Joshua Philipp
There is now a prevailing method of argument that replaces discussion and debate with personal attacks. At its root is the same philosophy used by totalitarian systems and leaders over the 20th century—from Hitler, to Stalin, to Pol Pot—to label members of society as enemies of the regime’s social agendas, and to thus mobilize its citizens in acts of suppression or violence against those targeted. These methods of attack and mobilization have found their way into the arguments of the postmodern left, and traditional liberals seem to be shocked by the emerging problem. British actor and comedian Tom Walker commented on this in a viral video from Nov. 10, shortly after the election of President Donald Trump, and said the same issue had led to Brexit and the Tory majority in Britain. He blamed the left, “because the left have decided that any other opinion, any other way of looking at the world is unacceptable.” The result of this mentality, he said, is that “we don’t debate anymore,” and instead turn to insults and labels. “If you’re on the right, you’re a freak—you’re evil, you’re racist, you are stupid, you are a ‘basket of deplorables.'” “How do you think people are going to vote if you talk to them like that?” he said. Jon Stewart, former host of “The Daily Show,” noted a similar problem during a Nov. 18 interview with CBS about the Trump victory. He said, “There is now this idea that anyone who voted for him has to be defined by the worst of his rhetoric.” Stewart noted that most liberals “hate this idea of creating people as a monolith.” One example, he said, is that you can’t look at Muslims as a monolith, based on negative actions of a few individuals. “But everyone who voted for Trump is a monolith, is a racist. That kind of hypocrisy is also real in our country.” Of course, the avoidance of direct debate was part of the original intention that is causing this new way of thinking—one that groups people into extreme definitions, and bypasses discussion to attack them personally. A New ‘Ideology’The method of debate is rooted in the Marxist idea of “ideology” and is meant to instill an altered worldview reinterpreted through the teachings of Marxism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued that people aren’t in control of their views, and their views are instead formed by the system. All values, concepts, opinions, theories, and beliefs that many of us hold as self-evident are viewed by this theory as products of political developments. The only ideas that are outside this system and should not be reconsidered, under the Marxist ideology, are the teachings of Marx. This is because it portrays its own ideology as being Utopian—the end of human progress. It creates a way of thinking where those who subscribe to Marxist ideology believe they are among the enlightened few, and that all other beliefs and ideas are part of outdated ideologies of the past—things they believe should be discarded or destroyed. “The concept vaulted to unprecedented popularity, primarily because it proved to be a most convenient tool in political conflicts: it allowed discrediting one’s opponents without entering into a substantive argument,” writes former Polish Minister of Education Ryszard Legutko in his book “The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies.” Rather than engage in direct debates and discussion, this new concept taught its adherents to dig out social characteristics of the individual they were speaking with, to reinterpret those characteristics according to the Marxist view of struggle, and then to attack them based on these labels. This concept also pulled in an idea of partisanship proposed by Vladimir Lenin: A person is either for something or against something. Moreover, Lenin’s ideas created the understanding that all things should be viewed only in black and white. The spectrum of ideas and beliefs is narrowed to two opposing extremes, with only socialist ideology being valid. Marxist ideology was used to terrifying effect under nearly all communist regimes, which are estimated to have killed 150 million people worldwide—including 80 million in China, alone—in a single century. Under Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Russia, the enemies were labeled the “bourgeoisie,” “fascists,” “capitalists,” and “Zionists;” under Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party, the enemies were called “rightists,” “counter-revolutionaries,” the “landlord class,” and those who believed in “superstition.” “By being identified as serving the cause of the bourgeoisie, the philosophers, artists, and writers could be arraigned on a charge of being the enemies of the socialist revolution and standing in the way of the future, often with lamentable consequences for the defendants,” Legutko writes. “This practically put an end to any form of intellectual argumentation,” he writes. “No one argued, but either accused someone of ideological treason or defended himself against such a charge.” Marxism in the WestThe Marxist idea of “ideology” was introduced to the West under the guise of “critical theory.” Critical theory was brought to the United States by the Frankfurt School, founded as a Marxist school of social theory and philosophy, which was affiliated with Columbia University in New York from 1935 until after World War II ended, when it returned to Frankfurt. The Frankfurt School has attempted through critical theory to understand knowledge as something that is defined either by a social context or a Utopian goal, not by objective reality. The thinkers in the school have used a variety of perspectives informed by Georg Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and, of course, Marx, although the school has also subjected Marx’s own thought to critical treatment. Dr. John Lenczowski, founder and president of The Institute of World Politics, described critical theory at an event on Jan. 29, 2016, as a “nihilistic Marxist analysis of our society based on its materialism” that tries to alienate people from traditional values. In particular, this analysis targets the United States, which established a “moral order” that gave us international law and global concepts of human rights. During the same event, Michael Walsh, author of “The Devil’s Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West,” explained the concept further. He believes that only by looking at what was behind critical theory can we understand its attacks on freedom of speech, freedom of belief, and our values as a nation. Walsh said that most people, religious or not, believe there are some absolute truths based on the human condition, and that we have developed a code of morals based on this recognition. “That is now under attack.” “What the Frankfurt School tried to do through the mechanism of critical theory, was to undermine your belief in reason,” Walsh said. “They erected a devil’s pleasure palace of illusion to give you the sense that what you previously had believed is no longer true and no longer operable.” “Among the traits of the Frankfurt School is the war on language, and the war on what you can say and what you can’t say, and that is political correctness,” he said. “Political correctness is meant to forbid you from thinking. That’s what it is—it’s fascism of the mind. The theory being if you can’t say it, you won’t think it.” The new ideology is a way of using debate to shut down debate. It’s a way of discrediting people based on their race, beliefs, gender, or creed. And it’s a way of using political labels to dehumanize a person so he or she can be stripped of rights and ultimately silenced.
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In 1945, Hannah Arendt wrote that evil would be the fundamental problem for postwar intellectual inquiry, but do the sheer magnitude of atrocities like Auschwitz defy human capacities for understanding? . "Just as you [Eichmann] supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations—as though you and your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world—we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang". ~ Hannah Arendt. . What's good for the goose is good for the gander states Hannah Arendt, thus subscribing to the secondary mindset that inevitably distils to war and genocide. The execution of Eichmann, the holocaust, the Japanese atrocity, all share a common theme: survival of the fittest – the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life. Arendt upon observing Eichmann found him banal. She was surprised at ‘the banality of evil’ and perplexed as to how totalitarianism could seduce such a person to the depths of evil. To properly understand the nature of evil we must raise our consciousness to awareness of totalitarianism on a level that embraces the higher truth of life: the cosmogonic cycle (Russell, Einstein, Campbell, Tesla etc.): The universe is disappearing to eternity and each return is eternity inside out: a flip-flop between stillness and ultimate magnetic force. Albert Einstein’s Special Relativity explains the physics of eternal disappearance but the information was used expeditiously to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki and thereafter shelved. Nicola Tesla also took us to the precipice of eternal awareness but, again, we ate the icing and left the cake. One must wonder at the contrivance of this for there is no person or group of persons with the sophistication to enact such levels of control. The energetic universe was sparked by resistance to eternity. The resulting annihilation was achieved by the ultimate magnetic force of eternity inside out. And thus, the cycle of life began. The primary resistance is a though-form with an agenda to live and live it does through the secondary result of the universe flashing in and out of the ultimate magnetic field. Please take important note that the primary resistance remains the same as it flashes on/off to serve the demands of the secondary forms of thinking. The primary lives through the secondary life-forms and just as any despot it will not give up its life of ultimate power and control. We are all pawns until we learn better. ~ Tom Kitt. . . At this level of existence "I" am immeasurably old; my forms are infinite and their comings and goings are simply the pulses or vibrations of a single and eternal flow of energy' - Alan Watts. . . Snagged from The New York Times: By STEVEN LEVITSKY and DANIEL ZIBLATT December 16, 2016 Donald J. Trump’s election has raised a question that few Americans ever imagined asking: Is our democracy in danger? With the possible exception of the Civil War, American democracy has never collapsed; indeed, no democracy as rich or as established as America’s ever has. Yet past stability is no guarantee of democracy’s future survival. We have spent two decades studying the emergence and breakdown of democracy in Europe and Latin America. Our research points to several warning signs. The clearest warning sign is the ascent of anti-democratic politicians into mainstream politics. Drawing on a close study of democracy’s demise in 1930s Europe, the eminent political scientist Juan J. Linz designed a “litmus test” to identify anti-democratic politicians. His indicators include a failure to reject violence unambiguously, a readiness to curtail rivals’ civil liberties, and the denial of the legitimacy of elected governments. Mr. Trump tests positive. In the campaign, he encouraged violence among supporters; pledged to prosecute Hillary Clinton; threatened legal action against unfriendly media; and suggested that he might not accept the election results. This anti-democratic behavior has continued since the election. With the false claim that he lost the popular vote because of “millions of people who voted illegally,” Mr. Trump openly challenged the legitimacy of the electoral process. At the same time, he has been remarkably dismissive of United States intelligence agencies’ reports of Russian hacking to tilt the election in his favor. Mr. Trump is not the first American politician with authoritarian tendencies. (Other notable authoritarians include Gov. Huey Long of Louisiana and Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin.) But he is the first in modern American history to be elected president. This is not necessarily because Americans have grown more authoritarian (the United States electorate has always had an authoritarian streak). Rather it’s because the institutional filters that we assumed would protect us from extremists, like the party nomination system and the news media, failed. Many Americans are not overly concerned about Mr. Trump’s authoritarian inclinations because they trust our system of constitutional checks and balances to constrain him. Yet the institutional safeguards protecting our democracy may be less effective than we think. A well-designed constitution is not enough to ensure a stable democracy — a lesson many Latin American independence leaders learned when they borrowed the American constitutional model in the early 19th century, only to see their countries plunge into chaos. Democratic institutions must be reinforced by strong informal norms. Like a pickup basketball game without a referee, democracies work best when unwritten rules of the game, known and respected by all players, ensure a minimum of civility and cooperation. Norms serve as the soft guardrails of democracy, preventing political competition from spiraling into a chaotic, no-holds-barred conflict. Among the unwritten rules that have sustained American democracy are partisan self-restraint and fair play. For much of our history, leaders of both parties resisted the temptation to use their temporary control of institutions to maximum partisan advantage, effectively underutilizing the power conferred by those institutions. There existed a shared understanding, for example, that anti-majoritarian practices like the Senate filibuster would be used sparingly, that the Senate would defer (within reason) to the president in nominating Supreme Court justices, and that votes of extraordinary importance — like impeachment — required a bipartisan consensus. Such practices helped to avoid a descent into the kind of partisan fight to the death that destroyed many European democracies in the 1930s. Yet norms of partisan restraint have eroded in recent decades. House Republicans’ impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 abandoned the idea of bipartisan consensus on impeachment. The filibuster, once a rarity, has become a routine tool of legislative obstruction. As the political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have shown, the decline of partisan restraint has rendered our democratic institutions increasingly dysfunctional. Republicans’ 2011 refusal to raise the debt ceiling, which put America’s credit rating at risk for partisan gain, and the Senate’s refusal this year to consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee — in essence, allowing the Republicans to steal a Supreme Court seat — offer an alarming glimpse at political life in the absence of partisan restraint. Norms of presidential restraint are also at risk. The Constitution’s ambiguity regarding the limits of executive authority can tempt presidents to try and push those limits. Although executive power has expanded in recent decades, it has ultimately been reined in by the prudence and self-restraint of our presidents. Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Trump is a serial norm-breaker. There are signs that Mr. Trump seeks to diminish the news media’s traditional role by using Twitter, video messages and public rallies to circumvent the White House press corps and communicate directly with voters — taking a page out of the playbook of populist leaders like Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. An even more basic norm under threat today is the idea of legitimate opposition. In a democracy, partisan rivals must fully accept one another’s right to exist, to compete and to govern. Democrats and Republicans may disagree intensely, but they must view one another as loyal Americans and accept that the other side will occasionally win elections and lead the country. Without such mutual acceptance, democracy is imperiled. Governments throughout history have used the claim that their opponents are disloyal or criminal or a threat to the nation’s way of life to justify acts of authoritarianism. The idea of legitimate opposition has been entrenched in the United States since the early 19th century, disrupted only by the Civil War. That may now be changing, however, as right-wing extremists increasingly question the legitimacy of their liberal rivals. During the last decade, Ann Coulter wrote best-selling books describing liberals as traitors, and the “birther” movement questioned President Obama’s status as an American. Such extremism, once confined to the political fringes, has now moved into the mainstream. In 2008, the Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin linked Barack Obama to terrorism. This year, the Republican Party nominated a birther as its presidential candidate. Mr. Trump’s campaign centered on the claim that Hillary Clinton was a criminal who should be in jail; and “Lock her up!” was chanted at the Republican National Convention. In other words, leading Republicans — including the president-elect — endorsed the view that the Democratic candidate was not a legitimate rival. The risk we face, then, is not merely a president with illiberal proclivities — it is the election of such a president when the guardrails protecting American democracy are no longer as secure. American democracy is not in imminent danger of collapse. If ordinary circumstances prevail, our institutions will most likely muddle through a Trump presidency. It is less clear, however, how democracy would fare in a crisis. In the event of a war, a major terrorist attack or large-scale riots or protests — all of which are entirely possible — a president with authoritarian tendencies and institutions that have come unmoored could pose a serious threat to American democracy. We must be vigilant. The warning signs are real. -Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are professors of government at Harvard University. A PETITION TO MITIGATE THREATS TO THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF UNSHELTERED INDIVIDUALS IN THE SOUTHERN HUMBOLDT COUNTY AREA BY A DECLARATION OF A SHELTER CRISIS. Whereas; there is an ongoing shortage of adequate housing, a persistent population of transient individuals, and continual disruption of camps used by unhoused individuals in the Southern Humboldt area by law enforcement officers and unofficial agencies that needlessly expose individuals to additional risk to their health and safety. And, Whereas; A de facto state of crisis exists that creates a threat to the health and safety of a significant population, and mitigating action by local government to reduce these risks, for the benefit of the communities affected is required, as specifically allowed by Title 2, Division 1. General Chapter 7.8. Shelter Crisis [8698 - 8698.2] of the California State Government Code. We therefore request: That the elected Supervisors of Humboldt County declare a shelter crisis in Southern Humboldt County, pursuant to Sec.8698 (2) & (d) of the California code That the county identify and designate appropriate public facility in the form of unused land in the Southern Humboldt area pursuant to Sec. 8698 (c) for the establishment of an orderly and self regulated campground for the relief and comfort of an at risk, unhoused population, and declare that a sanctioned tent site significantly improves the safety and security of those individuals affected by a shelter crisis. That the County provide minimal waste disposal service, consistent with the sanitation needs of the campground dwellers and additionally, a rudimentary water storage system be sanctioned, as allowed by the provisions of Sec. 8698.1 (b) That the County Supervisors agree to allow and support an ongoing, self governing compact of tent dwellers that protect their health and safety by collectively working to maintain a clean and and safe environment that benefits those that choose to participate and causes no impact to those who do not. GOVERNMENT CODE SECTION 8698-8698.2 8698. For purposes of this chapter, the following definitions shall apply: (a) "Political subdivision" includes the state, any city, city and county, county, special district, or school district or public agency authorized by law (b)"Governing body" means the following: (1) The Governor for the state. (2) The legislative body for a city or city and county. (3) The board of supervisors for a county. (4) The governing board or board of trustees for a district or other public agency. 5) An official designated by ordinance or resolution adopted by a governing body, as defined in paragraph (2), (3), or (4). (c) "Public facility" means any facility of a political subdivision including parks, schools, and vacant or underutilized facilities which are owned, operated, leased, or maintained, or any combination thereof, by the political subdivision through money derived by taxation or assessment. (d) "Declaration of a shelter crisis" means the duly proclaimed existence of a situation in which a significant number of persons are without the ability to obtain shelter, resulting in a threat to their health and safety. 8698.1. Upon a declaration of a shelter crisis, the following provisions shall apply during the period of the emergency. (a) The political subdivision shall be immune from liability for ordinary negligence in the provision of emergency housing pursuant to Section 8698.2. This limitation of liability shall apply only to conditions, acts, or omissions directly related to, and which would not occur but for, the provision of emergency housing. This section does not limit liability for grossly negligent, reckless, or intentional conduct which causes injury. (b) The provisions of any state or local regulatory statute, regulation, or ordinance prescribing standards of housing, health, or safety shall be suspended to the extent that strict compliance would in any way prevent, hinder, or delay the mitigation of the effects of the shelter crisis. Political subdivisions may, in place of such standards, enact municipal health and safety standards to be operative during the housing emergency consistent with ensuring minimal public health and safety. The provisions of this section apply only to additional public facilities open to the homeless pursuant to this chapter. 8698.2. (a) (1) The governing body may declare a shelter crisis, and may take such action as is necessary to carry out the provisions of this chapter, upon a finding by that governing body that a significant number of persons within the jurisdiction of the governing body are without the ability to obtain shelter, and that the situation has resulted in a threat to the health and safety of those persons. (2) For purposes of this chapter, the governing body of the state, in making a declaration of a shelter crisis pursuant to paragraph (1), may limit that declaration to any geographical portion of the state. (b) Upon a declaration of a shelter crisis pursuant to subdivision (a), the political subdivision may allow persons unable to obtain housing to occupy designated public facilities during the duration of the state of emergency. Beneath Fading Flags
1 Weaving through the front lines, Broadway south-bound, a reflection of our culture's decay, I notice a consistent fading of sticky patriotic flag ads, on lifted, mud-baptized 4x4 bumpers. Stars and blue, red lines blurred, worn to white, like Illusions of separateness. The most sentimental beings venture from fruitful forests roaming forgotten streets for coffee, beside bohemian guitars empathetically escorting wheel chairs to a remedy. Weathered street wanderers surviving on scraps migrate to huddle in that hacked-up Humboldt alleyway, across from the filth's glistening cage, beneath a mural depicting farm folk laughing ironically with grinning neighbors who appear helpful, contrasting the entirety of their Hand-me-down reality, in tattered, tortured souls, concrete camping, I watch them, watching Posh bank tellers counting their Cache of cash, as a status-pearl-parade comes prancing proudly through polished, bullet-proof glass, concerned mostly for soul-paralyzing stilettos, but I notice them not noticing the cracks. 2 The nearer we close in on another beginning again the more often I notice a survival split You either work for the system, or to dismantle it. I stumble from establishment to establishment where podiums are warm and hallow while gunfire hammers against a dulled-florescent-lit fog Old-Paradigm Professors wallow in anger, Luna observes in confusion, Inspiring me to muster up a smile just to marinate in variations of Housewife anthems, and other ignorance's I couldn't claim, that inspires the perpetuation of this species-disconnect- feeling. Sullen super-psychic souls grow to find acceptance in alienation, for life's not what past generations were trained to make it. They warn “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” Same fear-based plots re-branded, same industries enabled, same frail, male dominator cults genetically modifying natural law, and at interest, selling us our free will. So I just retreat to the interior of my eyelids The safest place I have ever been, Where compassion is confirmed, Vivacious colors twirl and spin Textures communicate, My abstractions, legitimate. Shakti It is being widely publicized on the corporate (and "public") media that the Republicans control both houses of Congress and almost every governor's mansion in the country. What is somewhat less widely publicized is the fact that now, as usual, the vast majority of US cities are controlled by the Democratic Party. In most cases, US city governments are essentially one-party institutions, where the Republicans don't even bother putting up a fight, since they never win. And there's a clear pattern in terms of the governance of all of these cities, and it goes like this: the more the rents go up, the more shrill the rhetoric of the ruling Democratic Party politicians get. And who are they criticizing with such enthusiasm? The real estate speculators and gentrifying developers who are primarily responsible for the growing misery? Or maybe the 48 (out of 50) Republican-controlled state governments which have banned rent control in their states? No. They prefer safe targets. Ones that don't affect the bottom lines of the real estate profiteers that bought their political offices for them. They acknowledge that we are having a rent crisis, a housing crisis, and still suffering from the long-term aftermath of the foreclosure crisis. But they say their hands are tied, nothing much they can do. Other than making it easier for the developers to build more "low-income" housing -- in actual terms meaning far above the median income. It is Orwellian doublespeak. And why not go ahead and break state law and impose some desperately-needed legal controls over the cost of housing? Simple. Because these supposedly progressive Democratic politicians don't give a shit about us. They are bought and sold by real estate developers and other rich people, and they govern on behalf of these scum. In the 1980's, in response to rising property taxes, property owners formed a lobby, and the Reagan administration passed a law that limited the annual rise in property taxes across the country to 1%. Why has such a law never been passed for renters? Because both parties rule on behalf of the (bigger) property owners, not the lowly renters. The proof is in the pudding. If these politicians cared about the working class, they would immediately break state laws across the country and institute sensible forms of rent control. In doing this, they would become tremendously popular among the working class residents of their cities. They could change the face of the country. And then of course they would become objects of hatred, victims of smear campaigns led by the real estate developers and property speculators who they would have just betrayed. Portland has lost most of it's African-American population in between the last two censuses, and statistics in San Francisco, Seattle and elsewhere are similar. If these Democratic politicians cared about Black people, they'd institute rent control. Instead, they'll take what they see as the safe road. They know that most of their constituencies hate Trump and the Republican establishment. They know that most of their constituencies are life-long Democrats with egalitarian impulses, who voted for Obama, who believe in an inclusive society. So they'll focus on things we can all agree on -- racism and sexism and fascism are bad. We stand against these things. What do we stand for? Who the fuck knows. Hope and change, or something. Entrepreneurship. Small business. The middle class, whatever the fuck that is. But Mexicans, African-Americans, Native Americans, Asians, poor people, and women who are all struggling to make ends meet, who desperately need governments to intervene on their behalf, against the rapacious greed of the landlord class, the big banks, etc.? Fuck them. The mayor of Portland, the mayor of Seattle, the mayor of New York City, the mayor of Boston -- that's what they would be saying if they were honest. Fuck them. We don't give a shit. Now go protest against Trump and the governor of North Carolina and racism and sexism some more -- just don't pay any attention to the landlord behind the curtain. John Pilger: I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they ask, “Where is that?” If I offer a clue by referring to “Bikini”, they say, “You mean the swimsuit.” Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini island. Sixty-six nuclear devices were exploded by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 – the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years. Bikini is silent today, mutated and contaminated. Palm trees grow in a strange grid formation. Nothing moves. There are no birds. The headstones in the old cemetery are alive with radiation. My shoes registered “unsafe” on a Geiger counter. Standing on the beach, I watched the emerald green of the Pacific fall away into a vast black hole. This was the crater left by the hydrogen bomb they called “Bravo”. The explosion poisoned people and their environment for hundreds of miles, perhaps forever. On my return journey, I stopped at Honolulu airport and noticed an American magazine called Women’s Health. On the cover was a smiling woman in a bikini swimsuit, and the headline: “You, too, can have a bikini body.” A few days earlier, in the Marshall Islands, I had interviewed women who had very different “bikini bodies”; each had suffered thyroid cancer and other life-threatening cancers. Unlike the smiling woman in the magazine, all of them were impoverished: the victims and guinea pigs of a rapacious superpower that is today more dangerous than ever. I relate this experience as a warning and to interrupt a distraction that has consumed so many of us. The founder of modern propaganda, Edward Bernays, described this phenomenon as “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the habits and opinions” of democratic societies. He called it an “invisible government”. How many people are aware that a world war has begun? At present, it is a war of propaganda, of lies and distraction, but this can change instantaneously with the first mistaken order, the first missile. In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the center of Prague, in the heart of Europe. He pledged himself to make “the world free from nuclear weapons”. People cheered and some cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It was all fake. He was lying. US president Barack Obama. The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over thirty years is more than $1 trillion. A mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, “Going smaller [makes using this nuclear] weapon more thinkable.” In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two – led by the United States – is taking place along Russia’s western frontier. Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia. Ukraine – once part of the Soviet Union – has become a CIA theme park. Having orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally. Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the persecution and expulsion of the Russian speaking minority. This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth. In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – next door to Russia – the US military is deploying combat troops, tanks, heavy weapons. This extreme provocation of the world’s second nuclear power is met with silence in the West. What makes the prospect of nuclear war even more dangerous is a parallel campaign against China. Seldom a day passes when China is not elevated to the status of a “threat”. According to Admiral Harry Harris, the US Pacific commander, China is “building a great wall of sand in the South China Sea”. What he is referring to is China building airstrips in the Spratly Islands, which are the subject of a dispute with the Philippines – a dispute without priority until Washington pressured and bribed the government in Manila and the Pentagon launched a propaganda campaign called “freedom of navigation”. What does this really mean? It means freedom for American warships to patrol and dominate the coastal waters of China. Try to imagine the American reaction if Chinese warships did the same off the coast of California. I made a film called The War You Don’t See, in which I interviewed distinguished journalists in America and Britain: reporters such as Dan Rather of CBS, Rageh Omar of the BBC, David Rose of the Observer. All of them said that had journalists and broadcasters done their job and questioned the propaganda that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction; had the lies of George W. Bush and Tony Blair not been amplified and echoed by journalists, the 2003 invasion of Iraq might not have happened, and hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today. The propaganda laying the ground for a war against Russia and/or China is no different in principle. To my knowledge, no journalist in the Western “mainstream” – a Dan Rather equivalent, say – asks why China is building airstrips in the South China Sea. The answer ought to be glaringly obvious. The United States is encircling China with a network of bases, with ballistic missiles, battle groups, nuclear-armed bombers. This lethal arc extends from Australia to the islands of the Pacific, the Marianas and the Marshalls and Guam, to the Philippines, Thailand, Okinawa, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India. America has hung a noose around the neck of China. This is not news. Silence by media; war by media. In 2015, in high secrecy, the US and Australia staged the biggest single air-sea military exercise in recent history, known as Talisman Sabre. Its aim was to rehearse an Air-Sea Battle Plan, blocking sea lanes, such as the Straits of Malacca and the Lombok Straits, that cut off China’s access to oil, gas and other vital raw materials from the Middle East and Africa. Donald Trump speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. In the circus known as the American presidential campaign, Donald Trump is being presented as a lunatic, a fascist. He is certainly odious; but he is also a media hate figure. That alone should arouse our skepticism. Trump’s views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than those of David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama. According to one prodigious liberal commentator, Trump is “unleashing the dark forces of violence” in the United States. Unleashing them? This is the country where toddlers shoot their mothers and the police wage a murderous war against black Americans. This is the country that has attacked and sought to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democracies, and bombed from Asia to the Middle East, causing the deaths and dispossession of millions of people. No country can equal this systemic record of violence. Most of America’s wars (almost all of them against defenseless countries) have been launched not by Republican presidents but by liberal Democrats: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama. In 1947, a series of National Security Council directives described the paramount aim of American foreign policy as “a world substantially made over in [America’s] own image”. The ideology was messianic Americanism. We were all Americans. Or else. Heretics would be converted, subverted, bribed, smeared or crushed. Donald Trump is a symptom of this, but he is also a maverick. He says the invasion of Iraq was a crime; he doesn’t want to go to war with Russia and China. The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted “exceptionalism” is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face. As presidential election day draws near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of her crimes and lies – just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about “hope”. And the drool goes on. Described by the Guardian columnist Owen Jones as “funny, charming, with a coolness that eludes practically every other politician”, Obama the other day sent drones to slaughter 150 people in Somalia. He kills people usually on Tuesdays, according to the New York Times, when he is handed a list of candidates for death by drone. So cool. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran with nuclear weapons. As Secretary of State under Obama, she participated in the overthrow of the democratic government of Honduras. Her contribution to the destruction of Libya in 2011 was almost gleeful. When the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, was publicly sodomised with a knife – a murder made possible by American logistics – Clinton gloated over his death: “We came, we saw, he died.” One of Clinton’s closest allies is Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State, who has attacked young women for not supporting “Hillary”. This is the same Madeleine Albright who infamously celebrated on TV the death of half a million Iraqi children as “worth it”. Among Clinton’s biggest backers are the Israel lobby and the arms companies that fuel the violence in the Middle East. She and her husband have received a fortune from Wall Street. And yet, she is about to be ordained the women’s candidate, to see off the evil Trump, the official demon. Her supporters include distinguished feminists: the likes of Gloria Steinem in the US and Anne Summers in Australia. A generation ago, a post-modern cult now known as “identity politics” stopped many intelligent, liberal-minded people examining the causes and individuals they supported – such as the fakery of Obama and Clinton; such as bogus progressive movements like Syriza in Greece, which betrayed the people of that country and allied with their enemies. Self-absorption, a kind of “me-ism”, became the new zeitgeist in privileged western societies and signaled the demise of great collective movements against war, social injustice, inequality, racism and sexism. What has happened to the great tradition of popular direct action, unfettered to parties? Where is the courage, imagination and commitment required to begin the long journey to a better, just and peaceful world? Where are the dissidents in art, film, the theatre, literature? Where are those who will shatter the silence? Or do we wait until the first nuclear missile is fired? -An edited version of an address given by John Pilger at the University of Sydney JohnPilger.com – the films and journalism of John Pilger George Monbiot What greater indictment of a system could there be than an epidemic of mental illness? Yet plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social phobia, eating disorders, self-harm and loneliness now strike people down all over the world. The latest, catastrophic figures for children’s mental health in England reflect a global crisis. Despite the collective efforts of schools, social workers and hospitals, children and parents speak of reduced services unable to help patients until their condition becomes critical. Here, 20 readers talk about their experiences There are plenty of secondary reasons for this distress, but it seems to me that the underlying cause is everywhere the same: human beings, the ultrasocial mammals, whose brains are wired to respond to other people, are being peeled apart. Economic and technological change play a major role, but so does ideology. Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme individualism. In Britain, men who have spent their entire lives in quadrangles – at school, at college, at the bar, in parliament – instruct us to stand on our own two feet. The education system becomes more brutally competitive by the year. Employment is a fight to the near-death with a multitude of other desperate people chasing ever fewer jobs. The modern overseers of the poor ascribe individual blame to economic circumstance. Endless competitions on television feed impossible aspirations as real opportunities contract. Consumerism fills the social void. But far from curing the disease of isolation, it intensifies social comparison to the point at which, having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing, and to see that other people have more friends and followers than we do. As Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett has brilliantly documented, girls and young women routinely alter the photos they post to make themselves look smoother and slimmer. Some phones, using their “beauty” settings, do it for you without asking; now you can become your own thinspiration. Welcome to the post-Hobbesian dystopia: a war of everyone against themselves. Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing Is it any wonder, in these lonely inner worlds, in which touching has been replaced by retouching, that young women are drowning in mental distress? A recent survey in England suggests that one in four women between 16 and 24 have harmed themselves, and one in eight now suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Anxiety, depression, phobias or obsessive compulsive disorder affect 26% of women in this age group. This is what a public health crisis looks like. If social rupture is not treated as seriously as broken limbs, it is because we cannot see it. But neuroscientists can. A series of fascinating papers suggest that social pain and physical pain are processed by the same neural circuits. This might explain why, in many languages, it is hard to describe the impact of breaking social bonds without the words we use to denote physical pain and injury. In both humans and other social mammals, social contact reduces physical pain. This is why we hug our children when they hurt themselves: affection is a powerful analgesic. Opioids relieve both physical agony and the distress of separation. Perhaps this explains the link between social isolation and drug addiction. Experiments summarised in the journal Physiology & Behaviour last month suggest that, given a choice of physical pain or isolation, social mammals will choose the former. Capuchin monkeys starved of both food and contact for 22 hours will rejoin their companions before eating. Children who experience emotional neglect, according to some findings, suffer worse mental health consequences than children suffering both emotional neglect and physical abuse: hideous as it is, violence involves attention and contact. Self-harm is often used as an attempt to alleviate distress: another indication that physical pain is not as bad as emotional pain. As the prison system knows only too well, one of the most effective forms of torture is solitary confinement. Lancet Commission report criticises lack of attention paid to young people’s health around the world It is not hard to see what the evolutionary reasons for social pain might be. Survival among social mammals is greatly enhanced when they are strongly bonded with the rest of the pack. It is the isolated and marginalised animals that are most likely to be picked off by predators, or to starve. Just as physical pain protects us from physical injury, emotional pain protects us from social injury. It drives us to reconnect. But many people find this almost impossible. It’s unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated with depression, suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat. It’s more surprising to discover the range of physical illnesses it causes or exacerbates. Dementia, high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses, even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people. Loneliness has a comparable impact on physical health to smoking 15 cigarettes a day: it appears to raise the risk of early death by 26%. This is partly because it enhances production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system. Studies in both animals and humans suggest a reason for comfort eating: isolation reduces impulse control, leading to obesity. As those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are the most likely to suffer from loneliness, might this provide one of the explanations for the strong link between low economic status and obesity? Anyone can see that something far more important than most of the issues we fret about has gone wrong. So why are we engaging in this world-eating, self-consuming frenzy of environmental destruction and social dislocation, if all it produces is unbearable pain? Should this question not burn the lips of everyone in public life? There are some wonderful charities doing what they can to fight this tide, some of which I am going to be working with as part of my loneliness project. But for every person they reach, several others are swept past. This does not require a policy response. It requires something much bigger: the reappraisal of an entire worldview. Of all the fantasies human beings entertain, the idea that we can go it alone is the most absurd and perhaps the most dangerous. We stand together or we fall apart. 10/3/2016 John Hardin's blog: https://lygsbtd.wordpress.com/2016/10/03/landlords-threaten-last-bastion-of-hippie-culture-in-sohum/#comment-4061 In this is the season of recurring conflict, big change is in the air. As the heart of town continues its face-lift of gentrification. Despite the caging of the town square; ‘undesirable’ people in the community continue to cause repulsion to the ‘desirable’ as the former’s rights and dignity are abused by the latter- from the simply houseless and tragically mentally ill, to those damaged by drug abuse all are guilty of being seen in public. Testimony by displaced people (documented by Paul- an example of some of the service he attempts) describes a pattern of abuse and theft carried out by vigilantism, that includes the participation of a prominent second Gen landlord. The abuse usually strategically stops short of actual physical assault, with perpetrators relying on the fact that the victims lack the resources to pursue due process for relief or justice.Winter storms will soon wash the streets clean again, and our local social ills will be forgotten for a time, by those that hunker down and endure the wet season in the privacy of their cozy shelters and those who trek to warm, exotic distraction to avoid the discomfort of winter. Some will not have the luxury to forget.Local ‘High Hippie’ Culture, often referred to as: ‘we’, as in “When we got here....” and easily defined by 1970’s new-settlers, with middle class upbringings, college education and lifestyles subsidized by the then generous social supports of “the war on poverty,” Is safely in denial about the struggles at street level of survival in a land hostile to the “underprivileged.”The word “Hippie” is used proudly to describe the roots of those now in their sunset years who glowingly recount the glory days of struggle and growth that built the local institutions and customs we take for granted. The founders of the local institutions that won the double lottery of low land prices, and the underground weed boom that spawned the dope yuppies John describes so well. With a wink and a nod, no one can deny that the local economy is powered by money laundered through business and real estate investment. Just as a real understanding of history and society can’t deny that poverty, hunger, drug abuse and the lack of housing are the real products of the political economy we are all part of. Though described by John as the last bastion of Hippie culture, Paul’s Bohemianism- The practice of an unconventional lifestyle, in the company of like-minded people, involving artistic, or literary pursuits, wanderers, adventurers, or vagabonds, predated Hippie culture- A Jesuit training in morals, philosophy, and history drove his personal revolution that later identified him as Hippie. The deep roots of social equality, justice, peace, and non-violence have informed his life. The business of books, was never entered upon as a path to wealth, but as a path of life. True Hippie culture was defined by the work of the Diggers who took their name from the original English Diggers of 1649-50 who promulgated a vision of society free from private property, and all forms of buying and selling. The San Francisco Diggers evolved out of two Radical traditions that thrived in the SF Bay Area in the mid-1960s: the bohemian/underground art/theater scene, and the New Left/civil rights/peace movement. The diggers fed hungry people, helped people who were sick- and increasingly they were- Media popularized the mystique of Hippie, and the summer of love, later recalled in utopian terms was the beginning of the end. The Haight-Ashbury district could not handle the amount of kids that invaded the region in 1967 looking for free love, mind expanding drugs and spiritual empowerment. Overcrowded conditions caused many to live on the streets and contributed to widespread illness. Overcrowding, and drug abuse use brought with it the problems of overdosing and crime. Speed and alcohol in particular, caused an increase in more violent crimes. Most of the kids that descended upon the Haight with hope and optimism in June returned home sick and out of money by September. By the fall of 1967, Haight-Ashbury was nearly abandoned, trashed, and laden with drugs and homeless people. The intellectual cultural creatives were always in the minority- most just came for the party. On October 8th 1967 The Diggers held a funeral march commemorating the death of the Hippie, proclaiming: "Stay where you are! Bring the revolution to where you live." even as the exodus from the chaos of the city led people “back to the land.”Hippie fashion and music, continued, but the prime directive of the movement went beyond those trappings co-opted by Madison Avenue to capitalize on the “youth-quake.” that distracted most from the reality of the escalating Vietnam war.Paul is described as the last bastion because commerce has won; education is an unaffordable commodity, idealistic social progress has become just another losing political slogan, and Business concerns trump humanity. The local institutions that were built with progressive social ideals, have become just that- Institutions, with all the issues and politics that inspired the questioning of authority to begin with. Disgruntled and angry neighbors, self righteous landlords, and intolerant locals are the forces creating the new Garberville, while the commons, privatized, have been lost. Paul, as loyal opposition, is pushed to the fringe of the new establishment he has been instrumental in building- for the unsavory act of caring for social justice.And still people are without shelter, hungry, cold, crazed and addicted, and still are we at war.No matter the hook for eviction, or the way it is spun, for a few, the important headline will be: "Octogenarian intellectual; international peace maker, community activist, writer and publisher- an advocate for the rights of downtrodden at risk community members, serving generations- whose long time activist partners sudden death was quickly followed by the lengthy illness and demise of their youngest child, is thrown out of his long established bookstore, for his tolerance and selfless service to victims of the gentrification and arbitrary standards of a merchant class in a community at odds with economic and social reality.” I’ve become aware, via cultural osmosis of a strange phenomenon. I’m not sure if the phenomenon is more disturbing than the fact that I know about it in such detail, or why. I was never much of a computer game enthusiast, and always wondered why anyone over the age of 12 would be. A tech savvy friend once described these games as “very sophisticated waiting.” The amount of time and energy spent navigating comic book worlds, solely created to pull profit from a devotional fan base is puzzling. In my day, the age of coin operated arcade games like pong and tank, I preferred air hockey, or pin ball- a tangible object made for a more satisfying expenditure of a quarter. The video game style that most appealed to me were cerebral, like the moon landing simulation, the lander depicted as a tiny illuminated stick figure that was sensitive to the forces of thrust, and the mystifying gravity of the moon, The only goal was to finesse the controls in a way that enabled a smooth touch down, no shooting lasers, no monsters no killing or capturing. Unlike me, my best buddy was a genius computer nerd, and there- by trustworthy enough to have keys to a community timeshare mainframe. We could get stoned on a late night bike ride and hang out at ‘The Peoples Computer Center’- A small store front operation that had some desks, chairs and couches in the front, a couple of banks of teletype terminals, and in the back an air conditioned windowed room that held the whirring refrigerator sized electronic brain. The game that interest me was the game called ‘Life.’ You would establish various parameters, and then enable your organism. The teletype would then begin the process of depicting with lines and symbols the geometric progression of your life form according to the program you established. Geometric patterns of growth emerged as the terminal clicked away...OK we were stoned, and waiting, waiting to grow up, waiting for more real life. So Pokemon Go is in the news, I know about it because people have been falling off cliffs, walking into traffic, being mugged and other strange viral behavior, apparently everywhere, very quickly. Of course I had to read about it, who wouldn’t. I guess I can understand the compulsion, the technolgy is intriguing- Enhanced reality, oh my. But lets get serious. Walking around with your nose on a slab of technology is a pretty low way to spend your time- Zero creativity, hardly an original thought is really required, and the goal- I’m not really even sure, as I’m not interested enough to care, but it seems like this stuff is being taken really seriously. My mind goes to the outlandish, and if anyone uses this, send me some royalties! What if this games GPS driven enhanced reality expands into. say point-of-view shooter games, or even POV malicious refrigerated trucks? Would there be people virtually machine gunning cartoon terrorists in public places, while not watching where they’re going, not interacting with fellow players, or maybe worse teaming up and creating virtual lynch mobs to root out the virtual guilty. The moral compass of this kind of gaming gets a little dicey. My proposed game is a Zombie hunt, where all those playing Pokemon Go have zombie attributes superimposed onto them by enhanced reality, and the goal is a brain shot, to put down the hapless fools that insist on playing this ridiculous game. Oh, but that creates another ridiculous game, that spawns another crowd of the hapless. Virus like, this thing has legs. Just wait till the drones get involved... Ah, Life. -Joshua Golden |
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February 2018
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