connecting*the*dots

(originally uploaded by philipn)

What is Man?
Mark Twain

“Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out… and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel…. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for “the universal brotherhood of man” — with his mouth.”

I’m jumping from a close look at American policy to a perspective on the history and future of Islam to shorts of fiction with gutfelt emotion to the ills of the ownership of ideas.

The mashup is pretty interesting…

Imperial Grand Strategy - Elite Concerns (pg. 39)

Within establishment circles, there has been considerable concerns that “America’s imperial ambition” is a serious threat even to its own population. Their alarm reached new heights as the Bush administration declared itself to be a “revisionist state” that intends to rule the world permanently, becoming, some felt, “a menace to itself and to mankind” under the leadership of “radical nationalists” aiming for “unilateral world domination through absolute military superiority.” Many others within the mainstream spectrum have been appalled by the adventurism and arrogance of the radical nationalists who have regained the power they wielded through the 1980s, but now operate with fewer external constraints.

The concerns are not entirely new. During the Clinton years, the prominent political analyst Samuel Huntington observed that for much of the world the US is “becoming the rogue superpower, [considered] the single greatest external threat to their societies.” Robert Jervis, then president of the American Political Science Association, warned that “in the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is the United States.” Like others, they anticipated that coalitions might arise to counterbalance the rogue superpower, with threatening implications.

Several leading figures of the foreign policy elite have pointed out that the potential targets of America’s imperial ambition are not likely to simply await destruction. They “know that the United States can be held at bay only by deterrence,” Kenneth Waltz has written, and that “weapons of mass destruction are the only means to deter the United States.” Washington’s policies are therefore leading to the proliferation of WMD, Waltz concludes, tendencies accelerated by its commitment to dismantle international mechanisms to control the resort to violence. These warnings were reiterated as Bush prepared to attack Iraq: one consequence, according to Steven Miller, is that others “are likely to draw the conclusion that weapons of mass destruction are necessary to deter American intervention.” Another well-known specialist warned that the “general strategy of preventive war” is likely to provide others with “overwhelming incentives to wield weapons of terror and mass destruction” as a deterrent to “the unbrideled use of American power.” Many have noted the likely impetus to Iranian nuclear weapons programs. And “there is no question that the lesson that the North Koreans have learned from Iraq is that it needs a nuclear deterrent,” Selig Harrison commented.

As the year 2002 drew to a close, Washington was teaching an ugly lesson to the world: if you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible military threat, in this case, conventional: artillary aimed at Seoul and at US troops near DMZ. We will enthusiastically march on to attack Iraq, because we know that it is devistated and defenseless; but North Korea, though an even worse tyranny and vastly more dangerous, is not an appropriate target as long as it can cause plenty of harm. The lesson could hardly be more vivid.

Still another concern is the “second superpower,” public opinion. Not only was the “revisionism” of the political leadership without precident; so too was the opposition to it. Comparisons are often drawn to Vietnam. The common query “What happened to the tradition of protest and dissent?” makes clear how effectively the historical record has been cleansed and how little sense there is, in many circles, of the changes in public consciousness over the past four decades. An accurate comparison is revealing: In 1962, public protest was nonexistent, despite the announcement that year that the Kennedy administration was sending the US Air Force to bomb South Vietnam, as well as initiating plans to drive millions of people into what ammounted to concentration camps and launching chemical warfare programs to destroy food crops and ground cover. Protest did not reach any meaningful level until years later, after hundreds of thousands of US troops had been dispatched, densely populated areas had been demolished by saturation bombing, and the aggression had spread to the rest of Indochina. By the time protest became significant, the bitterly anticommunist military historian and Indochina specialist Bernard Fall had warned that “Vietnam as a cultural and historic entity… is threatened with extinction” as “the countryside literally dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this size.”

In 2002, fourty years later, in striking contrast, there was largescale, committed, and principled popular protest before the war had been officially launched. Absent the fear and illusion about Iraq that were unique to the US, prewar opposition would probably have reached much the same levels as elsewhere. That reflects a steady increase over these years in unwillingness to tolerate aggression and atrocities, one of many such changes.

The leadership is well aware of these developments. By 1968, fear of the public was so serious that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to consider whether “sufficient forces would be available for civil disorder control” if more troops were sent to Vietnam. The Department of Defense feared that further troop deployments ran the risk of “provoking a domestic crisis of unprecedented proportions.” The Reagan administration at first tried to follow Kennedy’s South Vietnam model in Central America but backed down in the face of an unanticipated public reaction that threatened to undermine more important components of the policy agenda, turning instead to clandestine terror — clandestine in the sense that it could be more or less concealed from the general public. When Bush I took office in 1989, public reaction was again very much on the agenda. Incoming administrations typically commission a review of the world situation from the intelligence agencies. These reviews are secret, but in 1989 a passage was leaked concerning “cases where the US confronts much weaker enemies.” The analysts advised that the US must “defeat them decisively and rapidly.” Any other outcome would be “embarrassing” and might “undercut political support,” understood to be thin.

We are no longer in the 1960s, when the population would tolerate a murderous and destructive war for years without visible protest. The activist movements of the past forty years have had a significant civilizing effect in many domains. By now, the only way to attack a much weaker enemy is to construct a propaganda offensive depicting it as an imminent threat or perhaps engaged in genocide, with confidence that the military campaign will scarcely resemble an actual war.

Take a look around. People see the world as they experience it.

Why I started my Chomsky indulgence with Understanding Power and not this digestible gem I’ll never know.

Uncle Sam is a brilliant pocket reference of Noam Chomsky’s world view, specifically his unflinching criticism of US foreign policy. His genius with linguistics provides him the means to absolutely tear apart the propaganda surrounding isms, bringing the conversation and arguments back to the table of reality. By comparing declassified government files, public policy and geopolitical events occurring between the early 1940’s to 1992, Chomsky cuts directly through the posturing of the US to frame cause and effect in the struggle for global power.

The man is fearless. He critically deconstructs policy from within the sovereign US to expose the post-WWII new world order policies of US planners — clearly describing how the Third World has been shaped to remain the peasant working class via neo-Nazi techniques of torture and intimidation, satisfying the needs of the US investor class.

His arguments are completely lucid and relevant in today’s world, even though it was published in the early nineties. Want an example? Keep an eye on the US propaganda regarding the “left-wing rhetoric” of Hugo Chavez. The BBC is already picking up the US talking points of Venezuela elections being rigged. Chomsky describes these US tactics in detail.

Chomsky’s take on US indoctrination of its citizens to contributing productively to pure capitalism is classic, as he tackles complicit participants from the mainstream media to academia. Just as stinging is his perspective on the marginalization of 80% of our population, which reminded me a bit of the 5% Nation, but without the optimism.

Here’s a section about the US in a Rent-A-Thug role (remember, this was written during the original Gulf War conflict with George H.W. Bush in charge):

[…]

“In any confrontation, each participant tries to shift the battle to a domain in which it’s most likely to succeed. You want to lead with your strength, play your strong card. The strong card of the United States is force—so if we can establish the principle that force rules the world, that’s a victory for us. If, on the other hand, a conflict is settled through peaceful means, that benefits us less, because our rivals are just as good or better in that domain.

Diplomacy is a particularly unwelcome option, unless it’s pursued under the gun. The US has very little popular support for its goals in the Third World. This isn’t surprising, since it’s trying to impose structures of domination and exploitation. A diplomatic settlement is bound to respond, at least to some degree, to the interests of the other participants in the negotiation, and that’s a problem when your positions aren’t very popular.

As a result, negotiations are something the US commonly tries to avoid. Contrary to much propaganda, that has been true in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Central America for many years.

Against this background, it’s natural that the Bush administration should regard military force as a major policy instrument, preferring it to sanctions and diplomacy (as in the Gulf crisis). But since the US now lacks the economic base to impose “order and stability� in the Third World, it must rely on others to pay for the exercise—a necessary one, it’s widely assumed, since someone must ensure a proper respect for the masters. The flow of profits from Gulf oil production helps, but Japan and German-led continental Europe must also pay their share as the US adopts the “mercenary role,� following the advice of the international business press.

The financial editor of the conservative Chicago Tribune has been stressing these themes with particular clarity (William Neikirk, “We are the World’s Guardian Angelsâ€? 9/9/90) We must be “willing mercenaries,â€? paid for our ample services by our rivals, using our “monopoly powerâ€? in the “security marketâ€? to maintain “our control over the world economic system.â€? We should run a global protection racket, he advises, selling “protectionâ€? to other wealthy powers who will pay us a “war premium.”

This is Chicago, where the words are understood: if someone bothers you, you call on the Mafia to break their bones. And if you fall behind in your premium, your health may suffer too.

To be sure, the use of force to control the Third World is only a last resort. The IMF is a more cost-effective instrument than the Marines and the CIA if it can do the job. But the “iron fist� must be poised in the background, available when needed.

Our rent-a-thug role also causes suffering at home. All of the successful industrial powers have relied on the state to protect and enhance powerful domestic economic interests, to direct public resources to the needs of investors, and so on—one reason why they are successful. Since 1950, the US has pursued these ends largely through the Pentagon System (including NASA and the Department of Energy, which produces nuclear weapons). By now we are locked into these devices for maintaining electronics, computers and high-tech industry generally.

Reaganite military Keynesian excesses added further problems. The transfer of resources to wealthy minorities and other government policies led to a vast wave of financial manipulations and a consumption binge. But there was little in the way of productive investment, and the country was saddled with huge debts: government, corporate, household and the calculable debt of unmet social needs as the society drifts towards a Third World pattern, with islands of great wealth and privilege in a sea of misery and suffering.

When a state is committed to such policies, it must somehow find a way to divert the population, to keep them from seeing what’s happening around them. There are not many ways to do this. The standard ones are to inspire fear of terrible enemies about to overwhelm us, and awe for our grand leaders who rescue us from disaster in the nick of time.

That has been the pattern right through the 1980’s, requiring no little ingenuity as the standard device, the Soviet threat, became harder to take seriously. So the threat to our existence has been Qaddafi and his hordes of international terrorists, Grenada and its ominous air base, Sandinistas marching on Texas, Hispanic narcotraffickers led by the arch-maniac Noriega, and crazed Arabs generally. Most recently it’s Saddam Hussein, after he committed his sole crime—the crime of disobedience—in August 1990. It has become more necessary to recognize what has always been true: that the prime enemy is the Third World, which threatens to get “out of control.�

These are not laws of nature. The processes, and the institutions that engender them, could be changed. But that will require cultural, social and institutional changes of no little movement, including democratic structures that go far beyond periodic selection of representatives of the business world to manage domestic and international affairs.”

[…]

Exactly.

Okay, I’m off to read Cluetrain again. I call this “gray matter iteration.” ;-)

Check out Al taking out a Colorado Righty. Okay, okay, it’s only a bit for his new book, "The Truth (with jokes)."

You gotta love a bookstore with a sense of humor.

(forwarded by blather)

I was introduced to David Kline as a public figure, per chance, by catching him the other day on The O’Reilly Factor. While I almost exclusively review O’Reilly segments by visiting Media Matters (O’Reilly’s favorite site, mind you), I tuned into this particular segment about slanderous websites. I admit it; I wanted to see O’Reilly spinning reality within a realm I know a thing or two about.

As the "balanced guest from the left" Klein was immediately blown away by the conversation topic. O’Reilly’s patented tactical approach to force feeding his guest the Billy Boy perspective overwhelmed Kline, as he was completely uninformed regarding the blogosphere. He actually admitted, on-air, to have never heard of Media Matters (the site that O’Reilly focused his vengeance upon for the entire segment).

Media Matters is one of the most popular media watchdog/misinformation sites on the web, so much so that many well-known political bloggers use them as a source for their posts. Intrigued by such a naive understanding of the media ecosystem, I proceeded to browse over to Kline’s blog and become involved in a few of his posts. The first is basically an open apology to the left and to bloggers for how he allowed himself to be used and abused by O’Reilly. Hundreds of people posted comments, with the majority slamming him for his lack of preparation when appearing on such an obvious ambush show.

My reaction? As uniformed as he seemed to be, I shrugged it off as a poor showing and gave the guy a break. Today, my perspective has changed. Go to his site—blogrevolt.com—and scroll down to the lower right side of the page. His site is being managed by Christian Sarkar, a marketing guy that has coined his own website marketing strategy called, "Double Loop Marketing."

Let me get this straight.

1. A guy with practically zero hours put in as a blogger (his archives go back two months at the time of this post) writes, authoritatively, about the future of blogging—"Blog! How The Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics,
   Business and Culture"
2. He has someone managing his site? A marketing guy? Apparently, creating a blog template is too much for this "blogger" so he hires a marketing guy to build his blog, along with providing a strategy to pitch his book on the future of blogs to a specific demographic, which includes bloggers that come to his blo… I mean… site?
3. He somehow is booked to appear on The O’Reilly Factor, completely unable to defend the position of free speech and media accountability via the means of blogging.

No wonder Billy Boy’s staff picked this guy; he was ripe to be "found." I wonder what part of the "Double Loop" we were experiencing during the O’Reilly segment, let alone the part this post plays in it’s cycle of awareness and sales. Bill O’Reilly didn’t "stoop" to anything…

I’m sorry, but how can you not call this spade a spade.

When I have a week like this one (sorry, no details for you), I often turn to the covers of a James Baldwin novel or essay to keep my head on straight. Why? Read the following snippet of “The Fire Next Time:”

“I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering — enough is certainly as good as a feast — but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch his manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth — and, indeed, no church — can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable.

This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be bourne.“

James Baldwin, 5 foot something, a buck something dripping wet, would have banged Shaq straight out of the paint.