Posts filed under 'GUEST AUTHOR'
October 8th, 2007
By Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth to Power
In my recent article “The End Of America: The Police State Is Right Here, Right Now” I included experiences of escalating intimidation on the part of law enforcement in the United States within recent months. I must confess that when I cite such incidents, I fear that in a few days or weeks, it will all go away, and everyone else, myself included, will begin to question the validity of the examples, breathing a heavy sigh of relief and rejoicing that the situation isn’t nearly as dire as I’m asserting it is.
This time, however, I have nothing to fear because since that article was posted, the ante of out-of-control law enforcement in America appears to have been upped with a rapidity that I could not have imagined just a few weeks ago.
Have we not all heard about the New York woman on her way to rehab who passed through the Phoenix airport, became distraught when she had just missed her flight, and was arrested for disorderly conduct by airport police? The suspect, Carol Ann Gotbaum, was handcuffed and then placed in a holding cell and left alone. According to police, when they returned, she was dead. At this writing, Gotbaum’s family and officials are awaiting the autopsy report-the “official” cause of death.
Just a few days later, again in Phoenix, a male suspect was handcuffed after an on-foot chase by police, and shortly after being handcuffed, according to police, he lost consciousness. He was then taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
In today’s New York Daily News, the story “Science teacher’s brush with police ends in heart attack” relates an incident that happened back in June of this year when an African American Brooklyn high school teacher was mistaken for a perpetrator by police, suffered a heart attack, and was left on his own by the street cops who accused him of “acting.”
As outrageous as these incidents may be, the most chilling event appeared on networks across the nation this morning with the story of a twenty year-old Wisconsin sheriff’s deputy who shot and killed six young people at a party Saturday night. The most obvious question: How is it that a community of citizens allows a twenty year-old to become a deputy sheriff? Why not give an M-16 to a third-grader?
Nevertheless, all of these stories are connected by a common thread: Law enforcement in the United States, whose duty it is to “protect and serve” have now become not just part of the problem but in fact, predatory devourers of those they are sworn to keep safe.
Deepening collapse will be attended by manifestations of the unraveling of all institutions, one of the most frightening examples being law enforcement’s hysterical repression of citizens.
Although we are seeing more media attention given to private security companies such as Blackwater, we should not assume that the power and funding granted to these firms will dissipate anytime soon. They are an integral part of the Shock Doctrine brilliantly analyzed by Naomi Klein in her new book of the same title. The greater the extent of the empire’s collapse, the greater the intensity of the shock applied to those who reside within the belly of the beast. From those shocks flow not only increased terror and social control, but flourishing profits for private security companies.
The U.S. government is making it unmistakably clear that it intends to use every avenue of power at its disposal to lock down the nation. A story sent to my subscribers today from the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) reveals that in its correspondence with the Treasury Department “The Treasury Department was surprisingly candid in that correspondence, asserting the U.S. Government’s authority, in declared emergencies, to confiscate precious metals and to restrict ownership of mining shares — and to confiscate and restrict every other financial asset as well.”
Almost daily we hear of increased surveillance of Americans as well as unprecedented restrictions on travel, not only on persons entering the U.S. but on persons traveling within the country and on dissenters who attempt to enter other countries as in the case of two activists, Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright who were denied entrance into Canada on Thursday “because their names appeared on the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database.”
Another relevant story relinked today pertains to the anti-terrorism Vigilant Shield 2008 exercise of U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) “The series of exercises is mandated by the US government to prepare, prevent and respond to any number of national crises that would call for the use of the military inside the United States. Vigilant Shield 2008 builds a scenario of a domestic disaster in the US (terrorist attack or natural disaster). It posits the domestic use of the US military including a special role for the US Air Force.” As we know, a precedent for using the U.S. military inside the U.S. was set in the aftermath of Katrina in 2005.
For those considering expatriation, it will soon be too late to leave. For those who choose to remain within this increasingly locked down nation, it will be necessary to acquire survival skills, a strong community of friends, and a great deal of stealth in order to navigate this empire’s exacerbating Orwellian treachery.
October 8th, 2007
By Mathew Maavak of Panoptic World
This is a planet in denial. While the existential question gets a red hot “apocalypse now” for an answer, our stock markets seem to have regained paradise lost.
We are witnessing nothing less than history’s first confluence of unsustainable “peaks.”
Perhaps, we are incapable of piecing them all, for when crude oil reached an all-time intra-day high of $84.10 per barrel on Sept 20, its entitlement to a front pager screamer was conceded to the tale of a few thousand empty — or emptying — American homes.
It was like the Butterfly Effect, with a twist. The flapping rooftops of confiscated homes were now whipping up an economic tsunami worldwide.
Here is how it works.
US mortgage lenders, voracious as ever for “more,” had extended loans to the default-income group, who, were in turn hit by bad economic management. Credit card issuers followed suit to bloat consumer fantasies, and banks tightened the noose with additional loans for cars, tuition and businesses.
In the world of finance, debt is ironically regarded as an “asset.” Think of the rock-solid house that can be repossessed in the event of a default.
Debts, with the outward promise of a steady cash flow, are regularly pooled, “securitized” and converted into a bewildering array of financial products along an upward chain, where, they are hawked off by fund managers to the global market
This money buys up commodities, stocks, and yes, more “securities and derivatives,” along with junk bonds and blue chips.
It was easy come, easy go, wherever the money takes you…a 24/7 electronic casino…a Las Vegas without borders.
London bankers were toasting to the dawn of “the haves and the have yachts” at cocktail parties where sauvé qui peut was the vintage.
One of the greatest scams in recent memory was unfolding, exposing a pyramid scheme of epic proportions.
When this reached the point of metastasis, stock markets began to collapse.
The bottom feeders could not pay up anymore. Even the middle class were finding it difficult to pass the buck upwards.
This is called a liquidity crisis, and it happens when the laws of gravity finally exert a pull on the cash flow.
Still the champagne flowed. Lip-smacking advertorials continued to gush over “securities,” “derivatives,” and “comprehensive financial suites,” set in a Jacuzzi lilting to Ponzi’s version of “money for nothing and chicks for free.”
The pyramids may come crashing down, but the missing capstones are free to roam, investing in gold here, financial products there and junk bonds everywhere.
To avert a panic run though, central banks worldwide pumped $400 billion to maintain liquidity’s equilibrium.
Stock markets were no longer in the bearish or bullish mode; rather they were cancroidal, allowing fund managers to sidewheel from one market to another in search of profits, suckers, and a subtle pullout before the big bang.
It was the dawn of the crab, of cancer in stock market terminology, if one was needed. Suspicions were mounting. European banks were facing insolvency.
For three days beginning Sept. 14, savers across the United Kingdom removed £2 billion ($4 billion) from Northern Rock, Britain’s fifth largest lender. The Bank of England had to step in to guarantee all deposits in all banks – a move with little or no precedence.
However, the banks were not convinced either. Inter-bank lending, which profitably cycled cash from one bank to another as demand dictated, was now deemed an inter-bank debt trap. Available cash was hoarded up.
The Bank of England’s cash auction of £10bn — at a rate of 6.75% over three-months — has been shunned for the third consecutive week.
Either the “have yachts” have sailed away, or banks may actually find it difficult to repay the Bank of England.
Worldwide, the full weight of the “asset-backed” collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and structured investment vehicles (SIVs) may run into more than the $400 billion which central banks coughed up to keep the system afloat.
CDOs and SIVs are the sleek-sounding trillion-dollar apexes built on loans taken from simple homeowners.
Banks are still tallying what is real and redeemable, and what was created and whirling in thin air. Their best bet now is for a deux ex machina.
Bull in the China Shop
The biggest economic success story of our times was the product of Western consumerism. It created a real supply and demand situation, which forced the relocation of factories to the Third World of cheap labor.
China was the champion recipient. Demand for toys, screws, machinery, computers and cellphones could never ebb, whether it came leaded or unleaded. Beijing’s policymakers decided that the perennial flow of greenbacks demanded a domestic infrastructural revolution dictated by the export market — a first in history if there was one.
Factories, coal-fired plants, superhighways, skyscrapers were springing up at breakneck speed to fulfill the export craze. Excessive pollution and the plight of “unregistered” migrant workers from rural China mattered little.
What mattered were prestige, kickbacks and $1.2tr in hard currency-based reserves. It did not matter that China’s domestic consumption vis a vis its GDP was actually decreasing; it was more a matter of consumer opiates, of who was boss in the center of the universe.
It did not matter that Chinese cities were shrouded in toxic gray, where “only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.” [1]
The Chinese may cough but the ‘days when the world caught a cold whenever Uncle Sam sneezed was over.” Or so it seemed.
Uncle Sam sneezed.
Global finance began hemorrhaging, and it had to be resuscitated through an intravenous flow of taxpayer money.
Western consumers finally realized that girths had to be tightened, and what to better way than to curb spending, and let a market correction take place in the import sector.
An entire supply chain leading to China’s factories are in danger of folding up. Mineral resources from Africa, semiconductor plants in Malaysia, raw textile products elsewhere, now face acute market uncertainty.
China is in a bad fix. However, this is not deterring factories from coming online next year to meet the projected “global demand.” If Western consumers are scaling down their purchases, Africans are not in a position to be the replacement buyers, and without a market, they will not be able to sell their raw products either.
In such circumstances, moods can shift. When “Beijing rolled out the red carpet for more than 40 African heads of state last November, billboards depicting Africans clad in leopard skin underwear, and an indigenous man from Papua New Guinea, plastered the city.” [2] It is no wonder that China’s list of “allies” is getting shorter by the day.
Events in Myanmar are not proving helpful. China enjoys a near monopoly over Myanmar’s estimated 2.46 trillion cubic meters of gas and 3.2 billion barrels of crude oil. Beijing had plans to develop two parallel oil and gas pipelines stretching 2,380-km to link the deepwater port of Sittwe to Kunming, in the Chinese province of Yunnan. Upon completion, a good portion of Middle Eastern oil and gas is expected to bypass the Straits of Malacca.
The quid pro quo was arms supply and support at the UN for Myanmar’s military junta. Any new government now might negate all existing deals, and pull Yangon into the US orbit. This is a timely revolution from Washington’s perspective.
North Korea too is seeking rapprochement. There is enough operational space now to tackle Tehran, Damascus and the Hezbollah.
China can of course play the spoiler by providing arms to these regimes via a proxy. It is still a bad idea as the Israelis are just itching for war.
The IAF recently destroyed a Syrian installation that was purportedly an embryonic nuclear facility, but may well turn out to be a Kolchuga-type passive radar system, ideal for downing B2 stealth bombers. Coincidentally, the Russians have pledged to upgrade Syrian radar defenses after the attack.
If a wider conflagration breaks out in the Middle East, there will be no oil flowing from the Straits of Hormuz to China, either through Sitte, or through the Straits of Malacca.
The best option for Beijing will be to lock its oil and gas grid to the Russian Far East at a breakneck speed, and clean up some level of air pollution in time for the 2008 Olympics.
If an all-out war in the Middle East is our worst nightmare, think of the following unfolding crises…
The Peak Crises and its plural
Peak Oil: Fossil fuels, compressed and formed over aeons in subterranean geological layers are now releasing the telltale sibilant whispers of a punctured gas tank –- low as it was on petrol in the first place. With crude oil hovering above $80 per barrel, the various subsidies built into national economies are bound to burst at the seams, and precipitate price increases for basic necessities.
There is however a unique solution — falling consumer demand worldwide. That would crimp industrial demand for fossil fuel. It is no wonder oil majors were reluctant to build new refineries when profits seemed guaranteed in the era of “peak oil.” This day would surely come!
Peak oil is also tied to the current dollar crises. With the US dollar dipping against other major currencies, crude oil should come cheaper for Washington.
Oil and other commodities are traded in dollars, and dollar-denominated assets outnumber assets weighed in other currencies. Beijing can dump its hundreds of billions in dollar reserves for euros, only to trade them back into dollars to buy crude oil, gold and other assets.
The dollar blackmail will not work, especially with the US Army entrenched in the oil-rich Middle East.
Doomsday theorists are however predicting another Great Depression ahead, where the value of the dollar may mean little in the event of a global financial meltdown.
If this occurs, a global depression will have to deal with the following phenomena that was absent in the 30s.
Peak Urbanization: More than half of the world’s population will live in urban areas in just… a few months, according to a United Nations Population Fund report. That translates to 3.3 billion people in an urban concentration camp of shantytowns and high-rise pigeonholes.
Children are growing up in a peculiarly boxed-in environment, removed from the soil that births their identity. They do not wake up to the sound of a crowing rooster, which is nature’s way of sowing repentance and a turning of mindsets outside the conventional thinking box.
They wake up to beastly clangor instead. It is either the alarm clock or the barking dog, installed as “pets” to yelp any perceived intruder during the morning rush hour. The urban jungle is an industrialized Ziggurat, which pecks out a hierarchy from childhood. The ones right at the bottom will be the ones shouldering more concrete, or the biggest debt burden.
Close human proximity also leads to petty competitiveness and conflict. That is why “civilization” is held at gunpoint; by the police, by the army and by “treaties.”
The urban life is delicate and vulnerable to all sorts of hazards, from plagues to a breakdown in the utilities, communications and transportation services. And political upheavals. A disaster will grind down traffic to a gridlock, far from the escapist countryside.
What if an energy warfare broke out? What if a global depression hits us? Can three billion people grow a patch of greens on their balconies?
When it comes to greens, the outlook is not at all verdant…
Peak Grain: Global grain stockpiles are down to their tightest levels in three decades after two years of unusual weather patterns. Heatwaves have wilted crops in the granaries of the world while floods and other environmental scourges have devastated some of the poorer “self-sustaining” regions.
Global wheat stockpiles will fall to a 34-year low by June 2008, according to the International Grains Council. U.S. stockpiles will fall to lowest level since 1951-52. Wheat futures in Chicago reached $9.3925 a bushel late September when major supplier Ukraine slashed exports.
The price of a bushel has more than doubled in the past year.
The bushel of woes includes rice, barley, soybeans, sorghum, oats and lentils as well, and they are all sagging under record prices. The grapes of wrath have gone on to stalk eggs, cheese, milk, meat and the a la carte menu.
There may come a point when the industrial food chain has little choice but to pass the rising costs to consumers in a dramatic fashion.
Creeping upticks in the price of milk and bread are turning Europeans livid. Milk is now dubbed as the “new white gold.”
It is not just bad weather to blame. Rising demand from China is pushing up prices, despite the fact that only half of its urban population has basic health insurance. Tragically, processed food re-exported through Beijing’s food chain is causing a global health nightmare.
But why pick on China? The current biodiesel craze is inducing farms to purpose-plant their crops for the profitable bioenergy industry, according to the Hamburg-based Oil World.
“It is high time to realise that the world community is approaching a food crisis in 2008 unless usage of agricultural products for biofuels is curbed or ideal weather conditions and sharply higher crop yields are achieved in 2008,” it added
Bad news gets worse.
Peak Water: There is not enough freshwater around to sustain the planet’s inland ecosystem and its human population. Rivers that help supply drinking water are laden with toxic industrial wastes. Population growth is already straining the capacities of water treatment plants worldwide while desalination plants remain the prerogative of wealthy nations. According to the Pacific Institute: “Over 1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water; more than 2 billion lack access to adequate sanitation; and millions die every year due to preventable water-related diseases. Water resources around the globe are threatened by climate change, misuse, and pollution.” It estimates that “over 34 million people might perish in the next 20 years from water-related disease — even if the United Nations ‘Millennium Development Goals,’ which aim to cut the proportion of those without safe access by half, are met.” [3]
Lots of water will be diverted to industries and agriculture, or the highest bidder as privatization of water supply gains currency. In some regions, the situation is so acute that water diversion in one country may precipitate conflict with a neighbor. As early as 1974, Iraq reportedly mobilized its army to target Syria’s al-Thawra dam on the Euphrates. Israel has cast its own eyes on Lebanon’s Litani River.
According to Former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “The next war in the Near (Middle) East will not be about politics, but over water.”
If this watery grave is not enough, think of the next one…
Peak Fish: There is some fishy business going on in our oceans. Like oil and water, we are trawling deeper and deeper for our fish supplies. Such piscatorial adventures have led to a global decline in fish stocks. “Ecologists worry that entire fisheries will collapse as… ‘junk fish’ are used up.” Aquaculture, which substitutes marine catches to an extent, comes with its own environmental problems. [4]
The Times of London paints a similar gloomy scenario. According to some experts, 90% of fish around British waters “will disappear within 20 years” in the absence of an immediate intervention.
With 75% of fish stocks fully exploited, declining numbers across species worldwide hint at a collapse point by 2048, beyond which replenishment is not possible.
Peak Fish “comes at a time when their nutritional value is recognized more than ever.”
“World Health Organisation officials recommend a weekly intake of 200 to 300 grams of fish each week but today’s catches can only just meet this target. Since the 1950s an estimated 60 per cent of stocks in British waters have collapsed…”
The Times invokes the paradox that “measures proposed to limit fishing to a sustainable level will only place a cap on the nutritional flow for the coming decades.” [5]
The full circle
What began as sub-prime woes in the US housing sector may ripple into something we cannot yet imagine. Will there be a severe global recession, or worse? If wars are yet contained, bidding wars will yet emerge over wheat, water, fish, medicines and oil. What will the future hold in this ecology of crises?
Here is a refrain from the book of Hosea (4:3):
Because of this the land mourns,
and all who live in it waste away;
the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the fish of the sea are dying.
Kuala Lumpur, Oct 9, 2007
Copyright 2007 Maavak
Reference:
[1] As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes, NYT, Aug 26, 2007
[2] Beijing police round up and beat African expats Guardian, September 26, 2007
[3] Global Water Crisis Pacific Institute.
[4] Water shortages will leave world in dire straits USA Today, 26th Jan 2003
[5] Fish will vanish from British waters in 20 years, says author Times Online, Sept 15, 2007
Most of Mathew Maavak’s commentaries can be read here or visit the Panoptic World homepage.
October 8th, 2007
By Anwaar Hussain of Truth Spring
There are main battle tanks, there are fish tanks and there are simple water tanks. Then there are ‘Think Tanks’.
Odd as it may seem, Think Tanks are tanks that think. And just as when a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news, their ‘thinking’, whenever they do that, makes it straight to the main stream media. Ours, on the other hand, remains confined to free google blogspots.
So when in a recent study, the Oxford Research Group Think Tank said the “war on terror” has been a disaster, it was a man biting the dog but when we poor bloggers cried ourselves hoarse to, “bring out the nails to hammer into the coffin of the Empire dream because the Empire seekers tried to defeat with brawn what should have been conquered with brain”, it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank warns against attacking Iran it was a man biting the dog but when we said, “America’s invasion of Iran may finally prove to be that last straw on the camel’s back in the unraveling of that great country a la the Soviet break-up post Afghanistan invasion” and that “it is not wise to deliberately alienate 1.3 billion Muslims and act as lackey for the miniscule Zionists who are the only ones to benefit from the Iran misadventure while the Americans will foot the bill and take the brunt of Muslims’ wrath” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank asks for major changes to West’s military policy in Iraq and Afghanistan because the two places had become jihadist training grounds, it was a man biting the dog but when we said, ” from Sudan to Pakistan and beyond, the ranks of America haters now stand swollen like never before. The recruiters for suicide brigades now drool non-stop with glee at the long cues of raging applicants outside their murky caves”, it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank said,” every aspect of the so-called war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan has been counterproductive” it was a man biting the dog but when we said,” for the time being however, riding on the wings of terra, the Americans are being sleep marched into history’s hall of shame. But when they do finally wake up, they are sure to ask themselves, in a deafening global chorus of error, error, error, the fateful question, ‘What have we done?’ ” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank said that “From the loss of civilian life through to mass detentions without trial, in short, it has been a disaster,” it was a man biting the dog but when we said way back in March,” post-invasion excess deaths in occupied Iraq now totals 1 million” and, ” when Bush hastily declared mission accomplished, he stated that “Saddam’s torture chambers are closed.” He did not tell the world that he had already opened his own…the first one at Bagram” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank talked of secret detentions and renditions, it was a man biting the dog, but when we said, “America’s torture trail at the present weaves across the globe. America has now become the biggest patron of torture by proxy in the history of planet earth” it was dog biting the man.
When the Tank said,” Western countries simply have to face up to the dangerous mistakes of the past six years and recognize the need for new policies” it was a man biting the dog but when we said,” That this bloody US occupation practically guarantees that Americans and their sidekicks will continue to be targets of violence wherever and whenever possible and that the soon-to-come Iran misadventure is most likely to swell the ranks of these very ‘terrorists’ like never before” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank said,” Going to war with Iran will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region” it was a man biting the dog but when we said that there is a,” likelihood of hundreds of thousands of Taliban types who will come screaming banshee-like down the surrounding mountains to take revenge on our unfortunate troops bogged down in Iran” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank wants the West to take heed, the main stream media sits up and takes notice because it is a man biting a dog but when we shrieked from the rooftops for years that America has to realize, “that many other empires have had their day in the sun as superpowers before which others trembled. But today their crumbling ruins stand witnesses in mute silence to the fact that none were sovereign over the kingdoms of men for infinite times. All came to sad, inglorious ends” it was a dog biting the man.
If I were a Tank, every time I would think, men would bite dogs.
Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain
October 2nd, 2007
By Phil Rockstroh of Ebullient Skepticism (Note that Phil has a web site now!!!)
“We must become the change we want to see.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“In any case, I hate all Iranians.” –Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary to Defense Secretary, Robert Gates
How many times do we, the people of the US, have to go around on this queasy-making merry-go-round of propaganda and militarism before we shout — enough! — then shutdown the whole cut-rate carnival and run the scheming carnies who operate it out of town? It is imperative the nation’s citizens begin to apprehend the patterns present in this ceaseless cycle of official deceit and collective pathology. This republic, or any other, cannot survive, inhabited by a populace with such a slow learning curve.
Over the last three decades, the authoritarian right has risen to create the nation they have been longing for since their humbling by the Watergate scandal. After being subdued and humiliated by the mechanisms of a free republic, the right has turned the tables — and subdued and humiliated the republic. If the trend continues, all but unchallenged and unabated, we might as well replace the torch held aloft by Lady Liberty with a taser.
How could it come to this? How did so many US citizens grow so apathetic, oblivious, if not flat-out hostile to the tenets of a free republic?
The authoritarianism inherent to the structure of multi-conglomerate corporatism is antithetical to the concept of the rights and liberties of the individual. Most individuals — bound by a corporation’s secrecy-prone, hierarchical values — will, over time, lose the ability to display free thinking, engage in civic discourse, and even be able to envisage the notion of freedom.
This is true, from the florescent light-flooded aisles of Wal*Mart to the insular executive offices of Haliburton to the sound stages of CNN and Fox News. Under the prevailing order, reality, for the laboring class of the corporate state, has become debt slavery; in contrast, the simulacrum of reality, in which, the striver class exists, is a milieu defined by obsessive careerism. Under the hegemony of corporatism, freedom might as well be fairy dust. It only exists in an imaginary land, not the places one arrives by way of one’s morning and evening commute.
In addition, economically, by way of decades of financial chicanery, perpetrated by the nation’s business and political elite, we are eating our seed crop, and the consequences of this harvest of deceit have left the people of the US, intellectually and spiritually malnourished.
As a result, many attempt to sate the keening emptiness and mitigate the chronic unease by gorging themselves on the Junk Food Jesus of End Time mythology, which is a belief system wherein corporeal events and actions (personal and collective) have no lasting consequence because even the human body is to be cast aside, like a junk food wrapper, when the cosmic CEO decides to make the earth a part of his heavenly franchise.
Accordingly, the corporate state requires modes of being that evince obliviousness and obedience (the defining traits of the US consumer) on the part of the majority of the populace. Ergo, the rise of both Christian consumerists and the vast apparatus of the right-wing propaganda matrix that dominates news cycles via the electronic mass media.
All coming to pass, as George W. Bush — the reigning mascot of this fantasyland of infantile omnipotence and instant gratification — is rocked to sleep by his handlers cooing preposterous tales of how history will place him in the pantheon of those men whose greatness was unrecognized by the shallow and petty minds of their own era.
When, in fact, Bush, whose ruinous wars of aggression, deficit-ballooning tax breaks for the wealthy, and policies of crony capitalism (that enabled the economy-decimating, easy credit banking scams of the present) displays the character traits of a man ridden with severe psychological trauma; his attempts to tamp down immense inner turmoil, by means of his grandiose bearing, his absolute certitude regarding his own infallibility, and his bullying behavior, have resulted in an exteriorizing of his pathologies on a global scale, and this is playing out ugly, for all concerned.
Why do the people of the nation (for the most part) slouch, slack-jawed and passive, before this assault upon their collective integrity and personal dignity?
For generations, the ephemeral dazzle of pop culture paternalism and tabloid Manichaeism, as confabulated by advertising and public relations hacks and corporate news courtesans, has overwhelmed gravitas, history, even self-awareness. As all the while, shallow opportunists have been elevated to the status of pundits, experts and sages. Withal, the present system generously rewards those individuals who have mastered the art of impersonating human traits and responses in utterly contrived environments. As a whole, the majority of the populi have come to garner information about the world at large, and, worse, their own self-image, from a medium where phoniness is a treasured commodity, while authentic human traits and responses are banished to a beggar’s road.
Is it any wonder that the media types who thrive in these artificial settings have come to define authenticity as being only those attributes that appear authentic on television? Apropos, if you ask these “media personalities” about the shortcomings and corruption of the present system, they will plead the careerist’s Nuremberg Defense … of only being a stormtrooper obeisant to the “bottom line.”
Fantasy alert: One would hope that if one were to descend down a ladder constructed of these layers upon layers of bottom lines, one would arrive in a Hell reserved for those possessed with such shameless cupidity.
Reality redux: Yet as much as the human heart might yearn for such outcomes, there will never arrive the terrible majesty and bitter reckoning of anything resembling Judgement Day, heralded by celestial trumpets and legions of naked and cowering sinners; instead, in human affairs, there arises dire exigencies that can no longer be ignored nor explained away. The arrival of such a moment for the US is nearly at hand.
When a nation manifests a mixture of mass ignorance and official mendacity, in combination with uncheck power emanating from an insular and arrogant elite, a golden age of peace and plenty is as possible as holding a tea dance in a tsunami. As sure as a village of desperate fools who devour their seed crop, a nation that refuses universal health care to its children — yet rushes to the aid of its parasitic class of wealthy “speculators” and “investors” from the consequences of their own greed-besotted, fiscal debacles — is doomed.
This is the classic pattern of collective immolation experienced by a nation when power and privilege is increasingly consolidated in fewer and fewer hands. In essence, this is the key to the conundrum paralyzing the leadership of the Democratic Party: In a culture in which an individual’s worth is determined by the degree one can be exploited by the corrupt interests that control both the private and public sector, the public at large has little value to the political establishment … That is: other than, every few years, being bamboozled for their votes in the sham spectacles known as the US electoral process, a scam mostly financed, hence controlled, by the aforementioned big money interests.
In sum, this is the reason the Democratic Party feels little allegiance to their base. In turn, the political classes themselves are only of value to the big money corporate elite, because, by their delivery of staggering amounts of pork, massive tax cuts, and the passage of desired anti-regulatory legislation, they serve as their errand boys.
Moreover, the corporate control of congress is a microcosm of US society as a whole. Accordingly, the increasingly corporatized, ever more submissive people of the US should be termed, the Whose-Your-Daddy Nation.
Yet, since life does not exist in stasis, within this hierarchy of deceivers and dupes, we will gnaw at one another’s ankles until the whole pathetic pyramid collapses.
All around us, we can feel the shoddy structure starting to sway and buckle. Axiomatically, the value of the dollar is collapsing like the smooth facade of a con man called-out by a group of wised-up marks. At present, in the wake of the bust in the housing market, repo men are retracing the tracks of real estate grifters who fleeced legions of wishful thinkers who brought the American dream and now only possess the misery of debt slavery.
One would think the time for insurrection has arrived — that, at long last, an awakened and enraged public would rise up and foreclose on these reprobates and ne’er-do-wells squatting in the White House and skulking through Congress. The power and privilege of the corporately controlled elite of Washington should be repossessed like the Lexises of Atlanta real estate agents and the oversized pickup trucks of Tucson contractors, confiscated in the wake of the collapse of the housing market. Foreclosure signs and repossession notices should festoon the whole of official Washington.
Turn about would be fair play. Since, the rise of Reaganism, the financial sector has been engaged in selling off the assets of the nation’s public sector to the highest bidders. It is amazing that, at this point, this klavern of kleptocrats haven’t yet torn from the walls and absconded with all the copper plumbing fixtures and fittings on Capitol Hill.
Is a turnaround possible?
If we wake-up and smell the jackboot. From the miasma of right-wing media propaganda, to the proliferation of predatory capitalism, to the corruption and cupidity of the prison industrial complex, to the pandemic of police brutality and the trampling of the rights of the accused, to perennial civilian shooting sprees, to the muzzling of descent, to the rise of the national surveillance state, to the use and acceptance of torture as state policy, to the adoption of an unlawful, immoral foreign policy doctrine that promotes policies of perpetual war, one is forced to conclude that bullying, and deferring to bullies, has become the dominate mode of being in the US.
Remedy: In order to turn this trend around, the people of the US must begin to acquire the anti-authoritarian traits of empathy and engagement. The gaining of empathy alleviates the pathological need to be a bully, while social and political engagement mitigates feelings of powerlessness that authoritarian bully-boys, such as Bush, Cheney, Giuliani, et al., exploit.
In short, remedial human lessons for the US population, in general, and for the corporate and political classes, in particular.
Let us start the process by having a period of grief and repentance for the death and suffering that our government, in our name, has inflicted on the people of Iraq. This should be done as the US begins the process of a complete military withdrawal from their decimated nation, and the bestowing of economic reparations upon the millions of Iraqis who have suffered under the brutal machinations and murderous mayhem unloosed by our country’s contemptible invasion and occupation.
To do so, might save the people of our next target, Iran (as well as ourselves) a world of grief.
October 1st, 2007
BY Joel S. Hirschhorn author of Delusional Democracy and Friends of the Article V Convention
After many years of political disappointment, more progressives, liberals and conservatives - and certainly moderates and independents - know in their hearts that voting for Democrats or Republicans is a waste. Just imagine if voter turnout was cut to 25 percent or less! Let the whole world see Americans boycotting a broken and corrupt political system and rejecting what has become a delusional democracy. To keep voting in an unjust political system makes us willing political slaves that the rich and powerful elites exploit.
Just leaving the major parties is not good enough and, besides, most Americans are not party members. We need a bolder strategy. We must humiliate the political elites in both major parties and the corporate interests that support both of them. We can send a shock wave throughout the political establishment by not voting in the 2008 presidential election.
Stop playing THEIR game. Take back control. Take back YOUR nation. Time to boycott voting. This strategy is consistent with the thinking of Gandhi and King: peaceful resistance to political tyranny that can bring the corrupt system to its knees. Ultimately, the most effective protest is through civil disobedience - to visibly and stubbornly refuse to respect what has become a corrupt, untrustworthy system. Before it can be fixed it must be deconstructed and then rebuilt. Taxation with MISrepresentation means we need a Second American Revolution; it must begin - not with violent action - but with massive withdrawal by citizens that have seen the light. We have a good head start with about half of eligible voters already so turned off that they don’t vote. Obviously that has not been sufficient to change the system.
There will be negative, defensive knee-jerk reactions to this audacious strategy. Let’s examine them:
Many will think that taking such action violates our responsibility as citizens. But taking that responsibility seriously as engaged citizens in the Jeffersonian sense must reflect that there is still a valid contract between citizens and their government. When we vote we have the right to a political system that respects we the people and gives us an authentic representative democracy. We have a right to a constitutional republic operating under the rule of law. But we have elected representatives that no longer have the public interest as their primary commitment, nor truly honor and respect our Constitution.
They have been corrupted by corporate and other special interests that fund their campaigns to get the laws, loopholes and largesse they want. They have been corrupted by power and the perks of office. They are political cowards and mostly intellectual midgets. The two major parties have a stranglehold on our political system that no longer merits our participation in their crooked game. Political parties are not part of our Constitution and the two-party duopoly has demonstrated that both Democrats and Republicans put their own interests above those of we the people, our nation and our democracy. We cannot vote our way out of our current, dreadful political system.
Whether you are on the political left or right, you will fear that not voting will help put in office people that support policies your abhor. But decades of objective political reality tell us that even people from the party that we align with do not, when elected, fulfill their promises and our hopes. Sadly, most Americans have become lesser-evil voters, deluding themselves that this is the best, least worse, yet awful choice. Instead of feeling bad about voting for candidates that we know in our hearts are not worthy of our votes and public office, we must have the courage to say “enough is enough; I will not play in this shameful game any longer.” We must stop legitimizing and abetting our disgraceful government.
Many may fear that not voting sets a terrible example to children. But isn’t it more important to tell America’s children that true patriotism must reveal itself by rejecting a political system that no longer merits respect? Thomas Jefferson believed in periodic rebellion. Now is the time for all good Americans to come to the rescue of their nation, peacefully by boycotting elections.
The small number of third party members may be screaming: yes, don’t vote for Democrats and Republicans; come over and join us! I have been a strong third party supporter, but we must face the painful truth. The two major parties have so rigged the political system in their favor and against third parties that voting for third party candidates for federal office is a futile action. We must first boycott voting to create sufficient pressure to open the system to genuine political competition. That requires a number of electoral reforms, possible if the nation gets its first Article V convention (see www.foavc.org). With reforms we can increase voter turnout to over 90 percent, as routinely seen in other democracies.
False patriotism may cause some to think that we must not show anti-American nations and terrorists that our government no longer has the trust of its citizens. But that has already been widely disseminated by endless polls and surveys, including the recent Zogby poll that found a record-low 11 percent support for Congress. Better to show our enemies that we the people have finally awakened and decided to re-assert our sovereignty and restore American democracy. Loyalty to country, yes; loyalty to government, no. Our populist American insurgency must begin with a boycott of voting.
Proof that this extraordinary strategy can work is that by now diehard Democrats and Republicans reading this are squirming in discomfort. So spread the word, if you have not deluded yourself about voting the nation into a far, far better place. Time to boycott voting. Join the picket line; admit that none of the above is the only rational decision when the choices the two major parties give us for federal officials are not worth a dime.
Voting in a delusional representative democracy is as harebrained as voting even though you know votes will not be honestly counted - which many fear may be true. We may have lost control of our government, but we still control our voting. Time to walk away from the brainwashing and fiction that it really matters which Democrat or Republican you vote for in primaries and general elections for federal office. Power elites want us to believe that. They collude with the corporate mainstream media that make tons of money from campaigns and want you to stay glued to suspenseful horse races. Loud-mouth political pundits that narrate the races are democracy’s enemies. We must stop watching and listening to the political entertainment designed to keep us obediently mesmerized, as if the game is honest. Without an audience, these phony races and media circus will disappear.
Don’t be fooled by the large number of candidates in the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. It is a sham - a scheme to keep spectators glued to the illusory competition. Ron Paul has as much chance of being the Republican nominee as Dennis Kucinich has of being the Democratic nominee. With power elites controlling both major parties, zero chance for them and the other minor candidates, regardless of their grassroots support. Reflect on how both major parties accept lots of candidates in televised debates in the primary season. But come the general election with prime time televised presidential debates they keep out third party candidates that desperately need that exposure to rally meaningful support. Such is the hypocrisy and disdain of the two-party duopoly.
Come Election Day in 2008 we should party and celebrate (with TVs turned off) our populist boycott of voting and enjoy the camaraderie of fellow patriots. We must help them resist any late urge to vote, because by then millions of dollars will be spent by many special interests to make us feel guilty and ashamed if we do not vote. I can hear Paul Revere now: The liars are coming! The liars are coming! All that advertising and pundit-screaming to herd us back into the voting booths will verify that our boycott strategy works.
With having the votes of only a small minority of the electorate, whoever becomes president will have no public mandate except major, systemic political reforms that satisfy the will of the people. Either that or accept being the president of a fake democracy on the world scene.
Be brave. Stick together. Save voting for a reformed political system worthy of respect and participation.
September 30th, 2007
By Dale Allen Pfeiffer of The Mountain Sentinel
Since Bernanke cut interest rates last Tuesday (Sept. 25th), the already weak dollar has gone into a tail spin. Bernanke’s banker friends complained that they did not have enough money to cover their obligations and Bernanke responded by revving up the presses and printing up a slew of fresh funny money. In doing this he ignored the rest of the world, which was hoping that he would show some backbone and stand firm in support of the dollar. So now, everywhere you look, the dollar is losing its value against other currencies.
The Saudi’s unpegged their currency from the dollar for the first time since the oil dollar was established. They had no choice; it would have been suicide for them to follow Bernanke’s move. And elsewhere, other countries will have to follow suit or the US will drag them down. Japan is scrambling for shore.
Not long after the cut in interest rates, the dollar passed a key point against the Euro when it surpassed 1.41 dollars to one Euro. Since then the value of the dollar has continued to drop. The US dollar has been dropping against the Euro since January 2003. It now worth less than 59% of the value it had four years ago. At this point a dollar crash is nearly inevitable. US dollars may soon have as little value as confederate dollars.
For many years we have depended on foreign investors to support our economy by stockpiling our currency. These foreign investors cannot hold onto their dollars for much longer. Already they have lost over 40% of their investment. They will have to cut their losses and divest. This has already started to happen, and as the sell-off accelerates the dollar will find itself in a freefall which will quickly leave it a worthless currency. A massive sell-out could see the dollar losing as much as 90% of its value within days.
Snake Oil
You would not know any of this from the major news networks. They are trying to tell us that the drop in the dollar is actually a good thing. They reason that foreign consumers will flock to the US to buy devalued goods. This is a load of crap, and they know it.
US goods will not devalue. There are very few goods that are wholly US-made today. Most are at least partially manufactured offshore. Because of that, US goods will not devalue, they will simply go up in price. Soon, US consumers will find that their dollars can only purchase half of what they currently buy. And this ratio will worsen as the dollar continues to plunge. Once this crash is complete, US consumers will learn that they have lost everything. They will find that their salaries, their pensions, their health insurance coverage, everything is worthless.
So why is the media trying to sell us this lie? Simply to keep up consumer confidence. If US consumers understood what was really happening, there would be a panic. The truth could cause a run on the banks. Along with foreign investment, consumer spending is the only other pillar supporting the US economy. Consumer spending has already become sluggish. If the reality of our situation were understood, US consumer spending would quickly crumble.
The smart money is already fleeing the US market. It is diversifying into precious metals and a host of other currencies. It is quietly moving outside of the US. This migration has been going on for years, but now it is beginning to speed up. Yet, while this flight is going on, they want the general public to remain unalarmed. The smart money is trying to make its exit before a stampede blocks the fire doors. There were only so many lifeboats on the Titanic and the first class passengers were evacuated before anyone else was allowed out of steerage.
Black Monday and Bloody Tuesday
Monday, October 1st is the day of fiscal reckoning. October 1st is New Year’s Day for businesses, and on that day all the banks are required to open their books and honestly assess their current standing. The fear for the last couple months is that more than a few banks may close their doors. On Monday, we will find out for sure.
For several years now, the banks have been playing wide and loose with loans and investments. Spurred by low interest rates, they lured in consumers and home owners into mortgages and loans that they simply could not afford. It used to be that a bank would underwrite and fund every loan it made. But in the past decade, banks have developed the practice of making loans, storing them on their balance sheets for a short period of time and then packaging them into derivatives called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). These CDOs were then sold off to investors expecting a high rate of return on the investment. Through this mechanism, the banks did not tie up their own collateral with the loans they issued, so they could issue more and more loans.
CDOs were bought up by insurance companies, hedge fund managers, pension funds and even other banks throughout the world. Due to low interest rates, these managers even purchased CDOs with borrowed money. The CDOs themselves became collateral for more borrowing.
There are hundreds of billions of CDOs out there, and until now it has been mostly speculation as to what percentage is junk. Monday, October 1st the banks will have to fess up, and we will know once and for all whether or not they are capable of covering their losses. The losses in CDOs will be amplified and complicated by the problem of commercial paper.
“Commercial paper is highly-rated short-term notes that offer investors a safe haven investment with a yield slightly above certificates of deposit or government debt. Banks use the money to purchase longer-term investments such as corporate receivables, auto loans, credit card debt, or mortgagees.” (Wall Street Journal 9-5-07)
There is $2.2 trillion in commercial paper in the US. Much of this commercial paper is currently worthless because it is tied to toxic CDOs. Yet the banks are obligated to cover this commercial paper and refinance it regularly. Right now nobody will touch anything connected to CDOs, so the banks are sitting on whatever commercial paper they have in their possession and will have to cover its finances and make up for its losses on their own.
And here is the problem. The banks do not have the collateral to cover hundreds of billions in commercial paper and failing CDOs. So they have turned to the Fed, and their friend Bernanke has tried to come to their rescue by making billions in emergency bank loans and by lowering the interest rate. This lowering of the interest rate will not be used to lure in more shady mortgages. Nobody is offering mortgages right now. The funny money the Fed is currently printing up is supposed to help cover the banks’ losses.
Unfortunately, it is too little too late. Nor would it solve the problem anyway. The toxic CDOs are still there, as is the commercial paper. At best, the lowering of interest rates will simply buy a little time, while making the crash worse when it does come. That is all Bernanke was hoping to achieve when he lowered rates last week. And he did this as a wager that the weak dollar would not unravel as a result.
That is precisely what is happening. The dollar is unraveling, and on Monday, October 1st, we will find out just how much help Bernanke provided to his banker friends. If the banking news is as grim as many analysts believe it will be, then we will hear of banks defaulting and closing their doors. Thousands of small businesses and millions of regular customers will find that they cannot access their accounts. Where they can do so, there may be runs on the banks until they do close their doors.
A Black Monday will likely be followed by a bloody Tuesday as the banking news leads to a route on the stock market. In this climate, the dollar is likely to plummet even farther as foreign investors hurry to divest themselves of their shrinking dollars. It could all be over for the US economy before the week is out. And we may well see our once vain public standing in soup lines by the beginning of November.
Police States & the North American Union
Yes, we already live in a police state. But after the economy crashes, they will act to consolidate this police state and bring it to a new level of repression. Protests will be dealt with severely and encampments of the homeless will be aggressively policed.
It is possible that they will ram through new debt regulation that could turn the US into a nation of debt-servitude. The power-players may walk away from their financial obligations, but they will not want the general public to do so. If you can declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy, do so right now. Otherwise, try to discharge all of your debts while the dollar still has some value.
Eventually the government will announce that it is abandoning the dollar and creating a new regional currency: the Amero. This new currency will coincide with plans for consolidating the US with Mexico and Canada. It will be announced as our answer to the European Union, and will be touted as the road to future prosperity.
It probably will bring some prosperity to large corporations. But for the rest of us, it will mean lower wages, environmental destruction, a strengthening of the police state and the further encroachment of fascism. The North American Union is just more snake oil to benefit the rich and oppress the rest of us.
Stock Up and Drop Out
What can be done to prepare for the worst? The best thing you can do right now is to stock up on essential goods before the dollar collapses and prices go up. Purchase dried goods such as beans, grains, flour, dehydrated milk and dried fruit. It would be wise to stock enough of these durables to last your family for a month. Keep them someplace dry and air tight.
You might also invest in other items such as soap, razor blades, batteries, gardening seeds, socks, and other small but important items. A good supply of fishing gear could come in handy. Bicycles, spare tires and bicycle trailers would also be good items to have around.
These are goods that you will find useful. They are also goods that will have a high barter value if the dollar becomes worthless. If you think about it for a while, you can probably come up with a long list of such items. Things such as deodorant, spices, solar stoves, water purification kits and/or tablets, antibiotics, vitamins and other first aid supplies could also be worth a premium.
After stocking up, it is time to wash your hands of the system which has brought us 9-11, the “War on Terror,” global warming, energy and resource depletion, environmental destruction and increased economic disparity. George Bush told us how to do this when he told us that it was our patriotic duty to consume.
Stop consuming. Find some like-minded people and work on disconnecting yourself from the system. Default on your debts if you can and pay them off if you cannot. Leave your job and find a way to support yourself outside of the system. Stop going along with business as usual and build that sustainable lifestyle that we all know is the only sane alternative. Don’t put it off any longer. Start right now while there is still a chance. Or you will find yourself slaving away in a collapsing police state in short order.
September 29th, 2007
By: Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth to Power
I recently caught up with Rob Williams, volunteer editor of VERMONT COMMONS which is the online voice of Vermont Independence. The organization has been working for some time to establish The Second Vermont Republic which is a peaceful, democratic, grassroots, libertarian populist movement opposed to the tyranny of the U.S. Government, corporate America, and globalization and committed to the return of Vermont to its rightful status as an independent republic, as it was between 1777 and 1791. More of the history of Vermont and the Independence movement can be read at the VT Commons website.
CB: Please explain the Vermont secessionist movement and why many Vermonters support it. Why do you support it? What do you think might happen to Vermont if secession does not happen?
RW: The Vermont secession impulse is born out of our understanding that the United States - once a great republic - has become an unsustainable Empire governed by a very few. Beyond massive (and bipartisan) national electoral fraud, 9/11’s unanswered questions, a “war on terror” (that will not end, we are told, in our life times), the collapse of the U.S. Constitution, the erosion of civil liberties, and the practicing of “disaster capitalism” on a massive scale by political and economic elites, the U.S. is simply too big to function as a democratic republic in its current state. In other words, as astute observers from across the political spectrum have pointed out, the Empire is essentially ungovernable, unsustainable, and un-reformable.
We in the Vermont independence effort are a growing group of citizens who have moved beyond frustration with the current imperial system and are championing a more honest and hopeful paradigm - that of “small is beautiful” sustainability and, if need be, peaceable secession from the Empire, and the re-invention of Vermont as an independent republic, as it was from 1777 to 1791. Contrary to popular belief, New England was the first region of the country to openly call for secession - not once but several times - during the early 19th century, for similar reasons as our own in the 21st: concern about growing corporate and commercial power, and legitimate fears of a centralized federal/statist apparatus that trumps local decision-making and state sovereignty. Given expansive federal regulatory power over our food (USDA), our airwaves (FCC), our animals and livestock (NAIS), our educational endeavors (NCLB), and every other aspect of our lives, it makes sense to take a good hard look at some legitimate alternatives that exist as a forgotten part of the U.S. political tradition - this is what we are doing here at Vermont Commons newspaper.
While this is no small task, as a patriot and a secessionist both, I support Vermont independence (and indeed, the restoration of sovereignty for all states within this allegedly “indivisible” Union) because I think that peaceable secession is the only viable way to save what we so deeply appreciate about the ideals and values of our United States. And, without sounding too grandiose, secession may allow us to help sustain our civilization as a whole as we seek to “re-invent” our former republic-turned-Empire in the face of emerging “big picture” problems such as climate change, global peak oil, and the excesses of corporate globalization, what former Bush/Wall Street insider Catherine Austin Fitts calls the “tapeworm economy.”
CB: What does a “sustainable” lifestyle mean to you? What percentage of Vermonters would you say are living this way?
RW: “Sustainability” can be one of those vague and meaningless buzz words that is often used without thought. To me, living “sustainably” means practicing pragmatic but careful stewardship of our spiritual, physical, and economic resources - which leads, of course, to a thousand thoughtful daily decisions about how we live our lives. Vermont has a long tradition of frugality, self-reliance, community support, and what we call “Yankee ingenuity” - we’ll need all of these qualities in spades moving forward into this new century, which will look very different than the previous one.
And becoming more “sustainable” is a personal and collective process. Five years ago, my wife of fifteen years and I didn’t own land, keep chickens, split, stack and heat our home with local wood, grow and store some of our own food, and press our own cider, and now we do - thanks to continued collaboration with friends and neighbors who are as interested in these same sorts of issues, and are intent on finding local solutions to big picture problems.
CB: How and where do you see re-localization happening in Vermont? Which areas of the state are more supportive of the concept?
RW: Vermonters are speaking out on climate change (witness the Step It Up campaign, born out of a 5 day collective walk on behalf of “taking action on climate change” one year ago here in Vermont); beginning to adapt new and more local agricultural and energy/food consumption habits (our exploding Localvore movement, for example); conserving land for agricultural spaces (our vibrant land trust movement); seeking “alternative” energy solutions to fossil fuels (the explosion of local solar and wind companies here), and generally beginning to engage in some collective head-scratching about how we might steer our civilization towards more sustainable paths. Every Vermonter I know has a garden and knows how to grow food. Regarding regions, every section of Vermont is working on these dilemmas in their own ways. In one sense, I feel like Vermonters are returning to their roots by reviving practice in self-reliance and “do it yourself”-ness.
CB: Can Vermont feed itself? There is much talk of this, but in a state where the ground is frozen 8 months out of the year, how can Vermonters make this happen?
RW: You need a good-sized root cellar to pull this off! But more and more Vermonters I know are rediscovering the satisfaction that comes with canning, pickling, and preserving; of raising chickens and other livestock; of growing their own food and supporting CSAs, farmer’s markets, and farmers who are their neighbors. Specialty foods, many grown locally, are becoming a Vermont hallmark, as well. Once upon a time, one hundred years ago, Vermont proved much more self-sufficient then it is now. We have spent much time and energy these past few decades trying to preserve our family-owned dairy farms in the midst of a global dairy economy that milks them alive, while ignoring other agricultural needs - but we’re getting savvier in this arena, as well.
And one cannot exist on maple syrup, milk and cheese, and apple cider alone - ultimately, we need some state leadership on diversifying our food economy, beyond our “Buy Local” campaign, and we are, of course, continually discovering the joys of trading with our neighbors, as well as remaining plugged into a global food network while we can.
CB: How are Vermonters changing their form and quantity of energy consumption? How feasible is solar energy in Vermont? What other forms of natural energy are being used? How widespread is this usage?
RW: We Vermonters live in the midst of interesting times for energy here - 2/3 of our state’s electricity, for example, is generated by so-called “clean” non-carbon-emitting energy sources - Vermont Yankee Nuclear in the western portion of the state, and HydroQuebec, which owns the eastern border’s Connecticut River dams projects. The problem here is that Vermonters ultimately don’t have much say over the future of either of these out-of-state corporate energy sources, as “clean” as people perceive them to be in the short term. The state public service board, the legislature, and, to some extent, the governor’s office have all made some strides towards renewable and “alternative” energy. I think, though that local Vermonters and businesses are ahead of the curve. I’ve got neighbors who are growing solar panels in their back yard, bringing in wood stoves for more biomass, conducting energy audits to make their homes and businesses much more efficient, and the like. And this is what it takes - let a thousand ideas and projects bloom here in the Green Mountains.
Big picture - as with sustainable agriculture, there are many ideas on the table re: energy - my current favorite is a proposal I just read suggesting that we plant 100,000 acres of switch grass across the state. Switchgrass is a relatively carbon-friendly and renewable form of biomass energy - which could theoretically replace the entire state’s imported natural gas supply for heating our Vermont homes and businesses all winter. We’ve also gotten tremendous mileage out of our “Efficiency Vermont” energy conservation program - though there is much more work to do here. We are a state with the second oldest building stock in the Empire, too, so re-tooling our buildings to make them more energy efficient is key. In short, there is plenty of work to be done, and we’re well on our way. The bottom line is - we have to figure out how to do more with less energy, and do it more efficiently, and “incentive-ize” this in any way that we can.
CB: One of Vermont’s principle “industries” is education with the state spending more on education than many other states do. Is there opposition in the state to the No Child Left Behind Act? If so, how is this opposition being expressed? To what extent are people home-schooling their children?
RW: I’ve been a local school board member for several years now. While they have their problems, Vermont’s public schools are among the highest-performing of all fifty states within the Empire - we seem to be able to absorb NCLB’s demands - often unrealistic, opportunistic, and under-funded - without flinching too much, and, while I work with a vocal minority of NCLB critics, I am surprised there isn’t more public opposition to NCLB from the rank and file, though most teachers and administrators I know would prefer to test less and educate more. I know folks in Vermont who home school for a wide variety of reasons, but I don’t have any specific numbers here.
CB: Can you tell us a bit about Vermont’s new experiment with healthcare coverage, Catamount? What is your opinion of it? How will Catamount be funded and who will actually benefit from it? How prevalent are alternative health practitioners in Vermont? Vermont obviously sits on the Canadian border, so I’m wondering how successful Vermonters have been in obtaining medications from Canada. Please comment.
RW: Vermont is a great state to be sick in, aside from occasional life-threatening traumas that demand the kind of intense and immediate care that only a high-powered and high-tech urban hospital might be able provide. I think it is too early to tell how successful Catamount will be - the jury is still out, though I know that much is riding on its performance. Our once and future republic is a refuge and an incubator for a wide variety of alternative health practitioners - you can’t swing a live catamount in this state without hitting a physical therapist, yoga mistress, Reiki guru, or massage specialist. It is nice, actually - when we get sick or stressed, we have so many affordable options in our communities, and I know many folks who go over the border for surgeries of various kinds - it is good to have options.
CB: We hear much about “community” in Vermont, but what do you actually see happening in terms of people “living in community”? Are there intentional communities in Vermont? Please explain to readers the “village green” tradition in Vermont. Why is it important?
RW: The annual town meeting tradition, in which Vermonters take the first Tuesday in early March to attend their town and school board meetings to vote on budgetary matters, is under siege here - according to some recent figures, only 20% of Vermonters polled actually attend their town meetings on a yearly basis, and some towns are switching to Australian Ballot measures. This is too bad, as there is much to celebrate with our town meetings, which Henry David Thoreau called “the true Congress,” because we look at our neighbors face to face and deliberate matters vital to our communities.
And there is this funny paradox here - because we have no intermediate governing structures between town governments and the state, for the most part (no county seats, for example) - political decision-making is very centralized, in some ways.
But local Vermonters also donate tremendous amounts of time to school and select boards, planning commissions, ad hoc committees, neighborhood groups, volunteer fire and ambulance services, and the like.
And we in the Vermont independence effort have just started our “Free Vermont” campaign - to use annual town meeting as a way to jump start a debate about peaceable secession. Find out more at www.freevermont.net/.
CB: What do you absolutely love about Vermont? What are some of the challenges of living there? What would you like to change about Vermont?
RW: Vermont is a small, rural, poor, sparsely populated, beautiful, and quiet place. This is both a blessing and a curse - it is easy to live and work out of doors, and the skiing and other recreational opportunities are phenomenal, if you can put up with cold, long, dark winters, as well as the aesthetic pleasures of “mud” and “stick” season.
But for someone who grew up in the suburbs and then spent ten years living in cities as a young man in my twenties, I love Vermont’s size, Vermont’s neighborliness, Vermonters’ “live and let live” approach, and what might be called Vermonters’ “jack of all trades” quality: everyone I meet here is involved with all kinds of fascinating projects, working with their minds, and hands, and hearts, and all are passionately dedicated to this place we call Vermont, despite our disagreements about the specifics.
I’d like to see more ethnic and racial diversity here - we have had historically and still have a very small population of color here (though trends like a growing number of African refugee resettlement programs in cities like Burlington are changing this, and for the better, I think). We also have 2,000 Mexican migrant workers, for example, working on Vermont’s farms, who tend to keep a low profile, for obvious reasons. Vermont’s legal support for “civil unions” after much contentious conversation is another example of our “live and let live” philosophy, and this, from state with gun laws so liberal you don’t even need a permit to carry a hand gun! And this sort of fascinating combination of factors is what makes Vermont unique. We’re 630,000 citizens who are not so easily pigeonholed, though the national media tries and fails to most every time.
Ultimately, I think it is Vermont’s balanced combination of fierce independence and “live and let live” attitude, of community-mindedness and self-reliance.That is most compelling to me.
CB: This question probably should have been asked first, but what is your background? Where did you grow up? How long have you lived in Vermont? Do you work with Vermont Commons full-time, or do you do other work?
RW: I am not only a “flatlander” (as Vermont natives like to call us new arrivals), I am what Ethan Allen called almost pejoratively, (I should add) a “Yorker” - I grew up in the New York suburbs just four hours south of where I now live in central Vermont’s Mad River Valley. I’ve lived in Vermont for six years - and I am volunteer (web) editor for Vermont Commons. I am an historian, teacher, and musician by training, and I teach history and media studies courses at Champlain College in Burlington, when I am not out and about at our home tending to kids, chickens, and chores.
September 29th, 2007
By: Anwaar Hussain of Truth Spring
If wishes were horses, most Americans would have known that Iraq and Afghanistan are just the latest victims of the colonial behemoth in a continued saga of American imperialism and not any thing else. That throughout its imperialistic expedition, Americans have firmly believed that the United States was God’s chosen nation and, therefore, on course to divine destinies. They would have known Senator Albert J. Beveridge’s speech to Congress that exemplifies this American attitude as nothing else does, “…and thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world…” If wishes were horses.
If wishes were horses, most Americans would have known that, consequent to this belief of American leaders, the U.S. had, even before the deployment of troops for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, around 752 military installations located in more than 130 countries with actual American military contingents stationed in 65 different foreign countries. They would have known that like all occupying powers, Americans have around 70,000 U.S. troops in Germany, 40,000 in Japan and about 37,000 in South Korea, where they have been since 1951. Add to it now around 140,000 troops (not counting the 100,000 Blackwater type mercenaries) in Iraq and another 27,000 in Afghanistan and one gets a fair inkling of American’s idea of ‘regeneration of the world’ the American way. If wishes were horses.
If wishes were horses, most Americans would have known that that is THE reason their leaders believe that they could, by divine privilege, take any land they pleased. And that the land on planet earth, not just at home, was rightfully theirs and that every one else was merely squatting on their territory. Historically, therefore, their country has come off as an obstinate nation that would take what it wanted at any cost, 9/11 or no 9/11, the world opinion be damned. They would have known that surpassing by far the brutal ventures typical of European colonizers, the U.S. has, during the past several hundred years, annihilated millions of Native Americans, conquered half of Mexico, occupied Hawaii, subjugated the Philippines and taken the whole of Iraq and Afghanistan butchering a colossal number of the indigenous populations in all these places. If wishes were horses.
If wishes were horses, most Americans would have known that not only has their country rejected a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law, their country itself is a leading terrorist state and has been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism (in 1986). The ‘War on Terror’, therefore, is unwinnable because America needs to then declare a war on its own self and that it won’t. If wishes were horses.
If wishes were horses, most Americans would have known that if by ‘terrorism’ only the ‘terrorism of others’ is meant then bombing the countries from where those terrorists come is not the solution to the problem but in fact a part of the problem. For if that had been the case the British would have bombed Belfast for IRA’s bombing of London and one earlier American administration would have bombed Timothy McVeigh’s home town for Oklahoma bombing. They did not. If wishes were horses.
If wishes were horses, most Americans would have known the sordid history of their country’s contemptuous attitude toward smaller countries of this planet. They would have known, for example, that back in the 80s, a tiny country by the name of Nicaragua was subjected to violent assault by their country in which tens of thousands of people died with that country itself substantially destroyed. They would have known that rather than responding by setting off bombs in Washington, a la the American way, the poor Nicaraguans went to the World Court that ordered the U.S. not only to stop the atrocities but also to pay reparations. The U.S. scornfully responded by escalating the attacks. The Nicaraguans next went to the Security Council who ruled in their favor. The U.S. derisively vetoed the resolution. The Nicaraguans then obtained a similar resolution from the General Assembly. The U.S. and Israel opposed that one for two years in a row. If wishes were horses.
If wishes were horses, most Americans would have known that the world does not hate them for the values cherished by them; it rather aspires for the same. It abhors their duplicitous attitude, their hypocritical behavior and their cruel conduct on the world stage. It loathes them for their ‘freedom’ cries while sitting atop massive piles of human corpses. It despises their double embrace of the dictators the world over while singing sweet ‘democracies’ to their subjects. It hates them for their ruthless killing of half a million Iraqi children and then calling the effort, “worth the price”. If wishes were horses.
If wishes were horses, most Americans would have known that the whole world is cognizant of the horrible injustice to the Palestinians and America’s blind allegiance to the perpetrators. And that their bosom buddy Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza 35 years ago and over the course of these 35 years Israel has killed, blinded, mutilated, crippled and disfigured thousands of men, women and children, destroyed thousands of homes, businesses, hospitals, and schools, incarcerated and tortured hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. If wishes were horses.
If wishes were horses, most Americans would have known that over the years they have become too strong for their own good. They are all muscle and sinew now and no brains. They would have known that with the deadly, single minded purpose of a troll, they trample on through the blood and bones of their diabolical administrations’ innocent victims without hearing their cries. They would have known what their great country has come down to. They would have heard the windy, lonely, desperate last cries of the soul of America across its forlorn skies each night as it continues to crash into black nothingness;
Oh! Oh! This fiery height!
Oh, my feet of fire!
My burning feet of fire
(Algernon Blackwood, The Wendigo)
If wishes were horses.
September 21st, 2007
By: Phil Rockstroh
One would think that from the cries of (feigned) indignation and calls for repentance arising from conservatives regarding Move-On.org’s ad in the N.Y. Times that the liberal-leaning group had not simply questioned the insights and intentions of a public servant, promoting, in a public forum, the policy of an illegal and immoral occupation of a sovereign nation; rather, the folks of Move-On.org had committed blasphemy against the holy name of some revered saint — General Mary Petreus, Mother of God.
The false outrage of perpetually offended conservatives serves as cover for the true outrages of our era, including: truncated civil liberties, rising levels of social and economic inequality and injustice, and foreign wars of aggression waged by an insular and secretive executive branch and fought by a permanent underclass. The outrages keep arriving, because the collective imagination of the citizen/consumers of the US, arbitrated by a careerist media elite, has been, for decades, in the thrall of false narratives that serve the interests of the elite of the corporate/militarist classes.
Concurrently, a sense of unease and despair, due to a sense of personal and collective powerlessness before exploitive power, has created the tone and tenor of the times, and begot the phenomenon of supine liberalism and Viagra conservatism. (In this way, liberals stand fecklessly by, as the public is, time and time again, screwed by the decrepit schemes of the right.)
In this way, liberal paternalism is insufferable; worse, it is dangerous. This has been the right’s craftiest accomplishment: inducing “reasonable” liberals and “sensible” centrists to enable their crimes, from stolen elections to their present preparation for a massive bombing campaign of Iran, by intimidating them with the fear that any protest on their part will cast them among the ranks of America-hating, lefty moonbats, who wish to see the terrorist win, dumpsters piled high with discarded fetuses and metro-sexuality made the official state religion.
Moreover, these assaults upon both reason and the republic (what’s left of it) will persist until progressives begin to effectively counter the narratives of the predatory right. Some call it shameful demagoguery; although, conservatives call it career advancement. This is not a novel situation. Throughout history, these kinds of pernicious mindsets have always been with us; it is our tragedy that they have been allowed to prevail.
Conservatives are eager to embrace false narratives: The surge is working; the terrorists hate us for our freedom; Fred Thompson is Ronald Reagan incarnate, but with a touch of Jed Clampett “folksiness.” Accordingly, when the times are roiled with uncertainty, when thoughts of the future are tinged with dread, conservatives, like a character in Southern Gothic literature, will fall into a swoon, longing for the return of an imagined, purer past that never was. One can picture these rightwing sorts wandering the streets, wearing a faded prom dress and a broken, prom queen tiara, twittering and cooing, while repeating over and over again, “the surge is working; Anbar Province is now a beacon of freedom unto the world…”) in an imaginary dialog with the ghost of their long lost beau, Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan, an ungifted actor, by means of playing the role of a “resolute” Cold Warrior, was able to gain the approbation and wealth that had alluded him as a contract player in Hollywood. In truth, Reagan’s greatest accomplishment was convincing himself of his own sincerity.
Constantin Stanislavsky, who is considered the father of modern acting technique, is reputed to have said that when an actor starts to believe he is the character he’s portraying it is time to escort him from the theatre. Withal, Fred, Rudy, Rush, Hannity, O’Reilly, et al., can you find the exits on your own or will you need to be medicated, strapped to a gurney, and wheeled from the public arena? Rather than being candidates for President of the United States, most of the Republican field seems to be vying for the title of National Crazy Uncle — the kind of guy who corners you at a family gathering and rants that the PTA is a terrorist front group and gangs of illegal aliens are engaged in a vast conspiracy to steal single socks from his washer-dryer.
The Republican candidates for president and their fantasy-prone constituents wish to set the Way Back Machine to the golden days of the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was impersonating a man just arrived via the 1940s. This phenomenon is known as the Law of Republican Special Relativity, which states: When events begin to accelerate forward, the conservative mind will be cast, at an equal rate of speed, backwards in time. But the paradox is: they arrive in a parallel universe, an alternative past that never existed on this earth — a low probability dimension, comprised of platitudes and false pieties, where white male privilege is sacrosanct, only for the reason (according to their reality-proof perspective) that it serves to provide all mankind with all things good and holy.
This law can be tested by performing the following simple exercise: Engage a conservative true believer in a dialog regarding the manner by which “state’s rights” was misused in the Jim Crowe dominated Deep South of the pre-Civil Rights Era in order to propagate and maintain segregation, and your conservative-minded test subject will respond as if those realities transpired long ago and far away on a planet that he has never visited.
Yet, paradoxically, rightists have manage to create a Time Retrieval Device, a device that has summoned from the past wonders, such as the following: a reversal of many of the rights of working people; the return of unsafe and unsanitary practices in the food industry; widening gaps of wealth, health and privilege between social, racial and economic classes; in short, many the excesses of plutocratic rule inherent to unfettered capitalism.
As a result, a generation has inherited power who are devoid of the concept of causation and consequence. Ergo, we have developed a political class who rule by narratives of denial and shallow self-justification. An example of this is the blaming of the people of Iraq for the blood-drenched debacle that has resulted from the illegal and immoral invasion of their nation. As well as, an enabling cadre of media elitists who served as cheerleaders for the invasion, because they deemed it to be good for business, and, to this day, are unwilling to admit their complicity.
All of the above leads to the question: What are present day conservatives striving to conserve? Historically, conservatives gave their utmost to conserve institutions such as slavery, Jim Crowe, child labor — and, of course, the use of leeches for medical purposes. (Perhaps, they simply couldn’t stand the thought of a fellow blood-sucker being deemed dangerous, and they feared the start of a trend.) At present, the central paradox of contemporary conservatism is this: How does one practice conservatism within an all-encompassing economy based on disposability? This is analogous to establishing a brothel devoted to the goal of abstinence.
When engaged in a dialog with many conservatives, the question becomes: Are their reactions and responses evoked therein simply borne of plain ignorance, willful ignorance, or outright lying? Or are their responses the result of a group hallucination? All progressives have experienced the following nonsensical encounter of the conservative kind. Present a reasoned argument to a conservative — and, all at once, completely ignoring the tenet, tone and thrust of the point, they begin hallucinating a creature, only known to exist in the rightwing bestiary, known as a “moonbat” — a mythological beast that, ironically, seems to appear when a conservative is confronted with reality.
Accordingly, the time has come for a study of political zoology and to posit who are the true moonbats now making their habitat in the United States. Case study: Unregulated, wish-fulfillment-based conservative economic policy has created those suburban arrays of mold-incubating petri dishes known as products of the housing boom. Moreover, the bursting of the whole bubble-prone Ponzi scheme has sent shock waves throughout international economies and is surging the economy of the US towards recession. Furthermore, conservative anti-regulatory policies have rendered us babes in a cheap, plastic Toyland.
What has an era of conservatism wrought? Answer: a culture that has all the value, integrity, sustainability and safety as a toy manufactured in China. Apropos, contemporary life, as conceived and manufactured by conservative “values”, is shoddily made, toxic and not a lot of fun.
In addition, it has spawned a culture ridden with public relations fabulists and media-savvy confidence artists who tell us that the taste of corporate ass-suck is the ambrosia of the gods. The locked-down, stultifying mindset and ideological barbarianism of present day conservatism is directly linked to the steep decline of the quality of life in the United States.
The recent revelations regarding the I’m-not-gay-I-simply-engage-in-same-sex-encounters-in-puplic-restrooms” wing of the Republican Party are instructive in understanding the rightist’s worldview and its effect on our times. Covert sex in a public bathroom stall is an apt metaphor for how contemporary conservatism limits and restricts the possibilities of human life. In the same way that a closet-case gay conservative stunts the possibilities of his love life, the conservative mindset limits the scope of a culture’s possibilities. Accordingly, economic life must be ruled by ruthless, unregulated competition, and the nation’s meaning can only be found in war. Hence, under the Bush Junta, we are told, as far as international relations go, that the nation has few options other than its present policy of predatory capitalism and “wide-stance” militarism.
Regarding perma-fools such as these, Ernest Becker wrote: “Once you base your whole life striving on a desperate lie, and try to implement that lie, you instrument your own undoing.” Accordingly, the republic is dead; it’s ghost howls online only in pixelated protests such as this one. This grim reality will remain, until we rise up and repudiate the false narratives that have created and continue to comprise these tragic times.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at .
September 19th, 2007
By: Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth to Power
s nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air-however slight-lest we become unwilling victims of the darkness. ~Justice William O. Douglas~
In April, 2007 I was pleasantly surprised to find Naomi Wolf’s article, “Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps” posted in several places online. I have been a fan of Wolf for many years, greatly appreciating her works and especially her 1991 book, The Beauty Myth. I had been looking for a list-or more specifically, an encyclopedia of the losses of civil liberties in the United States that might clarify for my history students the extent to which America has become a fascist empire. Wolf’s “10 Easy Steps” was perfect, but her just-published book, The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot, from which the 10 easy steps was compiled, offers an even fuller picture-a succinct and engaging explanation of how our civil liberties have been hijacked in the past decade. It is the most poignant, powerful, genuinely patriotic piece of literature I have encountered since Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. No wonder then, that the book’s cover greatly resembles that 46-page tract by Paine written in 1775-as well it should.
One of the most frightening realities of teaching college history is that most students rarely have a clue what fascism is. They know about Hitler and the extermination of Jews, but they see little connection with Nazi rule in the 1930s and 40s and the current political milieu in the United States. Overwhelmingly, they cannot define fascism, nor can they define socialism or democracy. After all, they were pre-occupied during grammar school with becoming standardized human beings by way of taking standardized “No Child’s Behind Left” tests, five hours a day, four days a week. So why would they know the definitions of fascism, socialism or democracy?
Refreshingly, Wolf is not shy about using the term fascism and lets the reader know why. “I have made a deliberate choice in using the terms fascist tactics and fascist shift when I describe some events in America now. I stand by my choice. I am not being heated or even rhetorical; I am being technical.” (20) She explains that where Americans tend to see the various political “isms” as all-or-nothing, that perception is often inaccurate because of what she calls a “range of authoritarian regimes, dictatorships, and varieties of Fascist states…there are many shades of gray on the spectrum from an open to a closed society.” (20)
Wolf also emphasizes that America has flirted with fascism openly in the 1930s when numerous corporations and robber barons helped finance Hitler and when as Edwin Black notes in IBM And The Holocaust, some American corporations assisted the Nazi regime in carrying out its “final solution” to the “Jewish problem.” In fact, several of these corporate tycoons attempted to stage a coup d’ etat to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 and restructure the American government under fascist control. A thorough investigation of American politics and society from the end of the Civil War until the present moment reveals, as I have carefully traced in my book U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn’t Tell You, that much of recent American history is replete with a preference on the part of corporations and the politicians they own for an economic and political system on the far right end of the spectrum. In fact, resistance to fascism in the United States has been an arduous and daunting struggle for those who have been able to understand and oppose the appeal that fascism has to the corporatocracy, and in fact, take seriously Mussolini’s fundamental definition of fascism: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
As an historian who views American history as the complex unfolding of events that it is, I feel invigorated upon hearing someone like Wolf-especially the Wolf of feminist Beauty Myth fame-part company with the presentation of the Founders as “dead white men” inwardly tormented by various hypocrisies, such as the ownership of slaves and the subordination of women. Yes, Jefferson owned slaves and fathered six children by one of them, but what gets lost in that drama and other colorful stories of the Founders is that they were also thinking, speaking, and writing highly subversive thoughts. “You are not taught,” says Wolf, that “these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were wiling to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see.” (27) I do not wish to romanticize the Founders and their generation living in a milieu replete with racism, misogyny, and classism, but neither will I throw their achievements out with the bathwater of political correctness, nor is Wolf willing to do so in her examination of them.
In the “10 easy steps” outlined by Wolf, countries move from open to closed and repressive societies by devolving past certain markers, and Wolf makes a powerful case for the way in which the United States is following a similar pattern without any significant deviation. In each instance she compares and contrasts how America’s adherence to the pattern compares or contrasts with the pattern in pre-World War II Germany. The 10 steps are:
- Invoking an external and internal threat
- Establishing secret prisons
- Developing a paramilitary force
- Surveiling ordinary citizens
- Infiltrating citizens’ groups
- Arbitrarily detaining and releasing citizens
- Targeting key individuals
- Restricting the press
- Casting criticism as “espionage” and dissent as “treason”
- Subverting the rule of law
As noted in the quote from Justice Douglas above, the fascist shift is a protracted process; it never happens overnight, and in U.S. History Uncensored, I offer an historical narrative describing exactly how we have arrived where we are-at “the end of America”. Some aspects of the process were generated before the U.S. Civil War, but our recent history is nothing less than the story of the acceleration of the fascist agenda and the death of the Republic.
Frequently, books come into our lives with momentous timing. Several weeks ago a friend of mine was traveling through a small town in upstate New York looking for the location of a meeting he was scheduled to attend. Realizing that he was lost, he spotted a police officer in a marked car and waived to the officer to pull over. The officer pulled over, and my friend innocently got out of his car to walk back to the officer’s car. Suddenly, the officer’s voice came blasting across a loud speaker, “Get back in the car! Stop where you are! Get back in the car!” My friend returned to his vehicle and waited for the officer to approach his driver’s side window. The officer, with a hand on his holstered firearm, angrily asked my friend what he wanted. When my friend asked him for directions, he replied with hostility that he didn’t know the location of the place for which my friend was searching and once again repeated, “Never get out of your car when you’re dealing with a police officer.” So much for asking directions from a police officer these days.
On another occasion, two friends of mine returning from Canada were detained at the U.S./Canadian border, and while one of them had a U.S. passport, the other had forgotten to bring his. He produced a variety of identification but was taken aside, questioned, shouted at, and harassed in an extremely hostile manner as if he were an enemy of the state. Fortunately, after over-the-top intimidation from a couple of surly customs officers, he was allowed to enter the U.S.
About three weeks ago I was returning from a routine visit to the dentist in Mexico and had a U.S. passport with me, even though none will be required for returning from Mexico until January, 2008. I was told by a very aggressive female customs agent to pull over to the center where vehicles are detained. I was ordered in a very hostile manner to give her my driver’s license and the keys to my vehicle and stay in my vehicle. When I asked what the problem was, I was told to be quiet and again, to stay in my vehicle. Having taught in Mexico for three years, returning to the U.S. every day and rarely having to show any identification whatsoever, I found this procedure to be astonishingly rigid and unnecessary. I have made many trips to Mexico in recent months and have never had any problem when the automatic photos that are taken of every license plate crossing the border appeared on U.S. Customs computer screens.
After what seemed like an eternity the female officer returned and told me that it appeared that I had had an expired vehicle registration four years ago which I had not taken care of and that I needed to do so at once. She gave me the name of the court where the offense was allegedly registered. The very next day I contacted the court and discovered that indeed I had been stopped four years ago for an expired registration for which I was given a warning. Every year since, I have purchased my annual registration well before the deadline, but the offense was never brought to my attention, and I even acquired a new driver’s license last year through the motor vehicles division and was not informed of the offense. Not wanting any further hassle regarding the “heinous crime” of having an expired registration four years ago, I agreed to pay the small fine imposed by the court. Some readers may assume that I was harassed because of who I am and my open delivery of alternative news and opinions on this website daily. I, on the other hand, do not believe that this was “all about me.” Whether or not it was, it is blatantly obvious to me that the behavior of law enforcement in the United States has shifted dramatically in recent months. Whether or not I was targeted, which I sincerely doubt, this kind of treatment is becoming standard in law enforcement procedure throughout the United States.
And now fast-forward to yesterday, September 18, 2007, at Florida State University and the tasering of a student questioning John Kerry regarding the 2004 elections and Kerry’s membership in Skull and Bones-an incident which has been viewed by millions on the internet and on mainstream TV news broadcasts. Writing of this debacle, Wolf’s article “A Shocking Moment For Society” appeared on various internet sites this morning, and in it she states:
There is a chapter in my new book, , entitled “Recast Criticism as ‘Espionage’ and Dissent as ‘Treason,’” that conveys why this moment is the horrific harbinger it is. I argue that strategists using historical models to close down an open society start by using force on ‘undesirables,’ ‘aliens,’ ‘enemies of the state,’ and those considered by mainstream civil society to be untouchable; in other times they were, of course, Jews, Gypsies, Communists, homosexuals. Then, once society has been acculturated to that use of force, the ‘blurring of the line’ begins and the parameters of criminalized speech are extended - the definition of ‘terrorist’ expanded - and the use of force begins to be deployed in HIGHLY VISIBLE, STRATEGIC and VISUALLY SHOCKING WAYS against people that others see and identify with as ordinary citizens. The first ‘torture cellars’ used by the SA, in Germany between 1931 and 1933 - even before the National Socialists gained control of the state, during the years when Germany was still a parliamentary democracy - were informal and widely publicized in the mainstream media. Few German citizens objected because those abused there were seen as ‘other’ - even though the abuse was technically illegal. But then, after this escalation of the use of force was accepted by the population, students, journalists, opposition leaders, and clergy were similarly abused during their own arrests. Within six months dissent was stilled in Germany.
What is the lesson for us from this and from other closing societies, some of them democracies? You can have a working Congress or Parliament; newspapers; human rights groups; even elections; but when ordinary people start to be hurt by the state for speaking out, dissent closes quickly and the shock chills opposition very, very fast. Once that happens, democracy has been so weakened that major tactical and strategic incursions - greater violations of democratic process - are far more likely. If there is dissent about the vote in Florida in this next presidential election - and the police are tasering voters’ rights groups - we will still have an election.
What we will not have is liberty.
We have to understand what time it is. When the state starts to hurt people for asking questions, we can no longer operate on the leisurely time of a strong democracy - the ‘Oh gosh how awful!’ kind of time. It is time to take to the streets. It is time to confront those committing crimes against the Constitution. The window has now dropped several precipitous inches and once it is closed there is no opening it without great and sorrowful upheaval.
As I read Wolf’s latest article, I realized that despite my enormous admiration for her and The End Of America, there are a number of areas where I must disagree with her.
First, the only thing shocking to me about the University of Florida incident is that so many Americans are shocked that it happened. Last night I posted a communication to her mailing list regarding the incident from former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney who says:
No police officer should be in the business of denying Constitutional rights to anyone; I am particularly chagrined when it appears that a black police officer participated in this attack on an innocent student.
What is happening to us???? How much more will the people accept?? I was outraged as early as 2000 when Florida was stolen and the Democrats said nothing!!!! Now, innocent students get tasered just for asking questions.
What kind of US Senator do we have who can’t or won’t answer a question about his own election that affects all of us???
Wolf has given us a compendium of civil and Constitutional rights stolen from us during the past eight years of the Bush administration. If one understands this odyssey of oppression, then yesterday’s tasering of a questioning student makes perfect sense. I appreciate why Wolf used the word “shocking” in her most recent article, but I’d be willing to bet that she isn’t shocked at all-not after the extraordinary documentation she has given us in The End Of America. What I do believe she wishes to clarify is the intentionally traumatizing methodology of law enforcement to maintain social control.
Secondly, I must take issue with Wolf regarding her statement that “…we on the left must snap out of our ‘it’s-all-the-WTO-the-two-parties-are-the-same’ torpor…We have to reengage in an old-fashioned commitment to democratic action and believe once again in an old-fashioned notion of the Republic. We need to help lead a democracy movement in America like the ones that have toppled repressive regimes overseas.” (141)
Again, let’s fast forward not to yesterday, but today and the headline ““-a decision which supports the Bush administration’s denial of habeas corpus to Guantanamo prisoners who want to challenge their imprisonment in court. Need we reiterate one more time that since the 2006 elections, the Democrats have done virtually nothing to end the occupation of Iraq? Need we watch the video one more time of John Kerry standing mute and statue-like on the University of Florida auditorium stage-saying or doing nothing as a student was tasered for asking him why he handed the 2004 election to George W. Bush? Does anyone seriously believe that in a world where fellow students applaud as police remove and taser a questioning student and do nothing to speak up against such an outrage that we will see a viable, effective “democracy movement in America like the ones that have toppled repressive regimes overseas”?
As for Wolf’s suggestion in today’s article that we “take to the streets”, the police state is preparing for that eventuality as well by letting us know that it has developed severely injuring electromagnetic crowd control technology that will dramatically limit how many and how often people can “take to the streets.” Welcome to full-spectrum “1984″.
I repeat: the police state is right here, right now!
Moreover, some pivotal factors that Wolf has not addressed are global energy depletion, climate change, and global economic meltdown which are exacerbating the fascist shift about which she so brilliantly writes and which will continue to embolden that shift as energy scarcity, climate chaos, and financial crises add fuel to the fires of terrorism that the ruling elite have so consciously and carefully incited and fanned throughout America. As American society continues to unravel, the fascist shift will escalate, and what is left of our civil liberties will further evaporate.
As for political parties, I prefer the definition offered by Mike Ruppert in “America: From Freedom To Fascism” in which he explains that the two major parties are like two crime families-the Genoveses and the Gambinos. They function like players in a crap game that feign opposition to each other, but when the chips are down, they will always unite to serve their common interests. (If the Iraq occupation is not a case in point, then I don’t know what is.) When we vote in presidential elections for corporately-owned candidates or “the lesser evil”, we are merely choosing between the two crime families, and even if one candidate were not a crime family member, our votes in the past two presidential elections, as Bev Harris has so astutely demonstrated, have been hacked. In the throes of the current, and I might add, rapidly-accelerating fascist shift, what evidence do we have for assuming that if there is an election in 2008, anything will be different? Tell me again, what’s the definition of insanity?
At this moment another Naomi comes to mind-Naomi Klein whose book Shock Doctrine I shall soon review on this site. In that work Klein documents one of the key strategies of fascist empires: shocking their citizens into submission in a variety of ways from widespread societal terrorism to the administering of electroshock therapy to individuals. What we witnessed at the University of Florida yesterday, and what we are likely to see more frequently in America, are deliberate shock tactics applied by law enforcement to citizens for the purpose of achieving massive social control.
Some of my students who are criminal justice majors tell me that the latest strategies now being taught to police officers are “shock doctrine” techniques which terrorize and intimidate civilians in order to control them. Law enforcement officers are no longer encouraged to “keep a cool head” but to “follow their own instincts” (which usually means their own internal, adrenaline-charged state of terror) and react with full force because it’s easier to apologize (or encounter a lawsuit) than to ask permission or risk being killed. Terrified people should not be wearing a badge and carrying a gun, and when they are, a fully terrorized society is guaranteed.
In spite of my disagreements with Naomi Wolf’s suggested solutions, I cannot recommend The End Of America enthusiastically enough. It is now a permanent part of my U.S. history curriculum and is an ideal tool not only for educators, but for parents who want to teach their children where all those civil liberties we used to have actually came from as well as how and why they are disappearing in the present moment.
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