Collateral Brain Damage? - The Hollywood Propaganda Ministry

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The subversion of political activism in America

A Critical Analysis Of Anti-Establishment Movements In America

by Phillip Darrell Collins

 

 

 

Preface
Historically, a majority of anti-Establishment movements has been largely unsuccessfully. For instance, despite the efforts of the sixties counterculture to end the Vietnam War, the Establishment managed to draw the conflict out for several years and gain control of the lucrative drug trade in the Golden Triangle. The same holds true for the anti-WTO movement, which has only succeeded in vandalizing the businesses of small shop owners. These ongoing successions of failure are the results of the Establishment's subversive efforts and political activists' own susceptibility to Hegelian manipulation.

 

The Sixties Counterculture
Romanticized by filmmakers like Oliver Stone and faithfully emulated by Generation X, the sixties counterculture ostensibly represented an enormous grassroots mobilization against the elite. However, in reality, the movement was merely the integral constituent of a Hegelian dialectic designed by the ruling class. The elite laid this dialectical snare through the following tactics:

 

*  The Promulgation of a Hegelian Meme - One of the weaknesses of the sixties counterculture was its own feeble grasp of the political spectrum. Exploiting this systemic Achilles' heel, the elite infused sixties radicals with a meme (a virus of the mind, so-to-speak) that would guarantee the movement's disintegration. Many of the sixties activists were recruited from academic institutions, which have been longtime disseminators of Establishment propaganda. On college campuses abroad, political scientists were already rigorously promoting a Hegelian view of the political spectrum. According to this dialectical framework, the political spectrum could be conceived of as straight line with fascism occupying the far right pole and communism occupying the far left pole. Nestled comfortably in between these two polar extremes was the American system.

 

Communism ----- American system ------ Fascism

 

This spectrum was patently false. Where was there room for the absence of government (anarchy) on this spectrum? Why did Americanism, which is predicated upon limited government and individual liberties, find itself sandwiched between two totalitarian systems? Clearly, this spectrum was disproportionate with reality. In truth, the spectrum drew itself out like this:

 

Communism ------- Fascism ------- American system ------- Anarchy

 

Communism and fascism are merely kissing cousins of the left. The appellation of "communism" comes from the Latin root communis, which means "group" living. Fascism is a derivation of the Italian word fascio, which is translated as "bundle" or "group." Both fascism and communism are forms of coercive group living, or more succinctly, collectivism. The only substantial difference between the two is fascism's limited observance of private property rights, which is ostensible at best given its susceptibility to rigid government regulation. In 1933, the Fuehrer candidly admitted to Hermann Rauschning that: !'the whole of National Socialism is based on Marx!( (Martin, p. 239, 1990).  Nazism (a variant of fascism) is derivative of Marxism. The historical conflicts between communism and fascism were merely feuds between two socialist totalitarian camps, not two dichotomously related forces. This is the true nature of the political spectrum.

 

Ayn Rand probably provided the most eloquent summation of this dialectic:

 

It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of !'Freedom or dictatorship?!( into !'Which kind of dictatorship?!( - thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice - according to the proponents of the fraud - is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism) (Rand, p. 180, 1967).

 

However, the counterculture unconsciously subsumed the Establishment's Hegelian meme and assessed the political climate of the time according to the Establishment's Hegelian model of the political spectrum. The memory of Nazi Germany and the atrocities of fascism during World War II were still floating on the surface of public conscious. Frightened by the chimera of "right-wing fascism," sixties radicals aligned themselves with the crypto-Marxist left. Thus, the counterculture only further promulgated the Hegelian dialectic of communism against fascism. Both of these polar extremes represent variants of the same political doctrine: statism. Cloistered within this dialectical framework, the counterculture enshrined the very socialistic machinations of the State that would empower the ruling class.

 

* Control Through Elite Financing - Although the sixties counterculture mounted opposition against the Establishment, its adherents received funding from the plutocrats themselves. In 1970, an Illinois commission report revealed "!Kthat $192,000 in Federal money and $85,000 in Carnegie Foundation funds were paid to [the] Students for a Democratic Society!Kduring the fall of 1969" (Epperson, p.403, 1985). When undercover police intelligence operative David Gumaer investigated the sources of SDS financing, he:

 

!Ksoon discovered it came through radicals via the United Nations, from the Rockefeller Foundations, the Ford Foundation, United Auto Workers, as well as cigar boxes of American money from the Cuban embassy (Epperson, p. 403, 1985).

 

In his The Strawberry Statement: Notes of A College Revolutionary, former revolutionary Kunen provided the following account of the 1968 S.D.S. (Students for a Democratic Society) national convention:

 

Also at the convention, men from Business International Roundtables-the meetings sponsored by the Business International for their client groups and heads of government-tried to buy up a few radicals. These men are the world's leading industrialists and they convene to decide how our lives are going to go. These are the boys who wrote the Alliance for Progress. They're the left wing of the ruling class. They agreed with us on black control and student control!K
They want McCarthy in. They see fascism as the threat, see it coming from Wallace. The only way McCarthy could win is if the crazies and young radicals act up and make Gene more reasonable.
They offered to finance our demonstrations in Chicago.
We were also offered Esso (Rockefeller) money. They want us to make a lot of radical commotion so they can look more in the center as they move to the left (pg. 116).

 

Before the House and Senate Security Committees, former Communist Party member and FBI informant James Kirk made the following statement:

 

They (sixties radicals) have no idea they are playing into the hands of the Establishment they claim to hate. The radicals think they are fighting the forces of the super-rich, like Rockefeller and Ford, and don't realize that it is precisely such forces which are behind their own revolution, financing it, and using it for their own purposes (Griffin, 1995, pg. 107-108).

 

Eventually, a few of the sixties radicals became aware of this manipulation. One such radical was the leader of SNCC, Stokely Carmichael. James Kirk made the following observations concerning Carmichael:

 

Mr. Carmichael was obviously in the middle of something very important which made him more nervous and tense than in the past!KHe started speaking of things which he said he could not have said before because his research was not finished!K
He repeated the line from the song he liked so well, "Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" He kept hitting on the theme that a very large monopoly capitalist money group, the bankers to be exact, was instrumental in fomenting (the) idea that the Jews are the ones actually behind the oppression of the blacks!KIn the agencies of this power, he cited banks, the chief among which were Morgan Guaranty Trust and Chase Manhattan. And the foundations connected with these monoliths (Griffin, 1995, pg. 108).

Apparently, Carmichael's revelations presented a distinct threat to the hidden manipulators. According to researcher Des Griffin: "Within weeks Carmichael had been mysteriously removed from SNCC and the Black Panthers. He had learned too much" (pg. 108)!

 

*  Neutralization by COINTELPRO - Carmichael was but a microcosm of the paradigm shift gradually taking place amongst the sixties radicals. Like many of the power organisms that had originated with the ruling class, the counterculture was developing autonomy. Recognizing this tectonic shift, the elite decided that the movement was no longer a useful machination. In fact, the sixties counterculture had become a potential threat to the ruling class. The movement had to be neutralized. This was accomplished through COINTELPRO, a counter-insurgency program within the FBI. Ostensibly, COINTELPRO was presented as an anti-Communist "counterintelligence program." According to the chief of the COINTELPRO unit:

 

We were trying first to develop intelligence so we would know what they were doing [and] second, to contain the threat.... To stop the spread of communism, to stop the effectiveness of the Communist Party as a vehicle of Soviet intelligence, propaganda and agitation (Wolf, 2002).

However, COINTELPRO's objectives were delineated in such an elastic fashion that they could be extended to encompass almost any form of activism. This elasticity was especially evident in COINTELPRO's use of the vague appellation "New Left." The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations commented on this elasticity:

 

As discussed earlier, the Bureau did not define the term "New Left," and the range of targets went far beyond alleged "subversives" or "extremists." Thus, for example, two student participants in a "free speech" demonstration were targeted because they defended the use of the classic four-letter-word. Significantly, they were made COINTELPRO subjects even though the demonstration "does not appear to be inspired by the New Left" because it "shows obvious disregard for decency and established morality" (Wolf, 2002).

 

Thus, COINTELPRO became America's "morality police." However, the techniques employed by COINTELPRO were anything but moral. William C. Sullivan, former assistant to the Director, provided a candid description of the program's tactics:

 

This is a rough, tough, dirty business, and dangerous. It was dangerous at times. No holds were barred.... We have used [these techniques] against Soviet agents. They have used [them] against us. . . . [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business (Wolf, 2002).

The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations provided a brief synopsis of COINTELPRO's strategy:

 

The Bureau approved 2,370 separate counterintelligence actions. Their techniques ranged from anonymously mailing reprints of newspaper and magazine articles (sometimes Bureau-authored or planted) to group members or supporters to convince them of the error of their ways, to mailing anonymous letters to a member's spouse accusing the target of infidelity; from using informants to raise controversial issues at meetings in order to cause dissent, to the "snitch jacket" (falsely labeling a group member as an informant) and encouraging street warfare between violent groups; from contacting members of a "legitimate group to expose the alleged subversive background of a fellow member to contacting an employer to get a target fired; from attempting to arrange for reporters to interview targets with planted questions, to trying to stop targets from speaking at all; from notifying state and local authorities of a target's criminal law violations, to using the IRS to audit a professor, not just to collect any taxes owing, but to distract him from his political activities (Wolf, 2002).

 

While many researchers characterize COINTELPRO as a "right-wing conspiracy," it must be understood that so-called "left-wing" Communist regimes employed the same tactics. Recall William C. Sullivan's statement: "We have used [these techniques] against Soviet agents. They have used [them] against us. . . " (Wolf, 2002). This fact reinforces the chimerical nature of the traditional left vs. right dialectic. Totalitarianism is totalitarianism, irrespective of whatever Hegelian appellation the orthodoxy of political science might assign it.

 

The Anti-WTO Movement

The elite's Hegelian strategy of ideological divide and conquer is also evident in the case of the World Trade Organization. Exploiting the intrinsic irrationalism of partisan affiliations, the oligarchs promulgated another fraudulent dialectical struggle between the right-wing and the left-wing.

 

*  "Right-wing" Manipulation - Republicans, neo-conservatives, and other so-called "right-wingers" selectively overlooked the genuine threat posed by the WTO: the further erosion of national sovereignty and destabilization of national economies. Why would they turn their heads and ignore such an obvious danger? Simple. Support of the WTO constituted loyalty to the Republican Party. After all, didn't George Bush support free trade? Doesn't a good Republican support everything that a Republican president supports, irrespective of the economic, political, or moral ramifications? The National Review and other neo-conservative rags printed avid defense polemics for the WTO, thus reiterating a dictum espoused by both major political parties: "Our way or the highway." This rigidity endemic to the two-party system has already resulted in the ostracism of two dissenting voices, Patrick Buchanan and James Trafficant. Such is the irrationality of strict adherence to partisan affiliations.

 

*  "Left-wing" manipulation - Meanwhile, many of the left-wing anti-WTO protesters had no qualms with world government or globalism. They certainly were not heartbroken by the fact that globalist machinations such as the WTO undermined national sovereignty and subordinated national economies to the authority of an onerous global entity. Majorities of the protesters were eco-zealots (i.e., watermelon Marxists, green on the outside and red on the inside) whose only problem was the global elite's disregard for the environmental chimera they dubbed "Gaia." New Republic journalist Robert Wright made the following observation concerning Ralph Nader and other phony left-wing WTO protesters:

 

"Nader and most of the Seattle left would gladly accept a sovereignty-crushing world body if it followed the leftist model of supranational governance found in the European Union" (Wright, 2000).

 

To appease the puppets of this artificially contrived opposition, President Bill Clinton "espoused a future WTO whose member nations would meet global environmental and labor standards or else face sanction" (Wright, 2000).

 

If anything, the WTO conflict represented a feud between elite factions: the Anglo-American Establishment of the west and the European Union of the east. Of course, there is further fragmentation into smaller sub-factions, but these two camps seem to be the major players. Both the eastern and western elites desire a world government. However, the western ruling class seeks to establish what they call a Pax Americana, a New World Order headquartered in America. The eastern elite wants a Pax Europa with the locus of power firmly embedded in Europe.

 

The masses rallied in one of the two camps. The so-called "right-wing" (i.e., conservatives, Republicans, nominal Christians, etc.) aligned themselves with the Anglo-American Establishment. Meanwhile, the so-called "left-wing" (i.e., liberals, radical environmentalists, Democrats, traditional Marxists, etc.) aligned themselves with the oligarchs of the European Union. It must be understood that both sides are intrinsically irrational and wrong. Both are facilitating the formation of a one world socialist totalitarian government. Either way, the free republic of America is doomed should one of these camps succeed. This is the anatomy of the elite's Hegelian dialectic, an ongoing process of divide and conquer.

 

Political Activism and the Second Gulf War

There can be little debate over the illegitimacy of the latest American military campaign in Iraq. Clearly, the war was illegal because it was antithetical to the principles of Americanism. It was never the policy of the Founding Fathers to attack other nations without provocation. Iraq did not overtly attack the United States and the contention that it did through the surrogate apparatus of al-Qaida has never been substantiated. Moreover, a guiding axiom of Americanism has been the avoidance of entangling alliances abroad. The so-called "coalition of nations" that fought Saddam represented one such entangling alliance. Unilaterally, bilaterally, or multilaterally, America's initiation of the war was still wrong. However, infected by Hegelian memes and controlled through elite financing, the antiwar movement only helped to further realize the ruling class' objectives.

 

*  Empowering the UN - Many of the left-wing "antiwar" protesters argued that the United States could not go to war without the approval of the United Nations. Moveon.org trumpeted mantras such as "Inspections work. Wars don't!" Win Without War urged people to tell congress: "Supporting the current UN disarmament mission in Iraq is critical" (Jasper, 2003). Yet, perhaps the most blatantly pro-UN statement was made by Peace Action:

 

The US must do its part to strengthen international legal systems in order for them to be as effective as possible. This means immediately paying US back dues to the United Nations (UN) and working through the UN to strengthen international laws on terrorism and the means to enforce them. The US should also support the International Criminal Court (ICC).... (Jasper, 2003).

 

This contention was a Trojan horse of the UN's globalist masters. The Constitution, Bill of Rights, and other Freedom documents constitute the only legitimate law of the land, NOT any of the edicts or decrees of the United Nations. This was an obvious ploy to empower the United Nations as a world government and further undermine the sovereignty of the United States. In truth, the so-called "antiwar" protesters would have had little or no trouble with the war had it been officially sanctioned by the United Nations, which has always been a conduit for elitist interests.

 

*  Elite Financing - The left-wing antiwar activists fancied themselves as some sort of grass roots movement, another populist crusade for the twenty-first century. However, a recent article in the Washington Post painted quite a different portrait. Journalist Julia Duin observed: "The American antiwar movement is decked out with all the elements of the counterculture, but it is getting some very establishment funding" (Duin, p. 1, 2003).

 

The Institute for Policy Studies, which is a left-wing think tank with a budget of $2.2 million, had circulated numerous anti-war polemics in recent months (Duin, p.1, 2003). Among the various Establishment institutions financing this entity were the Turner, Ford, MacArthur, and Charles Stewart Mott foundations (Duin, p.1, 2003). The Institute for Policy Studies finds its very origins with the ruling class. New York banks provided the money necessary to establish the IPS as a branch of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (Dope, Inc., p. 547, 1992). James Warburg, son of first Federal Reserve chairman Paul Warburg, was a founding trustee of IPS (Dope, Inc., p. 540, 1992).

 

Eli Pariser, the international campaigns director of Moveon.org, openly admitted that his organization had an operating budget of $300,000 a year (Duin, p. 2, 2003). One major accomplishment that this group boasted was its $3.5 million grossing fund-raiser for liberal political candidates during the 2002 election (Duin, p. 2, 2003). No doubt, these grateful politicians were also major contributors to Moveon.org's $300,000 operating budget. After all, reciprocity is the key to any healthy relationship.

 

*  Manufactured Opposition - Of course, it would be both biased and flatly incorrect to assert that elite manipulation has remained confined solely to the left-wing. The so-called "right-wing" also played an integral role in the manipulation surrounding Bush's war in Iraq. Meanwhile, on the other end of the bogus political spectrum, the Establishment had manufactured its own synthetic opposition. Suddenly, from Fort Wayne to Cleveland and Atlanta to Philadelphia, "pro-war" rallies were launched to support Bush's Iraq campaign (Burkeman, p. 1, 2003). Was this a grass roots response to the antiwar demonstrations? Journalist Oliver Burkeman answers this question:

 

But many of the rallies, it turns out, have been organized and paid for by Clear Channel Inc. - the country's largest radio conglomerate, owning 1,200 stations - which is not only reporting on the war at the same time, but whose links with President Bush stretch back to his earliest, much-criticised financial dealings as governor of Texas. The company has paid advertising costs and for the hire of musicians for the rallies (Burkeman, p. 1, 2003).

 

Predictably, many conservatives, Republicans, and so-called "Christians" flocked to this dialectical camp. As the hawks and the doves engaged in the harlequin antics of a fraudulent ideological melee, the power elite strengthened their grip on society.

 

Conclusion

It is painfully clear that political activism in the United States has been rendered ineffective or, in some cases, detrimental to the activists themselves. A portion of the blame rests on the shoulders of the Establishment, which has controlled movements through elite funding. However, a larger portion of the blame must be shouldered by the activists themselves. Contaminated by Hegelian memes and trapped in dialectical snares, activists continue to help the very plutocrats they claim to hate. Only when activists learn to transcend partisan affiliations and develop some autonomous aptitude will America finally see the fruits of any political activism.

 

 

Sources cited

 

Burkeman, Oliver, "Bush backer sponsoring pro-war rallies," http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4633514,00.html, March 26, 2003.

Duin, Julia, "Foundation cash funds antiwar movement," http://dynamic,washtimes.com/twt-print.cfm?ArticleID=20030402-42181748, April 2, 2003.

Editors of Executive Intelligence Review, Dope Inc., Executive Intelligence Review, Washington, D.C. 1992.

Epperson, Ralph, The Unseen Hand, Publius Press, Tucson, Arizona, 1985.

Griffin, Des, Fourth Reich of the Rich, Emissary Publications, Oregon, 1995.

Kunen, James, The Strawberry Statement, Random House, New York, 1968.

Jasper, William F. "Recycling Radicalism," The New American Magazine Online, http://thenewamerican.com/tna/2003/03-24-2003/vo19no06_radicalism.htm, 2003.

Martin, Malachi, The Keys of this Blood, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1991.

Rand, Ayn, Capitalism: The Unknown Idea, New American Library, Reissue edition, July 1986.  

Wolf, Paul, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports On Intelligence Activities And The Rights Of Americans, http://www.cointel.org, 2002.

Wright, Robert, "Continental Drift," New Republic On-line, http://www.tnr.com/011700/coverstory011700.html, September 17, 2000.

 

Author's Biography
 

Phillip Darrell Collins was the chief editor of The Hidden Face of Terrorism, a book by Paul David Collins.

 

~ Illuminati News ~

 

Are government-trained psychic killers for real?

At the start of the twisted treasure hunt that is ''The Men Who Stare at Goats,'' the journalist Jon Ronson appears to be looking for furtive, paranoid quacks who play mind games. He seems to have hit the mother lode.

Take the goats of the title: Mr. Ronson cites a hundred of them. He says that they have been hidden at a Goat Lab at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and de-bleated for security reasons.

They have been used in top-secret experiments by psychic spies whose existence is not officially acknowledged by the United States Army. Military psychics are so well hidden that they aren't covered by the Army's coffee budget. It makes them cranky to have to bring their own coffee to work.

''The damn psychic spies should be keeping their damn mouths shut, instead of chitchatting all over town about what they did.'' So says retired Maj. Gen. Albert N. Stubblebine III, the first of the many characters redolent of ''Dr. Strangelove'' who are found in this jaw-dropper of a -- hard to believe, but, yes -- nonfiction story.

Some of these experts contend that a goat's heart can be stopped by the intense gaze of a certain kind of supersoldier. ''Goat didn't have a chance,'' one of these tough guys tells Mr. Ronson. Such fighters sometimes refer to themselves as Jedi Warriors, because the thinking about their occult superpowers dates back to early ''Star Wars'' days. It was then that the post-Vietnam military, demoralized and fiscally hamstrung, was ready to try anything in the way of intangible new weaponry.

Mr. Ronson sets his book up beautifully. It moves with wry, precise agility from crackpot to crackpot in its search for the essence of this early New Age creativity. Much of it can be traced to the 1977 fact-finding mission of Lt. Col. Jim Channon, now also retired but given credit for an influential legacy.

It was Colonel Channon's 125-page ''First Earth Battalion Operations Manual'' that suggested a whole new approach to combat and a whole new type of military uniform. According to Colonel Channon's plan, soldiers' uniforms should include pouches for ginseng regulators, divining tools and loudspeakers that would emit ''indigenous music and words of peace.''

The author's explorations also take him to one soldier of fortune who died after ''acting too big for his boots regarding his superhuman powers,'' and to a New Age company alleged to be dealing in both healing bars (costing $7,600 and resembling blocks of soap) and group sex (''Don't tell your husband because he wouldn't understand the energy work'').

~ more... ~

Reflections on the State

By Michael S. Rozeff (2005)

Why the State?

Just about everyone lives under a State. States are what the world has come to. We and our forefathers have both chosen this order and had it imposed on us. Can this whole order be a bad mistake? Yes, it can, if it is based upon faulty theory. Believing in spontaneous generation, not the germ theory of disease, doctors didn't know enough to wash their hands 140 years ago. We're like those doctors.

States were far weaker only 50 years ago and weaker still 100 years ago. Are bigger and stronger and more intrusive States, like the germ theory of disease, a great boon for mankind, a wonderful discovery that prolongs and saves lives? The bloody 20th century, a ton of evidence to the contrary, and the best theory all strongly suggest the opposite: All States harm mankind and the bigger they are the more harm they cause.

If the State destroys, then why is it the dominant political form? Basically because it gains power over its subjects who, for a variety of reasons, either cannot or do not resist that power. Oppenheimer and Albert Jay Nock tell us much about these developments.

The reactions of the State's citizens to the State fall into a great many categories, ranging from love to hate, indifference to resistance. Three prominent categories are worth mentioning. There are those who do not like the State but do not resist it. They realize that the State possesses the monopoly of legal violence in the area over which it rules and they view it as an irresistible force. They don't think it's worth fighting City Hall. Their behavior looks like those who are indifferent.

Then there are people who'd like to resist. Some even try but they fail to do much. They discover that the rulers are clever enough to prevent serious organized resistance from groups within the State. The rulers have a catalog of methods of control, including co-opting, subsidy, taxes, smear, propaganda, force, law, ballot access control, press dominance, etc.

Then there are very many people who loyally support, even love, the State. There are many reasons why they cling to the State.

1. Error of identification. People long to be identified as something, an American or a Frenchman or a Russian. These are matters of nation, country, society, custom, language, group, religion, culture, not State. Yet in many people's minds, they merge. The State comes to represent what a person is. The State gains loyalty by blurring the lines between itself, country and society. Patriotism, a love of country, overlaps with love of State.

2. Error of attribution. People make the logical error of attributing progress achieved by the country to the State: Cum hoc, ergo propter hoc. If a horse wins a race despite a 5-pound handicap, it wins despite the extra weight not because of it.

3. Illusion of order. People fear anarchy. They think that the power of the State to suppress and keep order is better than exposure to unnamed and unseen anarchic forces. Fear of one's fellow man sows the seeds of support of the State. This solution to the problem of order is an illusion that is based on contradiction, however. If one fears men, and the rulers are men, then the rulers are also to be feared. In fact, the State to whom one gives such great power is even more to be feared. There is no security of life when one turns one's life over to one's jailer.

4. Illusion of security. People want security, insurance against the trials of life, a father that is there to feed and house them when they have troubles. It is illusion to think that the State can provide comfort. The State has no resources of its own, so it must draw them from the citizens themselves. In the process, much waste occurs, insecurity of rights is fostered, and the overall productivity of the people is reduced. In its external relations, which are frequently aggressive, the State wastes still more resources. Hence, the State makes people less secure.

5. Vicarious pleasure. Many identify with the State's power. They feel good when the State uses its power. Death and destruction do not bother them. They like the idea of wars and armies marching, big tanks, missiles and rockets, and space ships flying to the moon. If the State is a superpower, all the better.

6. Hunger for power and wealth. Many people benefit from the State. Perhaps they rule, or gain subsidies or laws that favor them.

7. Philosophy. There are those like Hegel who justify the State and replace God with the State.

8. Miscalculation. Many people think the State is a good deal. These people can't count or calculate. They give up $1 and get back $0.80 and do not know it. Sometimes they underestimate the costs they bear now and in the future. Sometimes they overestimate the benefits. Of course, the State does what it can to help them miscalculate.

9. Hope. This is a kind of misplaced faith. People irrationally hope and believe that the State's power will ameliorate various evils, usually in a social context. When the State's programs fail, these people are incapable of analyzing the reason for the failure because of the complexity of social situations and because of their biased hopes.

10. Gullibility and propaganda. The State encourages illusions about its powers and abilities.

The State's success as a political form, even though it is a counterproductive form of human organization, has all these roots and no doubt more that I am overlooking.

The State's concentration of power

States are defined by their possession of a monopoly of legalized violence in a territorial area. But they usually also possess another signal feature: a peculiar pyramidal power structure. The State has a leadership consisting of a rather small group of men. Below each leader is the entire power of the people, and this amplifies the leader into a powerful concentrated force. The men in a country who like to use power see it for the taking in every State, and they take it by becoming its leaders. This process brings power-loving men into positions of power. This turns a nation's pinnacle into a power-wielding dynamo that can be turned internally or externally.

The leaders represent all their subjects in their inter-State (called international) relations. The various rulers, many being power-loving men, often do not get along with one another and have ambitions to expand their rule. Hence, the system of States with their concentrated powers is geared to produce strife and often war of a more serious scope than mankind's wars before the advent of States. Total war is an invention of the modern State.

If the masses have evil aspirations, and they do, the State focuses and embodies them. If the leaders have evil impulses, and they do, they are given greater scope. Hardly ever do leaders work as hard for peace as they do for conquest, because the State is power and attracts those who wish to use power. Peace talk comes mainly from those outside the State system. Even peaceable rulers are trapped by the system, often their own nasty subjects, and find it hard to promote peace. The results are deadly for the human race.

Overlooked costs

The State imposes, controls, robs, kills and invades, all of which is wrong. These actions are unhealthy for the souls of the citizens. They are also very costly. But I think we may not fully understand the long-term dynamic of some of these costs. Costly social programs, once begun, go on and on and on. War can last generations, even after it supposedly has officially ended.

Often with public consent, often without it, States consciously and rationally choose to begin conflicts, but are the underlying calculations flawed? Shortsighted? Do peoples and rulers fail to count all the costs of conflicts? Do they fail to understand the longstanding unhappiness these choices bring? Do they underestimate how long conflicts last and how the human and property costs mount? I hypothesize that this is the case.

Observe. The Kashmiri conflict is 60 years old. Today's Irish and English still are paying the price of the English invasion of Ireland over 800 years ago and the subsequent attempt to wipe out Catholicism. The South has not forgotten the North's invasion 145 years ago. Many generations of Arabs will remember the U.S. invasion of Iraq and seek justice. The 9/11/01 attack is related to the U.S. presence in Lebanon which goes back to 1957, some 44 years earlier. The Tamil-Sri Lankan conflict over secession is 30 years old. The Korean conflict is still not settled after 55 years.

Four elements of psychology underlie my hypothesis. First, human beings can be very determined. Second, human beings can pass memories of injustice on indefinitely. Third, human beings are prepared to die for what they believe in. Fourth, the horizon of a leader is approximately his tenure of leadership which is far shorter than the collective and enduring memories of those who bear the ultimate costs of his decisions.

To a leader and his cheerleaders, power looks a lot better in the short-run than in the long-run. But none of them will be around in the long-run. They won't even be around beyond a few terms in office. This is a strong argument for greatly limiting State power.

Costs of conflicts are sometimes hidden and forgotten. The 45-year Cold War has ended, for the time being. It is altogether too easy to forget that the bad and unrealized outcome of the Cold War, nuclear Armageddon, could have occurred. The risk was high. We might have suffered grievously heavy costs. To forget that risk because the gamble paid off is to misunderstand the flawed calculations upon which the Cold War was based. Mutual assured destruction was an incredibly poor policy choice compared to the no-holds-barred pursuit of peace. Trumpeting that we won the Cold War by an arms race is not only bad history but a bad basis for future policy based once again on even more force of arms. The next series of armed conflicts need not end so happily.

Risk is a peculiar thing and not well understood. It has to do with the loss you might incur if something bad happens. Sometimes the bad outcome does not happen and the player begins to forget the risk or figure it isn't really there anymore. But it is. And when it hits, you understand, even if it is too late to do anything about it.

And have all the costs of the Cold War been incurred yet? Far from it. Our leaders still have the cold war mentality. Our troops are still in far-flung places with missions redefined. Disarmament has not proceeded very far. If even one atomic device left over from the Cold War is exploded over one city anywhere in the world, what will we then think? Probably about blame. We'll be blaming the evil men who exploded it, the lax security of those who lost it, and the failures of those who could have stopped it. We'll be out for revenge. But what we should be thinking is that this is the cost of war-making rather than peace-making. This is a long-term cost of the Cold War.

Costs of the State that involve risk are also hidden. For example, we have a few men who are given enormous power. The risk is obvious but overlooked. The nation is vulnerable to the defects of character and emotion, limitations of mind and intelligence, and limited information of a few men. Concentrating power in a few men is like an investment with all one's wealth placed on one stock. Plunging in stocks usually fails and all is lost.

The U.S. has experienced this problem time and time again, but we have not recognized this problem for what it is. In fact, the Congress has supinely abdicated any serious debate on issues of war and defers to the President. So we have given him even more power! This is really a dumb thing to do. An all-powerful President is nothing more than a highly risky gamble. We have already lost that gamble far too many times. Count the wars and interventions since 1945 and you will know how many times.

Our leaders and their supporters among us overestimate the expected net benefits of fighting. They think naïvely that there is a benefit to a superpower stemming from its ability to impose on others. This is illusion. Superpowers create multiple enemies. The fights grow larger, more frequent, and more destructive as the opponents multiply and build their strength. As the superpower expands, it requires ever more territory and expenditure to secure its new outposts. It becomes ever more vulnerable. There is no security whatsoever in superpower politics and expansion.

Do we the people gain as the U.S. exercises its so-called leadership responsibility in the world? What a lot of hooey that is, designed to justify a losing power game. Is the game worth it, or is it illusion? When the sons are slain and maimed, when nothing real is gained or attained, isn't it illusion, La Grande Illusion? What are the gains from World Wars I and II? Some States fended off some other States. We ran just to stay in one place. We were held back by the struggles. We were not made better off. We defended, without necessity, because of the piled-up errors of States. Many millions of lives were destroyed. Each War created the conditions for yet more wars, such as the Cold War. What were the gains from Korea and Vietnam? The U.S. heavily inserted itself into the Middle East during the Cold War in order to contain the Soviet Union. From that questionable policy has sprung today's involvement for which the bills are piling up.

Are the long-run costs of the power game that produces world-wide flashpoints such as Taiwan and the 38th parallel adequately appreciated by its supporters? I very much doubt it.

~ PanArchy ~

Anti-Israel carol service condemned by religious leaders

The event, titled "Bethlehem Now: Nine Alternative Lessons and Carols", was held last week St James's, Piccadilly and organised by Open Bethlehem, a Palestinian group and Jews for Boycotting Israeli.

It saw Once in Royal David's City sung as: "Once in Royal David's City, Stood a big apartheid wall, People entering and leaving, Had to pass a checkpoint hall, Bethlehem was strangulated, And her children segregated."

The Twelve Days of Christmas was refashioned as: "Twelve assassinations, Eleven homes demolished, Ten wells obstructed, Nine sniper towers, Eight gunships firing, Seven checkpoints blocking, Six tanks a-rolling, Five settlement rings, Four falling bombs, Three trench guns, Two trampled doves, And an uprooted olive tree."

The Rector of St James's Piccadilly, the Rev Charles Hedley, has said that he received dozens of complaints and will "think twice" before allowing a repeat of the service in his church, according to The Times.

The newspaper adds that the offices of both the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and his predecessor Lord Carey of Clifton have also criticised the service.

Among the guests were Baroness Tonge, the Liberal Democrat peer who was sacked from the party's front bench in 2004 after saying she "understood" why Palestinians became suicide bombers and that she would consider becoming one if she were Palestinian.

~ Telegraph ~

Codex Alimentarius: Population control under the guise of consumer protection

The most dominant country behind the agenda of Codex is the United States whose sole purpose is to benefit multinational interests like Big Pharma, Big Agribusiness, Big Chema and the like. At the latest meeting in Geneva, the U.S. recently became the chair of Codex which will facilitate an exacerbation of the distortion of health freedom and will continue the promulgation of misinformation and lies about genetically modified organism (GMOs) and nutrients while fulfilling the tacit population control agenda. The reason the U.S. continues to dominate Codex is because other countries falsely believe the U.S. possesses the latest and greatest safety technology when it comes to food and hence, whatever the U.S. asks for, its allies (E.U., Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore) follow suit nearly every time.

Many of the countries who wish to participate and want to voice their opinions are not allowed to attend the Codex meetings as the U.S. denies most visas for these representatives whenever they feel like it. Many of these countries (South Africa, Swaziland, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt, Cameroon, Sudan, Nigeria) realize that Codex has been altered from a benevolent food organization to one that is fraudulent, lethal and illegitimate. The fact that Codex meetings are held all over the world is also no accident and allows the U.S. to maintain its tight grip on the Codex agenda as the less economically viable countries are not able to attend.

The Real Threat

While the esoteric agenda of the media is busy driving fear into the hearts of the world by focusing on terrorism, global warming, salmonella, and food shortages, the real threats are clandestinely becoming a reality. Soon every single thing you put into your mouth (with the exception of pharmaceuticals, of course) will be highly regulated by Codex Alimentarius, including water. The standards of Codex are a complete affront to the freedom of clean and healthy food, yet these regulations have no legal international standing. Why should we be worried? These soon-to-be mandatory standards will apply to every country who are members of the WTO (World Trade Organization). If countries do not follow these standards, then enormous trade sanctions will result. Some Codex standards that will take effect on December 31, 2009 and once initiated are completely irrevocable include [2]:

* All nutrients (vitamins and minerals) are to be considered toxins/poisons and are to be removed from all food because Codex prohibits the use of nutrients to "prevent, treat or cure any condition or disease"

* All food (including organic) is to be irradiated, removing all toxic nutrients from food (unless eaten locally and raw).

* Nutrients allowed will be limited to a Positive List developed by Codex which will include such beneficial nutrients like Fluoride (3.8 mg daily) developed from environmental waste. All other nutrients will be prohibited nationally and internationally to all Codex-compliant countries [2].

* All nutrients (e.g., CoQ10, Vitamins A, B, C, D, Zinc and Magnesium) that have any positive health impact on the body will be deemed illegal under Codex and are to be reduced to amounts negligible to humans' health [3].

* You will not even be able to obtain these anywhere in the world even with a prescription.

* All advice on nutrition (including written online or journal articles or oral advice to a friend, family member or anyone) will be illegal. This includes naturalnews.com reports on vitamins and minerals and all nutritionist's consultations.

* All dairy cows are to be treated with Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone.

* All animals used for food are to be treated with potent antibiotics and exogenous growth hormones.

* The reintroduction of deadly and carcinogenic organic pesticides that in 1991, 176 countries (including the U.S.) have banned worldwide including 7 of the 12 worst at the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pesticides (e.g., Hexachlorobenzene, Toxaphene, and Aldrin) will be allowed back into food at elevated levels [4].

* Dangerous and toxic levels (0.5 ppb) of aflotoxin in milk produced from moldy storage conditions of animal feed will be allowed. Aflotoxin is the second most potent (non-radiation) carcinogenic compound known to man.

* Mandatory use of growth hormones and antibiotics on all food herds, fish and flocks

* Worldwide implementation of unlabeled GMOs into crops, animals, fish and trees.

* Elevated levels of residue from pesticides and insecticides that are toxic to humans and animals.

Some examples of potential permissible safe levels of nutrients under Codex include [2]:

* Niacin - upper limits of 34 mcg daily (effective daily doses include 2000 to 3000 mcgs).

* Vitamin C - upper limits of 65 to 225 mcg daily (effective daily doses include 6000 to 10000 mcgs).

* Vitamin D - upper limits of 5 μg daily (effective daily doses include 6000 to 10000 μg).

* Vitamin E - upper limits of 15 IU of alpha tocopherol only per day, even though alpha tocopherol by itself has been implicated in cell damage and is toxic to the body (effective daily doses of mixed tocopherols include 10000 to 12000 IU).

The Door is Open for Codex

In 1995, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) created an illegal policy stating that international standards (i.e, Codex) would supersede U.S. laws governing all food even if these standards were incomplete [5]. Furthermore, in 2004 the U.S. passed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (illegal under U.S. law, but legal under international law) that requires the U.S. to conform to Codex in December of 2009 [6].

Once these standards are adopted there is no possible way to return to the standards of the old. Once Codex compliance begins in any area, as long as we remain a member of the WTO, it is totally irrevocable. These standards are then unable to be repealed, changed or altered in any way shape or form [1, 2, 7].

Population control for money is the easiest way to describe the new Codex which is run by the U.S. and controlled by Big Pharma and the like to reduce the population to a sustainable 500 million - a reduction of approximately 93 percent. The FAO and WHO have the audacity to estimate that by the introduction of just the vitamin and mineral guideline alone, at a minimum 3 billion deaths (1 billion from starvation and another 2 billion from preventable and degenerative diseases of under nutrition, e.g., cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes) will result.

Degraded, demineralized, pesticide-filled and irradiated foods are the fastest and most efficient way to cause a profitable surge in malnutrition, preventable and degenerative disease which the most appropriate course of action is always pharmaceuticals. Death for profit is the new name of the game. Big Pharma has been waiting for this opportunity for years.

~ more... ~

Capitalism needs purging, not tweaking

The very system that engenders our ecological suicide, values economic expansion over life, the economy over ecology and shopping over a sustainable future will soon claim it is going to save not only life on earth but itself at the same time. Timid NGOs – from Greenpeace to the New Economics Foundation – are jumping on the bandwagon, and will soon be followed by desperate corporations and governments greenwashing themselves in the hope that they will rebuild confidence and rake in profits from a new market. But it's a wagon that, despite a repaint, is still heading for the precipice.

Not only will the deal continue to be based on the fantasy logic of a growth economy with no tethers to the real limits of the biosphere, but it will include a "carbon army" of "green collar workers" – no doubt forced off welfare (which will be cut away as we pay off the bail-outs) into poorly paid and alienating green jobs. Meanwhile, fossil fuel corporations will be hit with a windfall tax that will be used to "deal with the effects of climate change." It all sounds suspiciously like the old capitalism to me.

What we need is a new logic, not a new deal. Eighteenth century abolitionists didn't advocate a tax on slavery: they wanted it stopped. We shouldn't tax fossil fuels, but stop them being pumped out of the ground. Similarly, we don't need new jobs but new definitions of work.

We need a new way of thinking about what has value, how we feed ourselves, how we live together, how we build culture, democracy and politics and how we connect to the natural world. None of us will ever see such an opportunity again.

~ more... ~

Mile-thick cloud of pollution is choking the planet

A massive mile-thick brown pollution haze has settled over vast areas of the planet, changing weather patterns and threatening health and crops, according to the UN.

Vast areas of Asia, the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, are affected by the smog-like plumes, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and firewood, are known as "atmospheric brown clouds".

When mixed with emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the earth's atmosphere like a greenhouse, they are the newest threat to the global environment, according to a report commissioned by the UN Environment Programme.

"All of this points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet," said Achim Steiner, head of the UNEP.

Brown clouds are caused by an unhealthy mix of particles, ozone and other chemicals that come from cars, coal-fired power plants, burning fields and wood-burning stoves. First identified by the report's lead researcher in 1990, the clouds were depicted in the report as being more widespread and causing more environmental damage than previously known.

Perhaps most widely recognised as the haze this past summer over Beijing's Olympics, the clouds have been found to be more than a mile thick around glaciers in the Himalaya and Hindu Kush mountain ranges.

They hide the sun and absorb radiation, leading to new worries not only about global climate change but also about extreme weather conditions.

~ The Scotsman ~

Dissidence and literature

Technologically, the world has come very far in the recent years, but still, dictatorships follow the same path as they always have, but of course, now they do it in a more sophisticated way. They still burn and ban books, but now they also try to limit and control the use of the Internet, because it is through the internet that the written word can reach millions of people in an instant and bring them the information that these governments and powers have tried to hide. In the past, once a writer was in exile, he/she would be more or less disconnected from his/her people, but today, this is not the case at all. Books and articles can be written and be made available on line. Discussions can be made, and the truth can rise to the top. Of course, this age of technology has its own complications. Just the same way that writers and dissidents can use the Internet to reach people, dictatorships and their agents and supporters can do the exact same thing and try to distort the truth. But this is a battleground of a very serious war that goes on without pause and to which every writer needs to remain dedicated. The future belongs to the young generation, and in order to make this future better than the present is for the older generation to succeed in giving to the youth the burden of history it has carried. However, let's not forget that history can be abused and twisted. For example, there are still those who say the holocaust never happened, even though the holocaust is a very well documented event of recent history.

As human beings, we have a tendency to turn our backs on what causes us sorrow, pain, and despair, especially when these are historical events that bring our conscience, whether personal or social, under a microscope. So a writer who writes about such matters is always faced with a great deal of resistance. Also, let's not forget that governments and extremist political groups have and will use literature as a tool of propaganda. Of course, it's needless to say that when literature becomes a tool to serve a certain ideology, it automatically loses its soul and becomes lost. Any intelligent reader can spot such a condition without effort, no matter how skillfully it's done. Literature is not to serve a certain ideology, but to become the honest bearer of the human experience and condition, whether in the fiction or non-fiction form.

There are also those who take the power of literature too lightly. Without words and literature, we become secluded and imprisoned in our own bodies. What is the use of experience if it cannot be shared? I learned more about the holocaust from Anne Frank's Diary, Ellie Wiesel's Night, and Imre Kertesz's Fatelessness than I have ever learned from any history books. This is because these amazing works of literature not only tell us about what happened, but they tell us about how people felt as they experienced such horrors, so that we can put ourselves in their shoes and not only know but feel their experiences. Without literature, history and the human experience, which is a very important part of history, becomes a cold and impersonal recitation of numbers and words that can rarely bring tears to anyone's eyes or touch anyone's heart.

I am a practical person by nature, and as I told you, I wanted to become a medical doctor, but I ended up becoming a political prisoner at the age of 16 and spending more than 2 years in prison, and then I became a writer. I have always admired those who act on their convictions for a good cause: doctors who risk all and work in war and poverty torn regions to save lives, human-rights activists who are at the front lines of humanitarian disasters, journalists who risk their lives to bring us reports and images about events happening across the globe, engineers who build roads and schools in remote areas or bring clean running water to those who need it.

What is the role of the writer? In my humble opinion, every writer is a part of humanity's collective conscience. As a writer, I am here to remember and to make sure that the world knows and remembers. Some people say, “but these are only words.” I would say that these are the words that contain our humanity. We're here at this conference to speak about dissidence and literature, but I would like to ask you “what is dissidence?” To you, is dissidence a political act or a human one, or maybe both? I believe that when dissidence is mainly political and serves a certain ideology or religion, it should be left to politicians. However, when literature enters the arena of dissidence, in order for literature to keep its soul and humanity, it has to serve the human conscience without serving an ideology, and if it manages to do this, it would deliver to the future generations the truth of our experience, humanity, and imagination. But this is easier said than done. As human beings, we are very much prone to letting our political views cloud our judgment. So when a writer allows his/her ideology to shape and define her work and become its blueprint, we see the death of good literature, which bears witness to human and historical conditions, and, we see the rise of a phenomenon which I choose to call “literary propaganda.”

~ more... ~