Category Archives: war on terror

The Mad Violence of Casino Capitalism

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AmericanRoulette

By Henry Giroux

Source: Counterpunch

American society is morally bankrupt and politically broken, and its vision of the future appears utterly dystopian. As the United States descends into the dark abyss of an updated form of totalitarianism, the unimaginable has become imaginable in that it has become possible not only to foresee the death of the essential principles of constitutional democracy, but also the birth of what Hannah Arendt once called the horror of dark times. The politics of terror, a culture of fear, and the spectacle of violence dominate America’s cultural apparatuses and legitimate the ongoing militarization of public life and American society.

Unchecked corporate power and a massive commodification, infantilization, and depoliticization of the polity have become the totalitarian benchmarks defining American society. In part, this is due to the emergence of a brutal modern-day capitalism, or what some might call neoliberalism. This form of neoliberal capitalism is a particularly savage, cruel, and exploitative regime of oppression in which not only are the social contract, civil liberties and the commons under siege, but also the very notion of the political, if not the planet itself. The dystopian moment facing the United States, if not most of the globe, can be summed up in Fred Jameson’s contention “that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” He goes on to say that “We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world.”1

One way of understanding Jameson’s comment is through the ideological and affective spaces in which the neoliberal subject is produced and market-driven ideologies are normalized. Capitalism has made a virtue out of self-interest and the pursuit of material wealth and in doing so has created a culture of shattered dreams and a landscape filled with “Broken highways, bankrupt cities, collapsing bridges, failed schools, the unemployed, the underpaid and the uninsured: all suggest a collective failure of will. These shortcomings are so endemic that we no longer know how to talk about what is wrong, much less set about repairing it.”[i]

Yet, there is a growing recognition that casino capitalism is driven by a kind of mad violence and form of self-sabotage and that if it does not come to an end what we will experience in all probability is the destruction of human life and the planet itself. Certainly, more recent scientific reports on the threat of ecological disaster from researchers at the University of Washington, NASA, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reinforce this dystopian possibility.2 The undermining of public trust and public values has now given way to a market-driven discourse that produces a society that has lost any sense of democratic vision and social purpose and in doing so resorts to state terrorism, the criminalization of social problems, and culture of cruelty. Institutions that were once defined to protect and enhance human life now function largely to punish and maim.

As Michael Yates points out throughout this book, capitalism is devoid of any sense of social responsibility and is driven by an unchecked desire to accumulate capital at all costs. As power becomes global and politics remains local, ruling elites no longer make political concessions to workers or any other group that they either exploit or consider disposable.

Security and crisis have become the new passwords for imposing a culture of fear and for imposing what Giorgio Agamben has called a permanent state of exception and a technology of government repression.[ii] A constant appeal to a state of crisis becomes the new normal for arming the police, curtailing civil liberties, expanding the punishing state, criminalizing everyday behavior, and supressing dissent. Fear now drives the major narratives that define the United States and give rise to dominant forms of power free from any sense of moral and political conviction, if not accountability.

In the midst of this dystopian nightmare, there is the deepening abyss of inequality, one that not only separates the rich from the poor, but also increasingly relegates the middle and working classes to the ranks of the precariat. Concentrations of wealth and income generate power for the financial elite and unchecked misery for most people, a fear/insecurity industry, and a growing number of social pathologies.

Michael Yates in The Great Inequality provides a road map for both understanding the registers that produce inequality as well as the magnitude of the problems it poses across a range of commanding spheres extending from health care and the political realm to the environment and education. At the same time, he exposes the myths that buttress the ideology of inequality. These include an unchecked belief in boundless economic growth, the notion that inequality is chosen freely by individuals in the market place, and the assumption that consumption is the road to happiness. Unlike a range of recent books on inequality, Yates goes beyond exposing the mechanisms that drive inequality and the panoply of commanding institutions that support it. He also provides a number of strategies that challenge the deep concentrations of wealth and power while delivering a number of formative proposals that are crucial for nurturing a radical imagination and the social movements necessary to struggle for a society that no longer equates capitalism with democracy.

As Yates makes clear throughout this book, money now engulfs everything in this new age of disposability. Moreover, when coupled with a weakening of movements to counter the generated power of capitalists, the result has been a startling increase in the influence of predatory capitalism, along with inequities in wealth, income, power, and opportunity. Such power breeds more than anti-democratic tendencies, it also imposes constraints, rules, and prohibitions on the 99 percent whose choices are increasingly limited to merely trying to survive. Capitalists are no longer willing to compromise and have expanded their use of power to dominate economic, political, and social life. For Yates, it is all the more crucial to understand how power works under the reign of global capitalism in order to grasp the magnitude of inequality, the myriad of factors that produce it, and what might be done to change it.

Accompanying the rise of a savage form of capitalism and the ever-expanding security state is the emergence of new technologies and spaces of control. One consequence is that labor power is increasing produced by machines and robotic technologies which serve to create “a large pool of more or less unemployed people.” Moreover, as new technologies produce massive pools of unused labor, it also is being used as a repressive tool for collecting “unlimited biometric and genetic information of all of its citizens.”[iii]

The ongoing attack on the working class is matched by new measures of repression and surveillance. This new weaponized face of capitalism is particularly ominous given the rise of the punishing state and the transformation of the United States from a democracy in progress to a fully developed authoritarian society.   Every act of protest is now tainted, labeled by the government and mainstream media as either treasonous or viewed as a potential act of terrorism. For example, animal rights activists are put on the terrorist list. Whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden are painted as traitors. Members of the Black Lives Matter movement are put under surveillance,[iv] all electronic communication is now subject to government spying, and academics who criticize government policy are denied tenure or worse.

Under neoliberalism, public space is increasingly converted into private space undermining those sphere necessary for developing a viable sense of social responsibility, while also serving to transform citizenship into mostly an act of consumption. Under such circumstances, the notion of crisis is used both to legitimate a system of economic terrorism as well as to accentuate an increasing process of depoliticization. Within this fog of market induced paralysis, language is subject to the laws of capitalism, reduced to a commodity, and subject to the “tyranny of the moment….emaciated, impoverished, vulgarized and squeezed out of the meanings it was resumed to carry.”[v]

As the latest stage of predatory capitalism, neoliberalism is part of a broader economic and political project of restoring class power and consolidating the rapid concentration of capital, particularly financial capital.[vi] As a political project it includes “the deregulation of finance, privatization of public services, elimination and curtailment of social welfare programs, open attacks on unions, and routine violations of labor laws.”[vii] As an ideology, it casts all dimensions of life in terms of market rationality, construes profit making as the arbiter and essence of democracy, consuming as the only operable form of citizenship, and upholds the irrational belief that the market can both solve all problems and serve as a model for structuring all social relations. As a mode of governance, it produces identities, subjects, and ways of life driven by a survival-of-the fittest-ethic, grounded in the idea of the free, possessive individual, and committed to the right of ruling groups and institutions to exercise power removed from matters of ethics and social costs. As a policy and political project, it is wedded to the privatization of public services, the dismantling of the connection of private issues and public problems, the selling off of state functions, liberalization of trade in goods and capital investment, the eradication of government regulation of financial institutions and corporations, the destruction of the welfare state and unions, and the endless marketization and commodification of society.

Nothing engenders the wrath of conservatives more than the existence of the government providing a universal safety net, especially one that works, such as either Medicare or Social Security. As Yates points out, government is viewed by capitalists as an institution that gets in the way of capital. One result is a weakening of social programs and provisions. As Paul Krugman observes regarding the ongoing conservative attacks on Medicare, “The real reason conservatives want to do away with Medicare has always been political: It’s the very idea of the government providing a universal safety net that they hate, and they hate it even more when such programs are successful.”[viii] In opposition to Krugman and other liberal economists, Michael Yates argues rightly in this book that the issue is not simply preserving Medicare but eliminating the predatory system that disavows equality of wealth, power, opportunity, and health care for everyone.

Neoliberalism has put an enormous effort into creating a commanding cultural apparatus and public pedagogy in which individuals can only view themselves as consumers, embrace freedom as the right to participate in the market, and supplant issues of social responsibility for an unchecked embrace of individualism and the belief that all social relation be judged according to how they further one’s individual needs and self-interests. Matters of mutual caring, respect, and compassion for the other have given way to the limiting orbits of privatization and unrestrained self-interest, just as it is has become increasingly difficult to translate private troubles into larger social, economic, and political considerations. One consequence is that it has become more difficult for people to debate and question neoliberal hegemony and the widespread misery it produces for young people, the poor, middle class, workers, and other segments of society– now considered disposable under neoliberal regimes which are governed by a survival-of-the fittest ethos, largely imposed by the ruling economic and political elite. Unable to make their voices heard and lacking any viable representation in the process makes clear the degree to which the American public, in particular, are suffering under a democratic deficit producing a profound dissatisfaction that does not always translate into an understanding of how neoliberal capitalism has destroyed democracy or what it might mean to understand and challenge its diverse apparatuses of persuasion and power. Clearly, the surge of popularity behind the presidential candidacy of a buffoon such as Donald Trump testifies to both a deep seated desire for change and the forms it can take when emotion replaces reason and any viable analysis of capitalism and its effects seem to be absent from a popular sensibility.

What Michael Yates makes clear in this incisive book on inequality is that democratic values, commitments, integrity, and struggles are under assault from a wide range of sites in an age of intensified violence and disposability. Throughout the book he weaves a set of narratives and critiques in which he lays bare the anti-democratic tendencies that are on display in a growing age of lawlessness and disposability. He not only makes clear that inequality is not good for the economy, social bonds, the environment, politics, and democracy, Yates also argues that capitalism in the current historical moment is marked by an age that thrives on racism, xenophobia, the purported existence of an alleged culture of criminality, and a massive system of inequality that affects all aspects of society. Worth repeating is that at the center of this book, unlike so many others tackling inequality, is an attempt to map a number of modalities that give shape and purpose to widespread disparities in wealth and income, including the underlying forces behind inequality, how it works to secure class power, how it undermines almost every viable foundation needed for a sustainable democracy, and what it might mean to develop a plan of action to produce the radical imagination and corresponding modes of agency and practice that can think and act outside of the reformist politics of capitalism.

Unlike so many other economists such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz who address the issue of inequality, Yates refuses the argument that the system is simply out of whack and can be fixed. Nor does he believe that capitalism can be described only in terms of economic structures. Capitalism is both a symbolic pathological economy that produces particular dispositions, values, and identities as well as oppressive institutional apparatuses and economic structures. Yates goes even further arguing that capitalism is not only about authoritarian ideologies and structures, it is also about the crisis of ideas, agency, and the failure of people to react to the suffering of others and to the conditions of their own oppression. Neoliberal capitalism has no language for human suffering, moral evaluation, and social responsibility. Instead, it creates a survival-of-the fittest ethos buttressed by a discourse that is morally insensitive, sadistic, cannibalistic, and displays a hatred of those whose labor cannot be exploited, do not buy into the consumerist ethic, or are considered other by virtue of their race, class, and ethnicity. Neoliberalism is the discourse of shadow games, committed to highlighting corporate power and making invisible the suffering of others, all the while leaving those considered disposable in the dark to fend for themselves.

Yates makes visible not only the economic constraints that bear down on the poor and disposable in the neoliberal age of precarity, he also narrates the voices, conditions, hardships and suffering workers have to endure in a variety of occupations ranging from automobile workers and cruise ship workers to those who work in restaurants and as harvester on farms. He provides a number of invaluable statistics that chart the injuries of class and race under capitalism but rather than tell a story with only statistics and mind boggling data, he also provides stories that give flesh to the statistics that mark a new historical conjuncture and a wide range of hardships that render work for most people hell and produce what has been called the hidden injuries of class. Much of what he writes is informed by a decade long research trip across the United States in which he attempted to see first-hand what the effects of capitalism have been on peoples’ lives, the environment, work, unions, and other crucial spheres that inform everyday life. His keen eye is particularly riveting as he describes his teaming up with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in the 1970s and his growing disappointment with a union that increasingly betrayed its own principles.

For Yates, the capitalist system is corrupt, malicious, and needs to be replaced. Capitalism leaves no room for the language of justice, the social, or, for that matter, democracy itself. In fact, one of its major attributes is to hide its effects of power, racial injustice, militarized state violence, domestic terrorism, and new forms of disposability, especially regarding those marginalized by class and race. The grotesque inequalities produced by capitalism are too powerful, deeply rooted in the social and economic fabric, and unamenable to liberal reforms.  Class disparities constitute a machinery of social death, a kind of zombie-like machine that drains life out of most of the population poisoning both existing and future generations.

The politics of disposability has gone mainstream as more and more individuals and groups are now considered surplus and vulnerable, consigned to zones of abandonment, surveillance, and incarceration. At one level, the expansive politics of disposability can be seen in the rising numbers of homeless, the growing army of debt-ridden students, the increasingly harsh treatment of immigrants, the racism that fuels the school-to-prison pipeline, and the growing attack on public servants. On another level, the politics of disposability has produced a culture of lawlessness and cruelty evident by the increasing rollback of voting rights, the war waged against women’s reproductive rights, laws that discriminate against gays, the rise of the surveillance state, and the growing militarization of local police forces. Yates argues convincingly that there is a desperate need for a new language for politics, solidarity, shared responsibilities, and democracy itself. Yates sees in the now largely departed Occupy Movement an example of a movement that used a new discourse and set of slogans to highlight inequality, make class inequities visible, and to showcase the workings of power in the hands of the financial elite. For Yates, Occupy provided a strategy that can be and is being emulated by a number of groups, especially those emerging in the black community in opposition to police violence. Such a strategy begins by asking what a real democracy looks like and how does it compare to the current society in which we live. One precondition for individual and social agency is that the horizons for change must transcend the parameters of the existing society, and the future must be configured in such a way as to not mimic the present.

What is remarkable about The Great Inequality is that Yates does not simply provide a critique of capitalism in its old and new forms, he also provides a discourse of possibility developed around a number of suggested policies and practices designed to not reform capitalism but to abolish it. This is a book that follows in the manner of Dr. Martin Luther King’s call to break the silence. In it Yates functions as a moral witness in reporting on the hardships and suffering produced by grotesque forms of inequality. As such, he reveals the dark threats that capitalism in its ruthlessly updated versions poses to the planet. Yet, his narrative is never far from either hope or a sense that there is a larger public for whom his testimony matters and that such a public is capable of collective resistance. The Great Inequality also serves to enliven the ethical imagination, and speak out for those populations now considered outcast and voiceless. Yates provides a furious reading of inequality and the larger structure of capitalism. In doing so he exhibits a keen and incisive intellect along with a welcomed sense of righteous fury.

Notes.

[i] Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land, (New York, N.Y.: The Penguin Press, 2010), p. 12.

[ii] Giorgio Agamben, “The Security State and a theory of destituent power,” Philosophers for Change, (February 25, 2014). Online:

The security state and a theory of destituent power

[iii] Ibid., Agamben, “The Security State and a theory of destituent power,”

[iv] George Joseph, “Exclusive: feds regularly monitored black lives matter since ferguson,” Intercept (July 24, 2015). Online: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/24/documents-show-department-homeland-security-monitoring-black-lives-matter-since-ferguson/; Deirdre Fulton, “Exposed: Big Brother Targets Black Lives:Government spying can be an ‘effective way to chill protest movements,’ warns Center for Constitutional Rights,” CommonDreams (July 24, 2015). Online: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/07/24/exposed-big-brother-targets-black-lives

[v] Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis, Moral Blindness: The loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity, (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013), p. 46.

[vi] I have taken up the issue of neoliberalism extensively in Henry A. Giroux, Against the Terror of Neoliberalism (Boulder: Paradigm, 2008) . See also, David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Gerad Dumenil and Dominique Levy, The Crisis of Neoliberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). Henry A. Giroux, Twilight of the Social (Boulder: Paradigm, 2013); Henry A. Giroux, and in Against the Violence of Organized Forgetting: Beyond America’s Disimagination Machine (San Francisco: City Lights, 2014);

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Cambridge: Zone Books 2015).

[vii] Michael D. Yates, “Occupy Wall Street and the Significance of Political Slogans,” Counterpunch, (February 27, 2013). Online:http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/27/occupy-wall-street-and-the-significance-of-political-slogans/

[viii] Paul Krugman, “Zombies Against Medicare,” New York Times (July 27, 2015). Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/opinion/zombies-against-medicare.html?_r=0

This essay is excerpted from the introduction to The Great Inequality by Michael D. Yates.

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.

The Age of Authoritarianism: Government of the Politicians, by the Military, for the Corporations

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By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy… But I knew it wasn’t a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head… The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country—not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society—cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.” ― Historian Howard Zinn

America is at a crossroads.

History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a militaristic state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom.

Certainly, this is a time when government officials operate off their own inscrutable, self-serving playbook with little in the way of checks and balances, while American citizens are subjected to all manner of indignities and violations with little hope of defending themselves.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age—the age of authoritarianism. Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal.

Don’t believe me?

Let me take you on a brief guided tour, but prepare yourself. The landscape is particularly disheartening to anyone who remembers what America used to be.

The Executive Branch: Whether it’s the Obama administration’s war on whistleblowers, the systematic surveillance of journalists and regular citizens, the continued operation of Guantanamo Bay, or the occupation of Afghanistan, Barack Obama has surpassed his predecessors in terms of his abuse of the Constitution and the rule of law. President Obama, like many of his predecessors, has routinely disregarded the Constitution when it has suited his purposes, operating largely above the law and behind a veil of secrecy, executive orders and specious legal justifications. Rest assured that no matter who wins this next presidential election, very little will change. The policies of the American police state will continue.

The Legislative Branch:  It is not overstating matters to say that Congress may well be the most self-serving, semi-corrupt institution in America. Abuses of office run the gamut from elected representatives neglecting their constituencies to engaging in self-serving practices, including the misuse of eminent domain, earmarking hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracting in return for personal gain and campaign contributions, having inappropriate ties to lobbyist groups and incorrectly or incompletely disclosing financial information. Pork barrel spending, hastily passed legislation, partisan bickering, a skewed work ethic, graft and moral turpitude have all contributed to the public’s increasing dissatisfaction with congressional leadership. No wonder 86 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing.

The Judicial Branch: The Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the United States Supreme Court have become the guardians of the American police state in which we now live. As a result, sound judgment and justice have largely taken a back seat to legalism, statism and elitism, while preserving the rights of the people has been deprioritized and made to play second fiddle to both governmental and corporate interests.

Shadow Government: America’s next president will inherit more than a bitterly divided nation teetering on the brink of financial catastrophe when he or she assumes office. He or she will also inherit a shadow government, one that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country. Referred to as the Deep State, this shadow government is comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes right now.

Law Enforcement: By and large the term “law enforcement” encompasses all agents within a militarized police state, including the military, local police, and the various agencies such as the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, America’s law enforcement officials, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace but now extensions of the military, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens. In the latest move to insulate police from charges of misconduct, Virginia lawmakers are considering legislation to keep police officers’ names secret, ostensibly creating secret police forces.

A Suspect Surveillance Society: Every dystopian sci-fi film we’ve ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science, technology and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful. By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the government knows what you say. By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and text messages, the government knows what you write. By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the government knows where you go. By churning through all of the detritus of your life—what you read, where you go, what you say—the government can predict what you will do. By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists—and in turn, the government—will soon know what you remember. And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc. Consequently, in the face of DNA evidence that places us at the scene of a crime, behavior sensing technology that interprets our body temperature and facial tics as suspicious, and government surveillance devices that cross-check our biometrics, license plates and DNA against a growing database of unsolved crimes and potential criminals, we are no longer “innocent until proven guilty.”

Military Empire: America’s endless global wars and burgeoning military empire—funded by taxpayer dollars—have depleted our resources, over-extended our military and increased our similarities to the Roman Empire and its eventual demise. The U.S. now operates approximately 800 military bases in foreign countries around the globe at an annual cost of at least $156 billion. The consequences of financing a global military presence are dire. In fact, David Walker, former comptroller general of the U.S., believes there are “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that contributed to the fall of Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government.”

I haven’t even touched on the corporate state, the military industrial complex, SWAT team raids, invasive surveillance technology, zero tolerance policies in the schools, overcriminalization, or privatized prisons, to name just a few, but what I have touched on should be enough to show that the landscape of our freedoms has already changed dramatically from what it once was and will no doubt continue to deteriorate unless Americans can find a way to wrest back control of their government and reclaim their freedoms.

That brings me to the final and most important factor in bringing about America’s shift into authoritarianism: “we the people.” We are the government. Thus, if the government has become a tyrannical agency, it is because we have allowed it to happen, either through our inaction or our blind trust.

Essentially, there are four camps of thought among the citizenry when it comes to holding the government accountable. Which camp you fall into says a lot about your view of government—or, at least, your view of whichever administration happens to be in power at the time.

In the first camp are those who trust the government to do the right thing, despite the government’s repeated failures in this department. In the second camp are those who not only don’t trust the government but think the government is out to get them. In the third camp are those who see government neither as an angel nor a devil, but merely as an entity that needs to be controlled, or as Thomas Jefferson phrased it, bound “down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution.”

Then there’s the fourth camp, comprised of individuals who pay little to no attention to the workings of government, so much so that they barely vote, let alone know who’s in office. Easily entertained, easily distracted, easily led, these are the ones who make the government’s job far easier than it should be.

It is easy to be diverted, distracted and amused by the antics of the presidential candidates, the pomp and circumstance of awards shows, athletic events, and entertainment news, and the feel-good evangelism that passes for religion today. What is far more difficult to face up to is the reality of life in America, where unemployment, poverty, inequality, injustice and violence by government agents are increasingly norms.

The powers-that-be want us to remain divided, alienated from each other based on our politics, our bank accounts, our religion, our race and our value systems. Yet as George Orwell observed, “The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”

The only distinction that matters anymore is where you stand in the American police state. In other words, you’re either part of the problem or part of the solution.

Colonialism and Imperialism: Two Most Deadly Forms of Terrorism

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By Andre Vltchek

Source: Dissident Voice

Terrorism has many forms and many faces, but the most terrible of them is cold cruelty.

We are asked to believe that terrorists consist of dirty lunatics, running around with bombs, machine guns and explosive belts. That’s how we are told to imagine them.

Many of them are bearded; almost all are “foreign looking”, non-white, non-Western. In summary they are wife beaters, child rapists and Greek and Roman statue destroyers.

Actually, during the Cold War, there were some white looking “terrorists” – the left-wingers belonging to several revolutionary cells, in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. But only now we are learning that the terrorist acts attributed to them were actually committed by the Empire, by several European right-wing governments and intelligence services. You remember, the NATO countries were blowing up those trains inside the tunnels, or bombing entire train stations…

It “had to be done”, in order to discredit the Left, just to make sure that people would not become so irresponsible as to vote for the Communists or true Socialists.

There were also several Latin American ‘terror’ groups – the revolutionary movements fighting for freedom and against oppression, mainly against Western colonialism. They had to be contained, liquidated, and if they held power, overthrown.

But terrorists became really popular in the West only after the Soviet Union and the Communist Block were destroyed through thousands of economic, military and propaganda means, and the West suddenly felt too exposed, so alone without anyone to fight. Somehow it felt that it needed to justify its monstrous oppressive acts in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.

It needed a new “mighty”, really mighty, enemy to rationalize its astronomical military and intelligence budgets. It was not good enough to face a few hundred ‘freaks’ somewhere inside the Colombian jungle or in Northern Ireland or Corsica. There had to be something really huge, something matching that ‘evil’ Soviet “threat”.

Oh how missed that threat was, suddenly! Just a threat of course; not the danger of egalitarian and internationalist ideals…

And so the West linked terrorism with Islam, which is one of the greatest cultures on earth, with 1.6 billion followers. Islam is big and mighty enough, to scare the shit out of the middle class housewives in some Western suburb! And on top of that, it had to be contained anyway, as it was essentially too socialist and too peaceful.

At that time in history, all great secular and socialist leaders of Muslim countries, (like in Iran, Indonesia and Egypt), were overthrown by the West, their legacy spat on, or they were simply banned.

But that was not enough for the West!

In order to make Islam a worthy enemy, the Empire had to first radicalize and pervert countless Muslim movements and organizations, then create the new ones, consequently training, arming and financing them, so they could really look frightening enough.

There is of course one more important reason why “terrorism”, particularly Muslim “terrorism”, is so essential for the survival of Western doctrines, exceptionalism and global dictatorship: it justifies the West’s notion of absolute cultural and moral superiority.

This is how it works:

For centuries, the West has been behaving like a mad bloodthirsty monster. Despite the self-glorifying propaganda being spread by Western media outlets all over the world, it was becoming common knowledge that the Empire was raping, murdering and plundering in virtually all corners of the Globe. A few more decades and the world would see the West exclusively as a sinister and toxic disease. Such a scenario had to be prevented by all means!

And so the ideologues and propagandists of the Empire came up with a new and brilliant formula: Let’s create something that looks and behaves even worse than we do, and then we could trumpet that we are still actually the most reasonable and tolerant culture on earth!

And let’s make a real pirouette: let’s fight our own creation – let’s fight it in the name of freedom and democracy!”

This is how the new generation; the new breed of “terrorist” was born. And it lives! It is alive and well! It is multiplying like Capek’s Salamanders.

*****Western terrorism is not really discussed, although its most extreme and violent forms are battering the world relentlessly and have for a long time, with hundreds of millions of victims piling up everywhere.

Even the legionnaires and gladiators of the Empire, like the Mujaheddin, Al-Qaida, or ISIS, can never come close to the savagery that has been demonstrated time and again by their British, French, Belgian, German or US masters. Of course they are trying very hard to match their gurus and bread-givers, but they are just not capable of their violence and brutality.

It takes “Western culture” to butcher some 10 million people in just one single geographic area, in almost one go!

*****So what is real terrorism, and how could ISIS and others follow its lead? They say that ISIS is decapitating their victims. Bad enough. But who is their teacher?

For centuries, the empires of Europe were murdering, torturing, raping and mutilating people on all continents of the world. Those who were not doing so directly, were “investing” into colonialist expeditions, or sending its people to join genocidal battalions.

King Leopold II and his cohorts managed to exterminate around 10 million people of Western and Central Africa, in what is now known as the Congo. He was hunting people down like animals, forcing them to work on his rubber plantations. If he thought that they were not filling up his coffers fast enough, he did not hesitate to chop off their hands, or burn entire village populations inside their huts, alive.

10 million victims vanished. 10 million! And it did not take place in some distant past, in the “dark ages”, but in the 20th century, under the rule of so-called constitutional monarchy, and self-proclaimed democracy. How does it compare with the terrorism that is ruling over the territories occupied by ISIS? Let’s compare numbers and brutality level!

And the Democratic Republic of Congo has, since 1995, lost again close to 10 million people in a horrid orgy of terror, unleashed by the West’s proxies, Rwanda and Uganda (see the trailer to my film “Rwanda Gambit”).

Germans performed holocausts in South-Western Africa, in what is now Namibia. The Herero tribe was exterminated, or at least close to 90% of it was. People were first kicked out from their land and from their homes, and driven into the desert. If they survived, the German pre-Nazi expeditions followed, using bullets and other forms of mass killing. Medical experiments on humans were performed, to prove the superiority of the Germanic nation and the white race.

These were just innocent civilians; people whose only crime was that they were not white, and were sitting on land occupied and violated by the Europeans.

The Taliban never came close to this, or even ISIS!

To this day, the Namibian government is demanding the return of countless heads severed from its people: heads that were cut off and then sent to the University of Freiburg and several hospitals in Berlin, for medical experiments.

Just imagine, ISIS chopping thousands of European heads, in order to perform medical experiments aiming to demonstrate the superiority of the Arab race. It would be absolutely unthinkable!

Local people were terrorized in virtually all colonies grabbed by Europe, something that I have described in detail in my latest 840-page book “Exposing Lies of the Empire”.

What about the Brits and their famines, which they were using as population control and intimidation tactics in India! In Bengal at least 5 million died in 1943 alone, 5.5 million in 1876-78, 5 million in 1896-97, to name just a few terrorist acts committed by the British Empire against a defenseless population forced to live under its horrid and oppressive terrorist regime!

What I have mentioned above are just 3 short chapters from the long history of Western terrorism. An entire encyclopedia could be compiled on the topic.

But all this sits far from Western consciousness. European and North American masses prefer not to know anything about the past and the present. As far as they are concerned, they rule the world because they are free, bright and hard working. Not because for centuries their countries have plundered and murdered, and above all terrorized the world forcing it into submission.

The elites know everything, of course. And the more they know, the more they put that knowledge to work.

Terrorist trade and experience are passed on from Western masters to their new Muslim recruits.

The Mujahideen, Al-Qaida, ISIS – on closer examination, their tactics of intimidation and terrorization are not original at all. They are built on imperialist and colonialist practices of the West.

News about this, or even about the terror that has been inflicted on the Planet by the West, is meticulously censored. You would never see them on the programs broadcast by the BBC, or read about them in mainstream newspapers and magazines.

On the other hand, the violence and ruthlessness of the client terrorist organizations are constantly highlighted. They are covered in their tiniest detail, repeated, and “analyzed”.

Everybody is furious, horrified! The UN is “deeply concerned”, Western governments are “outraged”, and the Western public “has had enough – it does not want immigrants from those terrible countries that are breeding terrorism and violence”.

The West “simply has to get involved”. And here comes the War on Terror.

It is a war against the West’s own Frankenstein. It is a war that is never meant to be won. Because if it is won, god forbid, there would have to be peace, and peace means cutting defense budgets and also dealing with the real problems of our Planet.

Peace would mean the West looking at its own past. It would mean thinking about justice and rearranging the entire power structures of the Planet. And that can never be allowed.

And so the West is “playing” war games; it is “fighting” its own recruits (or pretending to fight them), while innocent people are dying.

No part of the world, except the West, would be able to invent and unleash something so vile and barbaric as ISIS or Al-Nusra!

Look closer at the strategy of these group-implants: it has no roots in Muslim culture whatsoever. But it is fully inspired by the Western philosophy of colonialist terrorism: “If you don’t fully embrace our dogmas and religion, then we will cut off your head, slash your throat, rape your entire family or burn your village or city to the ground. We will destroy your grand cultural heritage as we did in South America 500 years ago, and in so many other places.”

And so on and so on! It would really require great discipline not to see the connections!

*****In 2006 I was visiting my friend, a former President of Indonesia, and a great progressive Muslim leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, (known in Indonesia as “Gus Dur”). Our meeting was held at the headquarters of his massive Muslim body Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). At that time the NU was the biggest Muslim organization in the world.

We were discussing capitalism and how it was destroying and corrupting Indonesia. Gus Dur was a “closet socialist”, and that was one of the main reasons why the servile pro-Western Indonesian “elites” and the military deposed him out of the Presidency in 2001.

When we touched on the topic of “terrorism”, he suddenly declared in his typically soft, hardly audible voice: “I know who blew up the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. It was done by our own intelligence services, in order to justify the increase in their budget, as well as aid that they have been receiving from abroad.”

Of course, the Indonesian army, intelligence services and police consist of a special breed of humans. For several decades, since 1965, they have been brutally terrorizing their own population, when the pro-Western coup toppled the progressive President Sukarno and brought to power a fascist military clique, backed by the predominantly Christian business gang. This terror took between 2-3 million lives in Indonesia itself, as well as in East Timor and (until now) in occupied and thoroughly plundered Papua.

3 genocides in only 5 decades!

The Indonesian coup was one of the greatest terrorist acts in the history of mankind. The rivers were clogged with corpses and changed their color to red.

Why? So that capitalism would survive and Western mining companies could have their booty, at the expense of a completely ruined Indonesian nation. So the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) would not be able to win elections, democratically.

But in the West, those 1965 intensive massacres planned by the Empire were never described as “terrorism”. Blowing up a hotel or a pub always is however, especially if they are frequented by Western clientele.

Now Indonesia has its own groups of “terrorists”. They returned from Afghanistan where they fought on behalf of the West against the Soviet Union. They are returning from the Middle East now. The recent attacks in Jakarta could be just a foreplay, a well-planned beginning of something much bigger, maybe an opening of the new “front” of toy soldiers of the Empire in Southeast Asia.

For the West and its planners – the more chaos the better.

Had Abdurrahman Wahid been allowed to stay as the President of Indonesia, there would, most likely, have been no terrorism. His country would have undergone socialist reforms, instituted social justice, rehabilitated Communists and embraced secularism.

In socially balanced societies, terrorism does not thrive.

That would be unacceptable to the Empire. That would mean – back to Sukarno’s day! The most populous Muslim nation on earth cannot be allowed to go its own way, to aim for socialism, and to annihilate terrorist cells.

It has to be at the edge. It has to be ready to be used as a pawn. It has to be scared and scary! And so it is.

*****The games the West is playing are complex and elaborate. They are murky and nihilist. They are so destructive and brutal that even the sharpest analysts are often questioning their own eyes and judgments: “Could all this be really happening?”

The brief answer is: “Yes it can. Yes it is, for many long decades and centuries.”

Historically, terrorism is a native Western weapon. It was utilized freely by people like Lloyd George, a British PM, who refused to sign the agreement banning aerial bombardment of civilians, using unshakeable British logic: “We reserve the right to bomb those niggers.” Or Winston Churchill who was in favor of gassing the ‘lower grade’ of races, like Kurds and Arabs.

That is why, when some outsider, a country like Russia, gets involved, launching its genuine war against terrorist groups, the entire West is consumed by panic. Russia is spoiling their entire game! It is ruining a beautifully crafted neo-colonialist equilibrium.

Just look how lovely everything is: after killing hundreds of millions all over the Globe, the West is now standing as the self-proclaimed champion of human rights and freedom. It is still terrorizing the world, plundering it, fully controlling it – but it is being accepted as the supreme leader, a benevolent advisor, and the only trustworthy part of the world.

And almost nobody is laughing.

Because everyone is scared!

Its brutal legions in the Middle East and Africa are destabilizing entire countries, their origins are easily traceable, but almost no one is daring to do such tracing. Some of those who have tried – died.

The more frightening these invented, manufactured and implanted terrorist monsters, the more beautiful the West looks. It is all gimmicks. It has roots in advertisement, and in hundreds of years of propaganda apparatus.

The West then pretends to fight those deep forces of darkness. It uses powerful, “righteous” language, which has clear bases in Christian fundamentalist dogma.

An entire mythology is unleashed; it feels like Wagner’s “Ring”.

The terrorists represent evil, not the enormous expenditure from the coffers of the US State Department, the European Union and NATO. They are more evil than the Devil himself!

And the West, riding on the white horse, slightly pissed on wine but always in good humor, is portrayed as both a victim and the main adversary of those satanic terrorist groups.

It is one incredible show. It is one terrible farce. Look underneath the horseman’s mask: look at those exposed teeth; that deadly grin! Look at his red eyes, full of greed, lust and cruelty.

And let us never forget: colonialism and imperialism are two most deadly forms of terrorism. And these are still the two main weapons of that horseman who is choking the world!

André Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker, and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest book is Exposing Lies of the Empire. He also wrote, with Noam Chomsky, On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter. Read other articles by Andre.

The glorification of Antonin Scalia

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By Tom Carter

Source: WSWS.org

The sickening tributes across the official US political and media spectrum to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died suddenly on Saturday at the age of 79, are a barometer of the putrefaction of American democracy.

The universal deference towards Scalia from what passes for the “liberal” faction of the establishment is particularly repulsive. The statements of the Democratic presidential candidates, the supposed “socialist” Bernie Sanders no less than Hillary Clinton—echoing similarly sycophantic drivel from the likes of the New York Times—are monuments to political cowardice.

One would say these people lack the courage of their convictions if they had any convictions to lack!

They have sprung into action to join their Republican counterparts in hailing Scalia as a towering figure in American jurisprudence. Virtually every description of the deceased justice includes the words “brilliant” and “intellectual.” One is reminded of the programmed acclamation of Sergeant Raymond Shaw recited by his brainwashed fellow soldiers in the film The Manchurian Candidate: “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

Sanders took time off from his hollow calls for a “political revolution” to demonstrate his political obeisance to the ruling class, declaring, “While I differed with Justice Scalia’s views and jurisprudence, he was a brilliant, colorful and outspoken member of the Supreme Court.”

Clinton praised Scalia as “a dedicated public servant who brought energy and passion to the bench.”

President Obama called Scalia a “towering legal figure.” The New York Times’ Ross Douthat hailed Scalia for “putting originalist principle above a partisan conservatism,” and for his “combination of brilliance, eloquence, and good timing.”

No one dares say what needs to be said. The object of their veneration was a black-robed thug and sadist who used his position on the bench to attack the basic civil liberties laid down in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights—separation of church and state; due process; protection from arbitrary arrest, search and seizure; the right to trial by jury; protection from cruel and unusual punishment; the right to vote.

His supposed juridical brilliance boiled down to starting with the political outcome he desired (invariably reactionary) and then cobbling together pseudo-legal arguments to justify his ruling—often with flagrant disregard for legal precedent and the unambiguous language of statutes and constitutional provisions.

In one case last year, Scalia argued that a police officer did not use “deadly force” when he climbed onto an overpass and used an assault rifle to kill an unarmed man fleeing in a car. According to Scalia’s reasoning, it was not deadly force because the officer claimed to have been aiming at the car, not the person in the car.

Perhaps the most infamous example of this method—absurdly described in the media as “constitutional originalism”—was the 2000 Supreme Court decision Scalia engineered to halt the counting of votes in Florida and hand the White House to the loser of the election, Republican candidate George W. Bush.

The 5-4 decision to steal the election all but acknowledged its own speciousness when it declared that the justifications it advanced could not be applied to any future cases. In his separate concurring opinion, Scalia declared that the Constitution did not give the people the right to elect the president.

At the time of the theft of the 2000 elections, the World Socialist Web Site wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision to stop the counting of votes, and the acceptance of that ruling by the Democrats and the entire political establishment, demonstrated that there was no longer any significant constituency for democratic rights within the American ruling class. The reaction to Scalia’s death is a measure of the further erosion of democratic sentiment in the ruling elite.

Scalia personified the decay of bourgeois democracy in the United States over a protracted period of time. Appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan, he flourished and exerted increasing influence in the decades of political reaction, militarism and Wall Street criminality that ensued, continuing without a hitch under Obama. Not only in the anti-democratic substance of his rulings, but also in his methods and bearing, he embodied the promotion by the ruling elite of backwardness, prejudice and outright cruelty.

He was corrupt and made no bones about his corruption, proudly voting to remove limits on corporate bribes in elections and flaunting his private outings with Vice President Dick Cheney while the latter was a party in a case before the court. He was a bully, making a practice of baiting and harassing lawyers who came before him.

Throughout his career, Scalia consistently advocated positions that can only be described as barbarous and fascistic. Fittingly, his last judicial act was to deny a stay of execution. He was a figure who relished the power and trappings of the state, openly defending torture and internment camps.

Scalia worked tirelessly to break down constitutional and democratic limits on state power, infiltrating fascistic doctrines into Supreme Court jurisprudence. His theory of executive power, according to which the American president has unlimited and unreviewable powers for the duration of the “war on terror,” resurrects Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s “state of exception” doctrine in all but name.

Scalia’s mere presence on the court testified to the advanced decay of American democracy. That decay is linked, on the one hand, to the extreme growth of social inequality, accompanied by the rampant parasitism and criminality of the ruling class, and on the other hand to unending war, which has its domestic reflection in the build up of the repressive state apparatus that Scalia championed.

The bitterness of the disputes over his replacement is a reflection of the importance of his role in American politics over three decades during which the political establishment shifted violently to the right.

The deference shown to such a figure from all quarters of the political establishment should be taken as a warning by the working class. The ruling elite fears above all the growth of social opposition and class struggle. It exalts the legacy of Scalia because it is preparing police state methods to defend its power and property against an insurgent working class.

 

Related Article: Scalia’s Black Beemer by Greg Palast

The Popular Myth of Democracy in America

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: SteveLendmanBlog

No nation in world history promised more and delivered less to its citizens and people worldwide. None more greatly threatens world peace – putting humanity’s survival up for grabs like never before.

None did more harm to more people globally over a longer duration. None matches the menace it represents – a presstitute media supported fascist gangster state willing to risk destroying planet earth to own it, run by a bipartisan criminal class.

From inception, America was always run by the people who own it, as first Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay explained.

John Adams believed power belonged exclusively to the rich, well-born and able. Today it’s about monied interests in charge – deciding who holds all top positions in government, elected and appointed.

People have no say whatever. Ignore electoral politics, intended solely to deceive – manipulating people to believe new bums are more worthy than current ones.

Voting is a waste of time, accomplishing nothing. Duopoly power rules.

America is a one-party state with two wings, indistinguishable from each other on issues mattering most – militantly pro-war, pro-business, anti-populist no matter what names and faces hold top positions.

Police state laws enforced by powerful security forces at the federal, state and local levels assure wealth and privilege interests are exclusively served at the expense of public welfare.

Elections are farcical, exercises in theater, not democracy. Candidates for the nation’s top offices are cardboard cutouts of each other, distinguishable only by their disingenuous rhetoric – promises made, forgotten and broken once in office.

The public interest be damned. People are used, not served, deceived to believe politicians represent them.

Embedded power runs America, politicians serving entrenched interests exclusively, chosen for that reason. Ordinary people thinking their enfranchisement matters are living in a fantasy world.

Government of, by and for the people is the grandest of grand hoaxes. Media scoundrels perpetuate the myth with all the familiar slogans and high-minded posturing.

Jimmy Carter was right last summer calling America an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery…a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.”

Republicans and Democrats operate by the same corrupted standards. “(U)nlimited) money” serves their interests at the expense of constituents they represent.

America’s system is too debauched to fix. It’s too late for tinkering around the edges.

A complete makeover is needed – a popular revolution, replacing oligarchy with grassroots democracy for the first time in the nation’s history, freed from money control.

Today is the most perilous time in world history. We have a choice.

Accept the status quo, its endless wars, oligarch control over the greater good, unprecedented wealth disparity between rich and all others, along with harsh crackdowns on nonbelievers and risk of potential humanity destroying nuclear war – or refuse any longer to tolerate a system responsible for so much harm and misery to so many people worldwide.

Survival depends on choosing wisely. What kind of world do you want to live in? What kind do you want your children to inherit?

 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

War fraud: The great lies behind imperial warfare in the 21st century

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By Mark Taliano

Source: Intrepid Report

The “War On Terror” and “The War On Drugs” are both fraudulent, and they are both related. In a classic example of “reverse projection”, ”the War on Terror” is literally a “War for Terror,” and the “War on Drugs” is literally a “War for Drugs.”

Terror, coupled with the illegal trade in narcotics, particularly heroin, is enabling the orchestration, and funding, of illegal warfare which serves the interests of an international oligarch class as it destroys humanity.

The barbarity of the military operations conducted by the West is beyond the imagination of most domestic audiences, even when details are publicized.

Broadly speaking, we can decode the 9/11 terror wars using a simple formula:

  • Problem
  • Reaction
  • Solution

NATO imperialists engineer or exploit problems to create reactions, with a view to creating previously planned solutions. Typically, problems (i.e, 9/11 crimes) serve to engineer public consent (reaction) for illegal invasions (solution).

The “end-game” also contradicts publically stated goals. Evidence demonstrates that the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, as well as the war in Ukraine, were launched and prosecuted with a view to destroy each country through invasion, occupation, plunder, and to establish military footholds. The popular notion that the wars are being prosecuted for humanitarian purposes is absolutely ridiculous.

Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, for example, drug-trafficking warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar were used to create extremist “jihadist” armies (mujahideen) to destroy the Soviet-protected socialist republic. The long-standing CIA-terror group alliance, which pre-dates Afghanistan, continues to be empowered by profits from illegal drug trafficking: According to U.S sources, the production of opium (which is eventually processed into heroin) has increased “40-fold” since the initial invasion of Afghanistan.

So, the invasion destroyed a secular, socialist government and filled the vacuum with extremist drug-trafficking terrorist warlords. But imperialists gained a military foothold in the country.

Iraq

We all know now that the fraudulent “Weapons Of Mass Destruction” pretext was used for the criminal invasion of Iraq. The engineered problem was followed by mixed reactions from a less gullible public, but the invasion (solution), was launched (on the heels of genocidal sanctions) anyway.

Joe Quinn reports that in this invasion, US Death Squads manufactured a civil war to divert attention from the real culprits: the occupiers. A 10,000 strong “Shia militia” under US command is used to terrorize the population and to destroy Iraqi grassroots resistance. Often, the terrorists bomb civilian targets and falsely blame innocent groups—false flag tactics—which in turn create engineered friction and retaliation. Black propaganda operations are a CIA specialty. Consequently, Iraq is now an unstable terrorist quagmire, whereas before the invasion it was a modern, well-developed country free of any identifiable terror groups.

Libya

The NATO invasion of Libya, previously the wealthiest country in Africa, was also a product of repeated Western lies, and now, it too, is a hotbed of terrorism, vice, and drug trafficking. Erin Banco reports in “Drug And Human Trafficking In ‘Lawless’ Libya Is Funding ISIS” that the West’s “lack of foresight has enabled different groups of fighters to traffic a continuous supply of arms, drugs and people across Libya’s borders, helping to bankroll some of the world’s most violent terrorists.”

Syria

The invasion of Syria is following predictable patterns as well. A constellation of extremist, mercenary terror groups, including ISIS—all supported by the West—are trying to destroy Syria. Drug trafficking, stolen oil and artifacts are being used to finance the mass murder, and death squads, often under the cover of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are being used to create a “civil war,” and to destroy President Assad’s government. The terror and mass murder are primarily orchestrated externally with a view to making Syria safe for Wahhabism, barbarity, and a NATO military presence.

A Wikileaks cable indicates that since 2011, more than 230,000 people have died and a million have been injured. But despite the so-far-successful alliance of Syria, Iran, and Russia in destroying the mercenary terrorists and in saving Syria, the West can take some consolation: the US already has a military foothold in the country. Only time will tell if the West succeeds in creating and sustaining yet another unstable, terrorist-infested vassal state.

Despite what naysayers might think, the NATO-perpetrated holocaust is in many respects a neocon success story: a succession of previously independent countries have been destroyed, and a NATO presence has been installed. In fact, the wars for Terror and Drugs are winning, despite ostensible setbacks.

The whole process of death and destruction is not rational or moral, and the degeneracy is beyond evil. Commentators call it imperialism.

 

The Wickedness of [US] Foreign Policy

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By Sheldon Richman

Source: Center for a Stateless Society

If you want to see how inhumane people can be, just watch those who make and execute foreign policy. We could spend all day discussing the cruelties that politicians and bureaucrats commit against people who live inside the United States. Think how many are caged like wild animals because they manufacture, sell, or consume disapproved substances; gamble where government has forbade it; traded sexual services for money; possessed a gun they weren’t “supposed” to possess; etc. ad infinitum. Naturally, America leads the world in locking up people.

But at least the policy of mass imprisonment gets increasing attention. Subject to far less scrutiny is how America’s (mis)leaders, (mis)representatives and public (self-)servants treat foreigners, especially those with dark skins and a still-unfamiliar religion. When we talk about foreign policy, how easy it is to get wrapped up in abstractions like empire,intervention, nonintervention, and kinetic military action. These are important concepts to understand, of course, but foreign-policy conversations often become sterile examinations of “policy,” when what we need is a full awareness of the harm to individual human beings, the destruction of their families, homes, communities, and societies. These persons are the victims of our rulers’ geopolitical stratagems, which seemly outrank all other considerations. Yet each victim has a story embodying unique relationships and aspirations, a story that is permanently changed by an American cluster bomb, drone-launched missile, or special-ops mission.

The best that can be said of the perpetrators of this carnage and social devastation is that they are guilty of gross negligence. Many of their acts, however, cross into the territory of premeditated murder and the infliction of mayhem with malice aforethought.

One need not look hard for the most egregious examples taking place right at this moment. In Yemen the Obama administration gives indispensable material support to Saudi Arabia’s barbaric war — war ought not to require a qualifier like barbaric, but it seems necessary these days — on the poorest population in the region. The U.S.-facilitated starvation blockade and cluster-bombing take an untold number of Yemeni lives while devastating the social order. Policymakers — a euphemism for the architects of devastation — can rationalize this cruelty in geopolitical terms — the Houthis, who incidentally are fighting al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadis, are (falsely) said to be instruments of Iran — but the fact remains that individual persons who did no harm to anyone are being slaughtered and starved with the help of American politicians and military bureaucrats.

Or how about Syria? U.S. conduct carries out a seemingly incoherent policy of simultaneously targeting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and one of his chief adversaries, the Islamic State, while helping another Islamist group, al-Nusra Front, that has pledged allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor as head of al-Qaeda, perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. Estimates of the death total in Syria’s civil war reach as high as 340,000, a number that represents the toll at the hands of both government and rebel forces. (The total is sometimes invidiously attributed to Assad’s military alone.) The injured and refugees are probably uncountable.

What must be understood is that most of these deaths, injuries, and dispossessions would probably not have occurred had the Obama administration — most especially Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — not early on intensified the civil war by declaring Assad’s regime “illegitimate,” demanding that he “go” (i.e., die), and overseeing the transfer weapons and jihadi fighters from Benghazi, Libya. While doing all this, the Obama administration was thwarting promising efforts toward a negotiated settlement, which might have stopped or at least reduced the killing of innocent persons. For details see these three articles by the excellent investigate journalist Jonathan Marshall.

And then there’s Libya itself, which Clinton boasts is an example of “smart power at its best.” In 2011 she had egg on her face because she was on the wrong side of the Arab Spring, having defended Egypt’s military dictator, Hosni Mubarak, as a family friend and trusted world leader to the bitter end while throngs of aggrieved Egyptians were in the streets demanding his exit. Needing to clean up her image (perhaps in preparation for her quest for the presidency), she along with administration national-security VIPs Samantha Power and Susan Rice persuaded a reluctant Obama that the residents of Benghazi had to be saved from Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s alleged genocidal designs. The only problem was that Gaddafi had no genocidal designs. (Also see this and this.) And in a classic exhibition of mission-creep, the U.S.-led NATO air campaign went from protecting Benghazi to changing the regime in Tripoli, prompting Clinton to gloated, “We came. We saw. He died.” (Gaddafi was killed extrajudicially, reportedly in a most gruesome manner.)

Since the U.S. intervention, Libya has been wracked by sectarian civil war — even the Islamic State now holds territory there — prompting many Libyans to flee to Europe, which now has to contend with a growing refugee crisis. As noted, the Libyan power vacuum, featuring the unlocking of Gaddafi’s arsenal of heavy weapons, helped to boost the Islamist rebel militias in Syria, to the delight of U.S. allies Turkey (which fears the Kurds) and Saudi Arabia (which fears Iran and the Shi’ites). After the nightmare in Iraq, one has to wonder what Clinton was thinking. The closest thing we have to an answer is from then-Secretary of War Robert Gates, an opponent of the intervention, who said, “We were playing it by ear.” (And let’s not forget: destabilization itself can be an objective.)

Of course we could point to Iraq, George W. Bush’s invasion of which in 2003 set most of the aforementioned mayhem in motion, and Afghanistan, but the story is largely the same: innocent lives are sacrificed to the politicians’ grand agenda. Little people living small lives can’t be allowed to stand in the way.

2016 The Year Ahead

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By Neil Kramer

Source: NeilKramer.com

2016 will rigorously test people’s readiness to embody their truth. Can we live the wisdom and transformation we’ve been cultivating over years of study, journeying, and contemplation? Can we summon the strength to have our outside accurately reflect our inside? Are we ready to run our own world yet?

In many schools of mystical study, polarity is a key principle. The student is taught that everything in life is dual. All phenomena have pairs of opposites, as observed in the primal forces of birth and death, day and night, order and chaos, joy and sorrow. Over time, through experientially mapping and understanding the interplay of each set of polarities in our own lives, we may gradually determine a point of equilibrium that reveals the hidden teachings of these mysterious fluctuations. What we must be careful to avoid, is clinging to just one end of life’s naturally divergent polarizations. And herein lie the trials set forth in the world’s current crises.

At every turn, the synthetic culture of Empire implores us to throw our hearts and minds into unconscious polarization. It wants us to radicalize ourselves to either patriot or terrorist, believer or atheist, white or black, liberal or conservative, strong or weak, and then embark on an endless crusade to reform, condemn, or destroy the other side. This one-way polarization renders all participants impotent, regardless of which side they pick. This subtle but devastating trick deactivates our will and we automatically forfeit our capacity to rule ourselves. Lost in unconscious polarization, we serve Empire.

Nevertheless, whilst Empire’s constant telegraphing of fear can be unsettling, its power to deceive is unquestionably failing to influence legions of honorable humans who refuse to hand over their discernment to the corrupt and compliant media. The sock puppet terror cells and fabricated economic cataclysms are fraying at the edges and their artificial nature is pitifully evident. The official narrative betrays only those who choose to hide from reality. For them we can do nothing, until they do something for themselves.

It is my heartfelt observation that a critical threshold of spiritually alive humans have grown so excellently in confidence and wisdom, that the old hierarchies must resort to ever more vulgar contrivances to preserve their reins of power. Understand then, that the daybreak of a new higher consciousness will be heralded not by gentle awakenings and well-mannered transitions, but by bewildering fragmentation. Just as these patterns of collapse were experienced in many people’s personal lives throughout 2015, so now they are shaking the very foundations of Empire. Towering ramparts that once seemed so impossibly daunting and everlasting, will soon be little more than forlorn ruins.

We are upon the eve of the grand winter solstice of Empire, and the longest darkest night will seem interminably protracted and bone-chillingly cold. But like all things, this too shall pass. And the daylight will lengthen and the new growth that we have envisioned for so long will blossom – if we let it. We made Empire and we must unmake it. As a thing is bound, so it is unbound. Deeds not words. Learn the art of depolarization and nothing can stop you.