Empire Needs Redefinition & Transmutation, Not Dangerous Collapse

        "Exactly one day after writing what was to be my last political post ever, I had decided to shelf my quitting because Chalmers Johnson's Evil Empire article needs to be addressed. It turned up practically everywhere I read and actually said many things which needed to be said, but failed to address some key problems." from my other blog, May 16, 2007

        "I believe that there is only one solution to the crisis we face. The American people must make the decision to dismantle both the empire that has been created in their name and the huge (still growing) military establishment that undergirds it. It is a task at least comparable to that undertaken by the British government when, after World War II, it liquidated the British Empire. By doing so, Britain avoided the fate of the Roman Republic -- becoming a domestic tyranny and losing its democracy, as would have been required if it had continued to try to dominate much of the world by force."

Chalmers Johnson from Ending the Empire, TomDispatch.com May 15th, 2007

        In an otherwise good summation and suggestions, he errs in saying how to turn back what cannot be undone. America always needs a greater goal forward. Our past is dead, gone. Only what is left now is what best we can make of that.

        The world is not yet ready to rule itself. That is an admittedly arrogant statement by an admittedly arrogant person, myself. Yet it is the truth. There has not yet been strong enough institutions set up for global security nor adequate control over or support from populations for a global democracy or any other 'just' system of government founded upon the support of the people for such an international government to emerge. People are too unaware of global issues to recognize the need to give up local autonomy for international security, real security, not as in the US, 'security' as an excuse to remove the rights of people to oppose it.
        Yet they are intertwined. If people would not yet willingly embrace limits on what their 'sovereign' states can and cannot do, a 'democratic' world government at this point would have to be forced upon governments and over the opposition of their publics as much as supposedly and questionably 'democratic' systems have been forced upon other nations recently, at the point of a gun before or after 'regimen change', or under threat of economic sanctions.
        Ironically, there is little 'demos' now for democracy, real global democracy, in the West which claims to embrace (or even own) the concept of democracy, and certainly not in the monarchies or semi-dictatorships where it would create an upheaval and ouster of those who rule them presently. One only needs to look at the collapse of the European Union's Constitution, that white Europeans who share close cultural and economic ties and traditions of democracy cannot bear the idea of giving up state control, even for an overarching democratic system which would guarantee greater local autonomy, and even when a near unanimity of political parties in those countries endorse it. What chance would a more global effort or institution inclusive of far more diverse cultures and racial differences have today?
        But of course that is a ridiculous concept, that you can 'force' democracy upon the world, or on cultures that have a privileged position or would be reluctant not only to embrace change, but even to shun changes which they might even concede could be beneficial to them over the long run. And when refusal to embrace the idea of change creates an ever growing imbalance of dangerously rising potential of chaos, public support, though ideal, can become a luxury. So if a new and increasingly necessary system cannot be 'forced' nor sometimes put off to be considered, which way is left?
        Many could say, there is no need for a global system of government, nor better integration at a supra-national level. If there is an groundswell of popular public opinion on global integration at the moment, it is mostly negative in regards to the havoc that globalization has already made upon all cultures, rich and poor alike, becoming poorer and less empowered over their governments, economies, and their abilities to survive. What 'integration' has already been 'forced' on publics, in the benefit of mostly the few and wealthy, has killed off most any desire for any other integration's that could balance that, international governments or agreements which could reign in supra-national corporations and regulate comprehensively a global economy.
        And of course, there is no country of great wealth or power that would wish to create an international system which would regulate it more, or wish to make such an idea more attractive to their own publics, to which it would be a difficult to impossible sell to them in this current climate anyway. This creates a situation almost in which there is no way out should such a need for one be present, or even dire.
        No system of power would be willing to hand off its power to an international regulatory system of global security it could not control, nor could there be a public groundswell for pushing its government to do such things even if that is in their own, and its own, long term interests. What global integration there has been, elite based as it was and serving the most wealthy, which created a foul taste in the publics mind, has been done in an autocratic way because not only has the public been uniformed of the necessity for greater international integration, but when informed, would still balk at it.
        One could argue the elite based economic integration up until now has not been in their publics best interests so the publics would be right to cry foul at having been, or continuing to be, shut out of the process, or only given perfunctory oversight or approval long after the deals have been made and have become intractable. But that integration up until now, as economically unjust and sometimes sickening in its effects as it has been, are the strings upon which better and worse integration's to come will have to be based upon or somehow around. Good or bad, they are the first steps.
        One of the first modern 'democracies' after the middle ages was in Lithuania where nobles and princes got to elect a 'king'. It was hardly democratic in the modern sense of the term: the average person was shut out completely, had no rights or say in the matter, yet it was an improvement. Instead of warring with each other, those who ruled directly over the people, questionably legitimately and completely irregardless of their consent, nonetheless began to work out a system between themselves which limited the conflicts and saved the lives of many who would have died if the previous warlord system it replaced did not evolve as it did.
        As bad as the globalization of the world is proceeding, extremely unjust and unfair to the vast majority of the people of this planet, it is coalescing into a single system which has the potential to limit wars and other things which would destroy what could only be termed most people and most civilizations. With that centralization comes a lack of individual control, a tyranny to suppress those who would oppose it, yet if managed right, can break into more freedom as well as the greater likelihood or tendency to obliterate freedom.
        One can say you have no freedom if you are dead, so it could, by that argument, only be better than chaos. It also holds true that in such circumstances, only the dead are free if there is only a single structure which one cannot oppose, and that the greatest freedoms, and sometimes the only real advancements in freedom, are won in times of chaos and decentralized control.
        But as I have tried to impress before in other writings, decentralized control is becoming impossible without an overarching system to guarantee it. As much as the big powers of the security council, nations which have basically an indefensible lack of oversight through their veto powers, have used that power (do as we say and not as we do) to become the world's biggest arms dealers and by that, by that ability to dump off large amounts of weapons to whomever they choose and call lesser powers doing that criminals, think weapons improves control or stability, are soon to learn it is not something that will guarantee their dominance any longer. Weapons will shortly become too powerful, too cheap, and with too much war and too much conflict, democracies and governments pretending to be ones would collapse with civil wars and terrorism as bad as Iraq.
        There are always local groups who would commit terrorist acts at home. There has been overkill in hyping these threats as an excuse to take away freedoms at home in the US and the UK, and it has been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet within 20 years, our own unbridled quests for creating the most devastating weapons will create a class of small arms lethal enough to turn cities into wastelands, and those driving that future now have complete control over our governments to an extent that it is unlikely to be turned, even when widely foreseen as almost inevitable.
        Constantly making more portable and cheaper and more powerful weapons will empower these fringe groups to be able to warrant the police state which will ironically keep creating better weapons to stay on top or ahead of them and continue the downward spiral into chaos within, and with that chaos, greater profits for the arms industries and their becoming more integral to the maintenance of whichever groups seek to hold onto power in such a climate, and more necessary.
        So if such a scenario seems possible or even likely, what is the way out? Only educating the world to embrace what it now finds the most distasteful paths, more globalized structures which will bring even greater risks of suppression and dictatorships at home in every country all over the world.
        If you look at the world as a whole, it is doing this already. Democratic rule as defined by peoples controls over their legislatures and their legislatures control over their executive leaderships have been in rapid decline for decades now. And this has set the stage for rising discontent which will force even greater centralization's of power and greater erosion of democracy, which will continue in name only.
        This centralization of power will either become global by choice of its governments regardless of the opinions of its peoples, because vacillation and self-interest of feeding their localized weapons and other industries in the most powerful countries will be overcome, or the failure of which will set off endless wars which will erode global cooperation completely. Even regional blocks of alliances may become unmanageable without a overarching global structure to keep them safe from chaotic shifts in weapons, biological, nuclear, and worse ones to come. Because there is little time to educate publics to the dangers, routes to survival and greater democracy may inevitably need to be forced upon the world.
        Yet that as I said, and most should intuitively know, that is a contradiction in terms. If you force something from above, it cannot be called 'democratic' in any sense of the word. Add to that, in the best of times, any country or power attempting to force even what may at that time seem the only course of survival possible against the will of most people or most other countries, would be suspect at best. That the only power which had been recently able to do so, the United States, has suffered a completely warranted meltdown of trust to be able to bring it off, makes the situation that much more unmanageable.
        If you take that as a given, that the United States has frittered away its golden opportunity to put in place a global system in favor of its purported values, instead losing or wasting or lessening that opportunity for a power grab at resources, namely oil, to no longer be able to dictate the terms of how a global order might take shape, we all over the world may be left with only a series of only bad and worse choices. Because without a referee, even a bad one, debates may not hold sway or even take place.
        With US power in every measure, economic power, soft power in goodwill, and military power diminished through overreach on multiple wars and fronts it cannot afford, on the decline, there is less chance for any powerful nation to commit itself now to giving up any autonomy necessary for prohibiting aggressive actions in the future to enhance its economic, military, or political power when the sudden unpredictable changes to come now by our decline shortly might leave themselves on top to dictate the possible necessary structures and integration's to come either on their own terms, or on terms far more to their own benefit.
        If indeed, the so-called American Empire has peaked or is on the wane through the actions of one reckless administration hastening its decline faster than most would have thought possible only a half dozen years ago, it is as great a reason for Americans to grieve as the collapse of the Soviet Union was for Russians, not just in lost pride or in economic hardships, but of the loss of better controlling the ability to influence the debate on how the 'new world order' will take shape. Some hate that term, 'new world order' and rebel against it. Every 5 or 10 years there is a new world order! Every 50 or 100 years it is so completely changed that any previous or new order becomes almost unrecognizable and inapplicable to those that it proceeded or came after.
        As the dust settles and it becomes clearer even to those in the US that the US has now greatly lessened its ability to put its own stamp on the changes taking shape, this upcoming 5 or 10 or 20 years version of a 'new world order', they can only hope that their values (the ones that should more accurately be called their former values, so completely have they now been [trounced] upon by their own present government) of liberty, democracy, and human rights, and above all else, free speech and freedom of thought and expression, would even have a place at the table, never mind being put at the head of the table.
        I don't claim the US has been necessarily an effective champion of such values so much outside of its own mind, nor that it necessarily deserves to be called the best or most effective proponent of them even before this century's astonishing abandonment of them, but that those values integration into a global structure would have been to most of our past generations of Americans a measure of our greatest success and worthy of our most heaviest of losses, as well as a vindication or lessening of our greatest mistakes. We have lost that initiative. We have lost that right to claim that as our signature, and we are losing fast that ability to direct such a spin. Worst than anything, we have lost any leadership that would warrant linking such a progression to be traceable back to us. We have become the obstacle, not the cure.
        To this America must rededicate itself to, to creating such a future democratic order that codifies the values in practice that we still mouth in rote, yet have been as of late abandoning in droves. We must reaffirm that freedom of thought, of expression without fear of being labeled a terrorist or of recrimination, the rights of citizens to oppose governments, even our own, when they think they have erred, and one that curtails any rights only when in the most extreme cases imaginable, and never without debate and consent of those who lose or are asked to give up such rights. Such orders and world governments will come about one day, and if this dark present is any guide, they will come about over our objections and not by our examples, or with our aid.
        America has become like an old king, unwilling to pass on the kingdom to our heirs, forgetting that it was only given to us as a loan, was not and never to be ours to own. "They are not ready yet, too reckless to get any of our power, to yet take the throne." Yet if that is so, it is because we have shown no magnanimity toward ever giving any of it up, have not used that power to create enlightenment in those who will ultimately have to succeed us, but have spent it recklessly upon ourselves without watching the clock on how long that could last or go on.
        When we claimed we were giving some of our power up, portioning it out, it usually was really as a rich old man tries to manipulate those around them seeking to get what they prize, to use that to degrade them and make them subservient. We cannot fathom those who do not want what we have to offer and seek only to find their own way through life if it is contrary to our ways.
        We have lost the war of ideas and now use the most debase forms of control, money and weapons, to limit and close the debates early, but there was time when we valued the ideas more than the power. And there was a time when the love of liberty and justice in ourselves would have prevented us from taking it and denying it so readily and so constantly from others. And valuing the truth more than allowing and permitting the lies of telling ourselves that we are not doing so to them while we know, and it is so obvious to others, that we are robbing them of those freedoms and self-determination and self-rule free from our influence or control.
        We will inevitably lose the head of the table, the control of the debate, the hypothetical throne, if not to our ideological heirs of liberty and justice, then to the heirs we are begetting now of treachery, lies, deceit of the publics, making ignorant misinformed subjects cowering in fear to make ourselves seem larger or omnipotent, and who would torture innocents to get to the guilty, no matter how many to find how few.
        We have not done a good job, not done any job, to prepare the world for being one where we are not in control of whatever we wish to be in control of, yet if we were while we still have some degree of power, we might be able to justify what we have inherited, as all kings have, something won through previous generations manipulations, conquests, and unspeakable acts, yet trying to turn it into something noble and something worthy of being passed on, which those whom it touches would be held up by it, and not made to bow, to cower, nor to be afraid, but far more than we, and more even than we can realize, to be freer men and women.

Torturing Color Coded Terror Mice

        What precedent do we set by not moving to impeach? If this president does not deserve impeachment, no future president ever will. By failing to act, you and the rest of the Democratic leadership are giving a blank check to all future presidents to act as they will with little or no regard for the will of the people. Your inertia will condemn the American people to the fate of hoping for the next benevolent dictator.

Jeffrey Kolakowski at Counterpunch.org

        Polling data of this type can be used to "demonstrate" that substantial numbers of virtually every religious group within America holds similar views, and in many cases, views which are even more extremist and, one could say, rather deranged. A 2005 Pew poll, for instance, found that large majorities of Christians believe in torture -- not "enhanced interrogation techniques," but torture:
        Note that majorities of white Christians want to torture not merely actual terrorists, but they also want to torture "terrorist suspects" as well, i.e., a group that almost certainly includes perfectly innocent people.
        And majorities of white Christians -- Catholics, evangelicals and protestants -- believe in torture not merely in the improbable-in-the-extreme "ticking time bomb" scenario; rather, they believe in torture as a matter of course (i.e., more than "rarely" -- either "often or "sometimes"). (By stark and revealing contrast, "secularists" oppose torture in far greater numbers). Think about how depraved that is: what kind of religious individual affirmatively believes that people should be routinely tortured, including people who have never been proven to have done anything wrong?

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com

        A curious state of fear prevails in America, but it is a governmental creation, a calculated manipulative Disneyland. Perhaps soon we will have Terror Mouse....
        Add the continuing presence of police in the schools, the arrest in handcuffs of children of seven, the expulsions for drawing a picture of a soldier with a gun. Something very twisted is going on.
        How much of the public knows what is happening, or even knows that something is happening? I don’t know. But I don’t think that it’s going to go away. In ten years it will be an entirely different place with the same name. Almost is now.

Fred Reed at ICH

        I meant to write something very long and involved today. I set aside time, went to a library, did a little research online, but got tired and ran out of time. Oh well, always another day, or at least supposedly for now there are at least a few more on the way anyway. So I figured to instead put up the above memorable quotes I saw today online, and include also the headline that screamed in large enough letters to signify (as if they are news anymore) the start of a 4th invasion/front in Bushs' groundhog wars (stop one war here (not that they can even manage that) and then another one pops up over there).
        The size of the headline was no doubt intended to jar us out of our complacency and to put into us the fear of God, or if atheists, the fear of random horrible acts of 'chance', or at least fear of bad weather. In giant letters we were informed that 'MAUI IS NOT IMMUNE FROM HURRICANES'. My God, you might think, what can we do! We are not immune, and now everyone knows this too!
        We ought to consider consulting Las Vegas odds-maker's about our chances of surviving each day sans this new menace God (or Satan, or even Neptune if you are Greek) might throw at us AT ANY TIME and print our odds of surviving it right next to our horoscopes. Or better yet, have a color-coded combined hurricane/terror chart right at the top on the front page so we can skip all the details about the weather or the news and just know at a glance of our chances of dying today. I wonder how many shades of red there are for if one wanted to make a similar chart for any Iraqi peoples' chances of surviving each day. Any other color would be a pipe-dream for as far as Bush can see or admit into the future.
        I did love the line above about the Terror Mouse. See Terror Mouse and his sidekick Scaredy Cat take on the Dogs of War, or at least torture some blindfolded poodles helplessly locked in cages, for your viewing pleasure.

Flashing the Future Institutionally: Part 1, Aqua-Ban

            This popped into my head when learning of the US ban on Andro (Androstenedione) . I was out of the country all during the 'debate' about making it illegal and had to find out about it as a historian might have, by looking through old newspaper clippings (albeit on the Internet) to find out about it long after the fact it was history, and how the 'debate' on it progressed and passed.

            To be fair to myself, I am not advocating that Andro should be legal, nor anything else one might infer from this as yet unwritten article. I only intend to highlight the structural difficultly both with the US thinking itself the Morality Master of the World, and how it can with a single stroke make millions of its citizens criminals overnight, and how its own laws and viewpoints count more than or supersede all international laws combined.

           I understood the arguments why Andro should have been made illegal from the time I was in Canada, while it was legally for sale within the US. Canada, like every other industrial country besides the US has national health insurance. I understood why Canadians thought that they were right to control vitamins and other over-the-counter supplements more than the US does, because their citizens actually have to pay to take care of their other citizens health problems. So they think that they collectively have a right to control what health supplements people can and cannot take which their long term risks to health have not been determined yet.

           The US, while pretending it cares if the majority of its citizens have decent health care or not, really lets things become legal or not depending on which industries give the most bribes, ahem, campaign contributions, and usually sees no qualms about using its population as a giant test case for pharmaceutical industries if the price is right in contributions, especially in behavioral control fields where risks are downplayed. ("Part of the justification for cracking down on andro products is to "protect the children" who are increasingly turning to athletic performance enhancers.And yet, at the same time, the FDA still allows antidepressant drugs to be routinely prescribed to children while at the same time helping cover up evidence that shows such drugs cause children to commit suicide. There's no effort on the part of the FDA to prevent these suicide-promoting drugs from being prescribed. Similarly, there's no effort to take one million children off the narcotics given to them by school counselors and psychiatrists in the form of Ritalin. We're raising a generation of doped up, FDA approved kids in our country, and the only thing the FDA can do about it is ban the nutritional supplements." May 05, 2004 by Mike Adams http://www.newstarget.com/001031.html)

           Because I had been hooked for awhile on Andro, I knew of its positive and potential negative effects more than most. I could see how simply making it illegal would not be enough to get people off the habit, thus making them turn to a no-doubt overnight boom to the black market, and giving a new revenue stream in drug dealers' repertoires. But that does not matter in the least to how it was decided, and conceivably could even have had sway in favor of making it illegal: new illegal items overnight with a built-in user base = more money for organized crime; more cases for lawyers; more control over those who cannot quit or might continue to take it.

           Though I took it regularly, I was bothered by the fact any kid of any age could have bought it at any Walmart. Clearly something should have been done, but making millions of people potential criminals overnight simply by reclassifying an exercise or training supplement into a criminal drug was more than overkill. But there was nothing to stop that overkill other than how much those who manufactured it could have 'bribed' Congress not to do so, the worst way to look at it, but the most honest way to see how the US regulatory system works, based upon the 'contributions' of those they seek to regulate.

The US Bans Aqua

DP (Disassociated Press) Wire Services- Washington DC

            The United States today made history in following through on its promise to make the color Aqua an illegal color. Though Europe had previously taken the lead in making symbols illegal, not subject to the normal allowances of political or artistic expression, this possibly marks the first time an entire color has been designated as an illegal symbol.

           The color Aqua (a mixture of equal parts of Blue and Green) was not the original thrust of the 'color control' movement. Previously, fundamentalist religious groups within the US had targeted the color Purple, long thought to have had a negative political connotation, especially to children not aware of its subversive contexts.

            Despite making a clear case linking the color Purple not only to homosexuality, but that such links were also being pushed in children's programming subversively via characters such as 'Barney the Dinosaur' and 'Tinky Winky,' the noted pro-homosexual lobby was able to defeat such a move. Powerful left-wing media figures such as Oprah Winfrey were formidable opponents of the move to ban the color Purple. The English and other foreign royalty also lobbied heavily to influence our American Congress to prevent us from banning that morally questionable color.

           To comply with the new law, schools have now enforced the following dress codes. Not only is the color Aqua banned of course, but also mixing the colors of Blue or Green when in equal parts, for that has been suggested to imply the color Aqua. For instance, Blue and Green stripped shirts are not permitted, nor wearing a solid or mostly Green shirt with a pair of Blue jeans, as in implies an equal balance of Blue and Green. Such combinations of clothing have now been deemed by the Justice Department as political speech and fall within the bounds of the newest Patriot Act against encouraging or promoting willful dissent in speech, art, music, or “public displays,” in which clothing is specifically mentioned by name.

           Internet sites have been warned not to show the color Aqua unless it specifically is contained within a spectrum of other colors in a scientific or sociological context, such as a prism or rainbow, although rainbows themselves have recently come under question due to their alleged links to homosexual propaganda. To be safe, those displaying rainbows with the color Aqua in them (and even some with displays of rainbows without that color in them) have begun to choose other symbols entirely to avoid having to make new changes again in the future, should those too soon be deemed morally questionable. The President himself has suggested that that is a wise example of “forward thinking.”

           Due to the international nature of the Internet, this not only applies to US based web sites, but for the rest of the world as well. The State Department and the FBI have put out advisories to all other nations law enforcement agencies to instruct their nations own ISP's (Internet Service Providers) to make sure all of their customer's web sites are in compliance with the ban, or they could face legal action from within the US.

           Though not every country's local laws have as yet been changed to harmonize with the recent US ban, Secretary of State Notheleastta Nice has been quoted that those foreign nationals who do not comply with the ban, at the very least (hinting off-record that “all options are on the table” in regard to “other methods”), risk arrest if traveling to the US, or any other country with an extradition treaty with the US, if it can be proved that any web page's background colors, text colors, or images containing or displaying that illegal color were accessible from within the United States.

           DC Comics has been put in an awkward position by this ban. Its comic book hero, Aqua-Man, has become an overnight anarchistic symbol, now appearing regularly in inner-city graffiti, and also on illegal drug paraphernalia. Through massive campaign contributions to both political parties, DC Comics has managed to keep this character from becoming banned as well, successfully arguing that the term “Aqua” in the name is only in the sense of meaning “water” and that his shorts are not, in fact, Aqua-colored, but instead are clearly and markedly more Green than Blue. Oliver Stone has expressed interest in directing a new major feature film based on the character which purportedly contains dialog which hints at criticism of the ban. Since this rumor came about, he has fled to Europe and would neither confirm nor deny these reports.

           The reason for putting this here is because it is meant to hint that there are no brakes within the US 'system of government' now to stop ridiculous and detrimental laws from being made. It is an institutional flaw. The threats of being struck down by the Courts (ooh, that really scares politicians these days more than pleasing their voters with making laws they know to be blatantly unconstitutional) are supposed to be the checks to keeping back harmful laws to such 'antiquated' notions of 'liberty' and 'civil rights' such as 'free speech' and other 'vagaries' within the Constitution. But those checks can only be applied retroactively long after such insane or clearly unconstitutional laws have been passed and enforced through arrests. Any just system of government would have a mechanism to prevent such intrusive and invasive, not to mention insane and unconstitutional laws from ever becoming enacted in the first place.

           One could argue there is such a mechanism, a President who is supposed to be above politics and represent the people regardless of party and uphold the Constitution faithfully above all encroachment by fanatical Congresses attacks aimed at the publics civil liberties. I don't know how to begin to address the irony of that, how inverted and antithetical to that notion in practice the entire system has become, so I will only suggest when the President has a completely different view, opposing a libertarian view of Constitutional rights, there ought to be another branch to contain both him and Congress when both fail not only in their duties to enforce them, but from even recognizing them. The Courts come in too late and too little, and have been marginalized and politicized out of effectiveness at stopping irrational mania driven legislation, and at political supporters 'purchased' industry (self-) 'regulations.'

           And once it gets to that point, finally to the courts after massive arrests or becoming established in practice in regulatory and criminal codes for months or years, the Media, about as free to say the truth now as politicians, can effectively politicize the issues to pressure the courts to uphold whatever insane laws the Media has pressured the politicians to write in the first place.

            And the courts themselves have shown themselves willing to completely defy all reasonable arguments and interpretations of what is prohibited under the Bill of Rights, with almost nothing being sacrosanct anymore, even to be arrested without charge indefinitely without being publicly acknowledged, up to and including torture as a means of interrogation and having torture-induced testimonies of others used as evidence against you, not that you are guaranteed the absolute right to a trial in the first place, nor you or your lawyer be allowed to know what the evidence is! Even should one believe that such methods do not apply to American citizens (they do), but only potentially to the other six billion people on this planet to be 'legally' be treated this way by us, shows what “American Jurisprudence” and “Human Rights” have been defined by us as being now.

            It was Richard Nixon who put forward the notion that “If the President does it, it cannot be illegal.” Americans have become so ignorant of the nature of their own government to have allowed such an insane view 180 degrees opposed from every notion their government was built upon, not only to have allowed such a view to go successfully unchallenged, but to have it become the new mantra of those who have taken control, literally, over the government completely.

           Many millions Americans now accept that as a given. If the President does it, it can't be illegal. And thus with that propagation lies the end of democracy in the United States. The President clearly then can do anything, and this President has shown that almost nothing cannot be done, certainly not anything unthinkable even a few years ago.

           Alberto Gonzales, always the President's go-to guy for being told he can do anything, recently admitted he had at least on one occasion told the President there was something he could not legally do. What that was, he could not say.

           A recent trial in England gives an idea what kind of things this President has had to be told he could not do. Supposedly he needed his friend Tony Blair to inform him he could not intentionally target civilians, journalists at that, for specialized attacks as that would (a little too blatantly even for Mr. Blair) constitute a war crime.

           To expand upon Richard Nixon's words, not that the President may have articulated it as such yet, nor would he need to for his supporters, but it could be held now that he believes “if America does it, it cannot be a war crime.” There is no law, there can be no law, save what we or he says.

           This has effectively gone unchallenged at home, and the international community as a whole has not risen up to change it in this President's mind. We are as untouchable as we are undefeatable. Yet we are neither, and he and his financiers profit none the more, as when the more completely and totally he errs on our behalf. We as a people or as a nation are not untouchable, but legally he knows he has become so by our systems failures and our peoples moral cowardice as evidenced through its chosen representatives, to put up anything other than token and 'non-binding' resistance. The American publics opinions, and welfare, have never been more completely irrelevant to its governments representatives and its 'debates.'

Fearlessness, Courage, Weakness and Strength

        On the day two days ago when I saw strength in quitting, my own “I will fight no more forever,” warped into “I will write no more forever,” I had rented Jet Li's movie Fearless. I figured the timing was good since Fearlessness was prominent in the web site I had just finished. Sometimes it takes more strength to quit than to fight. Sometimes fighting on becomes a way of hiding or running from truths you do not want to face.

         This I write because of that movie.

        When I was a child, being a male, during recess we used to fight for basically no point whatsoever. There was usually no anger in it, much as bear cubs or lions practice fighting to prepare themselves for survival. I was very skinny, having been very poor at the time, but even so I figured I was about the third best in the class of those who fought. Many did not see any point in it but would stand around and watch or cheer those who did, and chide those who lost, but never fought themselves.

         On one particular day, I even beat the two that were better than me. It was probably one of the best days in my life until then, riding high, champion of the day. That was until as a reward I was told a much larger much older kid wanted to fight me because he heard that “I thought I was tough,” because erroneously, that I “knew karate.” Later he confirmed that this was true. He almost never fought. He was so much bigger than everyone else, he never had to. He could have kicked anyone's ass and everyone knew it. I figured it was a good time to embrace the concept of non-violence and started hanging around with those who did not fight, and did not even usually watch those who did.

        About a year later, my diminished reputation suffered even more. Though we were still mostly pre-pubescent, the most openly what one could only be called 'gay' kid was added to the classes. If anyone ever had any doubts whether people are born that way, they would only have to had met this kid for overwhelming evidence, he was such a stereotype. Naturally most males wanted nothing to do with him or try to befriend him. Also, naturally I felt sorry for him and tried to get him to behave more 'normal'. It was not only these, sorry to have to use the term and not meaning offense, 'flying fag' qualities which were embarrassing but also that he, though bright, constantly smiled and played the most irritating fool one could possibly imagine. No doubt it was how he had previously made friends, or kept from getting his ass kicked, and was a part of his personality, but it was not helpful for anyone who tried to talk others into including him so he would not be by himself so constantly.

         Trying to hold to not fighting and sometimes sticking up for those who no one else would was not good for my reputation, but was not tragic, for awhile at least. Most remembered I could more than defend myself, and even the one I was smart enough not to fight was a decent person who did not like to hurt people. That did not last. A year later an even bigger person became the new center of the crowd I used to fight with, and he loved to beat people up for no reason. He probably weighed 3 times more than I did and by that time, fighting not only seemed stupid to me, but I just figured he would eventually get tired of trying to taunt me into fighting with him. I was wrong.

         The behavior of my other newer non-fighting friends was telling. Seeing the crap I was being put through, obviously for no reason whatsoever by someone damn near vicious, they eventually joined in the derision, even more so than any others, by fear to distance themselves from having known me well. That is, by my experience, quite how the bulk of people are. They will join in with the crowd, do things they know are wrong or refuse to speak up, simply to get along, to not make waves, to not draw attention to themselves. It was not something I could comprehend, and though I understand it in others, could never tolerate the idea of that taking hold in myself. Courage unfortunately is notable because too often, most people do not have it, or all to rarely use it.

         The courage of the weak I have seen, those who stand up to the strong, not by confronting them, just trying to live without being unreasonably taunted, yet never willing to do what the majority would, to be complicit in that wrongness, to me I know this as the strongest strength. By what I went through, at times by choice, cannot compare to what others more unable to blend in, unable to protect themselves, have gone through with a dignity through their worse taunting, their greater humiliations, and though shaming all those who laughed at them in ways the crowds could not see or would ever admit, outshone without measure those who mistreated them, the 'stronger', the 'popular', the ones everyone wanted to be with, if only to be left alone and not taunted or abused by them.

         It is this truth of how people are truly morally weak, who see their 'strength' in externals, in those who put on displays of power to humiliate opposition, to make others afraid to challenge them, and are rewarded for it, not only by this society but by most societies, it is the most distressing thing to me about wanting to help people. One cannot help people because you think people are good. They can be, and often they are. One could even argue in a nurturing environment, all might be good or want to be good, but the world we live in rewards the bad, and one bad apple will set off a chain of misery that will eventually affect many and cause those who are afraid to confront it, and those who would go along with it and enable it, to be the ones to meet the greatest success.

         The person who beat the crap out of me for no reason I later got to know, and found he had been abused by his father. It was how he learned people behave, and how to not to get abused was to learn to abuse others first, preemptively as it were. He did not see it as beating up on the weak, on needlessly making enemies for no reason. He even remembered only the time he did something good for me, and conveniently 'forgot' the endless cruelty because he either chose to forget or could not really face what a horrible person he could be, because he too had been beaten and was afraid inside more than I ever could be, and found his 'security' in harming others, or proving to himself that he could. I was simply something to break to him. It took me a long time to learn, simply fighting back would probably have ended years of hell, but not for a good reason.

         He could have singled out anyone to taunt, and no one did he do so more than me, because he was that much larger and meaner than anyone else. Everyone was afraid to fight him and I was no different. Because the people he hung around with were the same ones I had, he knew from them that I could fight but had professed for years now that I never would, and stuck to it. I unwittingly made myself a greater target simply because, in a sense, one could argue that by not fighting or having stated I never would, simply showed to him another new and different way to break me, a different vulnerability in me others did not have. Beating up someone who can't fight back, not that he did not do that too, was not as sporting.

         But with me, it was always to get me to fight, and then to prove to everyone and myself that I really could not, and that however good anyone thought I was, without needing to prove it by fighting, that that reputation was undeserved. I never gave him that satisfaction and it brought out the worst in him. I wonder now whether I knew that fully then, if just by fighting back just once would have satisfied him enough to have left me alone, a different kind of humiliation than years of taking beatings for no reason.

         If I had known it so completely in those terms, would I have chosen that route instead, or would my pride never surrendered to give him the pleasure of breaking me in a different way? I suspect I knew that was what he really wanted, but I do know, pride or not, inner strength or not, if I could have physically fought back and won, I would have. The only question was which way to lose which would have kept the most pride intact.

         I took the beatings and ironically won his respect by it, though it was unwanted and never valued. Through learning later of the hell he went through more than I had humbled me. I would have gladly if given a choice gotten my beatings in school, as I did, than at home as he did. Publicly I was treated as a leper because of him. He was treated with 'respect' earned by fear alone. His humiliations were private but far more damaging. My harm came not from anyone I respected nor loved. His harm was beyond comparing, but sought to include others in on his suffering as others would teach the world what they knew.

         The movie Fearless, makes these points, but there is a greater reason why I mention it now than simply dredging up the past. There is a scene where the 'hero' of the movie gets into a fight you know or suspect is wrong. He fights strongly and of course wins and kills his opponent, but you know he is fighting a fools fight, that he will regret it, that he is morally wrong and making a tragic mistake. Every blow he makes, you know he is digging himself in that much deeper, bringing that much more dishonor upon himself with every successful strike, committing that much more of a wrong. When the fight is over, the greatest sin finally committed, you know, now he will learn what he has done, he will be ashamed and know he has lost far more by winning than he would have by losing.

         In this, I obviously am referring to the War in Iraq. Many Americans, not all, not most, but maybe a hundred million strong, cannot image us being in the wrong in that fight. They cannot imagine how we would lose greater by winning it than by losing it. How it was wrong to begin with, it is wrong every strong blow we make, every 'point' we score, as well as every blow that hits back at us. We may never reach or live or get the narrative to find out what it will cost us. We may never live to learn how wrong it was.

         I know why those hundred million of us cannot face this. It is not an easy thing to see or to contemplate and many think by not facing it, that it is not so. It is easier to live with the disconnect from reality than with the shame, and the longer it is put off, many think it will never have to hang on them and they can escape from it. A war of choice is fundamentally different than a war of necessity, and that is where the greatest cowardice of our leadership lives now, that it was a necessary war. They truly, as the story progresses and the truth of the extent of the tragedy becomes inescapable to the audience at large, retreat further into their own delusions that they had no choice, they committed no wrong, that there was no sin. It was entirely avoidable, entirely chosen for the wrong reasons, and winning it would or will only compound the damages irrevocably and beyond estimate.

         Every blow we strike now is not against 'insurgents' because they have the popular support of the people and its government now. We as a nation committed a sin, and we are compounding it daily every day we do not disengage from it. It is inescapable without disavowing the very concept of reality and truth. You cannot make a wrong battle, an unjust fight right by 'winning' it, for that is a contradiction in terms. There is no 'collateral damage' in this war. There are no 'accidental' civilian deaths. There is only murders, being done by them, being done by us. Children no less valuable than our own, no less sacred, no less worthy of every opportunity this world has to offer being killed every hour in a conflict which could be de-escalated the moment we as a people, through forcing our reluctant and cowardly 'representatives' simply to admit it was wrong. Not that it was a bad judgment, not that it was poorly executed. It was wrong, morally wrong, inexcusable, reprehensible, and entirely for the wrong reasons.

         No good can come from 'winning' such a fight. And no victory can come without admitting it and be willing to do some serious penance for not only having done so, but for every moment since, refusing to admit it or even just hiding in the crowd so as not to admit it to oneself let alone the world. Tell the world and by doing so, tell yourself in away you will always remember it, cannot hide ever again from it, and cannot forget it. Only that can absolve the guilt eventually, and let your children and their country be one day less tainted by it. The alternative is continuing the unthinkable and the indefensible.

The Power and the Mana: Repression Vs. Human Spirit

        On Haleakala, someone I respected said to a tourist, “You know what Mana means? It means power!” Inside I literally cringed. I am not an expert on the Hawaiian language, and words meanings change over time, sometimes to mean even its opposite a few generations ago. But no, that I could not accept. As she pointed out correctly later, it depends upon the context. In certain contexts Mana can mean power, and my aversion to that definition I know is due to the misuse and subversion of power recently to mean bad things; the power to go against the public will, the power to kidnap people and torture them in secret, the power to rig elections and conduct black ops, not only on ones own public but governments committing terrorist acts in countries they do not like and then threatening them with invasion based up “terrorist acts” it is doing far more that they. Maybe the word and world of power has been subverted into something else. Mana to me remains something higher.

        As I understand it, and how I used it with PolSci 9 ('Aumakua born, mana built without fear of the sadists who rule this world), Mana means strength. Mana means spirit. In a sense, that is power, but a different kind of power. The power over oneself. The power to rebel. The power to stand against the wrongs being done in and by your society. It is not “soft power.” It is not political power, though it can trigger more just political movements. It is the opposite of political power, particularly the power to oppress, which has become the very definition of how political power is being used in world affairs.

        The worst aggressions being done in the world at this time are by my own country, the United States. Not that other countries are saints, far from it, it is just that for now, they are not in the same position of power to do them. Were the tables turned, too many would be doing the same things. That is the danger with that kind of power. It creates its own rules. It makes those who wield it or would wish to wield it interchangeable in what they would do with it. Most often, that is to make their definitions of things the only allowed or preferential definitions of things. They try to control the terms of the debates on their actions and make their views of their own excuses for taking away the rights of others to dominate them, to limit their ability to dissent or challenge them, and obscure or condemn all alternative points of view, particularly those of their victims.

        The blind patriotism which political power cultivates, and upon which it depends, teaches that we can do no wrong. That when we destroy a country, its infrastructure, towns, its previous legal orders and governments, we do so to help them, to make their lives better by giving them “democracy.” Yet the “democracy” we give them, so pointedly clear as in the case of Iraq, is one where vast majority of the people even when united against us cannot oppose us or our presence and bases there. Not only do they not want us there, but a slimmer majority believe it right to shoot us on sight as invaders, as occupiers, and as thieves of their economy and resources. To this our blindness responds, “That is the thanks we get for giving up our people's lives for their freedom.” Our minds have been so warped by such constant unchallenged and virulent propagandizing that the peoples own views as they are dying, starving, by what we did to them and are still doing, are considered not only irrelevant, but thankless, and unable to comprehend the “good” we are doing for them.

        We are not the first country to use patriotism to build an empire based upon the most convoluted of double-think “facts” fed to an unquestioning public eager to be told what it wants to hear, nor unfortunately unless we actually do destroy everything else, are we likely to be the last. However, it was not supposed to be this way. Like all those who come to abuse their power, we got there by degrees and ignored or missed the warning signs along the way.

        That we were too full of ourselves had no doubt a major part to play. Circumstances played a part also, but those who think it was simply “fate” or “providence” ought to review the facts. We have always been selective in what we see when we look at ourselves or our history. The nation which prides itself on giving the world equality was in truth the nation which held on to the slavery of human beings at all cost long after England and “lesser” systems of democracy had abandoned it, and they did so peacefully. We not only “accidentally” committed genocide to take “our inheritance from God” away from the Native Americans, but genocide actually was the official policy in some Western states with some of the worst offenses being committed by our official armies and militias.

        We are not a nation which remembers these abuses without papering over them with holidays and good feelings at how great we were only to become greater later, and cannot see that we did some of the worst things done in human history unfettered during the run of our “sacred” Constitution (now completely ignored by our Presidential administration and corrupted courts) which did not prevent them, nor is it preventing more horrific things now. But our “power” prevents other nations from calling us on our hypocrisy They may say things even amongst themselves on how we have gone wrong, but are polite enough to keep it out of their nations official discourses toward us and our government, at least as far as our public is aware. As bad as we have become, much of the rest of the world, based upon not unwarranted fear of us, have become not only enablers of our abuses, but also have joined in when possible to profit from both our now unrestrained looting, as well as positioning themselves to take advantage after our fast approaching implosion of debt and malfeasance.

        But as I said, it did not have to be this way, nor to a lot of us in this country still yet, think that it should be this way. During the Cold War, the US did have reason to assert itself to counter a growing polarity against Western interests threatened by Stalinism, lingering Fascism, and other after-effects of Europe's own meltdown and decent into madness based upon the same unbridled quest for control and power. Yet many could not see how this polarity was playing into the needs for profit and power. Eisenhower's farewell address, prominently replayed in the documentary “Why we fight” by Eugene Jarecki, was stark truth-telling but not taken to heart; that we not only were a part of the reaction to the Soviet aggression during the after World War II, but we fed into the polarity because in it, within that insane arms race, there was far more profits to be made, and more “power” to be won.

        Without the ideological gulf which was the supposed source of the Cold War, both systems could have improved and learned from each other, as indeed much of Europe did with Democratic Socialism, universal health care, better social programs decades ahead of the US, and higher standards of living than either of the primary “combatants” of the Cold War era. They were on the front line between both sides, yet they were able to look at both sides objectively whereas the US and Soviets were trapped by their rhetoric of being unable to grow, both of which to varying degrees using the enemy as a reason to consolidate power to itself and limit dissent.

        Anyone who thinks the US never limited dissent is a testament to how useful and effective our propaganda has been. From lynchings of innocent labor organizers as “Communists” in the 1800's and 1900's, mass arrests and political crackdowns around World War 1 and after World War II during the McCarthy Era, the “enemy” is always effective at growing the power of the military and tying the hands of the politicians to make peace. George W. Bush has merely pushed it to greater heights, calling any who would question his illegal wars to be a “helping the enemy” while sympathetic “journalists” and pundits muse about how critics and opposition members should be shipped off to our now no-longer-secret torture chambers, for some “education” as traitors.

        But with the death of the Cold War, the idea that the best of each of the previous types of systems could be administered to all regardless of blinding ideologies was a real risk to those of great wealth and those who had profited from and had become dependent upon Cold War arms sales, not only within the US, but within Russia, Britain, and France as well.

        New conflicts were not only desirable, they were required to maintain the status quo and existing industries. No “peace dividend,” no downsizing what Eisenhower rightly called the “dangerous military industrial complex,” and certainly no movement toward universal health care, toward universal free college educations as other nations have (to create stronger, brighter, more intelligent societies), nor other increased benefits to the poor, sick, or homeless. All forgotten and abandoned by all parties of power. No, it would be instead a no-holes barred disparaging of any who would stand against perpetual war against whomever got in our way with ever escalating military budgets for ever expanding wars. Without any credible normal state threat to attack against yet, we would go on “offensive” and take out threats before they could occur.

        And pointing out that this is illegal by our own laws, all international laws, and dare I say it, the very notion and principle and concept of having international laws in the first place; to prevent any one country from thinking it can attack any country it feels threatend by upon its say so alone. Silencing such “potentially treasonous” statements of common fact as well as common sense has been breathtaking in its scope, not only among what passes itself off as journalism these days, but in the halls of academia as well. To this by my studies, I can attest. And it is not just one Presidential administration as the cause, but the efforts of both political parties headed by the “bipartisan” Lieberman / Cheney university thought-policing (the American Council of Trustees and Alumni blacklists) which has silenced political science and philosophy departments, not to mention law departments, far more than I could have ever thought possible.

        So to keep any movements at bay to limit military approaches to diplomatic solutions, the first line of order was to militarize the State Department. The War in Iraq did a good job to wipe out anyone of conscience in high place positions in the career diplomatic corps, and to put in place those who would sabotage any glimmer of peaceful solutions before they could even begin to arise.

        And now, after a very brief truth telling by former CIA department heads and some leaked genuine intelligence reports unsupportive of bogus Bush claims to justify military aggression against Iran, the military's intelligence branches now dominate news reports and political “policy” making because they are far easier to control, and at least for the moment, are more effectively politicized with Generals knowing their path to promotion and advancements comes at the cost of saying whatever must be said to advance the aims of their Commander-in-chief, even at times hinting that his is the only opinion that matters anymore. So much for their oaths to uphold the Constitution, what is left of it anyway.

        So where is the good in all of this? In the reaction. Where there is an overwhelming degree of criminality and injustice, where lies and disinformation have displaced truth and legitimate information, there is a strength that arises in us all to stand up to it. Repression and suppression are untenable in the long run. They overreach, and by overreaching create opportunities for advancements which cannot be done when times are good and people are content.

        Probably the most victimized nations on this planet, other than in Africa, are found in Latin America. They have suffered death squads, ethnic cleansing, political repression, and all with the approval of “the world's greatest superpower,” (now a junkie on Red Kryptonite) and have bred a people unafraid to stand up against overwhelming odds, pervasive fears and threats, and have a strength which Americans sorely to say do not. (If you think this an exaggeration, compare Mexico's and other southern nations' reaction to potential rigged elections to the near complete non-reaction within the US to the election in 2000. How many in the US are cowered away from protesting because of fear of retribution, surveillance, and loss of jobs?)

        People forget the things they celebrate most are those who stood up against the wrongs of their times, or the ones crushed by heartless and oppressive empires who thought they could write their own rules, and previous laws or the rights of others did not matter as much, and could be subverted or gotten around. As much as the US and others have looked for a magic bullet to break cultures, make them loyal to leaders who do not represent the interests of their peoples, they have not yet succeeded in total and hopefully never will.

        All the twisting of words to make another country's leadership subservient to your own government's will, unable to economically or militarily stand up to them without fear of being attacked, threatened or destroyed, these are becoming blanks which are making no marks. Thus the need for ever more shrill rhetoric, ever more torturous convolutions of reason and “thought,” and the need for more prevalent and indiscriminate threats and deliveries of torture and death.

        It is a spiral that has its end when one realizes that those being repressed now will write their own histories one day. Every one of the hundreds of thousands, soon to be millions, of innocent deaths done, "collateral damage," by our present criminal wars of aggressions, any one of them could be that nation's Christ, that innocent victim of barbarous injustice to rally their culture for generations upon generations against what we have put them through, that hell, while we literally piss on their graves when saying it we were doing it to “help” them. They are waking up. Their sense of history will show their truths, truer than the ones we try to plant in their media, stronger than the leaderships or types of governments we “approve” of for them, and they will prevail where they should, in their own lands, as hopefully we, the self-critical ones, will one day prevail again in our own.