Monuments to the Ego

Posted on July 6, 2018 by Reid Mukai

By David Mattson

Some rich bourgeoisie newcomers have perpetrated yet the latest in a series of atrocities upon the small valley where we live, entailing an assault on the sensibilities of virtually everyone and everything living there. Adding insult to injury, this has all been done with apparent utter disregard for us, our neighbors, our dirt road, the wildlife, the native vegetation, and everything sacred and beautiful.

The newcomers scalped the hillside they’ve occupied, smoothed out the offending topographic wrinkles, tore up all the untidy native shrubs, hacked a bench in the slope, erected a large garish pole barn, chiseled out an impractically steep access road, covered every flat or otherwise traversed surface with thick coats of coarse and fine gravel, revegetated the raw soil with non-native plants, propagated massive amounts of weeds, and displaced the deer and elk…meanwhile afflicting all of the neighbors below their lofty perch with the endless noise of heavy equipment suited for construction of interstate highways and a ceaseless caravan of over-sized dump trucks kicking up billowing clouds of dust while assaulting us with their jake brakes. And, no doubt, these naïve newcomers will panic when they realize that mountain lions and bears prowl the ridge where they live, with resulting fatal consequences for any large carnivore ranging nearby.

Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the favorite pastimes among us and other long-term residents is grousing about the rich newcomers, especially the ugly monstrosities they’ve built in highly-visible places. Our nearest neighbor, a salt-of-the earth kind of guy, has a talent for naming the $1 million-plus edifices, including The Ugly House, The Chicken Coop, The Atrocity, and, most recently, The Abortion Clinic. But the most compelling comment was delivered by yet another long-time neighbor, who billed all of these overbuilt ugly piles with-a-view as simply “monuments to the ego.”

Ego and Egotism…

Ego is an interesting concept upon which to hang the rapine pillaging in our little valley…as well as throughout the human-occupied world. Freud and Buddha would have us believe that all humans have an ‘ego’ (Anatta to the Buddhists), whether as a literal reality or simply as a useful partitioning of the psyche. By these conceptions, ego entails a way of orienting to the world that engenders survival and practical action by the ‘self’.

But, importantly, Freud allows for a curbing effect of the super-ego that embodies ethical concerns and cultural constraints, usually in service of some greater collective good. Likewise, Buddhists distinguish between the Small Self, entailing ego-based motivations, and the Greater Self that, like the super-ego, embodies evolution towards a maturity manifesting compassion and cognizance of connection with other beings. In both instances, ego unchecked by the super-ego or by evolution towards a Greater Self manifests as greed, selfishness, arrogance, fear, and hedonism, with resulting indifference, dishonesty, ruthlessness, and even cruelty exhibited towards others—especially others who are alien or otherwise different.

And Our Moral Universe

Another way of framing all of this is through the lens of moral universes. A person driven wholly by crass motivations originating in the brainstem and ego has a moral universe collapsed into the cesspit of Small Self. This is to say, essentially no moral universe. Expanding outward from this problematic condition are those who deploy notions of fairness, obligation, concern, and benevolence only to family members—as in the Mafia. Next beyond are those with a moral orientation that additionally encompasses those who are of identical or similar identity—national, tribal, ethnic, racial, gender, or the like. And, at the doorstep of enlightenment and transcendence, are those who extend moral concerns and deportment towards all humans—even towards non-human sentient beings.

Scholars such as Peter Singer and Shalom Schwartz have expounded on the importance of an every-expanding moral universe to the welfare and dignity of all humans, even of non-humans with varying degrees of manifest sentience. A world comprised solely of ego-driven humans operating with little restraint or related regard for the effects of their actions on others would be a truly horrific, eventually uninhabitable, place. As Steven Pinker has argued, our small Earth has become a more hospitable and charitable place largely because ever more people are regarding ever more beings of ever greater difference with ever more benevolence, despite what one might think reading vitriolic trash published in outlets such as Breitbart.

The Larger Psycho-Sociological Context

In the end, though, unchecked egotism and all the ills that flow from it flourishes only to the extent that such a condition is sanctioned, even encouraged, by culture, society, and institutions. People obviously shape all of these derivations of basic human behaviors, but human behaviors are in turn powerfully shaped by the higher-order social-psychological phenomena within which they are embedded, creating the potential for powerfully wicked—or powerfully benevolent—synergies.

Of relevance here, culture, society, and institutions ineluctably invoke the nature of our somewhat benighted nation and the more overtly benighted nature of the individualistic capitalist enterprise we have so enthusiastically embraced and codified.

Contradictions of Capitalism

Neoconservatives and their lapdog economists would have us believe that unchecked unfettered capitalism under-girds the best of all possible worlds. Moreover, freely but selectively quoting the likes of John Locke and Adam Smith, they would further have us believe that unbridled greed and unqualified self-interest, channeled by the invisible hand of free markets, is the surest means of furthering the well-being of all humans. Indeed, the Princes of Capitalism who run amuck on Wall Street proudly and unabashedly profess their greed and fundamental disregard for others, assuming that we who hear such professions somehow know it ends well for the rest of us due to the transformative magic of markets.

Never mind peoples’ unequal access to markets. Never mind inequalities in power and privilege. Never mind unequal access to information. Never mind the fundamentally irrational behavior of humans. Never mind the distorting effects of artificial demand created by manipulative advertising. Never mind the chronic gross distortion of markets by hidden (or not so hidden) subsidies created by power elites beholden to wealth elites. Never mind…ad nauseam. We have no free markets.

Despotism…

In the end, people who are wealthy or powerful become ever more wealthy and powerful at the expense of everyone else. Despotism reigns in the sense that an ever smaller minority of people amass an ever greater portion of values, while everyone else becomes comparatively more impoverished. It is no coincidence that we have seen a trend, not only in the United States, but in most developed or developing countries, towards the amassing of more and more wealth in the hands of a mere 1%—even 0.1%—of the populace.

As the radical thinker and economist Charles Eisenstein pithily observed, the modern business enterprise operates on the basis of shifting costs onto others as a normal part of making profits; in other words, by privatizing profits while socializing costs. Put another way, profits—the fundamental underpinning of the capitalist enterprise—are axiomatically created by passing as many costs as possible onto the affected human community, the natural environment, and future generations, often in ways that are fundamentally destructive. The French economist Thomas Piketty offered a complementary argument in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, holding that ‘trickle down’ from wealth elites to the comparatively impoverished masses is, in reality, inconsequential and little more than cover for this despotic capitalist enterprise.

And the Problem of Externalities

But concern about the imperfections and problematics of capitalism are not limited to radical or revisionary economists. Indeed, the likes of John Locke and Adam Smith were acutely aware that, despite the hidden hand of markets, the monetary capitalist systems they championed would generate social costs and income inequalities that required rectification by governments.

Some of these social costs have been termed ‘externalities’ by succeeding generations of economists—an externality being a cost or benefit generated by a private economic transaction or activity, but incurred by those who did not chose to partake of the outcome. Classic examples of such externalities include air and water pollution, spillover effects of development on surrounding property values, and the loss of finite biota caused by profit-making enterprises.

Our society has, reasonably enough, responded to these sorts of externalities with laws that zone development, control pollution, and protect endangered species. Whether overtly or tacitly, most people realize that we do, in fact, live in community where considerations of the commonwealth occasionally weigh heavily in the scale of considerations. Indeed, every credible economic or political philosopher or theorist since Locke and Smith and afterwards, Marx, has viewed capitalism and property, not as ends in themselves, but rather as candidate means (dubious means, in the case of Marx) of uplifting humanity and enhancing the well-being and dignity of all—of promoting a flourishing commonwealth; something that many contemporary politicians, economists, and bourgeois capitalists seem to miss.

As it is, the pervasive systemic problem of privatized profits and socialized costs remains, especially in a society such as ours that is wedded to the justifying myth of capitalism and, in the minds of some, the virtues of unchecked greed and individualism—and where those who profit so much from displacing the costs of their activities onto society hold such sway over politicians. This insidious system continues to spawn the sorts of people who show up in our little valley with ill-gotten (by definition) wealth to manifest their ego in various physical obscenities.

Property…

The notion of ‘property’ is yet another pillar of Smith’s capitalism that factors into on-going devastation of the natural world by societies that have succumbed to the capitalist premise. More to the point, private property rights plays a central role in not only the unfolding ecological holocaust, but also in simultaneously catalyzing and justifying damage to human communities.

On the face of it, ‘property’ seems a benign or even beneficial concept. The term is generally understood in reference to anything owned or possessed by someone. Adam Smith even advanced the notion that one’s own labor and physical body are property held, by right of ‘natural law’, exclusively by the salient embodied person. Yet the notion of property has, in fact, been extended to possession of one human by another, most egregiously in the form of overt slavery, but historically (and, in places, still) even in application to dependent children and adult women.

And Its Problems

These latter extensions to other humans highlight an intrinsic, even potentially fatal, problem with the notion of ‘property’. Relegation of anything to the category of property constitutes the ultimate instrumentalization and related erasure of intrinsic worth. Through this, property has no rights, no prerogatives, and no claim to considerations of well-being and health.

Relegation of inanimate physical objects to the category of property is perhaps not problematic, but any application to another life form, especially one with plausible sentience immediately raises moral questions. Does a dog deserve consideration of its health and well-being, despite being property? Some people would say ‘no’, but our society has answered a resounding ‘yes’ through the passage, for example, of animal welfare laws and even serious consideration of whether chimpanzees deserve rights. But, then, do elk and bears and lions deserve consideration of their welfare? Do ecosystems have ‘health’ and, if so, do even these abstract entities warrant moral concern, especially when it comes to fostering and preserving ‘health’?

I hold that the manner in which a person orients to such issues offers a profound commentary on their ego maturity and moral universe—Small versus Greater. And, in fact, orientations towards living property end up being entangled with precepts of capitalism and consideration of ‘the other’ in choices people make regarding their use of property, specifically whether they care at all about the negative impacts their choices may have on others, whether human, animal, vegetal, or even spiritual. People with small souls and a small moral universe will probably not give a damn, and even actively resist any societal requirements that they be held accountable for the harm they cause, often by deploying the justifying rhetoric of libertarianism and the primacy of individual freedom.

Inanities of Property Rights

All of this comes to a head in considerations of private property rights, although it is worth first noting that property can be held privately, publicly, or communally, and also simply by societal consent without rising to the level of a ‘right’. But there are some ideologues and yahoos (not mutually exclusive) who hold that the only credible sort of property is private, and that all private property is axiomatically held by the owner as a ‘right’.

Such simple-minded constructions hardly pass the laugh test. On the face of it, public property has more intrinsic merit than private property simply because it is held in trust to explicitly serve the greater good of society. The same could be said for communal property, but with ‘the greater good’ reckoned at the scale of a given community.

Insofar as being a ‘right’ is concerned, Debbie Becher cogently observed in a 2015 article that “…social theorists have long understood that property is not the ownership of a thing or a set of individual rights, but a set of social agreements about what ownership entails…Property rules involve government intimately not only in creating value but also in determining who deserves which valuable resources.”

Notice ‘social agreements’, the role of ‘government’, and the invocation of ‘deserve’. None of this bespeaks a ‘right’ in the conventional sense that we think of such things, especially in application to human health and happiness (see my article on Human Dignity and Micheline Ishay’s book The History of Human Rights), although our society paradoxically—even perversely—holds that rights attach to our property but not to our health. In fact, property is held solely by the consent of society and ultimately (whether acknowledged or not) in service of promoting the commonwealth of human well-being and dignity.

Rich and Not-So-Rich Yahoos

Yet our country is filled with people who think that they not only have an absolute right to their property, but that this supposed ‘right’ gives them the prerogative to mete out use, abuse, destruction, and harm without restraint or consideration of impacts on other humans—much less impacts on other sentient beings, and certainly not impacts on the health and wholeness of the ecosystems they exploit.

Such seems to be the case with our new neighbors wreaking havoc upstream in yet the latest exhibition of stunted moral development by newly-arrived rich folk. Although these people are by no means the only ones.

Metamorphosis?

We all suffer sooner or later living in a world of unchecked greed, selfishness, and self-centeredness—understood by some to be the equivalent of ‘individualism’. This is especially true in a country such as ours where simple-minded conceptions of capitalism and private property encourage, if not sanctify, abusive relations with the land, other people, and other life forms. Under such auspices, people are prone to the fallacy of conflating ‘freedom’ with possession, which can never lead to contentment.

No doubt, most of us want the greatest scope of free choice possible, as well as assurance that the physical goods we depend upon and hold dear will be secure from depredation. Yet, more assuredly, I would hold that most of us—albeit inchoately—want to be part of a commonwealth of human dignity. Inescapably, such a commonwealth requires that we curb our actions out of respect for others and with due consideration of harm we may cause. Sadly, our society seems to be exhibiting less rather than more of such dignified self-restraint.

There are perhaps only a few ways that the current death spiral of our living Earth can be checked. The spiritually dead look to technological fixes. A highly virulent and contagious disease specific to humans might save the rest of life on this planet, but only through erasure of our species. More hopefully, we humans might evolve towards greater benevolence, generosity, and concern, not only for other humans, but for all of life.

But such evolution depends on the rapid expansion of our collective moral universe beyond the frontiers of humankind. To do so, though, requires that we transcend our delusional fixation with patently destructive ideologies, of which capitalism and private property rights are currently one of the most potent. Closer to home for me, I hope to live long enough to see the end of people scraping, gouging, chiseling, hacking, tearing, and uprooting the naked living Earth simply to build yet another monument to their ego.

Neo-Liberalism and the Retreat of Democracy

Posted on July 2, 2018 by Reid Mukai

By David Schultz

Source: CounterPunch

Democracy across the world is under siege. This according to the latest Freedom House report documenting that for 2017, “democracy faced its most serous crisis in decades” as seventy-one countries experienced declines in freedom or fair government, including the United States, and only thirty-five an improvement. This was the twelfth consecutive year of decline in democracy world-wide.

The question is why? Why has confidence in democracy retreated? Freedom House does not provide an answer, but there is a reason. It is democracy’s marriage to neo-liberal capitalism has fostered the conditions leading to its own undoing, similar to the way Karl Marx once described in the Communist Manifesto the “gravedigger thesis” (What the Bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers”) where capitalism would produce the conditions that would undermine its own existence.

From the 1960s until the early 1990s democracy was in the upswing internationally. African de-colonization produced initially popularly elected governments. In South America the demise of strongmen led to a wave of democratic regimes. And the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break up of the USSR in 1991 produced the dismantling of communist authoritarian or totalitarian governments that made it possible for Francis Fukuyama to proclaim that democracy had won and emerged as the last grand global political meta-narrative.

Yet several problems upset this rosy picture. Most prominently, it was the marriage of these new emerging democracies with free market capitalism and the victory of neo-liberalism. Internationally as post-colonial and post-communist countries emerged, international organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF forced them to adopt market reforms, often pushing them into what was then called “shock therapy.” Shock therapy involved rapid privatization of state owned enterprises and rapid dismantling of welfare states. This shock therapy was often accompanied by significant corruption as a few rich oligarchs emerged who came to own these newly privatized state enterprises.

Simultaneously, emerging democracies were rapidly pushed into what sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein would call the world-capitalist system. This system turned politically to right in the 1970s and 1980s as Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States pushed neo-liberalism or market fundamentalism as an alternative to the Keynesian welfare state that had dominated the west since the 1930s. It was adopted both for ideological reasons and because of what political economist James O’Connor would call the fiscal crisis of the state tht affect economics across the world in the 1970s. This was a crisis of declining profit among private businesses and therefore declining revenue for states to fund welfare programs. Something had to give, and it was the welfare state.

Neo-liberalism is a political economic theory of the state committed to the laissez-faire market fundamentalism ideology that traces back to Adam Smith and David Ricardo. It includes a belief in comparative advantage, a minimalist state, and market freedom, and is, as articulated in the 1990s and 2000s, driven by finance capital. At the state level, neo-liberalism defines a theory of public administration. If neo-liberalism includes a commitment to market fundamentalism, then that also means that it is dedicated to a politics of limited government. This includes privatization, deregulation, and a scaling back of many traditional functions that capitalist and communist states had performed since at least World War II. But neo-liberalism as a theory transcends the state, providing also an international economic theory committed to free trade and globalism.

This emergence of neo-liberalism in the 1970s and its linkage to democracy is central to the crisis affecting the latter. As neo-liberalism retrenched the welfare state and pushed globalism it was accompanied by a dramatic increase in economic inequality in the world, as Thomas Piketty has pointed out. This occurred in the US and much of the western world. But it also impacted newly emerging democracies in Africa, Eastern Europe, and South America. Pressures for shock therapy market reforms, austerity, and open borders meant export of jobs to other countries, dismantling of social safety nets, and other economic pressures placed on governments and ruling parties.

Politically voters turned on globalism and free trade. This happened here with Trump voters in 2016, but also in Brexit in the UK. But many voters also blamed immigrants for the loss of jobs or social unrest in places ranging from France, to Italy, to Hungary. The increasing economic gap between rich and poor and, more importantly, the erosion of the economic conditions of the working class soured them on democracy. This paved the way for the emergence of strongmen as political leaders, the rise of far-right nationalist parties, and disenchantment with democracy and democratic structures to deliver the economic goods.

What we see today then in terms of the decline in support for democracy across the world is a product of its marriage to neo-liberalism. Capitalism and democracy always had an uneasy co-existence, but the neo-liberal democracy variant demonstrates the powerful contradictions in them. Either their linkage is producing outright rejection of democracy or a populist, rightist version that is merely democracy in form but not in substance.

USA in a Debt Trap Death Spiral

Posted on June 27, 2018 by Reid Mukai

By F. William Engdahl

Source: New Eastern Outlook

The US economy and its financial structures have never recovered from the great financial meltdown of 2008 despite the passage of ten years. Little discussion has been given to the fact that the Republican Congress last year abandoned the process of mandatory budget cuts or automatic sequestration that had been voted in a feeble attempt to rein in the dramatic rise in US government debt. That was merely an added factor in what soon will be recognized as a classic debt trap. What is now looming over not just the US economy but also the global financial system is a crisis that could spell the end of the post-1944 dollar system.

First some basic background. When President Nixon, on advice of Paul Volcker, then at US Treasury, announced on August 15, 1971 the unilateral end of the Bretton Woods gold-dollar system, to replace it with a floating dollar, Washington economists and Wall Street bankers realized that the unique role of the US dollar as leading reserve currency held by all central banks and the currency for world commodity and other trade, especially oil, gave them something that appeared to be a gift from monetary heaven.

So long as the world needed US dollars, Washington could run government deficits without end. Foreign central banks, especially the Bank of Japan in the 1980’s and since the turn of the century, the Peoples’ Bank of China, would have little choice but to reinvest their surplus trade dollar earnings in interest-bearing AAA-rated US Treasury securities. This perverse dollar system allowed Washington to finance its wars in faraway places like Afghanistan or Iraq with other peoples’ money. During the Administration of George W. Bush, when Washington’s annual budget deficit exceeded annually one trillion dollars, Vice President Dick Cheney cynically quipped, “debt doesn’t matter; Reagan proved that.” Up to a point that appeared so. Now we are getting dangerously near to that “point” where debt does matter.

Federal Debt Rise

There are generally speaking three major divisions of debt measured in the US economy: Federal debt of Washington, corporate debt and private household debt. Today, owing in large part to ten years of historic low interest rates following the largest financial crisis in history–the 2007-2008 sub-prime crisis that became a global systemic crisis after September 2008–all three sectors have borrowed as if there was no tomorrow because of the near-zero Federal Reserve interest rates and their various Quantitative Easings. Nothing so radical can last forever.

Since the financial crisis erupted in 2008 US Federal debt has more than doubled from $10 trillion to over $21 trillion today. Yet conditions were made manageable by a Federal Reserve emergency policy that dealt with the financial and banking crisis by buying almost $500 billion annually of that debt. Much of the remainder was bought by China, Japan and even Russia and Saudi Arabia. Further debt levels were restrained by the bipartisan spending caps established in the Budget Control Act of 2011 that had kept recent deficits partially in check.

Now conditions of future US Federal debt and deficit growth are pre-programmed for systemic crisis over the next several years.

‘Trumponomics’ Disaster

The economics of the Trump Tax Cuts Act of 2017, signed in December, dramatically cut certain taxes on business corporations from 35% to 21%, but did not offset that with revenue increases elsewhere. The promise is that cheaper taxes will spur economic growth. This is a myth under present economic conditions and overall public and private debt burdens. Instead, the new tax law, assuming ideal economic conditions, will decrease expected revenues by a total of $1 trillion over the next 10 years. If the economy goes into severe recession, highly likely, tax revenues will plunge and the deficits will explode even more.

What the new Trump tax cut act will do is dramatically increase the size of the US annual budget deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that as early as Fiscal Year 2019 the annual deficit that must be financed by debt will reach $1 trillion. Then the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee expects government debt issues of $ 955 billion for FY2018, compared with $ 519 billion in FY 2017. Then for FY 2019 and 2020 the deficit will exceed $1 trillion. By 2028, ten years from now, under mild economic assumptions, the size of the USA Federal debt will rise to an untenable $34 trillion from roughly $21 trillion today, and the deficit in 2028 will exceed $1.5 trillion. And this year 2018 alone, with historically low interest rates the cost of interest only on the total Federal debt will reach $500 billion.

Zombie borrowers…time bombs

Now after almost a decade of unprecedented low interest rates to bail out Wall Street and create new asset inflation in stocks, bonds and housing, the Fed is in the early stages of what some call QT or Quantitative Tightening. Interest rates are rising and have been for the past year, so far very gradually as the Fed is being cautious. The Fed however is continuing to raise rates, and now the Fed Funds stands at 1.75% after nearly ten years at effectively zero. Were they to stop now it would signal a market panic that the Fed knew something far worse than they say.

Because never in its history has the Federal Reserve indulged in such a monetary experiment with so low rates so long, the effects of reversing are going to be as well unprecedented. At the onset of the 2008 financial crisis the Fed rates were around 5%. That is what the Fed is aiming at to return to “normal.” However, with rising interest rates, the lowest credit sector, so-called non-investment grade or “junk bonds” face domino style defaults.

Moody’s Credit Rating has just issued a warning that, barring some sort of miracle, as US interest rates rise, and they are, as much as 22% of US corporations that are being kept alive borrowing at historically low interest, not only in shale oil but in construction and utilities, so-called “zombie” corporations, will face an avalanche of mass defaults on their debt. Moody’s writes that, “low interest rates and investor appetite for yield has pushed companies into issuing mounds of debt that offer comparatively low levels of protection for investors.” The Moody’s report goes on to state some alarming numbers: since 2009, the level of global non-financial junk-rated companies has soared by 58%, representing $3.7 trillion in outstanding debt, the highest ever. Some 40%, or $2 trillion, are rated B1 or lower. Since 2009, US corporate debt has increased by 49%, hitting a record total of $8.8 trillion. Much of that debt has been used to fund stock repurchases by the companies to boost their stock price, the main reason for the unprecedented Wall Street stock market bubble.

Fully 75% of federal spending is economically non-productive including military, debt service, social security. Unlike during the 1930s Great Depression when levels of Federal debt were almost nil, today the debt is 105% of GDP and rising. Spending on national economic infrastructure including the Tennessee Valley Authority and a network of federally-build dams and other infrastructure resulted in the great economic boom of the 1950s. Spending $1.5 trillion on a dysfunctional F-35 all-purpose fighter jet program won’t do it.

Into this precarious situation Washington is doing its very best to antagonize the very countries that it needs to finance these deficits and buy the US debt—China, Russia and even Japan. As financial investors demand more interest to invest in US debt, the higher rates will trigger the default avalanche Moody’s warns. This is the real backdrop to the dangerous US foreign policy actions of the recent period. No one in Washington seems to care and that’s the alarming fact.

Superpowers and Concrete Towers: Katsuhiro Otomo’s ‘Domu: A Child’s Dream’

Posted on June 24, 2018 by Reid Mukai

By Patrick Haddad

Source: We Are the Mutants

In 1989, almost a year after it was released in Japan, the Western world was given its first cinematic taste of anime with the sci-fi epic Akira. Acclaimed writer Katsuhiro Otomo’s vision of a post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo, a sea of concrete edifices laid waste by war, was adapted from the manga of the same name, serialized in Japan from 1982 to 1990. Religious fanatics, biker gangs, and shadowy government figures all vie for control of children with superhuman powers, while the truth behind World War III teases just out of reach. But before Akira, Otomo penned and illustrated a shorter piece of raw, dystopian horror: Domu: A Child’s Dream. Set in a government housing complex where a series of inexplicable deaths are taking place, Domu (serialized between 1980-1981) is resolved through a conflict between an old man and a young girl, both of whom secretly possess extrasensory powers.

While Domu foreshadowed Akira in many ways, it is a much more intimate story with fewer characters and just one location, the Tsutsumi Housing Complex. The residents of Tsutsumi are a forgotten, surplus community. Dreams left unfulfilled, private sufferings gone unchecked, and the struggle for identity in the monotonous wash of concrete go some way to explain the rash of suicides plaguing the complex, yet the police are at a loss to explain exactly how many of these deaths occurred. From the beginning, Otomo sets out to introduce the overwhelming, modernist structure as a character in and of itself. Full panel shots of the building in high detail and high contrast are found throughout, and are often employed as bookends to each chapter. Its circular layout insists upon dreary introspection for half of the residents it houses: there is no looking out to the city, to a potentially brighter future. Many prisons, schools, and hospitals also follow a similar template. The circular design—reminiscent of the Panopticon—allows for both greater visibility and fewer places to hide, and is often accompanied by a raised central observation point. Tsutsumi is monotonous in its aspect as well as its makeup: hard concrete, hard lines; no facade, no flair. Behind this impassive exterior lie grimy, cramped apartments hidden among a labyrinth of iron and concrete hallways. It isn’t much of a stretch to imagine Tsutsumi as the backdrop to one of Freddy Krueger’s nightmarish rampages, and Otomo almost certainly drew upon similar feelings of unease regarding the homogeneous modernization of postwar Japan as did Shinya Tsukamoto, who created the shocking cult horror film Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989).

As the story progresses, it becomes clear—to the reader at least—that the mysterious deaths can be traced back to Old Cho, an apparently senile old man who is in fact using his telekinetic powers to cause fatal accidents or, as in the iconic scene featuring a depressed young man with a craft knife, forcing residents to commit suicide. Old Cho frequently kills from the background, unseen by his victims, his twisted revelry seeming to come from the building itself. Old Cho is not the only resident with special gifts. He finds an adversary in the form of a young girl called Etsuko. They clash the very moment Etsuko and her family move into the tower block, when she uses her abilities to catch the plummeting baby Cho, using his psychic powers, had snatched and dropped from the balcony.

As the story progresses, Cho’s and Etsuko’s confrontations escalate, as the tally of innocent victims climbs. The final act of Domu marks a stark departure from earlier passages, as the static panels showing the impassive monolith and its cowed inhabitants are replaced by dynamic and violent scenes, splashed with blood and fueled by emotion. By the end of the book, it is hard to tell who really won or what a victory would even mean, but it is clear that most of the violence was down to random malice, or misguided fear and rage. It is ironic, then, that the reduction of human beings to just pure function results in senseless, unproductive violence.

Many modernist, and particularly Brutalist, social housing structures were built after World War II in order to show that “A dwelling can be standardized to meet the needs of men whose lives are standardized,” according to urban design pioneer Le Corbusier. Projects such as Les Damiers in Paris, Robin Hood Gardens in London, Habitat 67 in Montreal, and the Unité d’habitation in Berlin are iconic examples of an architectural style that would dominate social housing well into the 1970s. However, the utopian vision set out by modernist architects—to create socially progressive and egalitarian housing—became twisted by time and by the reality of the project’s application. Affordable social housing turned into isolated ghettos, while the idea of social progress became just a gear, an empty promise, in the great Soviet machine. The modular, repetitive nature allowed for quick and cheap rebuilding, but, perhaps in part due to its success, it also aided in the dissolution of identity. Each building, each home, was just a copy of the last, with nothing substantial to distinguish each from each: an existence stripped of form, each building nothing but raw function. And so too its occupants.

In contrast to the urbanization implied by modernist housing, America saw large numbers of people, many of them returning veterans, flee the cities after World War II in favor of suburban living. Combining the power of assembly-line mass production with the G.I. Bill’s loan assistance saw entire communities of cookie-cutter homes spring up in a remarkably short space of time. Spreading out in a grid, rather than towering above, suburbia very often entailed a similar rationalization of living spaces. The mass produced sprawl, built to the same specifications and filled with the same stylish appliances, fits nicely into Le Corbusier’s definition of homes as “machines for living in.”

Things were much grimmer in Japan, of course. Suffering atomic bomb strikes that wiped two of its cities clean off the map, as well as the death of an Empire, caused a national crisis of identity. The country was then occupied by and rebuilt in the image of its conquerors: centuries of culture burned to the ground or consumed by industry and replaced with bloodless, uniform architecture. Tower blocks went up where pagodas once stood, no longer hewn from stone and wood but erected with concrete and rebar. British author Theodore Dalrymple describes modernist architecture as “inherently totalitarian… [it] delights to overwhelm and humiliate what went before it by its size and prepotency.” The seeds of modernism in Japan were planted before their defeat during World War II, however. Le Corbusier worked with two prominent Japanese architects during the 1930s, Kunio Maekawa and Junzo Sakakura. During this time, a synergy was found between Le Corbusier’s visions for flexible, open plan buildings filled with natural light and the traditional Japanese house, called Sukiya-zukuri. This synergy would be expanded upon in the later Metabolism movement, which sought to bring inspiration from organic, biological structures to modernist architecture during the 1960s.

In Domu, we find a manifestation of this dehumanizing monolith in the form of the Tsutsumi Housing Complex and it’s magpie avatar, Old Cho. For each of his victims, Cho claims a glittering prize, a personal token: a badge, a hat, a gun. Before being forced over the precipice of their hopelessness, literally and figuratively, a piece of their identity is stolen before being secreted away somewhere in the bowels of the building.

While it is unlikely that Otomo wrote Domu as an explicit attack on modernism in Japan, the influence of the displacement and anxiety it caused is clear in his work. In Domu, we see Otomo start to develop two of the principle themes that went on to make Akira a timeless classic: young people with exceptional, inherent power, and a dystopian vision of Neo-Tokyo as a failed totalitarianism, an endless landscape of monstrous and towering concrete. These themes went on to define an era of storytelling in manga and anime characterized by pervasively bleak visions of the future.

The loss of privacy and individualism caused by massive modernist social housing estates is also explored in J.G. Ballard’s High Rise (1975), in which tenants of a self-contained tower block in London degenerate into primal tribes, warring over territory and resources while normal city life continues outside. In High Rise, the dehumanizing power of Brutalism leads people to lose their “civilized” behavior and let base urges drive their lives, while in Domu we get a greater sense of the despondency that comes from being a lifeless industrial worker in a lifeless industrial landscape. It is as though living in this monochromatic, function-centric environment leaves us with only two potential identities: the animal, or the machine.

Regardless of whether you read Domu for its gripping and pioneering storytelling, for what it tells us about the role played by modernist architecture in postwar Japan, or purely for its wonderful aesthetic, it is a work that easily stands on its own two legs, despite often being overlooked as some sort of practice run for the Akira epic. Rather than the abstract, existentialist sprawl that is the latter, in Domu we have a more concise and personal tale, with a sense of looming oppression that bleeds from every page. The bare honesty found in some of Cho’s victims shines a light on the real lives lived quietly the world over, their deep fatigue resonating in profound echoes. The next time your morning commute takes you past some austere, concrete tower block, remember: somewhere inside may be a young girl who blows things up with her mind.

Read Domu for free here.

Peace is a Cliché: When the West cannot Control the World Unopposed it Means War

Posted on June 21, 2018 by Reid Mukai

Dedicated to my friend, a philosopher, John Cobb, Jr.

By Andre Vltchek

Source: Dissident Voice

The West likes to think of itself as a truly “peace-loving part of the world”. But is it? You hear it everywhere, from Europe to North America, then to Australia, and back to Europe: “Peace, peace, peace!”

It has become a cliché, a catchphrase, a recipe to get funding and sympathy and support. You say peace and you really cannot go wrong. It means that you are a compassionate and reasonable human being.

Every year, there are “peace conferences” taking place everywhere where peace is worshipped, and even demanded. I recently attended one, as a keynote speaker, on the west coast of Denmark.

If a heavy-duty war correspondent like myself attends them, he or she gets shocked. What is usually discussed are superficial, feel-good topics.

At best, ‘how bad capitalism is’, and how ‘everything is about oil’. Nothing about the genocidal culture of the West. Nothing about continuous, centuries-long plunders and benefits that virtually all Westerners have been getting from it.

At worst, it is all about how bad the world is – “all people are the same” cliché. And, also, there are increasingly, bizarre, uninformed outbursts against China and Russia which are often labeled by Western neo-cons as “threat” and “rival powers”.

Participants of these gatherings agree “Peace is Good”, and “War is Bad”. This is followed by standing ovations and patting each other on the back. Few heartfelt tears are dropped.

However, reasons behind these displays are rarely questioned. After all, who would be asking for war? Who’d crave for violence, terrible injuries and death? Who’d want to see leveled, charred cities and abandoned, crying infants? It all appears to be very simple, and very logical.

But then, why do we not hear too often that “peace speech” pouring from the devastated and still de facto colonized African or the Middle Eastern countries? Aren’t they suffering the most? Shouldn’t they be dreaming about the peace? Or are all of us, perhaps, missing the main point?

My friend, a great Indian writer and thinker, Arundhati Roy wrote, in 2001, reacting to the Western “War on Terror”:

When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said, “We’re a peaceful nation.” America’s favourite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the portfolio of Prime Minister of the UK), echoed him: “We’re a peaceful people.” So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is Peace.

When it comes from the lips of the Westerners, is ‘peace’ really peace, is ‘war’ really a war?

Are people in that ‘free and democratic West’, still allowed to ask such questions? Or is the war and peace perception just a part of the dogma that is not allowed to be questioned and is ‘protected’ by both the Western culture and its laws?

I’m not in the West, and I don’t want to be. Therefore, I’m not sure what they are allowed to say or to question there. But we, those lucky people who are ‘outside’ and therefore not fully conditioned, controlled and indoctrinated, will definitely not stop asking these questions anytime soon; or to be precise, never!

*****

Recently, through Whatsapp, I received a simple chain of messages from my East African friends and Comrades – mostly young left-wing, revolutionary opposition leaders, thinkers and activists:

Free Africa is a socialist Africa! We are ready for war! The young Africans are on fire! Death to the imperialist forces! Viva Bolivarian revolution! South-South Cooperation! Today we take the battle to the streets! Africa Must Unite!

Such statements would sound almost ‘violent’ and therefore could be even be classified as ‘illegal’, if pronounced openly in the West. Someone could end up in Guantanamo for this, or in a ‘secret CIA prison’. A few weeks ago, I directly addressed these young people – leaders of the left-wing East African opposition – at the Venezuelan Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Yes, they were boiling, they were outraged, determined and ready.

For those who are not too familiar with the continent, Kenya has been, for years and decades, an outpost of the British, US and even Israeli imperialism in East Africa. It was playing the same role that West Germany used to play during the Cold War – a window shopping paradise, stuffed with luxury goods and services.

In the past, Kenya was supposed to dwarf the socialist experiment of Tanzania under the leadership of Nyerere.

Today, some 60 percent of Kenyans live in slums; some of the toughest in Africa. Some of these ‘settlements’, like Mathare and Kibera are housing at least one million people, in the most despicable, terrible conditions. Four years ago, when I was making my documentary film, in these slums, for South American network TeleSUR, I wrote:

…Officially, there is peace in Kenya. For decades, Kenya functioned as a client state of the West, implementing a savage market regime, hosting foreign military bases. Billions of dollars were made here. But almost nowhere on earth is the misery more brutal than here.

Two years earlier, while filming my “Tumaini” near Kisumu city and the Uganda border, I saw entire hamlets standing empty like ghosts. The people had vanished, died – from AIDS and hunger. But it was still called peace.

Peace it was when the US military medics were operating under the open sky, on desperately poor and sick Haitians, in the notorious slum of Cité Soleil. I saw and photographed a woman, laid on a makeshift table, having her tumor removed using only local anesthetics. I asked the North American doctors, why is it like this? I knew there was a top-notch military facility two minutes away.

“This is as close as we get to real combat situation”, one doctor replied, frankly. “For us, this is great training.”

After the surgery was over, the woman got up, and supported by her frightened husband, walked away towards the bus stop.”

Yes, all this is, officially, peace.

*****

In Beirut, Lebanon, I recently participated in discussion about “Ecology of War”, a scientific and philosophical concept created by several AUB Medical Center doctors from the Middle East. Doctor Ghassan ‘Gus’ Abu-Sitta, the head of the Plastic Surgery Department at the AUB Medical Center in Lebanon, explained:

The misery is war. The destruction of the strong state leads to conflict. A great number of people on our Planet actually live in some conflict or war, without even realizing it: in slums, in thoroughly collapsed states, or in refugee camps.

During my work, in almost all devastated corners of the world, I saw much worse things than what I described above. Perhaps I saw too much – all that ‘peace’ which has been tearing limbs from the victims, all those burning huts and howling women, or children dying from diseases and hunger before they reach their teens.

I wrote about war and peace at length, in my 840-page book “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”.

When you do what I do, you become like a doctor: you can only stand all those horrors and suffering, because you are here to help, to expose reality, and to shame the world. You have no right to decompose, to collapse, to fall and to cry.

But what you cannot stand is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is ‘bulletproof’. It cannot be illuminated by correct arguments, by logic and by examples. Hypocrisy in the West is often ignorant, but mostly it is just self-serving.

So, what is real peace for the people in Europe and North America? The answer is simple: It is a state of things in which as few Western people as possible are killed or injured. A state of things in which the flow of resources from the poor, plundered and colonized countries is pouring, uninterrupted, predominantly to Europe and North America.

The price for such peace? How many African, Latin American or Asian people die as a result of such arrangement of the world, is thoroughly irrelevant.

Peace is when the business interests of the West are not endangered, even if tens of millions of non-white human beings would vanish in the process.

Peace is when the West can, unopposed, control the world, politically, economically, ideologically and ‘culturally’.

“War” is when there is rebellion. War is when the people of plundered countries say “No!”. War is when they suddenly refuse to be raped, robbed, indoctrinated and murdered.

When such a scenario takes place the West’s immediate reaction ‘to restore peace’ is to overthrow the government in the country which is trying to take care of its people. To bomb schools and hospitals, to destroy supply of fresh water and electricity and to throw millions into total misery and agony.

As the West may soon do to North Korea (DPRK), to Cuba, Venezuela, Iran – some of the countries that are being, for now, ‘only’ tormented by sanctions and, foreign -sponsored, deadly “opposition”. In the Western lexicon, “peace” is synonymous to “submission”. To a total, unconditional submission. Anything else is war or could potentially lead to war.

For the oppressed, devastated countries, including those in Africa, to call for resistance, would be, at least in the Western lexicon, synonymous with the “call for violence”, therefore illegal. As ‘illegal’ as the calls were for resistance in the countries occupied by German Nazi forces during the WWII. It would be, therefore, logical to call the Western approach and state of mind, “fundamentalist”, and thoroughly aggressive.

Harvest of Greed – the Merger of Bayer and Monsanto

Posted on June 14, 2018 by Reid Mukai

By Dr. Mercola

Source: Waking Times

The featured documentary, “Harvest of Greed,” investigates a number of the many issues brought about by the merger of Monsanto and Bayer AG. The merger was initially announced in May 2016, when Monsanto accepted Bayer’s $66 billion takeover offer — the largest all-cash buyout on record.^1,^2,³

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) approved the merger in April this year,⁴following the European Union’s (EU) approval in March. As a condition of the DOJ’s approval, Bayer will sell some of its assets to BASF — its German competitor — before the finalization of the merger.

This includes its soybean, cottonseed and glufosinate weed killer businesses, which overlap with Monsanto’s and were antitrust sticking points. Combined, Bayer and Monsanto used to control nearly 60 percent of the American cottonseed market. Monsanto also owns the rights to 80 percent of corn and 90 percent of soybeans grown in the U.S.⁵ The EU also demanded Bayer eliminate about $7.4 billion-worth of its various firms “to ensure fair competition.”⁶

Mega-Entity Now Controls Large Portion of Global Seed Supply

This new entity is now the largest seed and pesticide company in the world, controlling more than 25 percent of the global seed and pesticide supply. In all, just three companies now dominate the global seed and pesticide market.⁷ (In addition to the Bayer-Monsanto merger, the DOJ has also given the Dow-DuPont merger the green light, and the Federal Trade Commission recently approved ChemChina’s acquisition of Syngenta.)

The Bayer-Monsanto merger generated deep concerns right from the start, and anti-competition regulators were urged to investigate the takeover. Bernie Sanders went on record saying the takeover poses “a threat to all Americans” and needed to be blocked.⁸ He also urged the DOJ to “reopen its investigation of Monsanto’s monopoly over the seed and chemical market.” Farmers have also expressed concern over what the merger might do to prices, as less competition inevitably tends to lead to price hikes.

As just one example, the price of a bag of seed corn has risen from $80 to $300 over the past decade alone — a price hike attributed to the consolidation of seed companies and reduced competition. The merger of Bayer and Monsanto is predicted to make matters worse. Farmers also worry that consolidation will result in lower quality products by reducing incentive for innovation. Organic farmers have their concerns as well. As noted by Food and Power:⁹

“For Kristina Hubbard, director of advocacy and communications for the Organic Seed Alliance, the merger presents a particular threat to organic farmers. She notes that the National Organic Program’s regulations on organic seeds generally dictate that growers must use organic seeds to grow their crops. But there is an exception granted for non-organic seed when ‘an equivalent organically produced variety is not commercially available.’

Acceptable non-organic seeds are generally owned by the giant seed companies. ‘That exemption is important because currently the supply [of organic seeds] isn’t sufficient to meet the diverse and regional needs of all organic farmers,’ she says. With continued consolidation in the seed industry, she says farmers that rely on those non-organic seed options may find themselves faced with even fewer options as the merged companies cut down on research and development.”

Bayer-Monsanto Merger Unlikely to Benefit Anyone but Its Shareholders

Bayer AG’s CEO, Werner Baumann, has stated that “it is not our plan or our ambition or our intent to prevent farmers from having choice.”¹⁰ But the history of Monsanto and Bayer both suggest it would be naïve to believe him. As noted by Mark Connelly, an agriculture analyst at the investment group CLSA Americas, “These companies want to make more money, they want to raise prices. No company in this industry needs these deals in order to innovate.”¹¹

Indeed, there can be little doubt that the Bayer-Monsanto merger will give the subsequent entity even more power to bully farmers into paying more and pressuring and manipulating governments into accepting the unacceptable risks posed by genetically engineered (GE) crops and mounting use of ever more toxic pesticides.

One example of Monsanto’s strong-arm tactics included in the film is that of India, where more than 300,000 farmers have committed suicide due to farm-related debt. When the government attempted to regulate the price of seed — the main cause leading to these debts — Monsanto sued the Indian government.

Between 1997 and 2014, Monsanto also sued 147 farmers for “improperly reusing patented seeds.”¹² They never lost a single case, even in cases where organic fields were contaminated or cross-pollinated with unwanted GE seeds.

Billions Against Bayer

In response to the announcement of the merger in 2016, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) launched a boycott against Bayer. The “Billions Against Bayer” campaign is essentially a continuation of the successful “Millions Against Monsanto” campaign. Following the DOJ’s April approval of the merger, OCA renewed its call for consumers around the world to join the boycott. You can follow the campaign and get the latest news updates on Facebook.¹³ As noted in a September 2016 press release:¹⁴

“Two of the world’s most foul corporate criminals will be one. Monsanto will pack up its headquarters and head overseas. The much-maligned Monsanto name will be retired. But a corporate criminal by any other name — or size — is still a corporate criminal.

This merger only heightens the urgency, and strengthens our resolve, to hunt down the corporations that are poisoning everything in sight. We will follow them to the ends of the earth, if need be. We will expose their crimes. We will end the toxic tyranny. We will become the Billions Against Bayer. And we will need your help …”

Even many Bayer employees are leery of the merger. While both companies have checkered pasts, Bayer has managed to escape the brunt of the kind of criticism, if not hatred, leveled at Monsanto over the years.

According to the featured documentary, Bayer claims the merger has widespread support among its staff, yet when Bayer employees were approached under the promise of anonymity, the general consensus was one of dismay at inheriting Monsanto’s tarnished reputation. Such fears are likely to come true sooner rather than later. Activists in Argentina, for example, promise Monsanto’s ill reputation cannot be washed clean but will now transfer over to Bayer.

Glyphosate — A Toxic Legacy

Both Bayer and Monsanto insist that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup and other herbicide formulations, is “a very safe product when used properly.” In the video, Bayer CEO Werner Baumann stresses that more than 3,000 studies support the chemical’s safety. Yet numerous studies have reached the converse conclusion, showing it poses toxic risks to soil, animals and humans.

“The things you hear in the public debate are ultimately based on misinformation about the risks of this product,” Baumann says. “So, we think glyphosate, even if it does belong to our company, is a good product, and its license should be renewed.”

At the end of 2017, the EU did indeed renew its approval of glyphosate for the next five years,¹⁵ but the process was not without its critics, such as Martin Häusling, member of the Green Party and the European Parliament, who noted that many of the studies exonerating glyphosate were funded by Monsanto itself, while independent research keeps finding problems.

Indeed, scientists have discovered it not only may be carcinogenic,¹⁶ but may also affect your body’s ability to produce fully functioning proteins, inhibit the shikimate pathway (found in gut bacteria) and interfere with the function of cytochrome P450 enzymes (required for activation of vitamin D and the creation of nitric oxide and cholesterol sulfate).

Glyphosate also chelates important minerals, disrupts sulfate synthesis and transport, interferes with the synthesis of aromatic amino acids and methionine, resulting in folate and neurotransmitter shortages, disrupts your microbiome by acting as an antibiotic, impairs methylation pathways, and inhibits pituitary release of thyroid stimulating hormone, which can lead to hypothyroidism.

Recent Government Tests Show Roundup Is More Toxic Than Glyphosate in Isolation

Most recently, toxicology testing¹⁷ by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) concluded the Roundup formula is actually far more toxic than glyphosate alone.¹⁸ The NTP testing was done by request from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) following the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reclassification of glyphosate as a Class 2A probable carcinogen three years ago.¹⁹

At the time, the IARC noted concerns about glyphosate formulations possibly having increased toxicity due to synergistic interactions. As it turns out, that’s exactly what the NTP testing found. According to the NTP’s summary of the results, glyphosate formulations “significantly altered” the viability of human cells by disrupting the functionality of cell membranes.

Mike DeVito, acting chief of the NTP Laboratory commented on the results saying, “We see the formulations are much more toxic. The formulations were killing the cells. The glyphosate really didn’t do it.”

Internal documents from Monsanto, obtained through previous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, reveal Monsanto’s own employees have not been convinced the product is harmless either. For example, in a 2002 email, Monsanto executive William Heydens said, “Glyphosate is OK but the formulated product … does the damage.”²⁰

Monsanto Charged With Crimes Against Humanity

October 16, 2016 (on World Food Day), Monsanto was put on trial for “crimes against nature and humanity” at a tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. The steering committee²¹ included Vandana Shiva, Corinne Lepage (former environment minister of France), Giles-Eric Séralini (toxicologist researching toxicities of GMOs and glyphosate), and Olivier De Schutter (former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food), among others. The legal opinion on the evidence presented at the tribunal was delivered April 18, 2017. As reported by Corporate Europe Observatory:²²“The tribunal concluded that:

Monsanto has violated human rights to food, health, a healthy environment and the freedom indispensable for independent scientific research
‘Ecocide’ should be recognized as a crime in international law
Human rights and environmental laws are undermined by corporate-friendly trade and investment regulation”

When asked if Bayer will continue Monsanto’s underhanded business practices, Baumann said the new entity will be managed “according to our standards,” adding that “Bayer stands for transparency, reliability and a different style of debate.”

Monsanto — A Destroyer of the Natural World

In addition to GE seeds and its flagship product, Roundup, Monsanto has also been a leading producer of Agent Orange, PCBs, DDT, recombinant bovine growth hormone and aspartame — the history of which is summarized in “The Complete History of Monsanto, ‘The World’s Most Evil Corporation,’”²³ originally published by Waking Times in 2014.²⁴

Monsanto also made its mark on history by participating in the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb, thereby becoming a “war horse” ally to the United States government — an alliance that still holds today. As noted in “The Complete History,” article:

“To add insult to world injury, Monsanto and their partners in crime Archer Daniels Midland, Sodexo and Tyson Foods write and sponsor The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009: HR 875.²⁵ This ‘act’ gives the corporate factory farms a virtual monopoly to police and control all foods grown anywhere, including one’s own backyard, and provides harsh penalties and jail sentences for those who do not use chemicals and fertilizers. President Obama … gave his approval.

With this Act, Monsanto claims that only GM [genetically modified] foods are safe and organic or homegrown foods potentially spread disease, therefore must be regulated out of existence for the safety of the world … As further revelations have broken open regarding this evil giant’s true intentions, Monsanto crafted the ridiculous HR 933 Continuing Resolution,²⁶aka Monsanto Protection Act, which Obama robo-signed into law as well.

This law states that no matter how harmful Monsanto’s GMO crops are and no matter how much devastation they wreak upon the country, U.S. federal courts cannot stop them from continuing to plant them anywhere they choose. Yes, Obama signed a provision that makes Monsanto above any laws and makes them more powerful than the government itself.”

Bayer Also Has a Long, Dark, Destructive History of Genocide

Despite having a far “cleaner” public reputation than Monsanto, Bayer is really just more of the same. Founded in Germany in 1863 by Friedrich Bayer and Johann Wescott, it too has a long, sordid history of creating poisons and mass destruction.²⁷ During World War II, Bayer (then I.G. Farben) produced Zyklon B gas, used in the Nazi gas chambers to eradicate 11 million people whose only crime was to be born a Jew.

According to Alliance for Human Research Protection, the company was also “intimately involved with the human experimental atrocities committed by Mengele at Auschwitz.”²⁸ In one case, Bayer purchased 150 healthy female prisoners from the camp commander of Auschwitz for use as test subjects for a new sleep drug. All the test subjects died, and another order for prisoners was placed.

While some of its board members ended up being arrested and tried for their crimes against humanity, others escaped and helped create the Federal Reserve.²⁹ If you think the passing of time might have made this corporate entity kinder, safer and gentler, think again.

In 2003, it was revealed Bayer sold blood-clotting medicine tainted with the HIV virus to Asian, Latin American and Europe in the mid-1980s.³⁰ The drug, Factor VIII concentrate, was worth millions of dollars, and the company continued to sell the tainted drug for a year after the contamination was discovered. In Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than 100 hemophiliacs contracted HIV and died after using the medicine.

Bayer’s drug Trasylol — used to control bleeding during surgery — was also eventually found to be responsible for at least 1,000 deaths each month for the 14 years it was on the market.³¹ In 2006, documents proved Bayer hid evidence showing unfavorable results from the drug in order to continue selling it. Lawsuits have also been filed against Bayer for the untimely death of 190 young women taking their birth control pill Yaz, which raises your risk of blood clots by 300 percent.

Bayer Unlikely to Shift Public Perception of GMOs and Toxic Agriculture

Between 2006 and 2007, Bayer was also responsible for contaminating U.S. rice imports with three unapproved varieties of GE rice under development by Bayer CropScience. Bayer also makes neonicotinoid pesticides, suspected of being responsible for mass die-offs of bees around the world, thereby threatening the global food supply, and made the plastic chemical bisphenol-A, now known to have a dangerous impact on the human endocrine system.

In short, Bayer’s history is just as dark and unethical as Monsanto’s, if not more, and some have rightfully referred to the merger of these two destructive behemoths as a “marriage made in hell.”³² While change is possible, it seems improbable that this new Bayer-Monsanto mega-entity will radically change, and based on their combined histories, the world better get ready for a monumental fight.

Biotech Companies Are Gaining Power by Taking Over the Government

Monsanto and their industry allies will not willingly surrender their stranglehold on the food supply. They must be resisted and rolled back at every turn. There is no doubt in my mind that GMOs and the chemical-intensive agricultural model of which they are part and parcel, pose a serious threat to the environment and our health. Yet, government agencies not only turn a blind eye to the damage they are inflicting on the planet, but actively work to further the interests of the biotech giants.

This is not surprising. It is well-known that there is a revolving door between regulatory agencies and private corporations. This has allowed companies such as Monsanto to manipulate science, defang regulations and even control the free press, all from their commanding position within the halls of government.

Consider for a moment that on paper, the U.S. may have the strictest safety regulations in the world governing new food additives, but has repeatedly allowed GMOs and their accompanying pesticides such as Roundup to circumvent these laws.

In fact, the only legal basis for allowing GE foods to be marketed in the U.S. is the FDA’s tenuous claim that these foods are inherently safe, a claim which is demonstrably false. Documents released as a result of a lawsuit against the FDA reveal that the agency’s own scientists warned their superiors about the detrimental risks of GE foods. But their warnings fell on deaf ears.

Don’t Be Duped by Industry Shills!

In a further effort to deceive the public, Monsanto and its cohorts spoon-feed scientists, academics and journalists a diet of questionable studies that depict them in a positive light. By hiring “third-party experts,” biotech companies are able to take information of dubious validity, and present it as independent and authoritative.

Industry front groups also abound. The Genetic Literacy Project and the American Council for Science and Health are both Monsanto-funded. Even WebMD, a website that is often presented as a trustworthy source of “independent and objective” health information, is heavily reliant on advertising dollars. It is no coincidence that they promote corporate-backed health strategies and products.

There’s No Better Time to Act Than NOW — Here’s What You Can Do

The biotech giants have deep pocketbooks and political influence, and are fighting to maintain their position of dominance. It is only because of educated consumers and groups like the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) that their failed GMO experiment is on the ropes. We thank all of the donors who helped OCA achieve their fundraising goal. I made a commitment to triple match all donations to OCA during awareness week. It is with great pleasure to present a check to this fantastic organization for $250,000.

At the end of the day, we must shatter Monsanto’s grip on the agricultural sector. There is no way to recall GMOs once they have been released into the environment. The stakes could not be higher. Will you continue supporting the corrupt, toxic and unsustainable food system that Monsanto and its industry allies are working so hard to protect?

For more and more people, the answer is no. Consumers are rejecting genetically engineered and pesticide laden foods. Another positive trend is that there has been strong growth in the global organic and grass fed sectors. This just proves one thing: We can make a difference if we steadily work toward the same goal.

One of the best things you can do is to buy your foods from a local farmer who runs a small business and uses diverse methods that promote regenerative agriculture. You can also join a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program, where you can buy a “share” of the vegetables produced by the farm, so that you get a regular supply of fresh food. I believe that joining a CSA is a powerful investment not only in your own health, but in that of your local community and economy as well.

In addition, you should also adopt preventive strategies that can help reduce the toxic chemical pollution that assaults your body. I recommend visiting these trustworthy sites for non-GMO food resources in your country as well:

Organic Food Directory (Australia)	Eat Wild (Canada)
Organic Explorer (New Zealand)	Eat Well Guide (United States and Canada)
Farm Match (United States)	Local Harvest (United States)
Weston A. Price Foundation (United States)	The Cornucopia Institute

Monsanto and its allies want you to think that they control everything, but they are on the wrong side of history. It’s you, the informed and empowered, who hold the future in your hands. Let’s all work together to topple the biotech industry’s house of cards. Remember — it all starts with shopping smart and making the best food purchases for you and your family.

The Global Pivot Away From America

Posted on June 12, 2018 by Reid Mukai

By Graham Vanbergen

Source: TruePublica

There was a day when the world realised they’d had enough of America. It wasn’t when America turned it back on the Herculean effort to sign the world up to the Paris Climate Agreement or TTIP or America’s continuous support for Israel’s murderous actions in Gaza or various other deals that took years to iron out and negotiate that have since been trashed. It was a moment we knew was going to happen but least expected to prove so important.

This was a deal that took the combined effort of the European Union, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China and Russia. It took twelve years to negotiate. America was a key player and the deal signed, sealed and delivered on October 18th 2015. It was the Iran nuclear deal.

That landmark agreement stopped the escalation of nuclear weapons programs, not just in Iran, but actually in the Mid-East more widely.

With no evidence from any source of Iran breaching its nuclear deal, Iran now has many trading partners. However, America was not one of them. Rightly, the Iranians did not trust their old foe. And so it came to pass that Donald Trump withdrew from the deal, as expected last month.

Palpable European anger to protect the deal and keep it on track spawned a completely new global confidence to move in the same direction. The EU had prepared banking and trading systems to support EU companies doing business with Iran. China was committed having signed a huge joint oil pipeline deal and then launched the petroyuan. Russia has many reasons to protect this deal – obviously and also trades not USDs but Rubles and through a bartering system. Then India announced a few days ago a trade deal with Iran, again bypassing USDs. Then EU diplomats, working on a collaborative agreement in Cuba since 2016 announce that deal to be done and dusted just a few days ago. Last week, 14 African countries announced their intention to switch from USDs to China’s Yuan. All have dumped trading predominantly in US dollars for one reason or another.

On the 10th May, the EU declared that America had just become Europe’s number one threat to its economy.

The EU Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Pierre Moscovici warned Trump’s protectionism represented a “dangerous nexus.”

To that end, the European Union continues to retract from the USA. EuActiv reports that: “The EU and China announced on Friday (1 June) that they would expand trade and investment cooperation amid the global trade dispute triggered by US tariffs.”

Wang Yi, state councillor and minister of foreign affairs of China confirms: “In the context of growing uncertainties in the world, it is even more important for China and the EU to deepen our strategic partnership.”

What has really happened here is a global pivot. Leaders are striking whilst ‘the iron is hot’. Wang’s visit to Brussels, in the framework of the annual EU-China high-level strategic dialogue, came hot on the heels of US President Donald Trump’s confirmation of additional tariffs against Europe and other nations’ steel and aluminium exports. Trump has, to all intents, ended up galvanising other world leaders into real action.

This pivotal moment may take some time to be made fully functional, maybe decades.

In the meantime, China’s One Belt One Road or Belt Road Initiative (BRI) costing nearly $1trillion is well underway and cannot be ignored. A modern Silk Road that links China, Russia, Europe and Africa in trading routes across land and sea.

Foreign minister Wang Yi has described the initiative as a “symphony of all relevant parties”.

Beijing believes it will kick start “a new era of globalisation”.

One party not included in this symphony is America.

According to the global consultancy McKinsey, the BRI has the potential to massively overshadow the US’ post-war Marshall reconstruction plan, involving about 65% of the world’s population, one-third of its GDP and helping to move about a quarter of all its goods and services.

The ‘belt’ is a series of overland corridors connecting China with Europe, via Central Asia and the Middle East.

One year ago last May, China hoped to put some meat on the bones at an international forum in Beijing but the initiative was greeted with a mix of excitement and suspicion. Beijing saw 28 heads of state and government leaders but German Chancellor Angela Merkel turned down an invitation as did US president Donald Trump.

Today, that initiative now looks like a go. Europe has all but given China the green light. Merkel included.

America has just proven itself to be the new bogeyman on the international geopolitical block. It is headed up by an unstable administration whose warped worldview, beset with paranoia sees nothing but enemies hiding in the dark. It wants a destabilised world because that’s what America does best and profits from most. In the meantime, everyone else just wants to trade, get on and make some money.

Neoliberal Defenestration and the Overton Window

Posted on June 7, 2018 by Reid Mukai

By Stephen Martin

Source: CounterPunch

‘It is difficult to get Artificial Intelligence to understand something, when the Research and Development funding it depends upon its not understanding it’–

Paraphrase of Upton Sinclair.

defenestration (diːˌfɛnɪˈstreɪʃən)

n

the act of throwing a person or thing out of a window

[C17: from New Latin dēfenestrātiō, from Latin de- + fenestra window

The freedictionary.com

‘If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists of treating another human being as a thing‘

John Brunner ‘The Shockwave Rider‘

This small article a polemic against neoliberal hegemony; in particular the emerging issue of ‘surplus population’ as related to technological displacement in context of a free market, an issue purposive to such hegemony which as an ‘elephant growing in the panopticon’ i.e. not to be mentioned?

The central premise is that Artificial Intelligence (AI) + Robotics comprise a nefarious as formulaic temptation to the elite of the ‘Technetronic era’ as Zbigniew Brzezinski put it: this consistent with a determinism as stems ontologically from ‘Empiricism’ form of a ‘One Dimensionality’ as Marcuse phrased it over five Decades ago; and which thru being but mere simulacra, AI and Robotics represent an ontological imperative potentially expropriated under pathology to denial of Kant’s concept of ‘categorical imperative’? (That Kant did not subscribe to determinism is acknowledged). The neoliberal concepts of ‘Corporatism’ and ‘free market’ are powerful examples of this ‘one dimensionality’ which is clearly pathological, a topic notably explored by Joel Bakan concerning the pursuit of profit within a Corporatist framework.

– ‘One dimensionality in, one dimensionality out’– so it goes ontologically as to some paraphrase of GIGO as trending alas way of ‘technological determinism’ towards an ‘Epitaph for Biodiversity’ as would be – way of ‘Garbage’ or ‘Junk’ un apperceived as much as ‘retrospection’ non occurrent indeed -and where ‘Farewell to the Working Class’ as André Gorz conceived to assume an entirely new meaning: -this to some denouement of ‘Dystopian Nightmare’ as opposed to ‘Utopian Dream’, alas; such the ‘Age of Leisure’ as ‘beckoning’ to be not for the majority or ‘Demos’,but rather for the ‘technetronic elite’ and their ‘AI’ and Robotics – such ‘leisure’ being as to a ‘freedom’ pathological and facilitated by the absence of conscience as much as morality; such the ‘farewell’; such the defenestration of ‘surplus’ , such the ‘Age’ we ‘live’ within as to ‘expropriation’ and ‘arrogation’ to amount to ‘Death by Panopticon’ such the ‘apotheosis’?

It is being so cheerful which keeps these small quarters going.

But digression.

– It is a relatively small step from ‘the death of thought’ to ‘the death of Life’under Neoliberal Orthodoxy as proving to be the most toxic ideology ever known– such the hegemony as a deliberative, shift of the ‘ Overton Window’ currently occurring as to trend deterministic; such the mere necrotrophy as a ‘defenestration’ – and the ‘one percent’ but a deadly collective of parasitic orifice? For what is ‘Empiricism’ when implemented thru AI and Robotic Technology in a Corporatist economy as but a ‘selective investment’ as to Research and Development by elite ‘private interests’, which to a determinism so evidently entailing a whole raft of ‘consequence’ ; such the means, such the production, such the ‘phenomenology’ as ‘owned’ indeed? Under pathology, selectivity is impaired to point of ‘militarization’?

But foremost amongst said ‘raft’ of consequence – the concept of ‘classification’ as incorporates methodological reduction of the particular to a composite of generalities so typical of ‘Science’ as expropriated; the fruition thereof replicated not least thru ‘Consumerism’ – and ‘Lifestyle’ – as much as ‘Life’ reduced as much as abrogated to but correlation way of ‘possession’ of ‘things’: this as said replication expressed as much ‘thru’ Linnaeus as Marx concerning ‘class’- and as results in concepts’ Incorporated’ such as the ‘Overton Window’ – as will be explored by way of ‘extrapolation’ below? The debasing of identity as a correlate of possessions as a necessary ‘abrogation’ by way of engineered ‘bio hack’ is only furthered, such the loss of dimensionality as a potential, by such as social media? An excellent multimedia illustration of such loss is found here.

It’s to be noted that for Empiricism the concept of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ entails an extra dimensionality as ‘metaphysical’ – and that ‘Politics’ so deconstructed despite abuse under orthodoxy as to ‘mitigation’ remains as ‘Moral Economics’ – this despite the mitigative contention of neoliberal orthodoxy that there no morality in the ‘synonymy’; to a pragmatic as ‘Utilitarian’ point of a ‘Killing the Host’ prevailing at paradigmatic as much as Geopolitical level as but explicative of a ‘necrotrophy’; as much as the ‘defenestration’ as euphemism herein proposed this small article would explicate?

Kudos to Michael Hudson for exposing, and continuing to expose, the ‘death of thought’ which Neoliberalism as an orthodoxy as but a mere ‘racket’ of ‘transfer of resources’ represents.

– Are we ‘on a roll’ here as much as ‘off the leash’ – such the rebellion ‘psycho political’; such the ‘CounterPunch’ by way of digital pamphleteering as ‘restricted code’ rejected evidenced by way of ‘alternative’?

‘Politics’ should mean a diversity biological as much as phenomenological; it should mean more than Empirical ‘utility’, by way of the extra dimensionality which Metaphysics represents; this, as much as ‘Democracy’ demands diversity; ‘thought permitted’ as evidencing same as much as questions allowed to be asked; while Corporatism as antithesis demands ‘line’, a homogeneity, a uniformity, an abrogation as to a contingency?

Whether ‘Empiricism’ as to Philosophy is ‘Essentialist’ or ‘Instrumentalist’ is as of much political relevance as the Medieval question ‘how many angels can dance upon the head of a needle?‘ – the tragic fact remaining in ‘Oceania’ become to Corporatism is that the economic impact of (AI + Robotics) constitutes a ‘technological displacement’ which under a ‘one dimensionality’ as ‘Orthodox’ is as a ‘political impact’ at a quintessential or axiomatic level, such the ‘formulae’ as (=Ecocide) ‘completes’ under a determinism of hegemony as demands ‘whoredom’? AI and Robotics destroy the symbiotic relationship between production and consumption thru reducing the requirement for human labor as waged in the productive process; AI and Robotics thereby impact upon the distribution of resources as wage based. The fairy tale of compensatory employment opportunities is at best wishful thinking, at worst it is a purposively contrived propaganda?

‘Biodiversity’, alas, becoming more limited to a ‘Thanatos‘ of ‘Military Industrial Corporatist Complex’ as explicates the ‘Age of the Anthropocene’as of the ‘1%’ as funders of ‘hegemony’ such the transfer of resources?

‘As ‘we’ view the world so it becomes’, indeed – this as much as how ‘Others’, through hegemony as ‘Utilitarian’, would have it viewed – and that such a large part of ‘Currency’ as ‘it’ to the permit of ‘Hegemony’ which would control and issue views – such the window as ‘Overtonian’ as can be shifted?

How long before the ‘collateral damage’ concerning premature fatality and reduced life expectancy as evidenced in homelessness, withdrawal of social welfare, militarization of policing, drug abuse, including prescription of synthetic opioids, incarceration all as obscenities explicating the ‘cheapening of life’ becomes ‘formalised’ under neoliberal orthodoxy as euthanasia? To such an Overton Window would it at first be ‘voluntary’?

It was ‘Utilitarianism’ as gave the World the concept of ‘Panopticon’ back in the Eighteenth Century.

Apropos to such ‘Thanatos‘ identified:

Wherefore art thou ‘Eros’: as represented by checkout operator, bank teller, driver, warehouseman, barista, cook, secretary, journalist, lawyer, receptionist, ‘ human voice at the end of the line’ – such the insidious inroads being made consequent the advance of Empirical based Technology?

The ‘Litany’ of such ‘displacement/defenestration’ could go on, as it undoubtedly shall under prevailing Hegemony ‘Western’ as ‘Oceanic’ as much orthodox as ‘deadly’, such the invasive penetration of ‘one dimensionality’ as ‘technological displacement’ evidenced under neoliberal orthodoxy as entailing a transfer of resources to mere ‘Stateless Bastards’, such the point of a determinism as would prevail woeful?

Ponerological questions such as would not be asked commensurate:

‘Is the ultimate ‘stateless bastard’ satan?

Can ‘synonymy seen’ be’ revolutionary’?

‘Technological displacement’ under an ontology of ‘One Dimensionality’ aka‘Corporatism’ but a euphemism for ‘surplus population’; this as much as ‘Corporatism’ promotes the illusion of ‘Democracy’ by way of ‘mental cheating’; such the synonymy as ‘simulacra’ an ‘illusion’ denied – but ‘real’ under ‘doublethink’?

‘Trickle down economics’ is as real as much as ‘technological displacement’ to be compensated for in the ‘opening up of a whole new vista of opportunity’, such the death of thought as neoliberal orthodoxy represents some parallel of tales told by such as Horatio Alger to point of ‘illusion’ encouraged?

These small quarters would ‘rip a new one’ in Neoliberal Orthodoxy by way of polemic.

It remains a ‘big’ question under contemplation of the genius of Orwell and the highly perspicacious ratio of ‘1/15/84’ (hence the ‘one percent’) as to why, within an undoubtedly comprehensive as prescient Dystopian vision where ‘oligarchic collective’ a synonym of ‘technetronic elite’, he ‘permitted the currency’ of the ‘Prole’ as ‘84%’ to prevail as a presence rather than but a memory disappeared by way of ‘memory hole’?

Under neoliberal orthodoxy the political utility of the ‘Proles’ and in particular the ‘Lumpenproletariat’, alas, is as to but fear as a ‘stick’; a basis of control and manipulation same sense as Upton Sinclair explicated ‘carrot’ contingent by way of synonym seen: to wit; accept control and manipulation as ‘rewarded’ or be ‘expelled’; be but as a ‘Prole’ subsisting and awaiting death, such the economic incarceration as ‘CAFO’ epitomises the cheapening of life under a hegemony as has corollary of alienation, marginalization and impoverishment wielded under Dystopian imperative; this to a ‘transfer of resources’ from ‘Eros‘ to ‘Thanatos‘ reinforced thru contingency of profit such the ‘ponerology’ of ‘Biodiversity’ reduced by way of paradigm Geopolitical?

To love Life is to loathe the deadly; such the philanthropy as would only be evidenced, such the irony, by the ‘ragged trousered’ as so reduced, such the divide et imperaevidenced?

-And so to ‘defenestration’ as ongoing 21^stC. by way of ‘surplus population’ generated deterministically as to be dealt with ‘Utilitarian’ as much as the elimination of ‘Biodiversity’ such the ‘technetronic era’ as much as of Dystopia for Humanity as opposed to a Utopia for (AI + Robotics)?

In the annals of International Finance, in which ‘usury’ figures large as polymorphous(?), the power of (AI + Robotics) ‘growing’ as ‘metastasising’ – as evidenced by the concept of ‘Dark Pools’, and in political manipulation to point of control and issue of currency by algorithms, such as infamously deployed by the now defunct Cambridge Analytica using data ‘supplied’ by Facebook are on the rise – such the ‘technetronic era’ furthered?

When neoliberal orthodoxy states ‘Say hello to my little friend!‘ way of the militarization of ‘AI +Robotics” then a ‘defenestration’ form of ‘take all to hell’ will occur, such the shift of the ‘Overton Window’ in progress?

As to the ‘Overton Window’ as in title this small article; a fellow ‘CounterPuncher ‘sees thru it’ most apposite:

Overton described the evolution to broad public acceptance as a process that develops by degrees: “Unthinkable; Radical; Acceptable; Sensible; Popular; Policy.” The right used this model and stuck with it for 30 years to achieve its current dominance. Ideas like slashing unemployment insurance and welfare, privatizing crown corporations, gutting taxes on the wealthy, making huge cuts to social programs and signing “trade” deals that give corporations more power, were all “unthinkable” or “radical” in the beginning. But after 30 years of relentless promotion and the courting of politicians, all of these ideas are now public policy.

Murray Dobbin

– You see it is really quite ‘simple’ when boiled down, such the reductioad absurdumas ‘one dimensionality’ the result of Empiricism embraced to an exclusion of alternative, as ‘Evolution’ circumscribes as much as theoretically delineates?

‘The Talking Heads’ got it right regarding the consequences of neoliberal orthodoxy as concerns the masses and the ‘death of thought’ whereby a ‘Road to Nowhere’ becoming more ‘incorporative’?

Thru Empiricism as an ‘Ontology’, Man in process of nurturing a necrotrophy, such the orifice as existing to be stuffed to a ‘friction of the finitude’. Each ‘Billionaire’ as become so Empirically quantifiable as under such ‘neoliberal jungle’ such the paradigm of abrogation is as to to an obscene ‘transfer of resources’ whereby egocentricity a ‘Thanatos‘ as opposed to ‘Eros‘, and whereby in such land of the blind as a ‘Kingdom’, the ‘one eyed’ as ‘one dimensional’ as much as Empiricism lack any sense of empathy let alone mercy, and which AI and Robotics to epitomise?

Under such ‘paradigm’ of necrotrophy as debasement as much as abrogation it is as blessed to be a Prole? As Martin Luther so humorously said:

‘So our Lord God commonly gives riches to those gross asses to whom He vouchsafes nothing else’

The rationale for composing this small article is not to be pessimistic, rather such the pretension it is as to be a ‘gadfly’ against the manifestly ongoing cheapening of life thru which such a small minority profit from, and which yet remains mutable, as future submissions shall propose.

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