economical production of shale and deepwater oil at a profit since 2005. Further growth in shale oil production, however, clearly has a half-life, be it one, three or five years.
Recent news concerning deepwater oil production is not encouraging. Brazil’s deepwater oil fields which are thought to contain many billions of barrels of oil are not looking too good at the minute due to the very high costs and risks of production. All in all, the recent news from the oil industry tends to be one of growing pessimism.
The Peak Oil Crisis: A Winter Update
As the years go by, those studying peak oil are beginning to develop a better understanding of what has been happening since the concept of limits to oil production came to widespread attention. First of all, it is important to understand that in one sense, production of what had been thought of as “conventional oil” really did peak back in 2005. While there has been growth in certain sectors of the “oil” industry in the last nine years it has come in what are known as “unconventional liquids"; and, as we shall see, the maintenance of existing conventional oil production has come at a very high price.
The recent growth in the “oil” production has been nowhere near what had been normal prior to the “Great Recession,” so that if anyone should wonder why our economy has been stagnant in recent years, one can take the price and availability of oil as a good starting point. US consumption has been falling at 1.5 percent a year since 2005 as opposed to a normal growth rate of 1.8 percent in prior years.
In the last decade global oil production grew by only 7.5 percent and not the 23 percent that would have been needed to support the growth in the world’s GDP at a rate we would have liked to have seen. Since 2005, total “oil” production has grown by 5.8 million b/d, of which 1.7 million consists of natural gas liquids (NGL). While NGL’s are valuable and a useful form of what we now call “oil” they do not contain the same energy as crude and have a more limited range of uses, thereby contributing less to economic growth.
US unconventional liquids (shale oil and NGL’s) are up by 5.1 million b/d since 2005. Along with an additional million b/d from the Canadian tar sands, North American non-conventional liquids constitute nearly all the growth in the world’s oil supply in recent years. Production of conventional crude has remained essentially flat during the period. Moreover, OPEC production has dropped by nearly two million b/d in the last three years largely due to wars, insurgencies, and embargoes, and another 1.7 million b/d of its “oil” production has been NGL’s and not crude.
The world’s existing fields are depleting at rate of circa 4 million b/d each year, so without constant drilling of new wells in new fields global production will quickly wither and prices will climb still more. A good estimate is that the oil which now costs about $110 a barrel will be at $140 or above by the end of the decade unless some major geopolitical upheaval sends it still higher.
To keep the oil flowing, the world’s oil companies have invested some $4 trillion in the last nine years to drill for oil. About $2.5 trillion of this was spent on simply replacing production from existing oil fields. Even this gigantic expenditure was not enough since conventional oil production fell by 1 million b/d during the period.
About $350 billion went to drill shale oil and gas wells in the US, and increase Canadian oil sands production. This was clearly a bargain as compared to maintaining conventional oil production which is now focused on ultra-expensive deep water wells.
Recent announcements by the major oil companies indicate that they have reached their limit. Profits and production are falling. Expenditures for finding and developing oil fields have tripled in the last decade and the return from these expenditures has not been enough to justify the costs. Nearly all of the major oil companies have announced major reductions in their exploration and drilling programs and several are selling off assets as they are caught in a trap between steady oil prices and rapidly rising operating costs.
Note that the major oil companies do not constitute the whole oil industry as most of the world’s oil production is now in the hands of state-owned companies and small independent producers. These firms are obviously facing the same problems as the large publicly traded companies, without as much publicity.
What is going to happen in the next few years? First, investments in future production are going down, meaning that in a few years depletion likely will overwhelm new production and output of conventional oil will drop.
Then we have the Middle East which, to put it mildly, is coming unglued. Oil exports from several countries have nearly disappeared and the spreading sectarian violence is likely to reduce exports from other countries before the decade is out.
Venezuela, from which the US still imports some 800,000 barrels of crude a day, is not transitioning to the post-Chavez era gracefully. The current student riots could easily morph into reduced oil exports.
With much of the growth in global oil production coming from US shale producers, a fair question is just how long fracked shale oil production will continue to grow. Opinions vary. Some foresee the possibility that growth will slow considerably this year, while others think there are two or three years of large production increases ahead. The three months of extremely cold and snowy weather we have had this winter is already hurting production, but most believe production will rebound in the spring.
Even though production of conventional oil peaked nine years ago, massive investment and a five-fold increase in oil prices has allowed the economical production of shale and deepwater oil at a profit since 2005. Further growth in shale oil production, however, clearly has a half-life, be it one, three or five years.
Recent news concerning deepwater oil production is not encouraging. Brazil’s deepwater oil fields which are thought to contain many billions of barrels of oil are not looking too good at the minute due to the very high costs and risks of production. All in all, the recent news from the oil industry tends to be one of growing pessimism.
Friday, February 21, 2014
SC121-11
http://stormcloudsgathering.com/the-real-target-of-obamas-next-extrajudicial-assassination
The REAL Target of Obama's Next Extrajudicial Assassination
This week Obama announced that his administration was contemplating killing an American citizen in Pakistan. Supposedly because this individual is suspected of terrorism. Doesn't that strike you as a bit odd? Why on earth would they announce something like that? Why would they publicize their lawlessness opening up a potential public relations disaster and giving the assassination target a chance to escape?
I'll tell you why.
The real target of this stunt isn't some man living in a foreign country that may or may not have contemplated committing a crime. The real target is you.
We've been conditioned to weigh the value of the lives of people in distant lands with a different scale than than we measure our own. Especially when those people seem very different from us. So it may never have punched you in the gut when you heard of civilians being killed in drone strikes even when it was revealed that 50 civilian non-combatants are killed for every 1 so called insurgent in the U.S. Drone program. Those weren't Americans, so it made it easier to put the reality of those numbers aside, and to put your attention back on much more important issues, like Justin Biebers recent arrest. (Yeah I know, like what was he thinking? You don't tell the cops you've been smoking weed.)
However, to kill an American citizen overseas without a trial, without even the semblance of due process that's psychologically different, even if morally indistinguishable. 50 years ago such talk would have sent shockwaves through the nation, it would have been interpreted as a constitutional crisis and an existential threat, but today it's just a minor blip in the weekly news cycle.
Why?
The American people have been gradually conditioned to accept a new paradigm, a paradigm in which a single man in a position of power can issue death sentences on a whim, a paradigm in which those who wrap themselves in the mantle of government are above the law, and act accordingly. The power to kill or imprison without due process, the power to rule by edict, to sidestep and ignore the constitution, these are the powers of a king. The ruling class is attempting to establish the cultural context for a modern monarchy, a dictatorship with the superficial trappings of a democratic system.
I say the cultural context, because this all depends on the acquiescence and participation of the population.
This announcement by Obama is perfect example of the method they have been using to psychologically condition the people. What they're doing here is getting you used to hearing about suspects being murdered in the field without a trial. And this isn't the first time they've done this. Remember the drone strike Obama ordered that killed Anwar al-Aulaqi and his 16 year old son? Oh wait, their skin is brown, and they have funny sounding names. They don't count do they.
I've got news for you, they do count, because if you are willing to look the other way and rationalize the extrajudicial murder of those you have a hard time relating to that sets precedent. And precedent is more than just a legal concept, it's a psychological principle.
That principle will enable the next president to pick up where Obama leaves off and stretch these new powers even farther, just like Obama expanded upon the abuses pioneered by the Bush administration.
These publicized assassinations of U.S. citizens living in other countries are are test balloons. If the people accept this as a new normal then it is only a matter of time till we start hearing about targeted assassinations being carried out domestically, and it's only a matter of time till the definition of a terrorist becomes stretched to accommodate political dissidents of all flavors. That's what states do with this kind of power. To think that the U.S. government is the exception is beyond naive.
That unnamed American citizen targeted for assassination in Pakistan is you, it's the future we are handing down to our children, it is the essence of our very way of life, the most basic protections that we have come to take for granted. That's what's really in the cross hairs. And all they need from you is your silence......
The REAL Target of Obama's Next Extrajudicial Assassination
This week Obama announced that his administration was contemplating killing an American citizen in Pakistan. Supposedly because this individual is suspected of terrorism. Doesn't that strike you as a bit odd? Why on earth would they announce something like that? Why would they publicize their lawlessness opening up a potential public relations disaster and giving the assassination target a chance to escape?
I'll tell you why.
The real target of this stunt isn't some man living in a foreign country that may or may not have contemplated committing a crime. The real target is you.
We've been conditioned to weigh the value of the lives of people in distant lands with a different scale than than we measure our own. Especially when those people seem very different from us. So it may never have punched you in the gut when you heard of civilians being killed in drone strikes even when it was revealed that 50 civilian non-combatants are killed for every 1 so called insurgent in the U.S. Drone program. Those weren't Americans, so it made it easier to put the reality of those numbers aside, and to put your attention back on much more important issues, like Justin Biebers recent arrest. (Yeah I know, like what was he thinking? You don't tell the cops you've been smoking weed.)
However, to kill an American citizen overseas without a trial, without even the semblance of due process that's psychologically different, even if morally indistinguishable. 50 years ago such talk would have sent shockwaves through the nation, it would have been interpreted as a constitutional crisis and an existential threat, but today it's just a minor blip in the weekly news cycle.
Why?
The American people have been gradually conditioned to accept a new paradigm, a paradigm in which a single man in a position of power can issue death sentences on a whim, a paradigm in which those who wrap themselves in the mantle of government are above the law, and act accordingly. The power to kill or imprison without due process, the power to rule by edict, to sidestep and ignore the constitution, these are the powers of a king. The ruling class is attempting to establish the cultural context for a modern monarchy, a dictatorship with the superficial trappings of a democratic system.
I say the cultural context, because this all depends on the acquiescence and participation of the population.
This announcement by Obama is perfect example of the method they have been using to psychologically condition the people. What they're doing here is getting you used to hearing about suspects being murdered in the field without a trial. And this isn't the first time they've done this. Remember the drone strike Obama ordered that killed Anwar al-Aulaqi and his 16 year old son? Oh wait, their skin is brown, and they have funny sounding names. They don't count do they.
I've got news for you, they do count, because if you are willing to look the other way and rationalize the extrajudicial murder of those you have a hard time relating to that sets precedent. And precedent is more than just a legal concept, it's a psychological principle.
That principle will enable the next president to pick up where Obama leaves off and stretch these new powers even farther, just like Obama expanded upon the abuses pioneered by the Bush administration.
These publicized assassinations of U.S. citizens living in other countries are are test balloons. If the people accept this as a new normal then it is only a matter of time till we start hearing about targeted assassinations being carried out domestically, and it's only a matter of time till the definition of a terrorist becomes stretched to accommodate political dissidents of all flavors. That's what states do with this kind of power. To think that the U.S. government is the exception is beyond naive.
That unnamed American citizen targeted for assassination in Pakistan is you, it's the future we are handing down to our children, it is the essence of our very way of life, the most basic protections that we have come to take for granted. That's what's really in the cross hairs. And all they need from you is your silence......
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
SC121-10
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/our_sinister_dual_state_20140216
Our Sinister Dual State
On Thursday the former National Security Agency official and whistle-blower William E. Binney and I will debate Stewart A. Baker, a former general counsel for the NSA, P.J. Crowley, a former State Department spokesman, and the media pundit Jeffrey Toobin. The debate, at Oxford University, will center on whether Edward Snowden’s leaks helped or harmed the public good. The proposition asks: “Is Edward Snowden a Hero?” But, on a deeper level, the debate will revolve around our nation’s loss of liberty.
The government officials who, along with their courtiers in the press, castigate Snowden insist that congressional and judicial oversight, the right to privacy, the rule of law, freedom of the press and the right to express dissent remain inviolate. They use the old words and the old phrases, old laws and old constitutional guarantees to give our corporate totalitarianism a democratic veneer. They insist that the system works. They tell us we are still protected by the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Yet the promise of that sentence in the Bill of Rights is pitted against the fact that every telephone call we make, every email or text we send or receive, every website we visit and many of our travels are tracked, recorded and stored in government computers. The Fourth Amendment was written in 1789 in direct response to the arbitrary and unchecked search powers that the British had exercised through general warrants called writs of assistance, which played a significant part in fomenting the American Revolution. A technical system of surveillance designed to monitor those considered to be a danger to the state has, in the words of Binney, been “turned against you.”
We live in what the German political scientist Ernst Fraenkel called “the dual state.” Totalitarian states are always dual states. In the dual state civil liberties are abolished in the name of national security. The political sphere becomes a vacuum “as far as the law is concerned,” Fraenkel wrote. There is no legal check on power. Official bodies operate with impunity outside the law. In the dual state the government can convict citizens on secret evidence in secret courts. It can strip citizens of due process and detain, torture or assassinate them, serving as judge, jury and executioner. It rules according to its own arbitrary whims and prerogatives. The outward forms of democratic participation—voting, competing political parties, judicial oversight and legislation—are hollow, political stagecraft. Fraenkel called those who wield this unchecked power over the citizenry “the prerogative state.”
The masses in a totalitarian structure live in what Fraenkel termed “the normative state.” The normative state, he said, is defenseless against the abuses of the prerogative state. Citizens are subjected to draconian laws and regulations, as well as arbitrary searches and arrests. The police and internal security are omnipotent. The internal workings of power are secret. Free expression and opposition political activity are pushed to the fringes of society or shut down. Those who challenge the abuses of power by the prerogative state, those who, like Snowden, expose the crimes carried out by government, are made into criminals. Totalitarian states always invert the moral order. It is the wicked who rule. It is the just who are damned.
Snowden, we are told, could have reformed from the inside. He could have gone to his superiors or Congress or the courts. But Snowden had numerous examples—including the persecution of the whistle-blower Thomas Drake, who originally tried to go through so-called proper channels—to remind him that working within the system is fatal. He had watched as senior officials including Barack Obama lied to the public about internal surveillance. He knew that the president was dishonest when he assured Americans that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret and hears only from the government, is “transparent.” He knew that the president’s statement that Congress was “overseeing the entire program” was false. He knew that everything Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the press, the Congress and the public about the surveillance of Americans was a lie. And he knew that if this information was to be made available to the public he would have to do so through a few journalists whose integrity he could trust.
I was a plaintiff before the Supreme Court in Clapper v. Amnesty International, which challenged the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. This act authorizes surveillance without a showing, or probable cause, that a targeted person is an agent of a foreign power. The court dismissed our lawsuit because, it said, the idea that we were targets of surveillance was “based too much on speculation.” That Supreme Court ruling was then used by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to deny the credibility, or standing, of the other plaintiffs and me when it heard the Obama administration’s appeal of our successful challenge to Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a provision that permits the U.S. military to detain citizens in military facilities, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely. The government, in both court cases, did not attempt to defend the surveillance and detention programs as constitutional. It said that I and the other plaintiffs had no right to bring the cases to court. And the courts agreed.
This deadly impasse, the tightening of the corporate totalitarian noose, would have continued if Snowden had not jolted the nation awake by disclosing the crimes of the prerogative state. Snowden’s revelations triggered, for the first time, a genuine public debate about mass surveillance. Since the disclosures, three judges have ruled on the NSA’s surveillance program, one defending it as legal and two accusing the NSA of violating the Constitution. A presidential panel has criticized the agency’s blanket surveillance and called for reform. Some members of Congress—although that body authorized the Patriot Act and its Section 215, which ostensibly permitted this wholesale surveillance of the public—have expressed dismay at the extent of the NSA’s activities and the weakness of its promised reforms. Maybe they are lying. Maybe they are not. Maybe reforms will produce improvements or maybe they will be merely cosmetic. But before Snowden we had nothing. Snowden’s revelations made us conscious. And as George Orwell wrote in his dystopian novel “1984”: “Until they become conscious they will never rebel. ...”
“Now, we’re all familiar with Congress’ most dramatic oversight failure,” said Ben Wizner, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union Speech, Privacy & Technology Project and a legal adviser to Snowden, in a recent debate over Snowden with R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. “And this was in the notorious exchange between Sen. Ron Wyden and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Wyden had asked, did the NSA collect any type of data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? Clapper’s answer was, ‘No, sir.’ Now, this brazen falsehood is most often described as Clapper’s lie to Congress, but that’s not what it was. Wyden knew that Clapper was lying. Only we didn’t know. And Congress lacked the courage to correct the record—allowed us to be deceived by the director of national intelligence.”
Societies that once had democratic traditions, or periods when openness was possible, are often seduced into totalitarian systems because those who rule continue to pay outward fealty to the ideals, practices and forms of the old systems. This was true when the Emperor Augustus dismantled the Roman Republic. It was true when Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized control of the autonomous soviets and ruthlessly centralized power. It was true following the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi fascism. Thomas Paine described despotic government as a fungus growing out of a corrupt civil society. And this is what has happened to us.
No one who lives under constant surveillance, who is subject to detention anywhere at any time, whose conversations, messages, meetings, proclivities and habits are recorded, stored and analyzed, can be described as free. The relationship between the U.S. government and the U.S. citizen is now one of master and slave. Yet the prerogative state assures us that our rights are sacred, that it abides by the will of the people and the consent of the governed.
The defense of liberty, which Snowden exhibited when he cast his fortune, his safety and his life aside to inform the public of the forces arrayed against constitutional rights, entails grave risks in dual states. It demands personal sacrifice. Snowden has called us to this sacrifice. He has allowed us to see who we are and what we have become. He has given us a chance. He has also shown us the heavy cost of defiance. It is up to us to seize this chance and dismantle the prerogative state. This means removing from power those who stole our liberty and lied to us. It means refusing to naively trust in their promised reform—for reform will never come from those who are complicit in such crimes. It will come through Americans’ construction of mass movements and alternative centers of power that can mount sustained pressure. If we fail to sever these chains we will become, like many who did not rise up in time to save their civil societies, human chattel.
Our Sinister Dual State
On Thursday the former National Security Agency official and whistle-blower William E. Binney and I will debate Stewart A. Baker, a former general counsel for the NSA, P.J. Crowley, a former State Department spokesman, and the media pundit Jeffrey Toobin. The debate, at Oxford University, will center on whether Edward Snowden’s leaks helped or harmed the public good. The proposition asks: “Is Edward Snowden a Hero?” But, on a deeper level, the debate will revolve around our nation’s loss of liberty.
The government officials who, along with their courtiers in the press, castigate Snowden insist that congressional and judicial oversight, the right to privacy, the rule of law, freedom of the press and the right to express dissent remain inviolate. They use the old words and the old phrases, old laws and old constitutional guarantees to give our corporate totalitarianism a democratic veneer. They insist that the system works. They tell us we are still protected by the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Yet the promise of that sentence in the Bill of Rights is pitted against the fact that every telephone call we make, every email or text we send or receive, every website we visit and many of our travels are tracked, recorded and stored in government computers. The Fourth Amendment was written in 1789 in direct response to the arbitrary and unchecked search powers that the British had exercised through general warrants called writs of assistance, which played a significant part in fomenting the American Revolution. A technical system of surveillance designed to monitor those considered to be a danger to the state has, in the words of Binney, been “turned against you.”
We live in what the German political scientist Ernst Fraenkel called “the dual state.” Totalitarian states are always dual states. In the dual state civil liberties are abolished in the name of national security. The political sphere becomes a vacuum “as far as the law is concerned,” Fraenkel wrote. There is no legal check on power. Official bodies operate with impunity outside the law. In the dual state the government can convict citizens on secret evidence in secret courts. It can strip citizens of due process and detain, torture or assassinate them, serving as judge, jury and executioner. It rules according to its own arbitrary whims and prerogatives. The outward forms of democratic participation—voting, competing political parties, judicial oversight and legislation—are hollow, political stagecraft. Fraenkel called those who wield this unchecked power over the citizenry “the prerogative state.”
The masses in a totalitarian structure live in what Fraenkel termed “the normative state.” The normative state, he said, is defenseless against the abuses of the prerogative state. Citizens are subjected to draconian laws and regulations, as well as arbitrary searches and arrests. The police and internal security are omnipotent. The internal workings of power are secret. Free expression and opposition political activity are pushed to the fringes of society or shut down. Those who challenge the abuses of power by the prerogative state, those who, like Snowden, expose the crimes carried out by government, are made into criminals. Totalitarian states always invert the moral order. It is the wicked who rule. It is the just who are damned.
Snowden, we are told, could have reformed from the inside. He could have gone to his superiors or Congress or the courts. But Snowden had numerous examples—including the persecution of the whistle-blower Thomas Drake, who originally tried to go through so-called proper channels—to remind him that working within the system is fatal. He had watched as senior officials including Barack Obama lied to the public about internal surveillance. He knew that the president was dishonest when he assured Americans that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret and hears only from the government, is “transparent.” He knew that the president’s statement that Congress was “overseeing the entire program” was false. He knew that everything Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the press, the Congress and the public about the surveillance of Americans was a lie. And he knew that if this information was to be made available to the public he would have to do so through a few journalists whose integrity he could trust.
I was a plaintiff before the Supreme Court in Clapper v. Amnesty International, which challenged the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. This act authorizes surveillance without a showing, or probable cause, that a targeted person is an agent of a foreign power. The court dismissed our lawsuit because, it said, the idea that we were targets of surveillance was “based too much on speculation.” That Supreme Court ruling was then used by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to deny the credibility, or standing, of the other plaintiffs and me when it heard the Obama administration’s appeal of our successful challenge to Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a provision that permits the U.S. military to detain citizens in military facilities, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely. The government, in both court cases, did not attempt to defend the surveillance and detention programs as constitutional. It said that I and the other plaintiffs had no right to bring the cases to court. And the courts agreed.
This deadly impasse, the tightening of the corporate totalitarian noose, would have continued if Snowden had not jolted the nation awake by disclosing the crimes of the prerogative state. Snowden’s revelations triggered, for the first time, a genuine public debate about mass surveillance. Since the disclosures, three judges have ruled on the NSA’s surveillance program, one defending it as legal and two accusing the NSA of violating the Constitution. A presidential panel has criticized the agency’s blanket surveillance and called for reform. Some members of Congress—although that body authorized the Patriot Act and its Section 215, which ostensibly permitted this wholesale surveillance of the public—have expressed dismay at the extent of the NSA’s activities and the weakness of its promised reforms. Maybe they are lying. Maybe they are not. Maybe reforms will produce improvements or maybe they will be merely cosmetic. But before Snowden we had nothing. Snowden’s revelations made us conscious. And as George Orwell wrote in his dystopian novel “1984”: “Until they become conscious they will never rebel. ...”
“Now, we’re all familiar with Congress’ most dramatic oversight failure,” said Ben Wizner, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union Speech, Privacy & Technology Project and a legal adviser to Snowden, in a recent debate over Snowden with R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. “And this was in the notorious exchange between Sen. Ron Wyden and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Wyden had asked, did the NSA collect any type of data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? Clapper’s answer was, ‘No, sir.’ Now, this brazen falsehood is most often described as Clapper’s lie to Congress, but that’s not what it was. Wyden knew that Clapper was lying. Only we didn’t know. And Congress lacked the courage to correct the record—allowed us to be deceived by the director of national intelligence.”
Societies that once had democratic traditions, or periods when openness was possible, are often seduced into totalitarian systems because those who rule continue to pay outward fealty to the ideals, practices and forms of the old systems. This was true when the Emperor Augustus dismantled the Roman Republic. It was true when Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized control of the autonomous soviets and ruthlessly centralized power. It was true following the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi fascism. Thomas Paine described despotic government as a fungus growing out of a corrupt civil society. And this is what has happened to us.
No one who lives under constant surveillance, who is subject to detention anywhere at any time, whose conversations, messages, meetings, proclivities and habits are recorded, stored and analyzed, can be described as free. The relationship between the U.S. government and the U.S. citizen is now one of master and slave. Yet the prerogative state assures us that our rights are sacred, that it abides by the will of the people and the consent of the governed.
The defense of liberty, which Snowden exhibited when he cast his fortune, his safety and his life aside to inform the public of the forces arrayed against constitutional rights, entails grave risks in dual states. It demands personal sacrifice. Snowden has called us to this sacrifice. He has allowed us to see who we are and what we have become. He has given us a chance. He has also shown us the heavy cost of defiance. It is up to us to seize this chance and dismantle the prerogative state. This means removing from power those who stole our liberty and lied to us. It means refusing to naively trust in their promised reform—for reform will never come from those who are complicit in such crimes. It will come through Americans’ construction of mass movements and alternative centers of power that can mount sustained pressure. If we fail to sever these chains we will become, like many who did not rise up in time to save their civil societies, human chattel.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
SC121-9
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/demonizing-putin-and-villainizing-russia/
Demonizing Putin and Villainizing Russia
As an American living most of his time in western Siberia, east of Moscow by some three thousand kilometers, tucked away near the foot of the Altai Mountains abutting Mongolia and Kazakhstan, I have a unique vantage point from which to assess, and a different perspective on the Russia-bashing we have been witness to in the Western media, not just recently with the Sochi Olympics (although most notably there), but really as a non-stop flood of shitty-reporting since the fabled Wall came tumbling down decades ago.
Our conglomerate corporate media moguls, particularly in Britain and the USA, continue to craft narratives that drive not only the Grand Spectacle of our Western lives, but also shape all perceptions west of Moscow (and increasingly even in Moscow and the East).
I know that the naïve patriots among us will sing as follows; ‘but of course our story is shaping perceptions around the globe, that is because our narrative is rich and healthy and good.’ But, us realists will quickly and cynically point out that this patriotic (and self-delusional) narrative really only benefits a select few among us, even in our beloved HOMELAND, while depleting global resources, fouling air and water, eviscerating land, destroying indigenous lifeways, and leading the earth to an apocalyptic climatic (and climactic) expiration date.
The really suspicious among us will ask further; ‘Was the Pussy Riot incident a covertly managed Western affair meant to embarrass Putin, the Kremlin, and the Russian cultural traditions (viz., the Orthodox Church)?’ And, alternatively, ‘Was the political uprising against Putin during the elections the result of Western influence, financed and staffed by NGO’s operating covertly to drum up political angst against the new arch-enemy of Uncle Sam?’ Indeed, creating a tangible enemy where none existed; and this, perhaps due to our grand failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, not to mention Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, etc.
Our narratives, moreover, appear ever more conspiratorial in nature, reflecting an uncanny allegiance with and lockstep adherence to the official narrative of the emerging American imperial hegemony, with its alphabet soup of secreted and militaristic services engaged in a unipolar war of global domination and planetary destruction… all under the false-flag slogan of spreading democracy and freedom round the world, when all they are really interested in is spreading-out and making more living-room for the fatuous and gluttonous lifestyles of the uber-rich, the spectacularly famous among the elect Western oligarchy and its entourage.
More often than not, when it comes to Russia bashing, President Putin lies at the heart of these ad-hominim attacks. We hear constantly about how evil he is; that he was the man from the KGB and now has brought that secretive mentality under his political control, engendering a totalitarian state. We hear about his defense of the Assad regime, and his close ties to Iran, along with his attacks on poor Georgia and the idiot Saakashvilli, along with his alleged attempts to take back control of Ukraine. But, where do we see totalitarianism really trending? Why, in Amerika, of course. Drone attacks on civilians abroad, presidential kill lists, unrestricted and unabashed monitoring, data collection, and snooping not only on all US citizens, but also world leaders, together with the covert activities of the NSA, FEMA, TSA, CIA, FBI, ATF, and a host of other secreted agencies tucked away in Washington’s hidden portfolio. Indeed, perhaps it is Washington that has covert designs on Ukraine!
" Any doubts about the Obama administration’s real intentions in Ukraine should have been dispelled by the recently revealed taped conversation between a top State Department official, Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador in Kiev. The media predictably focused on the source of the “leak” and on Nuland’s verbal “gaffe”—“Fuck the EU.” But the essential revelation was that high-level US officials were plotting to “midwife” a new, anti-Russian Ukrainian government by ousting or neutralizing its democratically elected president—that is, a coup. [Distorting Russia]"
And, of course, the Western media is quick to gaffe at the $50+BB expenditure that went into preparing for the Sochi Olympics. They will talk about graft, skimming, payoffs, greed, Putin and his friends, and crazy give-aways. Like we have seen none of that here in the good ole’ USA. Right! Well, Russia is a large country covering twelve time zones… at almost twice the size in landmass of the USA. The infrastructure throughout this country is less developed, more primitive, more ‘make-do’ than it is finished (according to spectacular Western tastes). In part this is due to its size, in part its geography, in part its harsh climate, in part cultural tradition, and in part past Soviet policies and decisions. But, as a recent blogger rightfully pointed out, substantial infrastructure work was needed in and around Sochi, just to provide suitable access to the venues for all the Western visitors and press. It is part and parcel of the cultural transformation, the Westernization, the gentrification of Russia! Like it or not!
But, we know those media complaints are themselves another false flag, another distraction from the real agenda, the real enemy in our midst… the US government, with its secret agencies, its covert spying on its “free” citizens, its militarized security forces, its hegemonic designs for a New American Century. There is nothing this growing hegemony will not do to achieve its ends… the protection of the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.
Russia is not the real problem in today’s world. The USA is the problem. Our lifestyle and our propaganda first germinated and then forced the eruption of of radicalized self-interest, greed, graft, and the competitive winner-take-all-and-fuck-the-rest-of-you attitude we now find growing and in full flower increasingly throughout the Russian Federation. Putin himself may only be a victim himself of this growing and gnawing Western infiltration. He is not the culprit, but merely a hapless recipient of the propaganda and its generous beneficence to the rich and powerful.
The political goons and fakir running the USA (black, white or otherwise), along with their hyperventilating neotenous (juvenile or developmentally arrested), militaristic corporate overseers, have one plan in mind; demonize and villainize Putin and destroy Russia. But then again, it is only a smokescreen intended to cover-up the creeping global tentacles of BIG BROTHER AMERIKA!! It is part of the planned spectacle to keep us citizens enthralled, to crusade religiously and search out the OTHER, the ALIEN, defining him as the ENEMY, because we have nothing positive to offer this world except divisiveness, hatred, violence, war, death, and planetary annihilation. Is anyone sick of the narrative yet?
Demonizing Putin and Villainizing Russia
As an American living most of his time in western Siberia, east of Moscow by some three thousand kilometers, tucked away near the foot of the Altai Mountains abutting Mongolia and Kazakhstan, I have a unique vantage point from which to assess, and a different perspective on the Russia-bashing we have been witness to in the Western media, not just recently with the Sochi Olympics (although most notably there), but really as a non-stop flood of shitty-reporting since the fabled Wall came tumbling down decades ago.
Our conglomerate corporate media moguls, particularly in Britain and the USA, continue to craft narratives that drive not only the Grand Spectacle of our Western lives, but also shape all perceptions west of Moscow (and increasingly even in Moscow and the East).
I know that the naïve patriots among us will sing as follows; ‘but of course our story is shaping perceptions around the globe, that is because our narrative is rich and healthy and good.’ But, us realists will quickly and cynically point out that this patriotic (and self-delusional) narrative really only benefits a select few among us, even in our beloved HOMELAND, while depleting global resources, fouling air and water, eviscerating land, destroying indigenous lifeways, and leading the earth to an apocalyptic climatic (and climactic) expiration date.
The really suspicious among us will ask further; ‘Was the Pussy Riot incident a covertly managed Western affair meant to embarrass Putin, the Kremlin, and the Russian cultural traditions (viz., the Orthodox Church)?’ And, alternatively, ‘Was the political uprising against Putin during the elections the result of Western influence, financed and staffed by NGO’s operating covertly to drum up political angst against the new arch-enemy of Uncle Sam?’ Indeed, creating a tangible enemy where none existed; and this, perhaps due to our grand failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, not to mention Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, etc.
Our narratives, moreover, appear ever more conspiratorial in nature, reflecting an uncanny allegiance with and lockstep adherence to the official narrative of the emerging American imperial hegemony, with its alphabet soup of secreted and militaristic services engaged in a unipolar war of global domination and planetary destruction… all under the false-flag slogan of spreading democracy and freedom round the world, when all they are really interested in is spreading-out and making more living-room for the fatuous and gluttonous lifestyles of the uber-rich, the spectacularly famous among the elect Western oligarchy and its entourage.
More often than not, when it comes to Russia bashing, President Putin lies at the heart of these ad-hominim attacks. We hear constantly about how evil he is; that he was the man from the KGB and now has brought that secretive mentality under his political control, engendering a totalitarian state. We hear about his defense of the Assad regime, and his close ties to Iran, along with his attacks on poor Georgia and the idiot Saakashvilli, along with his alleged attempts to take back control of Ukraine. But, where do we see totalitarianism really trending? Why, in Amerika, of course. Drone attacks on civilians abroad, presidential kill lists, unrestricted and unabashed monitoring, data collection, and snooping not only on all US citizens, but also world leaders, together with the covert activities of the NSA, FEMA, TSA, CIA, FBI, ATF, and a host of other secreted agencies tucked away in Washington’s hidden portfolio. Indeed, perhaps it is Washington that has covert designs on Ukraine!
" Any doubts about the Obama administration’s real intentions in Ukraine should have been dispelled by the recently revealed taped conversation between a top State Department official, Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador in Kiev. The media predictably focused on the source of the “leak” and on Nuland’s verbal “gaffe”—“Fuck the EU.” But the essential revelation was that high-level US officials were plotting to “midwife” a new, anti-Russian Ukrainian government by ousting or neutralizing its democratically elected president—that is, a coup. [Distorting Russia]"
And, of course, the Western media is quick to gaffe at the $50+BB expenditure that went into preparing for the Sochi Olympics. They will talk about graft, skimming, payoffs, greed, Putin and his friends, and crazy give-aways. Like we have seen none of that here in the good ole’ USA. Right! Well, Russia is a large country covering twelve time zones… at almost twice the size in landmass of the USA. The infrastructure throughout this country is less developed, more primitive, more ‘make-do’ than it is finished (according to spectacular Western tastes). In part this is due to its size, in part its geography, in part its harsh climate, in part cultural tradition, and in part past Soviet policies and decisions. But, as a recent blogger rightfully pointed out, substantial infrastructure work was needed in and around Sochi, just to provide suitable access to the venues for all the Western visitors and press. It is part and parcel of the cultural transformation, the Westernization, the gentrification of Russia! Like it or not!
But, we know those media complaints are themselves another false flag, another distraction from the real agenda, the real enemy in our midst… the US government, with its secret agencies, its covert spying on its “free” citizens, its militarized security forces, its hegemonic designs for a New American Century. There is nothing this growing hegemony will not do to achieve its ends… the protection of the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.
Russia is not the real problem in today’s world. The USA is the problem. Our lifestyle and our propaganda first germinated and then forced the eruption of of radicalized self-interest, greed, graft, and the competitive winner-take-all-and-fuck-the-rest-of-you attitude we now find growing and in full flower increasingly throughout the Russian Federation. Putin himself may only be a victim himself of this growing and gnawing Western infiltration. He is not the culprit, but merely a hapless recipient of the propaganda and its generous beneficence to the rich and powerful.
The political goons and fakir running the USA (black, white or otherwise), along with their hyperventilating neotenous (juvenile or developmentally arrested), militaristic corporate overseers, have one plan in mind; demonize and villainize Putin and destroy Russia. But then again, it is only a smokescreen intended to cover-up the creeping global tentacles of BIG BROTHER AMERIKA!! It is part of the planned spectacle to keep us citizens enthralled, to crusade religiously and search out the OTHER, the ALIEN, defining him as the ENEMY, because we have nothing positive to offer this world except divisiveness, hatred, violence, war, death, and planetary annihilation. Is anyone sick of the narrative yet?
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
SC121-8
http://cluborlov.com/
“American” exceptionalism
The term “American exceptionalism” has been receiving more than its fair share of play recently. It was pressed into service in the vapid banter that passes for political discourse in the US, with the Republicans accusing Obama of not believing in it. More recently, it surfaced as a term in international relations, when Russian president V. Putin chastised the US for believing it in a NY Times editorial, equating it with chauvinism and lack of respect for the rule of international law. It seems that it is Putin's dream to extend his cherished concept of “dictatorship of the law” to encompass even the US.
I feel that “American exceptionalism” does exist, and is, in fact, quite pervasive, but not in the way politicians and politicos in the US wish to think. This term, as those in the US are currently attempting to use it, is yet another of their attempts to mangle the language, along with “Libertarianism” that isn't libertarian (i.e., socialist) and “football” that isn't football (the entire planet's favorite team sport). This sort of mangling of international terminology is rather exceptionally obnoxious.
The term “American exceptionalism” was born during a meeting which took place in the spring of 1929 between Joseph Stalin and the US Communist Party leader Jay Lovestone, during which Lovestone argued that workers in the US weren't interested in socialist revolution. In response, Stalin the seminary drop-out demanded to put an end to this “heresy of American exceptionalism.” Stalin used the term in a mocking way, and something important was lost in translation from Russian “исключительность”, which is closer to “abnormality,” to English “exceptionalism” which has a few positive connotations, whereas in Russian, with the verb “исключить” (to expel) as its base, it is altogether non-aspirational.
Stalin's taking an exception to “American exceptionalism” aside, Lovestone may at the time have had a valid point. At that time, the US could have been considered to stand a good chance of mitigating the negative effects of capitalism and advancing in the direction of a just and equitable society without resorting to brutal class struggle and violent revolution. The reasons for this had to do with luck: the US had the natural resources, the industrial capacity, a well-organized labor movement and an immigrant population that hadn't had the time to develop rigid class distinctions.
But just a year later, at the 1930 American Communist convention, it was proclaimed that “the storm of the economic crisis in the United States blew down the house of cards of American exceptionalism.” While the USSR surged forward, the US wallowed in the mire of the Great Depression and recovered economically only thanks to the gigantic windfall of Word War II, at the end of which it remained as the only industrial nation that hadn't been bombed to smithereens, flush with natural resources, and with a new-found egalitarian attitude borne of wartime patriotism and a newfound ability to understand each other thanks to the installation of Dayton, Ohio English as the nation's official dialect. The US reaped another, much smaller windfall with the peaceful collapse and dismantlement of the USSR in 1990, extending its life expectancy by perhaps a decade.
But now this period is well and truly over: the resource base is depleted, the industrial base is in shambles, and society is rapidly degenerating from a class society to a caste society, with a disappearing middle class, an unbridgeable chasm between the haves and the have-nots and the lowest social mobility of any developed nation. If and when the revolution finally comes, I imagine Stalin's embalmed corpse, resting in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, smiling ever so sweetly.
So much for “exceptionalism” (in quotes); what about “American” (also in quotes)? I am currently working from an undisclosed location south of the US border, where temperatures hover around 85°F, the ocean is pleasantly warm, fresh fruit comes from a nearby jungle, the Internet is high-speed and rent is quite a lot cheaper than what it cost me to heat the boat in Boston. I am still very much in America (without the quotes)—as former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez put it “We are all Americans.”
America, you see, is the term the entire world uses to describe the major land mass of the planet's western hemisphere comprising some 43 million km2, grouped, for convenience, into North America and South America, and containing 36 countries. But then there is one country that controls well under a quarter of the total landmass and contains just over a third of the population, but which has the gall to call itself “The United States of America.” It is not the only “united states” in America; it is not even the only “united states” in North America because there is also Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
People south of the US border use a different intonation or roll their eyes ever so slightly to signal the difference between America the geographic term and “America” the country that had the impertinence to appropriate it. “Americans” themselves should probably use finger-quotes, to be polite, when they mean to say “America” rather than America.
Getting back to the subject of “American exceptionalism”: I believe that “America” (in quotes) is in some ways exceptional (in Stalin's original sense of “abnormal”). I will therefore move “exceptionalism” outside the quotes and say a few more things about “American” exceptionalism.
First, “America” has an exceptionally bad government. There is fervent insistence that “America” is a democracy, but a look into the details of the matter discloses a decrepit political structure whose sole purpose is to legitimize privilege, wealth and aggression.
Starting with Congress, its two houses are both founded on systemic corruption. The Senate has two members from each state, be it a huge state like California or a tiny one like North Dakota, making it rather cheap for lobbyists to purchase roughly half the Senate, the rest being somewhat more expensive but still affordable. The House of Representatives is formed by a process called “gerrymandering,” whereby electoral districts are formed in ways that disadvantage the groups which the ruling elite wishes to see underrepresented. The result of this is that, according to numerous opinion polls, members of US Congress are now less popular than lice, cockroaches, colonoscopies, Hitler or Genghis Khan. This august body has been essentially incapable of governing. Its main activity involves enacting legislation which runs into thousands of pages, most of them written by lobbyists, which none of the members can either read or understand.
As a result, President Obama has recently announced his intention to ignore Congress and to start ruling by decree (the local euphemism for “decree” being “executive order”). This is rather typical of presidential régimes that are burdened by a morbid legislature, and, as such, is a step in the right direction. Turning ever so briefly to the supposedly independent judiciary, the US Supreme Court has consistently decided that justice is a matter of wealth and privilege, judging that “free speech” amounts to the right to spend money, and that “corporate persons” have more rights and fewer responsibilities than human ones. And so “America” is no longer a democracy, and although one never hears it from corporate-owned or corporate-funded “American” media, the “Americans” themselves seem well aware of the fact, which is why so few of them bother to vote. Why should powerless people participate in a humiliating farce designed to legitimize the power of those who oppress them? Elsewhere this state of affairs might be called “political corruption” whereas in “America” that corruption is enshrined in the constitution and the system of law, which everyone is expected to uphold and venerate.
Second, “America” also has an exceptionally bad health care system. The rot started with a very bad mistake—the idea that health care should be tied to employment. It has now degenerated to a point where the medical system eats up a fifth of the country's economic output, and is drifting in the direction of socialized medicine administered by a powerful group of profit-seeking companies. It produces outcomes that are slightly worse than those of Cuba, where per capita expenditure on health care is just 5% of that in “America.”
Life at an “American” hospital is a non-stop macabre comedy where sleep-deprived interns compulsively poke away at computers while ignoring the patients, and where the hospital profits from their numerous mistakes. Every “American” should know the term nosocomial, which designates medical problems caused by medical care itself. While “American” truck drivers must by law pull over and rest after ten hours behind the wheel, “American” doctors are often required to work 24-hour shifts, not because the decisions they make are so much less important than those made by truck drivers, but because their mistakes drive up profits by causing complications that require additional treatment. The sine qua non of “American” health care is emergency medicine, much of it devoted to keeping elderly patients alive for no good reason, and often against their will—until the money runs out. How much money? Well, a great deal of it, but how much anything costs is kept as a great mystery which is disclosed to patients only after the fact, often as part of a legal effort to bankrupt them.
This is why many “Americans” are discovering that their favorite doctor is, as the saying goes, is “Dr. Blue—Jet Blue.” A quick flight to America proper takes you out of the hands of “American” medical establishment and puts you in the hands of proper American doctors, who tell you how much your treatment will cost beforehand, charge reasonable rates and achieve reasonable results with reasonable effort.
There are other areas in which “America” is exceptional. For the sake of brevity, I will only touch upon one of them, briefly.
“America” has an exceptionally bad foreign policy. A key aspect of “American” foreign policy is that “America” is a sore loser: once defeated and expelled, it goes into a passive-aggressive mode of trying to rewrite history using economic sanctions and covert activities. Cuba overthrew the “American” dictator Fulgencio Batista 55 years ago, but sanctions are still in effect. Similarly with Iran: 35 years after its “American” shah was overthrown, it is still being portrayed as the enemy. Another key aspect of “American” foreign policy is its complete lack of compunction in resorting to political assassination. Luckily, “America” seems to be losing its ability to project power beyond its borders. It ran roughshod over Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan unopposed, it was checked in Libya, and, if all goes well, it will be checkmated in Syria and Iran.
I could go on and on and talk about exceptionally high prison population, exceptionally expensive and ineffective education, exceptionally weak national infrastructure, exceptionally high levels of surveillance, exceptionally high murder rate and so on and so forth, but I hope I have made it clear: “American” exceptionalism is not something for “Americans” to be proud of. How it came about is by no means the fault of the vast majority of “Americans.” If it is anyone's fault, it is the fault of their ruling class, with its faulty, self-serving, and ultimately self-defeating ideas. There are some impediments making the transition from being “Americans” in quotes to becoming Americans proper—and to accept their birthright as inhabitants of the American continent—but these impediments are mostly mental, cultural and organizational. All of them will have to make that journey sooner or later, as “America” breaks up and disappears in a maelstrom of national bankruptcy, repudiation of federal authority and open revolt.
“American” exceptionalism
The term “American exceptionalism” has been receiving more than its fair share of play recently. It was pressed into service in the vapid banter that passes for political discourse in the US, with the Republicans accusing Obama of not believing in it. More recently, it surfaced as a term in international relations, when Russian president V. Putin chastised the US for believing it in a NY Times editorial, equating it with chauvinism and lack of respect for the rule of international law. It seems that it is Putin's dream to extend his cherished concept of “dictatorship of the law” to encompass even the US.
I feel that “American exceptionalism” does exist, and is, in fact, quite pervasive, but not in the way politicians and politicos in the US wish to think. This term, as those in the US are currently attempting to use it, is yet another of their attempts to mangle the language, along with “Libertarianism” that isn't libertarian (i.e., socialist) and “football” that isn't football (the entire planet's favorite team sport). This sort of mangling of international terminology is rather exceptionally obnoxious.
The term “American exceptionalism” was born during a meeting which took place in the spring of 1929 between Joseph Stalin and the US Communist Party leader Jay Lovestone, during which Lovestone argued that workers in the US weren't interested in socialist revolution. In response, Stalin the seminary drop-out demanded to put an end to this “heresy of American exceptionalism.” Stalin used the term in a mocking way, and something important was lost in translation from Russian “исключительность”, which is closer to “abnormality,” to English “exceptionalism” which has a few positive connotations, whereas in Russian, with the verb “исключить” (to expel) as its base, it is altogether non-aspirational.
Stalin's taking an exception to “American exceptionalism” aside, Lovestone may at the time have had a valid point. At that time, the US could have been considered to stand a good chance of mitigating the negative effects of capitalism and advancing in the direction of a just and equitable society without resorting to brutal class struggle and violent revolution. The reasons for this had to do with luck: the US had the natural resources, the industrial capacity, a well-organized labor movement and an immigrant population that hadn't had the time to develop rigid class distinctions.
But just a year later, at the 1930 American Communist convention, it was proclaimed that “the storm of the economic crisis in the United States blew down the house of cards of American exceptionalism.” While the USSR surged forward, the US wallowed in the mire of the Great Depression and recovered economically only thanks to the gigantic windfall of Word War II, at the end of which it remained as the only industrial nation that hadn't been bombed to smithereens, flush with natural resources, and with a new-found egalitarian attitude borne of wartime patriotism and a newfound ability to understand each other thanks to the installation of Dayton, Ohio English as the nation's official dialect. The US reaped another, much smaller windfall with the peaceful collapse and dismantlement of the USSR in 1990, extending its life expectancy by perhaps a decade.
But now this period is well and truly over: the resource base is depleted, the industrial base is in shambles, and society is rapidly degenerating from a class society to a caste society, with a disappearing middle class, an unbridgeable chasm between the haves and the have-nots and the lowest social mobility of any developed nation. If and when the revolution finally comes, I imagine Stalin's embalmed corpse, resting in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, smiling ever so sweetly.
So much for “exceptionalism” (in quotes); what about “American” (also in quotes)? I am currently working from an undisclosed location south of the US border, where temperatures hover around 85°F, the ocean is pleasantly warm, fresh fruit comes from a nearby jungle, the Internet is high-speed and rent is quite a lot cheaper than what it cost me to heat the boat in Boston. I am still very much in America (without the quotes)—as former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez put it “We are all Americans.”
America, you see, is the term the entire world uses to describe the major land mass of the planet's western hemisphere comprising some 43 million km2, grouped, for convenience, into North America and South America, and containing 36 countries. But then there is one country that controls well under a quarter of the total landmass and contains just over a third of the population, but which has the gall to call itself “The United States of America.” It is not the only “united states” in America; it is not even the only “united states” in North America because there is also Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
People south of the US border use a different intonation or roll their eyes ever so slightly to signal the difference between America the geographic term and “America” the country that had the impertinence to appropriate it. “Americans” themselves should probably use finger-quotes, to be polite, when they mean to say “America” rather than America.
Getting back to the subject of “American exceptionalism”: I believe that “America” (in quotes) is in some ways exceptional (in Stalin's original sense of “abnormal”). I will therefore move “exceptionalism” outside the quotes and say a few more things about “American” exceptionalism.
First, “America” has an exceptionally bad government. There is fervent insistence that “America” is a democracy, but a look into the details of the matter discloses a decrepit political structure whose sole purpose is to legitimize privilege, wealth and aggression.
Starting with Congress, its two houses are both founded on systemic corruption. The Senate has two members from each state, be it a huge state like California or a tiny one like North Dakota, making it rather cheap for lobbyists to purchase roughly half the Senate, the rest being somewhat more expensive but still affordable. The House of Representatives is formed by a process called “gerrymandering,” whereby electoral districts are formed in ways that disadvantage the groups which the ruling elite wishes to see underrepresented. The result of this is that, according to numerous opinion polls, members of US Congress are now less popular than lice, cockroaches, colonoscopies, Hitler or Genghis Khan. This august body has been essentially incapable of governing. Its main activity involves enacting legislation which runs into thousands of pages, most of them written by lobbyists, which none of the members can either read or understand.
As a result, President Obama has recently announced his intention to ignore Congress and to start ruling by decree (the local euphemism for “decree” being “executive order”). This is rather typical of presidential régimes that are burdened by a morbid legislature, and, as such, is a step in the right direction. Turning ever so briefly to the supposedly independent judiciary, the US Supreme Court has consistently decided that justice is a matter of wealth and privilege, judging that “free speech” amounts to the right to spend money, and that “corporate persons” have more rights and fewer responsibilities than human ones. And so “America” is no longer a democracy, and although one never hears it from corporate-owned or corporate-funded “American” media, the “Americans” themselves seem well aware of the fact, which is why so few of them bother to vote. Why should powerless people participate in a humiliating farce designed to legitimize the power of those who oppress them? Elsewhere this state of affairs might be called “political corruption” whereas in “America” that corruption is enshrined in the constitution and the system of law, which everyone is expected to uphold and venerate.
Second, “America” also has an exceptionally bad health care system. The rot started with a very bad mistake—the idea that health care should be tied to employment. It has now degenerated to a point where the medical system eats up a fifth of the country's economic output, and is drifting in the direction of socialized medicine administered by a powerful group of profit-seeking companies. It produces outcomes that are slightly worse than those of Cuba, where per capita expenditure on health care is just 5% of that in “America.”
Life at an “American” hospital is a non-stop macabre comedy where sleep-deprived interns compulsively poke away at computers while ignoring the patients, and where the hospital profits from their numerous mistakes. Every “American” should know the term nosocomial, which designates medical problems caused by medical care itself. While “American” truck drivers must by law pull over and rest after ten hours behind the wheel, “American” doctors are often required to work 24-hour shifts, not because the decisions they make are so much less important than those made by truck drivers, but because their mistakes drive up profits by causing complications that require additional treatment. The sine qua non of “American” health care is emergency medicine, much of it devoted to keeping elderly patients alive for no good reason, and often against their will—until the money runs out. How much money? Well, a great deal of it, but how much anything costs is kept as a great mystery which is disclosed to patients only after the fact, often as part of a legal effort to bankrupt them.
This is why many “Americans” are discovering that their favorite doctor is, as the saying goes, is “Dr. Blue—Jet Blue.” A quick flight to America proper takes you out of the hands of “American” medical establishment and puts you in the hands of proper American doctors, who tell you how much your treatment will cost beforehand, charge reasonable rates and achieve reasonable results with reasonable effort.
There are other areas in which “America” is exceptional. For the sake of brevity, I will only touch upon one of them, briefly.
“America” has an exceptionally bad foreign policy. A key aspect of “American” foreign policy is that “America” is a sore loser: once defeated and expelled, it goes into a passive-aggressive mode of trying to rewrite history using economic sanctions and covert activities. Cuba overthrew the “American” dictator Fulgencio Batista 55 years ago, but sanctions are still in effect. Similarly with Iran: 35 years after its “American” shah was overthrown, it is still being portrayed as the enemy. Another key aspect of “American” foreign policy is its complete lack of compunction in resorting to political assassination. Luckily, “America” seems to be losing its ability to project power beyond its borders. It ran roughshod over Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan unopposed, it was checked in Libya, and, if all goes well, it will be checkmated in Syria and Iran.
I could go on and on and talk about exceptionally high prison population, exceptionally expensive and ineffective education, exceptionally weak national infrastructure, exceptionally high levels of surveillance, exceptionally high murder rate and so on and so forth, but I hope I have made it clear: “American” exceptionalism is not something for “Americans” to be proud of. How it came about is by no means the fault of the vast majority of “Americans.” If it is anyone's fault, it is the fault of their ruling class, with its faulty, self-serving, and ultimately self-defeating ideas. There are some impediments making the transition from being “Americans” in quotes to becoming Americans proper—and to accept their birthright as inhabitants of the American continent—but these impediments are mostly mental, cultural and organizational. All of them will have to make that journey sooner or later, as “America” breaks up and disappears in a maelstrom of national bankruptcy, repudiation of federal authority and open revolt.
Monday, February 3, 2014
SC121-7
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_menace_of_the_military_mind_20140203
The Menace of the Military Mind
I had my first experience with the U.S. military when I was a young reporter covering the civil war in El Salvador. We journalists were briefed at the American Embassy each week by a U.S. Army colonel who at the time headed the military group of U.S. advisers to the Salvadoran army. The reality of the war, which lasted from 1979 to 1992, bore little resemblance to the description regurgitated each week for consumption by the press. But what was most evident was not the blatant misinformation—this particular colonel had apparently learned to dissemble to the public during his multiple tours in Vietnam—but the hatred of the press by this man and most other senior officers in the U.S. military. When first told that he would have to meet the press once a week, the colonel reportedly protested against having to waste his time with those “limp-dicked communists.”
For the next 20 years I would go on from war zone to war zone as a foreign correspondent immersed in military culture. Repetitive rote learning and an insistence on blind obedience—similar to the approach used to train a dog—work on the battlefield. The military exerts nearly total control over the lives of its members. Its long-established hierarchy ensures that those who embrace the approved modes of behavior rise and those who do not are belittled, insulted and hazed. Many of the marks of civilian life are stripped away. Personal modes of dress, hairstyle, speech and behavior are heavily regulated. Individuality is physically and then psychologically crushed. Aggressiveness is rewarded. Compassion is demeaned. Violence is the favorite form of communication. These qualities are an asset in war; they are a disaster in civil society.
Homer in “The Iliad” showed his understanding of war. His heroes are not pleasant men. They are vain, imperial, filled with rage and violent. And Homer’s central character in “The Odyssey,” Odysseus, in his journey home from war must learn to shed his “hero’s heart,” to strip from himself the military attributes that served him in war but threaten to doom him off the battlefield. The qualities that serve us in war defeat us in peace.
Most institutions have a propensity to promote mediocrities, those whose primary strengths are knowing where power lies, being subservient and obsequious to the centers of power and never letting morality get in the way of one’s career. The military is the worst in this respect. In the military, whether at the Paris Island boot camp or West Point, you are trained not to think but to obey. What amazes me about the military is how stupid and bovine its senior officers are. Those with brains and the willingness to use them seem to be pushed out long before they can rise to the senior-officer ranks. The many Army generals I met over the years not only lacked the most rudimentary creativity and independence of thought but nearly always saw the press, as well as an informed public, as impinging on their love of order, regimentation, unwavering obedience to authority and single-minded use of force to solve complex problems.
So when I heard James R. Clapper Jr., a retired Air Force lieutenant general and currently the federal government’s director of national intelligence, denounce Edward Snowden and his “accomplices”—meaning journalists such as Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras—before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week I was not surprised. Clapper charged, without offering any evidence, that the Snowden disclosures had caused “profound damage” and endangered American lives. And all who have aided Snowden are, it appears, guilty of treason in Clapper’s eyes.
Clapper and many others who have come out of the military discern no difference between terrorists and reporters, and by reporters I am not referring to the boot-licking courtiers on television and in Washington who masquerade as reporters. Carry out an interview with a member of al-Qaida, as I have, and you become in the eyes of generals like Clapper a member of al-Qaida. Most generals I know recognize no need for an independent press. The munchkins who dutifully sit through their press briefings or follow them around in preapproved press pools and publish their lies are the generals’ idea of journalism.
When I was in Central America the U.S. officers who were providing support to the military of El Salvador or Guatemala, along with help to the Contra forces then fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, did not distinguish between us journalists and the rebel forces or the leftist Sandinista government. We were one and the same. The reporters and photographers, often after a day or two of hiking to reach small villages, would report on massacres by the Salvadoran army, the Guatemalan army or the Contras. When the stories appeared, the U.S. officers usually would go volcanic. But their rage would be directed not at those who pulled the triggers but at those who wrote about the mass killings or photographed the bodies.
This is why, after Barack Obama signed into law Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, which permits the U.S. military to seize U.S. citizens who “substantially support” al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces,” to strip them of due process and to hold them indefinitely in military detention centers, I sued the president. I and my fellow plaintiffs won in U.S. District Court. When Obama appealed the ruling it was overturned. We are now trying to go to the Supreme Court. Section 1021 is a chilling reminder of what people like Clapper could do to destroy constitutional rights. They see no useful role for a free press, one that questions and challenges power, and are deeply hostile to its existence. I expect Clapper, if he has a free hand, to lock us up, just as the Egyptian military has arrested a number of Al-Jazeera journalists, including some Westerners, on terrorism-related charges. The military mind is amazingly uniform.
The U.S. military has won the ideological war. The nation sees human and social problems as military problems. To fight terrorists Americans have become terrorists. Peace is for the weak. War is for the strong. Hypermasculinity has triumphed over empathy. We Americans speak to the world exclusively in the language of force. And those who oversee our massive security and surveillance state seek to speak to us in the same demented language. All other viewpoints are to be shut out. “In the absence of contrasting views, the very highest form of propaganda warfare can be fought: the propaganda for a definition of reality within which only certain limited viewpoints are possible,” C. Wright Mills wrote. “What is being promulgated and reinforced is the military metaphysics—the cast of mind that defines international reality as basically military.”
This is why people like James Clapper and the bloated military and security and surveillance apparatus must not have unchecked power to conduct wholesale surveillance, to carry out extraordinary renditions and to imprison Americans indefinitely as terrorists. This is why the nation, as our political system remains mired in paralysis, must stop glorifying military values. In times of turmoil the military always seems to be a good alternative. It presents the facade of order. But order in the military, as the people of Egypt are now learning again, is akin to slavery. It is the order of a prison. And that is where Clapper and his fellow generals and intelligence chiefs would like to place any citizen who dares to question their unimpeded right to turn us all into mindless recruits. They have the power to make their demented dreams a reality. And it is our task to take this power from them.
The Menace of the Military Mind
I had my first experience with the U.S. military when I was a young reporter covering the civil war in El Salvador. We journalists were briefed at the American Embassy each week by a U.S. Army colonel who at the time headed the military group of U.S. advisers to the Salvadoran army. The reality of the war, which lasted from 1979 to 1992, bore little resemblance to the description regurgitated each week for consumption by the press. But what was most evident was not the blatant misinformation—this particular colonel had apparently learned to dissemble to the public during his multiple tours in Vietnam—but the hatred of the press by this man and most other senior officers in the U.S. military. When first told that he would have to meet the press once a week, the colonel reportedly protested against having to waste his time with those “limp-dicked communists.”
For the next 20 years I would go on from war zone to war zone as a foreign correspondent immersed in military culture. Repetitive rote learning and an insistence on blind obedience—similar to the approach used to train a dog—work on the battlefield. The military exerts nearly total control over the lives of its members. Its long-established hierarchy ensures that those who embrace the approved modes of behavior rise and those who do not are belittled, insulted and hazed. Many of the marks of civilian life are stripped away. Personal modes of dress, hairstyle, speech and behavior are heavily regulated. Individuality is physically and then psychologically crushed. Aggressiveness is rewarded. Compassion is demeaned. Violence is the favorite form of communication. These qualities are an asset in war; they are a disaster in civil society.
Homer in “The Iliad” showed his understanding of war. His heroes are not pleasant men. They are vain, imperial, filled with rage and violent. And Homer’s central character in “The Odyssey,” Odysseus, in his journey home from war must learn to shed his “hero’s heart,” to strip from himself the military attributes that served him in war but threaten to doom him off the battlefield. The qualities that serve us in war defeat us in peace.
Most institutions have a propensity to promote mediocrities, those whose primary strengths are knowing where power lies, being subservient and obsequious to the centers of power and never letting morality get in the way of one’s career. The military is the worst in this respect. In the military, whether at the Paris Island boot camp or West Point, you are trained not to think but to obey. What amazes me about the military is how stupid and bovine its senior officers are. Those with brains and the willingness to use them seem to be pushed out long before they can rise to the senior-officer ranks. The many Army generals I met over the years not only lacked the most rudimentary creativity and independence of thought but nearly always saw the press, as well as an informed public, as impinging on their love of order, regimentation, unwavering obedience to authority and single-minded use of force to solve complex problems.
So when I heard James R. Clapper Jr., a retired Air Force lieutenant general and currently the federal government’s director of national intelligence, denounce Edward Snowden and his “accomplices”—meaning journalists such as Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras—before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week I was not surprised. Clapper charged, without offering any evidence, that the Snowden disclosures had caused “profound damage” and endangered American lives. And all who have aided Snowden are, it appears, guilty of treason in Clapper’s eyes.
Clapper and many others who have come out of the military discern no difference between terrorists and reporters, and by reporters I am not referring to the boot-licking courtiers on television and in Washington who masquerade as reporters. Carry out an interview with a member of al-Qaida, as I have, and you become in the eyes of generals like Clapper a member of al-Qaida. Most generals I know recognize no need for an independent press. The munchkins who dutifully sit through their press briefings or follow them around in preapproved press pools and publish their lies are the generals’ idea of journalism.
When I was in Central America the U.S. officers who were providing support to the military of El Salvador or Guatemala, along with help to the Contra forces then fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, did not distinguish between us journalists and the rebel forces or the leftist Sandinista government. We were one and the same. The reporters and photographers, often after a day or two of hiking to reach small villages, would report on massacres by the Salvadoran army, the Guatemalan army or the Contras. When the stories appeared, the U.S. officers usually would go volcanic. But their rage would be directed not at those who pulled the triggers but at those who wrote about the mass killings or photographed the bodies.
This is why, after Barack Obama signed into law Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, which permits the U.S. military to seize U.S. citizens who “substantially support” al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces,” to strip them of due process and to hold them indefinitely in military detention centers, I sued the president. I and my fellow plaintiffs won in U.S. District Court. When Obama appealed the ruling it was overturned. We are now trying to go to the Supreme Court. Section 1021 is a chilling reminder of what people like Clapper could do to destroy constitutional rights. They see no useful role for a free press, one that questions and challenges power, and are deeply hostile to its existence. I expect Clapper, if he has a free hand, to lock us up, just as the Egyptian military has arrested a number of Al-Jazeera journalists, including some Westerners, on terrorism-related charges. The military mind is amazingly uniform.
The U.S. military has won the ideological war. The nation sees human and social problems as military problems. To fight terrorists Americans have become terrorists. Peace is for the weak. War is for the strong. Hypermasculinity has triumphed over empathy. We Americans speak to the world exclusively in the language of force. And those who oversee our massive security and surveillance state seek to speak to us in the same demented language. All other viewpoints are to be shut out. “In the absence of contrasting views, the very highest form of propaganda warfare can be fought: the propaganda for a definition of reality within which only certain limited viewpoints are possible,” C. Wright Mills wrote. “What is being promulgated and reinforced is the military metaphysics—the cast of mind that defines international reality as basically military.”
This is why people like James Clapper and the bloated military and security and surveillance apparatus must not have unchecked power to conduct wholesale surveillance, to carry out extraordinary renditions and to imprison Americans indefinitely as terrorists. This is why the nation, as our political system remains mired in paralysis, must stop glorifying military values. In times of turmoil the military always seems to be a good alternative. It presents the facade of order. But order in the military, as the people of Egypt are now learning again, is akin to slavery. It is the order of a prison. And that is where Clapper and his fellow generals and intelligence chiefs would like to place any citizen who dares to question their unimpeded right to turn us all into mindless recruits. They have the power to make their demented dreams a reality. And it is our task to take this power from them.
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