Category Archives: Corruption

Thinking Dangerously in the Age of Normalized Ignorance

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By Henry Giroux

Source: CounterPunch

What happens to a society when thinking is eviscerated and is disdained in favor of raw emotion? [1] What happens when political discourse functions as a bunker rather than a bridge? What happens when the spheres of morality and spirituality give way to the naked instrumentalism of a savage market rationality? What happens when time becomes a burden for most people and surviving becomes more crucial than trying to lead a life with dignity? What happens when domestic terrorism, disposability, and social death become the new signposts and defining features of a society? What happens to a social order ruled by an “economics of contempt” that blames the poor for their condition and wallows in a culture of shaming?[2] What happens when loneliness and isolation become the preferred modes of sociality? What happens to a polity when it retreats into private silos and is no longer able to connect personal suffering with larger social issues? What happens to thinking when a society is addicted to speed and over-stimulation? What happens to a country when the presiding principles of a society are violence and ignorance? What happens is that democracy withers not just as an ideal but also as a reality, and individual and social agency become weaponized as part of the larger spectacle and matrix of violence?[3]

The forces normalizing and contributing to such violence are too expansive to cite, but surely they would include: the absurdity of celebrity culture; the blight of rampant consumerism; state-legitimated pedagogies of repression that kill the imagination of students; a culture of immediacy in which accelerated time leaves no room for reflection; the reduction of education to training; the transformation of mainstream media into a mix of advertisements, propaganda, and entertainment; the emergence of an economic system which argues that only the market can provide remedies for the endless problems it produces, extending from massive poverty and unemployment to decaying schools and a war on poor minority youth; the expanding use of state secrecy and the fear-producing surveillance state; and a Hollywood fluff machine that rarely relies on anything but an endless spectacle of mind-numbing violence. Historical memory has been reduced to the likes of a Disney theme park and a culture of instant gratification has a lock on producing new levels of social amnesia.

As we learned in the recent debate between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton (a billionaire and millionaire), ignorance is the DNA of authoritarianism, serving to subvert the truth and obscure the workings of power. Willful ignorance has become a normalized political tool and form of public pedagogy that both provides the foundation for what Noam Chomsky labels as the rise of the “stupid party” and which works incessantly to create a “stupid nation.”[4]Trump, of course, proves that stupidity is in fashion and deeply entrenched within the larger culture while Hilary capitalizes on her penchant for disingenuousness by claiming support for policies she really disdains, i.e., stating she will raise taxes on her buddies from Goldman Sachs and other members of the financial elite. Hardly believable from a woman who “has earned millions of dollars from speeches to Wall Street banks and investment firms (and) was paid $675,000 for a series of speeches to Goldman Sachs.”[5] No hints of the radical imagination here, or the truth for that matter. Only the politics of stupidity and evasion and a media spectacle supporting the celebration of corrupted and limited and pathologized political horizons.

Manufactured ignorance also makes invisible the corruption of the financial elite, allowing them to plunder resources and define the accumulation of capital as a divine blessing. It gets worse. Manufactured ignorance aided by the voracious seductions of commodified corporate-driven disimagination machine that promotes a culture of empty pleasures through and endless regime of consuming and discarding. American society is now dominated by a pervasive commodified landscape of disimagination machines that extends from Hollywood movies and video games to mainstream television, magazines, news, and the social media. These mind-numbing desiring machines which thrive on speed and sensation function mostly as workstations of ignorance to create a fog of distractions that promote forms of social amnesia that erase from memory and public discourse the structural, systemic and social forces that reinforce what can be called organized powerlessness and massive human suffering. This is the stuff of a politics of disappearance that erases the presence of the poor, unemployed, the “approximately 11 million Americans cycle[d] through jails and prisons each year,” black youth, immigrants, ecological disasters, class warfare, acts of state sponsored terrorism, the rise of the police state, and the rise of the warfare state.[6] As the machinery of social death accelerates, America’s most precious investment, youth, also disappear. As neoliberal disimagination machines such as Fox News make clear youth as a social investment no longer count in a society that disdains long term investments and their messy calls for being included in the script of democracy. As such, the current war on youth is about erasing the future, at least any alternative future and any notion of imagination that might summon one into view.

When coupled with an age of precarity and endless uncertainty in which young people have few decent jobs, are strangulated by debt, face a future of career-less jobs, and isolation, young people have little room for politics because they are more concerned with trying to survive rather than engaging in political struggles, or imagining a different future. At the same time, armies of the unemployed or underemployed are caught in a spiral of receding wages, diminished social provisions, and increasingly find themselves paralyzed by anxiety and free-floating anger. In such situations, thinking and informed action become more difficult while a politics wedded to economic and social justice is eviscerated. Moreover, politics becomes toxic when dominated by unapologetic discourses of racism and hatred and is on full display in the Trump campaign. Tapping into such anger and redirecting away from the real problems that produce it has become the central script in the rise of the new authoritarians. This poisonous discourse gains momentum and accelerates as it moves between white supremacist incantations of Trump and his zealots and the deceptive vocabulary of Hillary Clinton and her financial elite backers who embrace a savage neoliberalism with its false claims to freedom, choice, and the virtues of militarization. Civic death is on full display as the ideals of democracy disappear in an election in which authoritarianism in its various forms rules without apology. As thinking dangerously and acting with civic courage wanes, state violence, disposability and voicelessness become the dominant registers of an authoritarian politics that has intensified in American life producing neo-fascist movements in American society that have moved from the fringes to the center of political life.

Tragedy looms large in American society as the forces that promote powerlessness and voicelessness intensify among those elements of the population struggling just to survive the symbolic violence of a culture of cruelty and the material violence of a punishing state. The issue of losing one’s voice either to the forces of imposed silencing or state repression weaken dissent and open the door to the seductions of a dogmatism that speaks in the language of decline, making America great again, while touting the coded vocabulary of white nationalism and racial purity. How else to explain Trump’s call for imposing racial profiling as a way to boost the notion of law and order.

Thinking undangerously is the first step in the triumph of formalism over substance, theater over politics, and the transformation of politics into a form of celebrity culture. The refusal to think works in the service of a form of voicelessness, which is another marker of what it means to be powerless. Within this moral and political vacuum, the codes, rhetoric, and language of white supremacy is on the rise wrapped in the spectacle of fear-mongering and implied threats of state repression. In this instance, emotion become more important than reason, ideas lose their grip on reality, and fashion becomes a rationale for discarding historical memory, informed arguments, and critical thought. Reflection no longer challenges the demands of commonsense. In the mainstream media, the endless and unapologetic proliferation of lies become fodder for higher ratings, informed by suffocating pastiche of talking heads, all of whom surrender to “the incontestable demands of quiet acceptance.”[7]Within such an environment, the truth of an event is not open to public discussion or informed judgment at least in the official media apparatuses producing, distributing and circulating ideas that parade as commonsense. As a result, all that remains is the fog of ignorance and the haze of political and moral indifference.

Americans occupy a historical moment in which it is crucial to think dangerously, particularly since such thinking has the power to shift the questions, provide the tools for offering historical and relational contexts, and “push at the frontiers…of the human imagination.”[8]Stuart Hall is right in insisting that thinking dangerously is crucial “to change the scale of magnification. … to break into the confusing fabric that ‘the real’ apparently presents, and find another way in. So it’s like a microscope and until you look at the evidence through the microscope, you can’t see the hidden relations.”[9] In this instance, the critical capacity for thinking becomes dangerous when it can intervene in the “continuity of commonsense, unsettle strategies of domination,” and work to promote strategies of transformation.[10]

As Adorno observes, such thinking “speaks for what is not narrow-minded—and commonsense most certainly is.”[11] As such, dangerous thinking is not only analytical in its search for understanding and truth, it is also critical and subversive, always employing modes of self and social critique necessary to examine its own grounds and those poisonous fundamentalisms in the larger society haunting the body politic. As Michael Payne observes, thinking dangerously (or critical theory in this instance) should be cast in the language of hints, dialogue, and an openness to other positions, rather than be “cast in the language of orders.”[12] Of course, this is not to suggest that thinking dangerously guarantees action, but at the same time, any action that distances itself from such thinking is bound to fail.

In an age when shouting, rage, and unchecked emotions shape public discourse, self-reflection becomes a liability and suppresses the axiom that critical thought should function to “lift…human beings above the evidence of our senses and sets appearances apart from the truth.”[13]   Salmon Rushdie is right in viewing thinking dangerously as a type of political necessity whose purpose is to “push boundaries and take risks and so, at times, to change the way we see the world.”[14] As Hannah Arendt noted, thoughtfulness, the ability to think reflectively and critically is fundamental to radical change and a necessity in a functioning democracy. Put differently, formative cultures that make such thinking possible along with the spaces in which dialogue, debate, and dissent can flourish are essential to producing critically literate and actively engaged citizens.

Unfortunately, thinking undangerously cuts across ideological and political divides. For instance, there is a new kind of historical and social amnesia overtaking some elements of resistance in the United States. Many progressives have forgotten the lessons of earlier movements for real change extending from the anti-Vietnam War and Black Freedom movements to the radical feminist and gay rights movements of the sixties. History as a repository of learning with vast resources to enable people to build on historical legacies, develop mass movements, and take seriously the pedagogical task of consciousness raising, is in decline. Too much of contemporary politics has become more personal, often reducing agency to the discourses and highly charged emotions of trauma. These historical legacies of resistance did not limit their politics to a call recognition and security within the confines of isolated political issues. Instead, they called for a radical transformation of capitalist and other authoritarian societies. Moroever, they understood that the truth of domination lie in understanding the totality of a society and how various issues were connected to each other. George Monbiot exemplifies this issue in arguing against responding to the varied crisis associated with neoliberalism as if they emerged in isolation—a response that contributes to neoliberalism’s anonymity. He writes:

Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007?8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalyzed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?[15]

This politics of the disconnect is exacerbated by the fact that mass social movements run the risk of undermining by a politics that has collapsed into the personal. For example, for too many progressives personal pain represents a retreat into an interiority that focuses on trauma. Robin Kelley provides a caveat here in pointing out that all too often “managing trauma does not require dismantling structural racism” and the larger issues of “oppression, repression, and subjugation” get replaced with “words such as PTSD, micro-aggressions, and triggers.” [16] Kelley is not suggesting that the pain of personal suffering be ignored. Instead, he warns “against … the consequences of framing all grievances in the ‘language of personaltrauma.’”[17]

Personal trauma in this case can begin with legitimate calls for spaces free of racism, sexual harassment, and various other forms of hidden but morally and politically unacceptable assaults. And at its best, such a politics functions as an entry into political activism; but when it becomes less a justifiable starting point than an endpoint it begins to sabotage any viable notion of radical politics. Kelley is right in insisting that “trauma can easily slip into thinking of ourselves as victims and objects rather than agents.”[18] Moreover, the language of safe spaces, personal trauma, and triggers can easily become a topsy-turvy discursive universe of trick mirrors and trapdoors that end up reproducing a politics of intimidation and conformity, while forgetting that pedagogical practices and a corresponding politics in the service of dramatic transformation are always unsettling and discomforting.

Progressives must avoid at all cost is the rebirth of a politics in which how we think and act is guaranteed by the discourses of origins, personal experience, and biology. When individuals become trapped within their own experiences, the political imagination weakens, and a politics emerges that runs the risk of inhabiting a culture of exclusion and hardness that shuts down dialogue, undermines compassion, kills empathy, makes it more difficult to listen to and learn from others. A politics that puts an emphasis on personal pain can become blind to its own limitations and can offer falsely a guaranteed access to the truth and a comforting embrace of a discourse of political certainty.

In such cases, the walls go up again as the discourses of biology and exclusion merge to guard the frontiers of moral righteousness and political absolutism. Put differently, the registers of militarization are on full display in such alleged sites of resistance such as higher education where a growing culture of political purity marks out a space in which the personal becomes the only politics there is housed within a discourse of “weaponized sensitivity” and “armed ignorance.”[19] The first causality of armed ignorance is a kind of thoughtfulness that embraces empathy for the other, a willingness to enter into public discussion, and dialogue with those who exist outside of the bunkers of imagined communities of exclusion. Leon Wieseltier is right in arguing that “grievance is sometimes the author of blindness, or worse.”[20]

Under such conditions, empathy wanes and only extends as far as recognizing those who mirror the self, one that endlessly narrates itself on the high ground of an unassailable moralism and stultifying orbits of self-interests. In addition, politics collapses into the privatized orbits of a crude essentialism that disdains forms of public discourse in which boundaries break down and the exercise of public deliberation is viewed as fundamental to a substantive democracy. Of course, there is more at work here than what might be called the atrophy of critical thought, self-reflection, and theory, there is also the degeneration of agency itself.

What does thinking look like when it is transformed into a pedagogical parasite on the body of democracy? At one level, it becomes toxic, blinding the ideological warriors to their own militant ignorance and anti-democratic rhetoric. At the same time, it shuts down any attempt to develop public spheres that connect rather than separate advocates of a politics walled in by suffocating notions of essentialism dressed up in the appeal to orthodoxy parading as revolutionary zeal. What must be remembered is that thinking undangerously mimics a pedagogy of repression that falsely assumes a revolutionary stance when in fact everything about it is counter-revolutionary. In the end this suggests a kind of theoretical helplessness, a replacing of the courage to think dangerously with the discourse of denunciation and a language overflowing with the comforting binary of good and evil.

There is more at risk here than legitimating the worse forms of thoughtlessness, there is also the intolerable potential for both the moral collapse of politics and the undermining of any vestige of democracy. Thinking dangerously as a critical enterprise is about both a search for the truth and a commitment to the recognition that no society is ever just enough and hence is fundamental to the always unfinished struggle, making the impossible all the more possible. Not one or the other but both. Such thinking should be used to both understand and engage the major upheavals people face and to connect such problems to larger political, structural, and economic issues.

Thinking dangerously can make the pedagogical more political by mapping the full range of how power is used and how it can be made accountable in all of its uses. Thinking dangerously is about more than doing a critical reading of screen culture and other texts, it is also about how knowledge, desire, and values become invaluable tools in the service of economic and political justice, how language provides the framework for dealing with power and what it means to develop a sense of compassion for others and the planet. Dangerous thinking is more than a mode of resistance, it is the basis for a formative and pedagogical culture of questioning and politics that takes seriously how the imagination can become central to the practice of freedom, justice, and democratic change.

Notes.

[1] This essay draws upon a number of ideas in Henry A. Giroux,Dangerous Thinking in the Age of the New Authoritarianism (New York: Routledge, 2015).

[2] I have borrowed this term from Jeffrey St. Clair, “The Economics of Contempt,” Counterpunch (May 23, 2014).

[3] Brad Evans and I have taken up the issue of violence in its various valences in Brad Evans and Henry A. Giroux, Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of the Spectacle (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2015). Also, see Henry A. Giroux, America’s Addiction to Terrorism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016).

[4] Noam Chomsky, “Corporations and the Richest Americans Viscerally Oppose the Common good,” Alternet (Sep9tember 29, 2014). Online: http://www.alternet.org/visions/chomsky-corporations-and-richest-americans-viscerally-oppose-common-good

[5] Chris Cillizza , “The New York Times just perfectly explained Hillary Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speech problem,” The WashingtonPost (February 26, 2016). Online:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/26/the-new-york-times-just-perfectly-explained-why-hillary-clintons-answers-on-her-paid-speeches-dont-work/

[6] Rebecca Gordon, “There Oughta Be a Law…Should Prison Really Be the American Way?,” TomDispatch.com (September 25, 2016). Online: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176190/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_arresting_our_way_to_%22justice%22/

[7] Brad Evans and Julien Reid, “The Promise of Violence in the Age of Catastrophe,” Truthout (January 5, 2014. Online: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20977-the-promise-of-violence-in-the-age-of-catastrophe

[8] Arundhati Roy, Power Politics (Cambridge, Ma: South End Press, 2001), P. 1

[9] Stuart Hall and Les Back, “In Conversation: At Home and Not at Home”, Cultural Studies, Vol. 23, No. 4, (July 2009), pp. 664-665.

[10] I have taken this phrases from an interview with Homi Bhaba in Gary Olson and Lynn Worsham, “Staging the Politics of Difference: Homi Bhabha’s Critical Literacy JAC ((1999), p. 9.

[11] Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Life (London: Polity Press, 2005), p.139.

[12] Michael Payne, “What Difference Has Theory Mad? From Freud to Adam Phillips,” College Literature 32:2 (Spring 2005), p. 7.

[13] Ibid., Bauman, Liquid Life, 151.

[14] Salman Rushdie, “Whither Moral Courage?” The New York Times, (April 28, 2013)

[15] George Monbiot, “Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems,” The Guardian, (April 15, 2016) Online: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

[16] Robin D.G. Kelley, “Black Study, Black Struggle – final response,”Boston Review, (March 7, 2016). Online: http://bostonreview.net/forum/black-study-black-struggle/robin-d-g-kelley-robin-d-g-kelleys-final-response

[17] Ibid., Robin D.G. Kelley, “Black Study, Black Struggle – final response.” Boston Review.,

[18] Robin D.G. Kelley, “Black Study, Black Struggle,” Boston Review,(March 7, 2016) Online: https://bostonreview.net/forum/robin-d-g-kelley-black-study-black-struggle

[19] The notion of weaponized sensitivity is from Lionel Shriver, “Will the Left Survive the Millennials?” New York Times (September 23, 2016). Online. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/opinion/will-the-left-survive-the-millennials.html. Armed ignorance was coined by my colleague Brad Evans in a personal correspondence.

[20] Leon Wieseltier, “How voters’ personal suffering overtook reason – and brought us Donald Trump,” Washington Post, (June 22, 2016). Online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/22/how-voters-personal-suffering-overtook-reason-and-brought-us-donald-trump/

 

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Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. His most recent books are America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth (Monthly Review Press, 2013) and Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education (Haymarket Press, 2014). His web site is www.henryagiroux.com.

Electoral Politics and the Illusion of Control

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By William Hawes

Source: Dissident Voice

We have all been told a lie. The lie that says democracy can be maintained only through voting, through purely representative, parliamentarian means. When the founding fathers set up the Constitution and Bill of Rights, they were wary of any truly popular, working and middle class control of the United States. Our government was to be run as a republic, designed by elites, for the elites. Our three branches of government were not simply invented for checks and balances: another reason was to stymie any massively popular mandates that would go against the interests of the oligarchy.

Today, the checks and balances used ostensibly to prevent tyranny are being used against us: even though a high majority (65%) is against government surveillance which violates privacy, and 78% want Citizens United overturned, we are stuck with a broken system and statesmen bought off by corporations. Even though 80% of eligible citizens didn’t vote in the 2014 elections, this year our out-of-touch pundits and mass media puppets prattle on unceasingly about our democracy, still misguidedly believing these candidates represent the will of the people.

Just sixteen years ago, our very own electoral system, in the form of a gilded cage, shut down the popular will of the people, as Al Gore won about 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush, yet still lost. Although the decision was made over 200 years ago, we have decided that the antiquated Electoral College system should still be used today.

More broadly, our never-ending election cycle serves as a palliative for ordinary Americans, but does nothing to cure the underlying disease and rot within our political system. Progressive liberals can take pleasure in Sanders’ statements supporting a raise in the minimum wage, debt relief for students, fighting income inequality, etc. Yet Sanders has no broad coalition in Congress to advance his agenda and to fight his “revolution”. Isolationist, non-interventionist conservatives can take pride in Trump’s support of Russia’s fight against ISIS in Syria, and his token rhetoric towards re-working unfair free trade agreements and bringing back jobs. Yet Trump’s pandering towards racists and xenophobes will only accelerate the descent towards fascism that the US has been slipping into for decades.

The second lie we’ve been told, or assumed implicitly, is that we are in control of our national destiny. Through the vote, we can supposedly make a clean slate every four years, to make up for the misdeeds of our past political leaders. The truth is much murkier. Our national security state and intelligence services have been built up to Leviathan levels, and presidential candidates are instantly discredited and marginalized for suggesting even small decreases in military spending. Corporate lobbyists and the conglomerate multinationals control the political landscape, determining the limits of discourse and shutting down anyone who exceeds the boundaries. Absurdly, third party candidates, some of the only ones with fresh ideas to invigorate our democracy, are demonized. Mainstream media coverage reinforces these imaginary limits of discussion, and Independents, Greens, Socialists, and Libertarians are relegated to the sidelines.

As the neoliberal order reinforces and deepens material poverty and intellectual ignorance, public discourse narrows without totalitarian overt manipulation. This makes issues seem as if they are progressing naturally, when public debate and consent is in actuality homogenized and conformist. This is analogous to the concept known to scientists as “shifting baselines”: here it applies to a public that accepts deeper cuts to social services, increases in privatizations, and increased militarization and policing of the public sphere, because the momentum seems inexorable and immutable. The establishment uses rhetorical threats and excuses to further corporate agendas and destroy civil society, all in the name of maintaining “economic growth” and upholding “law and order”.

The truth is that only by staring into the abyss can we collectively begin to dig ourselves out of our self-dug graves. The US has been in an unofficial recession since 2008. Millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, with minimal society safety nets, leading to insecurity, uncertainty and cynicism towards the future, and crippling anxiety. Politicians routinely show they do not care about the working class and the poor when they speak to the “middle class”, whatever that means anymore. Our leaders are handpicked by Wall Street billionaires, and/or defense and fossil fuel industrialists. Abroad, covert war is ongoing in a dozen or more countries in Asia and North Africa.

With so many minds confined to the hypnotic and myopic gaze focused on high technology, mass media, and our official “leaders”, 21st century man falls further into enslavement every day. As Fromm would say, we Escape from Freedom into self-indulgence and apathy, leaving hard decisions to technocrats and oligarchs. Control over our food, medicine, intellectual property, and basic social and environmental rights are consolidated into a handful of multinational corporations who inundate us with false needs through advertising and propaganda. Computer algorithms tell us what to buy, and social media manipulates our emotions, fulfilling the preaching of techno-dystopian prophets who warn of non-human intelligence guiding humanity towards dark futures.

Revolutionary fervor lurks under the surface, yet whether a popular progressive movement can blossom remains to be seen. Conversely, a missed revolution could easily result in an authoritarian and fascist takeover by the reactionary far-right. One thing we know for certain is that continuing under this two-party charade will only lead us to our doom.

Average citizens have never had any control of the republic since its founding. A complete constitutional overhaul is needed, and forms of direct, consensus, and deliberative democracy must be woven into a hybrid system. Elections should be funded by the public, with no corporate money allowed, shorter election cycles, and no discrimination towards third parties, unlike the current Commission on Presidential Debates. State governments should gain power, and federal programs reigned in and redefined towards streamlined regulation and oversight. Tax subsidies should be stripped from the fossil fuel industries entirely and redirected towards the best scientists and engineers in the field of renewable energy.

What is desperately needed is a shift in worldview to promote government that sees its job as not simply to tax and legislate, but to also support healthy life-world systems. Also, promoting humble and dedicated leaders who are stewards of community and the Earth, who do not insist on blatant exploitation of distant nations and pillaging resources, would go a long way. This cannot be done within the confines of the Democratic and Republican parties, who thrive on domination, coercion, control, and manipulation of public interests.

To break the cycle, we must collectively embrace our frailties and limitations. The deadly, patriarchal energy technologies such as the petrochemical industries and nuclear energy must be shut down. We must learn from the man-made tragedies of Bhopal, Katrina, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, and dismantle dangerous plants and factories, and begin to move humanity away from areas susceptible to natural disasters and coastal flooding. The US, Russia, and the nuclear nations must formally apologize for the atmospheric nuclear testing in the fifties and sixties which will kill millions from cancer, and ban nuclear weapons for good.

Learning to relinquish control and learning to keep one’s ego in check are two of the ultimate tests our leaders must accept. As the Tao Te Ching says:

Therefore the sages:
Manage the work of detached actions
Conduct the teaching of no words
They work with myriad things but do not control
They create but do not possess
They act but do not presume
They succeed but do not dwell on success
It is because they do not dwell on success
That it never goes away.1

  1. Tao Te Ching: Annotated and Explained. Derek Lin. SkyLight Paths. 2006.  Translation by Derek Lin. [↩]

 

William Hawesis a writer specializing in politics and the environment. You can find his e-book of collected essays here. His articles have appeared online at Global Research, Countercurrents, Dissident Voice, and Counterpunch. You can email him at wilhawes@gmail.com Read other articles by William.

Obama Fears Backlash from Saudi 9/11 Bill — So What?

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By Klaus Marre

Source: Who.What.Why.

Only an idiot would sign an order triggering a process that ends up with them in court. President Barack Obama is not an idiot and that is why he vetoed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA).

The legislation, which allows victims of terror attacks on US soil to sue foreign governments, was very popular in Congress where lawmakers did not want to seem unpatriotic ahead of the election. That is why, to Obama’s great disappointment and consternation, Congress overrode the veto — and immediately showed buyer’s remorse.

Specifically, its purpose is as follows:

The purpose of this Act is to provide civil litigants with the broadest possible basis, consistent with the Constitution of the United States, to seek relief against persons, entities, and foreign countries, wherever acting and wherever they may be found, that have provided material support, directly or indirectly, to foreign organizations or persons that engage in terrorist activities against the United States.

What the legislators had apparently not considered, even though it was Obama’s main argument for not supporting the bill, were the unintended consequences of JASTA. Sure, allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia sounded like a great idea to lawmakers running for reelection.

Yet the law will also open up the United States, its military and intelligence services to the same kind of action abroad. That is something Obama wanted to avoid at all costs — and why the White House called the veto override the “single most embarrassing thing” the Senate has done in decades.

But why? Shouldn’t the United States conduct itself in a way that would prevent it from getting sued abroad? The president, who has access to more intelligence than anybody else, clearly didn’t think so.

If JASTA allows Saudi Arabia to be sued for whatever level of complicity in the 9/11 attacks a US court finds sufficient evidence of, just imagine what the United States government can be taken to court for.

There is already talk of Vietnam War veterans being particularly vulnerable to lawsuits. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Could Pakistanis whose wedding got blown up by a drone take Obama to court? Can one of the many torture victims sue to get the names of their guards, torturers, etc. and then seek compensation from them? Or what about GITMO prisoners who were released without ever being charged? Finally, what about any citizen of a country that was plunged into turmoil as a result of CIA actions?

Maybe an easier challenge would be to figure out who couldn’t sue the United States once this precedent has been established.

But we ask again: Would that really be such a bad thing, especially going forward? It could serve as a deterrent and maybe the United States, as well as the other big players on the world stage, would think twice about intervening in the affairs of other countries if the threat of personal accountability would hang over their heads.

Cutting the Cords of Empire: The Spectacle of US Elections

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By William Hawes

Source: Global Research

“The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.” -Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

It’s almost time for our quadrennial political distraction, masquerading as the US presidential election. As opposed to previous elections, this one feels quite different. Even with Obama/Romney in 2012, important, basic economic issues were discussed, health care reform was questioned, and foreign policy was given its due.

However, this time, the spectacle of the personalities seems to dominate the conversation: Mrs. Clinton is somehow on a feminist crusade, an inspiration for women everywhere. Going unmentioned are her irredeemable backers, such as the genocidal Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. As for Trump, his version of America is as naïve, narrow-minded, and delusional as a Leave It to Beaver episode, or a Captain America comic book. In the background, the monstrosity of global capitalism goes unquestioned, and the cries from victims of US institutional racism and structural violence go unheard.

Global warming, broad economic policy, and nuanced foreign policy are simply too much to ask of these candidates. Their stupidity knows no end; their corruption and depravity know no bounds, and many of both of their supporters, as well as media, political, and corporate backers and sycophants can be considered “deplorable”. Many supporters of the two-party system do not bother to think about the damage either potential president would do to people outside the US. Many backers of Trump and Clinton have little to no basic knowledge of world cultures and history.

What are the cords that connect us to these “leaders”, to our American Empire? They are the same ones that the Industrial Revolution, the basis of our civilization, has implanted in each of us since birth, as Alvin Toffler explains in The Third Wave. As our social world became modeled on the factory floors developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, a set of unspoken principles were ironed out, and transferred to the political, social, and economic realms. (1)  As we shall see, these principles spread unchecked, and have infiltrated political discourse and social hierarchies. Toffler identifies these implicit rules as:

1) Standardization: Industry, production, and factory life revolved around endless loops and inputs of metals, fabrics, coal, oil, and specialized parts for trains, cars, etc. The simplification and standard mechanical parts used were mirrored and reflected in the culture at large: eventually, markets, the media, radio and TV, and even great art and literature succumbed to commoditization and homogenization. We now have mass marketing, public relations, and “electioneering”, where our duopoly controls all branches of government.

2) Specialization: With the explosion in the fields of science and engineering, specialized techniques were taught to develop, invent, and maintain mechanical and electric equipment. Yet again, this philosophy infected the general society:  only bureaucrats are able to work in the halls of power, only industrial experts are able to administer federal agencies, creating the disgraceful revolving door phenomena in Washington.

3) Synchronization: As more people flocked into cities with gleaming promises of steady, factory jobs, time and punctuality became of prime importance. Punching timecards and meeting quotas were necessary: there was no room for leeway, as assembly lines demanded strict timelines. The time demands of labor leaked into white-collar work as well: in banking and finance, railroads, time zones, and office jobs, advanced scheduling became the norm. Eventually, synchronization of the political system gained traction, and the imperial system came to resemble a deathly machine, marching in time to bloody footsteps: military, immoral diplomacy and ideology, and industry worked together to lord over Latin America with the Monroe Doctrine, annihilate Native Americans using Manifest Destiny, even as today, the excuse of the “War on Terror” is used to exterminate entire populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere.

4) Concentration: Think of the vast oil and coal stored underground for millions of years, only to be strip-mined, taken up by rigs, and transported by rail and tanker into vast refineries: concentration of energy. Further, every class of people became absorbed and intensified in the industrial system: workers into factories, children into schools, mentally ill into institutions, finance concentrated into New York, London, and Paris. Mega-mergers of corporations: today, it is the Apple, Google, Shell, and BP’s of the world who have coffers of blood money held tidily in banks throughout the world. Further, the concentration of technocrats who we supposedly need to run our societies: in the West, the military-industrialists, just as the Soviets were once told the nomenklatura was necessary.

5) Maximization: Firms were encouraged to grow as large as possible, and expand into as many fields as possible. Companies in Japan in the mid-twentieth century would actually have workers sing of the glory and greatness of their employer. Today, 62 people have the same wealth as half the world’s population. This is concentration and maximizing at its most obscene. Of course, you won’t hear Clinton, Trump, or anyone in Washington talking about this. Maximizing GDP, corporate profits, fossil fuel use, and flexing imperial muscle is what the Feds do best.

6) Centralization: Connected to the first five rules of empire stated above, centralizing power, wealth, and using knowledge for private gain is required to uphold the industrial state. Taxation, subsidies for industry, political debates via the sham Committee on Presidential Debates, the backroom shenanigans of the DNC and RNC, and cloak and dagger lobbying and bribery now dominate our system of government. Further, the Leviathan of state-sanctioned violence now lords over the world from the Pentagon and NATO, and the centralization of information runs through fiber-optic cables straight to the infernal, yet temperature-controlled offices of the CIA and NSA.

The elections have adopted all the patterns of the industrial, imperial state: we have standardized TV, scripted questions, airbrushed candidates, and childlike debates. We’ve seen specialized tactics of gerrymandering, vote-rigging, PR bullshit, and strategists whose careers accomplish nothing for the public good. We all know of the synchronization of Wall Street, defense and oil companies. The concentration of power in the hands of the few hardly needs mention: here’s the study by Princeton and Northwestern professors who conclude that the US is an oligarchy, not a democracy. We’ve witnessed the maximization of endless primaries, debates, press conferences, and town-hall meetings ad infinitum. The centralization of political ideology (triangulation in Clintonite terms, Machiavellian to a rational person) and the limitations of discourse that our candidates display are all too clear.

These are the iron chains holding us down, shackling us in Plato’s cave: our candidates are figureheads, shadows on the wall; they are puppets of the super-elite. The central position they carve out in the mainstream is really a pit, an abyss: one that we all find ourselves in, as we continue to vote for those who don’t fight for our interests.

The two best options for this election seem to be: voting for Jill Stein, or boycotting the election, as Joel Hirschhorn advocates. As for our obscene election cycles, I believe Zach de la Rocha summed it up best:

  A spectacle monopolized

The camera’s eyes on choice disguised

Was it cast for the mass who burn and toil?

Or for vultures who thirst for blood and oil?

William Hawes is a writer specializing in politics and environmental issues. His articles have appeared online at Global Research, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, The World Financial Review, Gods & Radicals, and Countercurrents. He is author of the e-book Planetary Vision: Essays on Freedom and Empire. You can reach him at wilhawes@gmail.com

Notes:

1.) Alvin Toffler. The Third Wave. Bantam, 1980. p. 46-60.

 

Fascism Trumps Democracy: America, A State of Impunity

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By Norman Pollack

Source: CounterPunch

Notwithstanding my title’s oblique reference to Trump, he is not the greater of the dangers now facing America, but an entirely known factor, representing a gut incipient fascism grounded primarily in capital accumulation, a nymphomaniac drive for ownership, deal-making, undisguised prestige—in short, the very traits becoming to American’s wish for wealth, power, and status on which its system of capitalism is based. Ethnocentrism gives it a psychological heart, sheer ignorance of humane sensibility, a soul, indifference to the humiliation and destruction of others because of capitalism’s workings, a modal personality and societal mental set. We’ve had many examples of The Donald up-and-down the line, from the 10%, 5%, 1%, down to the bottom of the social-class scale, that being how effective false consciousness has been disseminated downward through the American value system. He presently vibrates with what appears to be a significant portion of the working class. So be it; at least the portents and record are there for fighting back.

Not so the Obamas and Clintons in our midst, largely free from serious criticism by a supine, homogenized radicalism, chanting the “lesser-of-two-evils” song on the way, not to the gas chambers (not even Trump has, as yet, gone this far), but a manifestation and structure of liberal fascism, possibly more militaristic, more ensconced deeply in a Cold War mental set, talking a good game on immigration while actively promoting a class-state of monopolism equal to anything Trump favors. We have then a condition of growing fascistization with little internal checks and differentiate primarily by rhetorical flourishes. Obama is the point man, exceeding his predecessors, in global counterrevolution, intervention, regime change, and the steady pressures toward confrontation with, above all, China, but also Russia. Meanwhile, Clinton fits the bill, perhaps more viscerally combative, with Russia, rather than China, the chief ADVERSARY. (Caps. are necessary, because the US cannot exist, much less thrive, without an enemy, whether for the mammoth defense industry, an hegemonic foreign policy, or the social discipline at home, to keep the internal market going, ferret out dissent on policy, favor the already enriched and favored.)

Stealth destroyers, appropriation $4B+, already noticed in today’s Times; the safety net grows more outmoded, environmental degradation and pollution continue apace, the murder rate in Chicago and other major cities climbs, but imperialism is, literally, business-as-usual. And business itself is business as usual: Bank of America last week’s poster boy of questionable behavior. “You break it, you own it” might be the slogan in a small business souvenir shop, but what of the bigger picture? American business, notably, railroads and banking, by the mid-19th century, had already broken the promise of democracy, and fixing the system on democratic lines has grown more remote with time. That is where “fascism” is not an expletive, but reality: the interpenetration of business and government, capitalism and the State, the cozy amalgam of wealth, power, the military, which even the strongest chisel could not pry them apart.

Germany had its form, Italy, its, Japan, its, all signifying cultural and linguistic differences, but not systemic ones, capitalism in each case, and the social structure of hierarchy it created, the determinative factor in shaping the polity and its purposes of Order, deservedly the dirtiest word in the political lexicon. Everyone knows his/her place in a fascist social order. Substantive protest is muted, whether through repression or indoctrination. America now joins the 20th century’s historical Big Three of fascist persuasion, relying more on indoctrination than explicit, overt repression. Fly-over military jets at football games is the Pavlovian reminder of requisite patriotism to be considered, and consider oneself, the Good American. (Trump merely echoes the man-in-the-street, his difference being a silk shirt for a denim work shirt.) But it is Clinton who deserves, and has earned the respect, of all right-thinking Americans, parroting the vitriol of the defense intellectuals, propaganda masters (even Axelrod in today’s paper seems to have become critical), her controlled shrillness, backed by her husband’s man-of-destiny complex, posing more serious risks for putting nails into the coffin of democracy.

Why choose either, Trump or Clinton? Elections are rigged, not by corruption, but, more profoundly, by the political culture and class structure of the society, the candidates merely the façade for several centuries of political-economic-ideological development, cumulative, self-renewing, above all, hubristic, i.e., exaggerated pride, the Chosen, backed by the military force to cram it down the throats of all and sundry, where “friends and allies” become, for these purposes of unilateral global dominance, indistinguishable from adversaries and enemies in successfully maintaining claims of leadership and greatness.

 

Norman Pollack Ph.D. Harvard, Guggenheim Fellow, early writings on American Populism as a radical movement, prof., activist.. His interests are social theory and the structural analysis of capitalism and fascism. He can be reached at pollackn@msu.edu.

America’s War Party

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By Steven Lendman

Source: SteveLendman Blog

America is a one-party state with two wings, each virtually identical to the other, differing only in style and rhetoric.

They’re in lockstep on issues mattering most – notably supporting endless wars at the expense of peace, equity and justice.

America’s so-called war of independence changed little, afforded no benefits for “we the people,” did nothing more than substitute new management for old.

Civil war had nothing to do with freeing slaves, everything to do with keeping the nation intact and serving dominant monied interests. War assures huge profits.

19th century wars were waged to steal land and resources from America’s native people, annex Texas, then half of Mexico, followed by Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, Samoa, Hawaii, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Canal Zone, Puerto Rico and other territories.

Peace candidate Woodrow Wilson manipulated public sentiment in office, turned largely pacifist Americans into raging German haters and got the war he wanted.

Senator Robert La Follette/later 1924 Progressive Party presidential aspirant said at the time “(e)very nation has its war party.”

“It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely.”

“It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. It tolerates no opposition. It is just as arrogant, just as despotic, in London, or in Washington, as in Berlin.”

“The American Jingo is twin to the German Junker. If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another.”

Yesteryear’s “Jingo” is today’s bipartisan neocon, the curse infesting Washington, waging endless wars on humanity at home and abroad – risking another global one with super-weapons able to extinguish life on earth.

Socialist leader Eugene Debs was imprisoned for opposing America’s involvement in WW I. Ahead of his ordeal, his Socialist Party called the war “a crime against the people of the United States.”

He said “(t)hey tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people.”

“That is too much, even for a joke…Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder… And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.”

During the war my dad was conscripted to fight in, about 900 people were imprisoned for opposing it. Tens of thousands declared themselves conscientious objectors and refused to serve.

True to its tradition, The New York Times supported America’s war party, urged its readers to inform authorities of “any evidence of sedition” instead of denouncing the great war preceding the greater one two decades later.

Endless others followed, raging today in multiple theaters, much more likely coming, possible nuclear war today more threatening than perhaps any previous time.

Monied interests support America’s war party – benefitting hugely at the expense of most others.

Resisting tyranny is a universal right and obligation. We have a choice – resist or perish.

 

Democracy Is Dead

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By Gilbert Mercier

Source: News Junkie Post

From the west to the east, and the south to the north of our global horizon, it is the same tableau: the horrendous killing fields of disaster capitalism where its cohorts of 18-wheelers, heavy road machinery and police patrol cars roam the landscape continuously and are turning us and the better principles of our humanity into countless road kills. Hell on Earth is to be our common fate, and we might have already reached a point of no return. The corporate hyenas and political vultures that generally constitute the global elite are joyfully feeding on the carcasses of justice and morality; rationality and empathy; common sense and the notion of public good; sound governance without corruption and equality before the law; and last but not least, freedom and fair governance through democracy.

Comparing this small group of depraved elite sociopaths, with not a trace of compassion or even consciousness to the scavengers of the natural world, is actually unfair to vultures and hyenas. Scavengers in nature have an important function in the ecosystem for their role of recycling waste. On the other hand, the few thousand rulers of global corporate imperialism are parasites weakening our common life force. If vultures are the useful garbage collectors of the natural world, the corrupt rulers of globalization are tics and leeches gorging on our blood. The British exit vote from the European Union, known as Brexit, has to be understood in the context of rejection of globalization. The global corporate world order has only worked for its masters but certainly not for the vast majority of the people, who are becoming the serfs of a new feudalism.

Calling the vote in favor of Brexit xenophobic doesn’t address the issues at stake. Cheap labor coming from Eastern Europe has served the interests of corporations and the rich very well, but it has had a negative impact on the welfare of British-born workers. This problem is general across the EU. The purpose of the EU was never to be a capitalist paradise where a free circulation of people, money, goods, and services would cater to the needs of multinational corporations, and where people ultimately would be uprooted to become the slaves of the so-called free market. The EU project was not centered on economic considerations but instead on cultural and social-value notions. It was a way out of the nightmare eras of World War I and World War II for founding members France and Germany. The formation of the EU was about a resolute rejection of war to embrace lasting peace. Other countries might follow the British people in their intention of leaving supra-national entities such as the EU. Paradoxically, the United Kingdom itself might disintegrate with the independence of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Globalists of all stripes are calling this nationalist revival narrow-minded and obscurantist. Their leading argument is that global problems such as climate change, overpopulation, and poverty require institutions with global authority. But what they should keep in mind is that those various supra-national institutions or entities, which started with stated good intentions, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), not only have failed to solve any global problems but have, by their corrupt nature made them worse. In the case of the supra-national North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), there is no pretense of being a do-gooder. The armed fist of the Orwellian empire is in the business of globalization of war with decisions made in Washington, DC.  In Orwellian times, many supra-national organizations behave like corporations under humanitarian pretenses, when they are in fact parasitic organisms depleting our strength. Meanwhile, no one represents We The People at all. In the world of humanitarianism for profit, public servants have vanished and been replaced by corrupt incompetent groups operating like crime families.

All members of the fake left advocate that the system must be changed progressively from within and that a collapse would be mainly a disaster for the poor and weak. This notion is as valid as to claim that a building destroyed by an earthquake is in need of some fresh window dressing. Regardless of the global elite’s arrogance, a systemic collapse is on its way and will exponentially take hold of the planet within two or three decades. The super-rich will eventually have nowhere to run or hide, and no private armies to protect them from the wrath of nature. Forcefully resisting the brand of globalization imposed on us by the thugs and slave drivers of disaster capitalism is a moral obligation all world citizens should embrace. When people in power live in the castle of their own lies, it is time to dismantle the fortress. When governance has lost all moral ground and reason, it is time to call for a revolution.

If, as human beings, we could understand that We The People should be all of us, regardless of geographic location, then perhaps the concept of globalization would serve a purpose and be beneficial. No workers in Europe and the United States should tolerate that people in places like Haiti, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Honduras be paid slave wages; otherwise, down the line they will either lose their jobs or be exploited by the same corporations. Under the globalization of the plantation owners, the people are living in chains. Once upon a time, words like freedom, liberty, and democracy had meaning. They have largely been gutted out and are just empty shells, ghosts in a play of smoke and mirrors animated by the sinister masters of ceremony of the universal rat race. A first necessary step to take would be for all people still able to exercise free will and critical thinking to understand that what government and political representation has become is precisely the opposite of democracy. Voting under these kinds of circumstances is as delusional as giving substance to the figments of our own imaginations. When democracy is dead, it is time to boycott elections.

 

Gilbert Mercier is the author of The Orwellian Empire.

Oceania Forever: Rise of the Global Police State

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By Patrick Henningsen

Source: Waking Times

Much has been written about the approaching Police State in alternative media. Commentary ranges from various warnings, to shock and outrage, and fear over an impending martial law takeover in North America and Western Europe. It’s hitting us from so many different angles, and yet the mainstream conversation continues to be woefully inadequate in both characterising the situation and offering a remedy.

In order to really understand the modern Police State, we need to explore some very profound and difficult questions. Many people who consider themselves aware think Western society has already reached the tipping point and the deteriorating situation is simply inevitable. If you feel like Winston Smith right about now you aren’t alone.

Prior to the mid 1990s, one might have described the militarisation of public law enforcement something of a creeping paradigm, but one that was still a long way off. Society explored many aspects of the Police State, both the physical and Orwellian psychological scenario, through literature and film. American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick penned some significant works like The Minority Report, and cinematic hits like Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil also explored what this dystopic, future vision of fascist technocracy might look like. As it turned out, and far from fantasy, countless devices, systems and themes depicted in so many of these supposedly ‘fictional’ classics have since made their way into our day to day lives. The dark dream became real.

Unfortunately, as humanity’s freshmen class of the early 21st century, we can no longer afford the intellectual distance enjoyed by previous generations between life today and that blurry, far-off spectre of something that might arrive sometime at some point in the future.

Any modern globalised Police State requires a social engineering framework in order to provide its shape and scope of law enforcement. The latest social engineering blueprint for global technocratic management was unveiled at this year’s 70th United Nations General Assembly in New York City. Their ‘new’ agenda (newer than the old one) entitled, Agenda 2030,1 hopes to “transform our world for the better by 2030.” Author Michael Snyder from the blog ‘End of The American Dream’ explains: “The entire planet is going to be committing to work toward 17 sustainable development goals and 169 specific sustainable development targets, and yet there has been almost a total media blackout about this…”2

Within its 17 ‘universal goals’, the actual Police State provision for Agenda 2030 can be found within Goal 11, which states how the new global government will, “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” Translated in technocracy terms, this means more Big Brother tech, smart grid tracking and big data surveillance states.

The age of computerisation and database integration, along with advances in military and crowd control technology perfected overseas, have enabled a sharp advance toward the Police State. Trying to make sense of ‘it’ is a major challenge, to say the least. In its totality, the control system is both multifaceted and multilayered. It may have been possible to describe it, or even define it 20, 30, or 40 years ago, as Philip K. Dick and so many others did. Today, as society has already eclipsed the possible, we face a situation whereby the very thing we are trying to describe is woven through nearly every fabric of modern social, professional, family, religious and political life.

If you happen to live in one of the technocratic nations, you can’t opt out, nor can you fully repeal the advances already made by the control system. What other options are available?

Firstly, we have to try and understand, from an economic, cultural and political perspective at least, how this control system came to be.

What are its strongest areas? Can we reform those areas? Where is it still emerging? Cannot those areas be slowed down? What was the political climate that enabled it?

How to Build a Police State

When you observe a modern Police State, the first things you might notice will not necessarily be the batons, shield, helmets or MRAPs. Think Switzerland or Singapore. A modern Police State will be neat, clean and efficient. Retail zones will be shiny and feature all the top designer brands. Many of the people you see in public will be well-groomed, well-healed and beautiful, but often with only one political party and a strict public code.

Just like admirers of the modern Chinese State, Singapore’s proponents refer to the single party State as “a great argument for Authoritarianism.” Order and civility rule the day, so long as you don’t fall foul of the narrow perimeters set by the State.

What has been accomplished in Southeast Asia since 1965, and what is possible in previously ‘free’ countries like the US, UK and Australia, are two very different social and political evolutions. Still, the modern Police State is advancing globally and it’s being driven primarily by three factors: technology, for-profit industry, and an age-old obsession by the ruling class to manage the masses.

The first and easiest area to challenge is the physical realm of the control system. The most obvious of these are the gadgets and toys. They are easy to see. Look at your local police department and notice the difference between what officers looked like and what they wore in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and now in the 21st century. Notice the firearms and tasers, the ‘Bat-Belts’, and now the body cameras. Your average officer today looks like a cross between a soldier and an android. Dress them like robots and don’t be surprised when they act like machines (and it won’t be long until many of them are replaced by machines).

If you’ve ever attended a street protest or witnessed some civil unrest, then you’ll have noticed the high-tech body armour, the riot and ‘crowd suppression’ equipment.

My first intense experience where I felt the full force of the modern Police State was in 2009, at the G20 Protests in the City of London, England. It was early in the evening and approximately 4,000 demonstrators suddenly found themselves trapped at Bishopsgate. Several hundred police officers on foot and horseback had blocked all the entrances and egresses in and out of the main road. Even alleyways were manned by riot police. Then police began charging the crowds, and beating protesters with clubs. They alternated their ‘surge’ efforts, from different ends of the street, north to south, one brutal flurry after another. The worst part about it was there was no escape route away from the police. Many were beaten and trampled on that evening. It was as if police planners were playing a video game.

Finally, at around 9pm, after being forced to stand, surrounded by police in a ‘Kettle’ for nearly three hours, along with 500 other demonstrators and press, who spent most of that time pressed up against police shields and not knowing what would happen next – I realised this is an impersonal, disinterested and totally uncompromising machine. It does not care who you are, what your views and opinions are, or whether you were innocent or guilty. The lesson was simple: “next time, stay home.” The only detail this machine is concerned with is that you comply with orders, and if no orders are given, then the machine demands you stay where you are until the machine decides what to do with you. If you complain too much, or become emotional, or heaven forbid act out in any way, then the machine will move in to subdue and detain you. That is all there is to it.

Big Brother Reality

It’s well-known that Great Britain is home of the world’s largest and most sophisticated physical Police State, including tens of millions of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras, covering every conceivable inch of habitable space, both indoors and outdoors. The CCTV phenomenon in Britain was fuelled by an obsession with cameras that became increasingly popular with both government and corporate technocrats in the 1980s and 1990s. The psychology behind the exponential proliferation in cameras was mainly a fairly crude bit of criminology which held that the cameras would somehow act as a deterrent to criminal behaviour, and thus subdue the feral population into a more docile state. Industry used this line too, as sales persons were deployed en masse with endless flip charts and statistical models that claimed CCTV cameras would prevent the UK’s spiralling social malaise.

The only problem is that more cameras don’t equal less crime. Canadian writer Cory Doctorow observed this reality back in 2011, explaining: “After all, that’s how we were sold on CCTV – not mere forensics after the fact, but deterrence. And although study after study has concluded that CCTVs don’t deter most crime (a famous San Francisco study showed that, at best, street crime shifted a few metres down the pavement when the CCTV went up), we’ve been told for years that we must all submit to being photographed all the time because it would keep the people around us from beating us, robbing us, burning our buildings and burglarising our homes.”3

The CCTV is only one single aspect of Big Brother. It turns out that the real value of the CCTV camera grid is not so much the monitoring of crime per se, as it is in mass applied behavioural psychology.

The Panopticon

The physical Police State could not exist without some philosophical underpinning. Before Orwell, there was Bentham…

In the mid 19th century Britain developed a new style of prison architecture known as the ‘Panopticon’ under the aegis of utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham.4 The unique feature of this Panopticon concept was the transparent nature of each prisoner cell, visible to a central surveillance guard tower that could eye inmates at all times. The result of this psychological experiment, according to the pragmatic Benthamite philosophy, was to produce a regime of “self-policing” amongst the inmates, a kind of early behavioural conditioning. For technocrats and emerging utilitarian social managers of that era, this was seen as the most economic and efficient solution. Ultimately, this Benthamite concept is what underpinned phase one of the mass CCTV deployment throughout the UK. Sitting well above the security minions and the industry profiteers, elite scholars knew full well that CCTV cameras do not stop crime.

The real power of the Panopticon is in convincing the general population they are under constant surveillance. After that point, through a long-term process of nudging, diversions and scare tactics, the State gradually moulds the behaviour and thoughts of its subjects.

In order to keep citizens locked into this new conscious state of fear and trepidation, the State needs anenemy…

The Long War & ‘The Extremist’

One of the chief campaigns to nudge society towards a fully-functional Orwellian State is the War on Terror. Ever since September 11, 2001, the concept of an endless war against the ‘terrorists’ – a seemingly ubiquitous and constantly shape-shifting enemy – has been used to justify nearly every large new security expenditure and policy. Back in 2006, US President George W. Bush’s chief architect of the ‘long war’, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, laid out the tea leaves for the next 100 years, stating: “It does not have to do with deployment of US military forces, necessarily. It has to do with the struggle that’s taking place within that faith between violent extremists – a small number of them, relatively – who are capable of going out and killing a great many people, as they’re doing, and the overwhelming majority of that religion that does not believe in violent extremism or terrorism.”5

In George Orwell’s classic novel 1984, Winston Smith also grappled with the State’s endless war. “Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.”

In Oceania, people eventually forgot what started the long war. The news was just one terrorist attack after another. They enemy was everywhere, but nowhere too. The population learned to acquiesce to the idea that war was the permanent state of affairs, and that questioning the provenance of this idea was futile.

“Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war, but it was evident that there had been a fairly long interval of peace during his childhood, because one of his early memories was of an air raid, which appeared to take everyone by surprise. Perhaps it was the time when the atomic bomb had fallen on Colchester. He did not remember the raid itself.”

And so it was, in the early moments of the 21st century, Orwell’s dream suddenly became a waking reality. Social engineers are firm believers that if the Panopticon (married with the threat of an invisible enemy) can remain in place for a generation, then the State could fundamentally change a once free-thinking society into something noticeably different – a much more fearful and compliant populace.

The Social Media Panopticon

As terror scares and attacks become somewhat of a daily event in the West, identifying and quarantining the ‘extremist’ becomes a primary fetish of the Police State and its media arms. This is very much evident in how terrorists and ‘active shooters’ (dead or alive) are now profiled after the event. The mainstream media has integrated this into its work practice by crafting the post hoc guilty verdict of the accused, prior to a trial, with circumstantial or non sequitur accusations based on an individual’s “web history” that may have “radicalised” the suspect. In effect, the mainstream media’s function as an establishment propaganda arm results in trial by media – the bypassing of any trial by jury as the accused have already been implicitly or explicitly declared guilty by association or something as nebulous as “web history.”

Such incidents, as they are portrayed in the media for psychological conditioning purposes, are intended to cause the public mind to dismiss outdated notions of fair and due process and rule of law in favour of fiat corporate news and government “official” pronouncements. The net effect of this trend is that social media users, ie. the majority of the population, are adopting self-policing habits in their communications online. According to the principals of applied behavioural psychology, if you change the language people use, then eventually you change the way they think and act.

Like Bentham’s Panopticon, this new social media monitoring system works by utilising the digital web, which is arguably the most economic and efficient solution. The acceptance of self-policing and vague terms such as “radicalised” that are subject to the increasingly elastic definitions of the social engineering establishment.

This leads to one of the most profound questions one might ask in the wake of Edward Snowden’s NSA spying revelations: Knowing what we know now, are people more outspoken or are they more self-policing because of the Snowden leaks?

‘The Daily Shooter’

By extension, once the technocrat has regained some modicum of physical control, then the next domain to be conquered is the mind. In 1984, the technocracy was viewed through the eyes of the protagonist Winston Smith, who while remaining a physical prisoner of the Police State, could still retreat into his own mental state.

In our day, the expansion of the surveillance State and vast spying by the likes of the NSA and GCHQ are precisely intended to achieve this same effect, with the justification for such intrusions being an endless series of terror spectacles and lone wolf public shooting events. In the US, these mass shootings and terror scares are happening on an almost daily basis, hence, ‘The Daily Shooter’. Media coverage is both chaotic and relentless. As a result, the pubic are left stupefied and completely unable to challenge whatever narrative the government-media complex is selling at that time. The Police State marches forward.

A similar psychodrama also played out for 1984’s protagonist Winston Smith. As time progressed, however, maintaining some level of autonomy in one’s own thoughts became increasingly difficult for Winston. The final objective of the Police State, it seemed, was not only to fundamentally transform the way citizens act, but how they think too. The all-seeing and all-controlling “Big Brother” State was also the de facto social authority figure. The State’s law enforcement police force also became the “thought police.”

We see this same exact narrative playing out today as the State’s political figureheads continue in their mission to widen their definition of “extremism” along with other State-issued euphemisms used to describe citizens who should be regarded with suspicion.

Fall out of line and you might even be segregated or sent away to a special camp. Following the recent mass shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee, retired US General and NATO Commander Wesley Clark proposed that any “disloyal Americans” should be sent to internment camps for the “duration of the conflict.” Notice the language: “for the duration of the conflict.” Indeed, it seems that Oceania is at war. He went even further, calling for the US government to identify people most likely to be “radicalised” so we can “cut this off at the beginning.”

“At the beginning?” Here, it seems Clark might be alluding to pre-crime, which will be powered by A.I…

Artificial Intelligence

Post-September 11, UK society was still hooked on their CCTV matrix, and with millions of cameras already in place and crime continuing to rise, security ‘experts’ and politicians simply doubled down on their previous wager, insisting that what the country really needed was more cameras. They believed that once a certain CCTV saturation was reached, by default they would somehow reached their twisted utopia.

It turned out that’s not humanly possible for security workers, most of whom are on a mere £7-10 (aud$14-20) per hour, to keep track, let alone analyse, a seemingly endless stream of footage. For the technocrat, the operative word here is ‘humanly’. Enter A.I…

Once again, advanced technology enters the narrative and supplies the solution to this previous insurmountable problem. The age of Artificial Intelligence, or A.I., is nearly upon us, and this next step in technological development is certain to radically change the entire concept of the Police State.

Laying down the framework an A.I. grid is not easy because the grid must be designed to cope with the application of A.I. As A.I.’s potential and practical applications have not yet been fully realised, designing the grid upon which it will be unleashed has been problematic up to this point. Sadly, society on the whole appears disinterested in questioning the social and unethical imperative currently driving the adoption of these new technologies.

At present, the big money is on the Smart Grid. Technocrats and their corporate partners are hoping to usher in their new surveillance grid under the auspices of ‘smart’ technologies. With A.I. in play, technocrats will be able to utilise the smart grid – which includes your mobile phone – to detect and track multiple targets over a wide area.6 Add facial recognition and data profiling to the mix and it’s a recipe for a full-on A.I. Smart Grid future. The ultimate hands-free, ‘surveillance selfie’ – compliments of Big Brother.

Just imagine, one day you’re simply walking down the street and pointing to something in the air. All of it is being captured on a 1.8 billion pixel video stream from the sky. They already know your identity and location with the phone in your pocket, and they already have your face logged and tracked.7

At this point we introduce Philip K. Dick’s concept of “pre-crime” whereby an A.I. system can predict an action you are likely to take.8 The system will then close the ‘Big Data’ loop by storing the video footage alongside your profile into a massive data ‘mash-up’. It will then compare with other potentially ‘suspicious’ activity in the area. Great Britain’s national police force, the Metropolitan Police, are already using a type of pre-crime software that British technocrats believe will somehow ‘revolutionalise’ modern policing in the 21st century.9

UK consumer advocate Pippa King explains how CCTV is already being phased out: “CCTV, closed circuit television, is not quite what is operating on our streets today. What we have now is IPTV, an internet protocol television network that can relay images to analytical software that uses algorithms to determine pre-crime area in real time.”

“Currently this AI looks at areas that may be targeted for crimes such as burglaries or joyriding,10 with the predicted hotspot information being sent direct to law enforcement smart phones in the field. This analytical software is being used in Glasgow, hailed as Britain’s first ‘smart city’,11 where the Israeli security firm NICE Systems are running the CCTV/IPTV network, analysing data from the 442 fixed HD surveillance cameras and 30 mobile units under a project called ‘Community Safety Glasgow’,12 whose primary objectives are described as ‘delivering Glasgow a more efficient traffic management system, identifying crime in the city and tracking individuals’.”13

This all can happen thanks to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) latest creation – the ARGUS camera, Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance.14 According to its designers ARGUS, “melds together video from each of its 368 chips to create a 1.8 billion pixel video stream” all in real-time and archived. It’s just one of the many new toys used by the State to realise its Orwellian ambitions.

Who’s Paying For It All?

Aside from its ability to trample over the rights of law abiding citizens, the Police State has one other chief characteristic which may also be its Achilles heal: it’s bankrupting the State. Here’s how it works:

The gravy chain is endless, but only with the help of taxpayers’ money, along with a series of bribes and favours between politicians and corporates. If you have ‘friends’ in government administration, then you are more likely to cash in on any number of lucrative ‘domestic defense’ contracts.

Where you have constant crisis you also have constant business opportunity. In this dark paradigm, timing is everything. As US President Barack Obama’s sociopathic15 former chief of staff, now Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, once said:

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

With that mantra in mind, in the wake of any shooting, terror scare, or crisis, industrial lobbyists and their elected political gophers will waste no time pushing for new federally-funded add-ons like training courses, workplace psychologists, regulators, specialist contractors, police cameras and other big-ticket items16 – anything to help “solve the crisis.” One such program in the US is known simply as the ‘1033’.

Joseph Lemieux writes:

“The 1033 program has flooded our local police forces with military equipment, and has turned them from Peace Officers, to a domestic army.”

“Officers stopped looking like officers, and more like soldiers all kitted out with fully automatic weapons, armoured vehicles, body armour, grenades launchers, night vision, and even bayonets! Besides the cost of liberty, how much has this domestic army cost you the tax payer?”17

In the US, no single entity embodies the Police State gravy train more than the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where federal grants are used to bribe local law enforcement and absorb them into a larger framework of institutional dependency.

At over $200 billion per year, the DHS is now America’s most expensive federal agency. As any sane local law enforcement chief will tell you, once you smoke from the federal crack pipe, you’re hooked for life. Remember that each federal Police State agenda item has a lucrative contract attached to it. With each move central government makes, a large amount of money is also made (by someone).

By cutting off public money that is driving the runaway federal Police State in Western countries, the people have a chance to mitigate and potentially reform the current agenda.

If we hope to preserve what is left of our hard fought democracy, then now is the time to put it to the test. The alternative is unthinkable.

 

About the Author

Patrick Henningsen is an independent investigative reporter, editor, and journalist. A native of Omaha, Nebraska and a graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in California, he is currently based in London, England and is the managing editor of 21st Century Wire – News for the Waking Generation (www.21stCenturyWire.com) which covers exposés on intelligence, geopolitics, foreign policy, the war on terror, technology and Wall Street. Patrick is a regular commentator on Russia Today.

Footnotes:

  1. ‘Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’,https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transforming
    ourworld
  2. ‘The 2030 Agenda: This Month The UN Launches A Blueprint For A New World Order With The Help Of The Pope’ by Michael Snyder, 2 Sept 2015, http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-2030-agenda-this-month-the-un-launches-a-blueprint-for-a-new-world-order-with-the-help-of-the-pope
  3. ‘Why CCTV has failed to deter criminals’ by Cory Doctorow, The Guardian, 17 August 2011
  4. www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/who/panopticon
  5. www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/The_Long_War
  6. ‘Bilderberg 2015: Implementation of the A.I. Grid’ by Jay Dyer, 21st Century Wire (www.21stcenturywire.com), 14 June 2015
  7. ‘Britain Launches “Big Brother” System, Uploads One Third of Population to Facial Recognition Database’, 21st Century Wire, 3 Feb 2015
  8. ‘Already Underway: Smart A.I. Running Our Police and Cities’ by Pippa King, 21st Century Wire, 13 Mar 2015
  9. ‘British Police Roll Out New “Precrime” Software to Catch Would-Be Criminals’, 21st Century Wire, 13 Mar 2015
  10. ‘Pre-crime software recruited to track gang of thieves’ by Chris Baraniuk, New Scientist, 11 Mar 2015
  11. ‘Glasgow wins “smart city” government cash’, BBC News, www.bbc.com/news/technology-21180007
  12. www.saferglasgow.com
  13. ‘Already Underway: Smart A.I. Running Our Police and Cities’, op.cit.
  14. www.darpa.mil/program/autonomous-real-time-ground-ubiquitous-surveillance-infrared
  15. ‘The Two Sides of Rahm Emanuel: Sociopathic Political Hitman and Puppy Lover’ by Foster Kamer, 16 Aug 2009, gawker.com
  16. ‘Mayor de Blasio Announces Retraining of New York Police’ by Marc Santoradec, The New York Times,4 Dec 2014
  17. ‘How Much Money Have American Taxpayers Spent on Building a Domestic Police State?’ by Joseph Lemieux, 1 Dec 2014, http://theantimedia.org/taxpayers-police-state/

The above article appeared in New Dawn 153 (Nov-Dec 2015)