Social Perspective

Let me see if I can get this straight, even for a minute.

We are living beings; supposedly the most intelligent on the planet. We have built for ourselves the most elaborate and complex of worlds, one of social, political, economic, and other untold numbers of dimensions. Each of these aspects inter-plays with one another with emergent qualities: the media, the market, the military, management structures, institutions, nations, societies, religions, and so on. Humanity is subdivided, fragmented, and categorized by as many dimensions as we find it possible to dream up. Every time there is a new idea and every time that new idea is put forward to a bunch of "smart" people a new category is born. Yet, beneath all of this complexity, there remain only a few rank necessities for us to continue to survive. The most fundamental of these; sustenance and secure shelter are enjoyed only by a small subset of the human population, perhaps 20%. Much of the remaining 80% of the world has neither of the two.

Humans, in our infinite wisdom, bear the capacity to reflect somewhat clearly on history. Each fragment of the human population, certainly each person, would have a different story to tell. Any individual, given the responsibility of acting as compendium of all human knowledge, could tell only one side of the story. Perspective is a dangerous but necessary aspect to our experience. Yet, the notion that every person is an individual is roundly rejected in favor of a sense of belonging. Whether membership is in a political party or a national identity or a religious group, or any discrete combination of these groups, the result is identity, a means of maintaining predictability. Maintaining predictability, another form of security, is a primary responsibility of the wise, for, prediction of the future is the most hallowed of responsibilities in society.

As such, all aspects of amassed power and authority have funneled their enterprise to make all things as predictable as possible. Antiquated notions of nationality in a physical world are maintained when a virtual cyberspace exists. Antiquated notions of proper behaviour are maintained within societies when there has never been a time when human populations have been less homogeneous. International travel and immigration/emigration patterns have spread people across the globe. Despite the spread of ideas and the shrinking of the global community, there still exists a mandate in power centers, within governments and other such bodies, to maintain tight controls over people and their ideas. Recent observations, though cast as speculative paranoia, suggest that captivation by media outlets pushes the agenda of pacifying the population; that technology has enabled governments to suppress dissent with massive monitoring and propaganda. In so doing, the enterprise of humanity has sought only to secure its place in existence against the clear and present need for change. The mandate for change, according to conservative wisdom, is unwise.

Once, a much longer time past that anyone cares to mention, humanity was in possession of a simple freedom. That freedom came with a price, it was for each member of the society to hold adequate trust in others. Since that time, humanity has begun to overlay society with disingenuous superstructures that, each in turn, can be manipulated by those with the right information or resources. Laws were enacted, governments formed, coalitions with neighboring territories were forged with trade agreements, intermarriage between out-groups occurred, religious rites were performed, armies raised and wars fought, economies established, empires rose and fell. With each successive turn humanity spiraled farther from its center. History taught hard lessons, there were bitter pills to swallow, but, each added sophistication became incorporated. Rarely, if ever, was a solution adopted that made a society less sophisticated. Every day, technology is adopted to make life "simpler," but this really is euphemistic. Simple is undesirable; it is lower than the sophisticated. No one wants to return to living in caves, cooking by and open flame, or to foraging or hunting for food. It is beneath the dignity of humanity as we now know a "better" way.

For all of the information and perspective that humanity has amassed in the past six- to twelve-thousand years, it remains impossible to obtain the few key comforts of a global civilization. These imbalances are the folly of human stewardship of the world. There exists an immense imbalance between the supremely rich and the desperately poor. The poor people of rich nations remain incredibly wealthy if measured against the poverty stricken of the global community. The health and welfare of more than two-thirds of the people in the world, in both rich and poor nations, is neglected for political and economic reasons. More resources are spent on destruction of the world itself than are spent on investing in its health. All of these things are well known, well-documented, and plain to see for any who look. However, the trick to maintaining the status quo is to ensure that few people, if anyone, thinks this way. That this perspective, the one that admits a desire for wholesale change, does not gain force in the world. That ignorance of truths held self-evident is the new world order.

The level of sophistication that the world has presently achieved makes it a system that is virtually impossible to completely understand. I've tried. I will continue to try. From my perspective, the one that holds self-evident that humans cannot continue on our current path and expect to survive for more than the next century, change is not optional -- it is mandatory. Humans cannot continue to have industry and economy that is based on inexpensive fossil fuels. Humans cannot continue to pollute the planet with impunity. Economy can no longer be the fundamental value to which we ascribe policy. Military enterprises must cease as, presently, any motivated individual is easily capable of killing hundreds if not thousands of people. Essentially, all of the things we value must be re-evaluated. Blind enterprise has brought us to this point. I was born into a world run amok. It is time to simplify. To distill the best of human enterprise and remove the glut. To do this, priorities must change.

As usual, money confounds everything.

[A] Way Out: Part II of II

A sickness is an imbalance in a living system. The human world, the political and social and economic systems that we rely upon, are experiencing a worsening sickness of imbalance. As it approaches a fixation this -- captial I -- Imbalance splits humans into castes, the upper echelon that controls virtually everything including ideas, justice, and freedom. The lower echelon, which grows in number by the daily, are merely subjects in this scenario. The subjects of the most terrible aspects of the Imbalance, civilian populations under occupation by overwhelming powers, find that their voice are heard only when the violations that meet them at their doorstep are met by violence. Lacking any semblance of power as defined by those above in the Imbalance, those on the lower end resort to the basest of tactics to effect change in their intolerable situation. They resort to maximizing the effects of their attacks in both the physical and psychological dimensions. They resort to meeting their terror with terror.

Certainly the best way to effect change is not in bombings or in killing or in violation of any basic human right or dignity. However, because, the majority of those on the higher end of the Imbalance slumber against the demand for change, acts that are taken to wake this mass from slumber are jarring, irregular, and impactful. The tragedy is that, on both sides of the Imbalance there is a firm belief in deterrence. It is believed that, in this manner, can change be made effectively. That, in ensuring that there is no means to return to the life lived before, an attack utilized to effect change be successful. That, in directly relating the pain and suffering that is visited upon "the other," can the one be caused to change. Terror has proven an effective means of resistance to overwhelming power in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Lebanon, and in other conflicts. The social, political, and economic aims of this same resistance have been met, however with disdain, discredit, and destruction. In resisting the resisters, the American government has engaged in some very questionable actions. In many respects American forces have become the enemies, past and present, they have fought. It is for this reason that, for the bidirectional terror to stop, and an effective solution to be attained, the "terrorists" must be granted some victory.

This assertion is based in three distinctions. The first must be that of terrorist. By definition, by reason and logic alone, a "terrorist" exists as manifestation of opposition the Imbalance. Both from above and from below, terror is an instrument of manipulation, a destabilizing force. On the lower end of the Imbalance, "the terrorists" are the unempowered, the destitute, who seek change by any means necessary. Their cause is not the subject of justice as they cannot set the agenda for justice. Terror then, is the only means to manipulate the agenda of those above who act with violence against them. Properly, it is asymmetrical warfare; but, warfare, being an enterprise of massive expense, is only symmetrical when great powers battle one another. Those that engage in terrorism beneath the Imbalance, an evolutionary element of guerilla warfare, cannot engage in symmetrical warfare in the contemporary world. Thus, the Imbalance is exposed.

On the upper end of the Imbalance, "terrorists" are the great military powers waging that is properly called asymmetrical warfare against "much weaker enemies." While, from a civilian point of view, these acts of invasion, warfare, military engagement, occupation, or simply military-backed corporate enterprise, are seen as acts of terrorism, they are not referred to as such in common language. These engagements are seen as 'business as usual.' Terrible acts, not "terrorism," are used to control and pacify foreign populations and to -- literally -- pave the way for enterprise. The agenda in foreign nations is, thus, manipulated. These acts are undertaken at massive expense and are direct descendants of the colonial and imperial enterprises of days long past. They are no more just now than they were then, however, because the asymmetry favors those higher in the Imbalance, it is accepted.

An imbalance of power is a clear element of many, or all, of the conflicts in world. Those who fight a deservingly to regulate the balance of power operate on a timetable in competition with the immediacy of other competing interests. The plight of the unempowered is constantly pushed aside in favour of more lucrative interests, therefore the unempowered are required to step forward to make their plight appear to be more immediate. The only means of achieving this, thus far, has been death and destruction. Those on the lower end of the Imbalance cannot make the military or social or political expenditures required; not in time and not in dollars. As such they are characterized as terrorists. This would not be a misnomer. Those above in the Imbalance, first, cannot understand their plight of those below. Second, those above in the Imbalance set the standard for what is good and just. Further, it is impossible for those above in the Imbalance comprehend the magnitude and effect of the Imbalance. So it is that the "terrorist" is, by definition, the enemy and against all that is good, and only attacks from beneath in the Imbalance.

The second definition of import is successful. Here, success relates to communication of a message. With any action, any undertaking of the human mind, there is a message be communicated. The message is often misinterpreted. A successful communication is one that is symbolic, delivering a message that is clear. The "official story," that America was attacked "because they hate US" is wavering in its veracity, credibility, and reality. Perhaps the architects of the "official story" got it wrong, like the many other messages similarly interpreted since that time. The message of the attack, over the course of nine days, was mis-/re-interpreted to fit an agenda, again, set from above in the Imbalance. As a result, the message, the reasons behind it and the changes sought by those who sacrificed their lives and those who were caught in the middle, were lost.

For example, the attacks of 9/11 could, easily have been carried out explicitly against the American people. Those fateful aircraft could have been hijacked the night before and directed at a baseball stadium, killing many more Americans than at the WTC or the Pentagon. Instead the attacks were carried out against the military and industrial centers of America, the airline industry being a "complex" that binds them together. In many parts of the world the WTC and the Pentagon do not symbolize free enterprise but the yoke of oppression. Further, it reduces the capacity for it to produce positive, effective change in the world; it reduces the capacity for the attack to be successful. No violent attack is undertaken for the sole purpose of that violent attack. Terrorists are not serial killers, though being maligned by many lenses, the groups that support them are characterized as such.

Discredit for the message is followed by discredit for the messenger. Manipulations of every order are made in favour of those self-same powers being attacked. So, successful communication of a message is defeated by the reinforced ignorance of those attacked, those for whom the message was intent. As long as the "victims" don't understand the reasons behind the attack, reactions taken are blind and, regardless of the effect, justified. Terrorist acts are lumped together as a cancerous mass of "enemies of freedom." The possibility of delivering credible, though opposite, messages to those in superior position is marginal. Finally, the message remains only with the messenger and the two parties are driven farther apart from understanding one another.

The final definition of import is effect. Previously, there was mention of a message in the conduct of a terrorist attack. The desired effect is that a message, if conveyed in a language that is universal, will cause a desired outcome. If the cause of change is an attack, it is proven effective if the outcome is not a violent response. David toppled Goliath; Goliath did not strike back. Terrorists on the lower end of the Imbalance are in the role of David. It is this sort of effect that opposition groups seek to achieve. The political, social, or economic aims of those on lower end of the Imbalance are meant to counter those of an overwhelming power. Without any means of equalization, only activism, guerilla warfare and, terror remain as options. The message is, but has not been, carried by the words of the participants and sometime victims. In these instances, especially where an overwhelming military power is involved and people are being oppressed and are dying, activism is abandoned in favor of a violent response to a violent situation.

There are many problems and conflicts to be broached in the world. The Imbalance is at the root of many, if not all, of them. The Imbalance of power and authority; the Imbalance of wealth, health, and resource; the Imbalance of cultural identity; and the Imbalance of basic dignity are examples. Terrorism, poverty, environmental destruction and warfare are manifestations of this Imbalance. There is no one outside the purview of the Imbalance; it affects all people everywhere. Some, however, benefit from it while many more are injured by it.

The cycle of cause and effect is vicious. With each effect – a bombing, an air strike, a hostage taking, a sanction – there is a cause. Humans react to the situations that they are placed in, often with righteous indignation, seeking to balance what is so imbalanced. To reduce the sickness felt at such imbalance. The path chosen, thus far, has been a predictable one within the cycle. There remains the path not taken, to concede a single victory to the hated enemy, before all are consumed.

[A] Way Out: Part I of II

A certain reality touches home as I think of the events of the past days in relation to the past months and years. There seems to be a worsening sickness among the major actors in the social, political, and economic world. It is not getting any better. There must, in my mind, be a way to break this fever, but I can only think of one. The terrorists must win.

In the past few weeks the corruption of the neo-Conservative Bush Administration knows no absolute depth. The misuse of authority -- if not in fact, in the spirit of a democratic institution -- has ascended to the height of the OVP; wherein Dick Cheney asserts that he and the affairs of his office are beyond public scrutiny. Essentially, that the OVP is not a part of the executive branch of the government and, therefore, that the national archives have no right or authority to require his office to produce documentation for the actions taken in the past five years. Just what types of action have been taken by the OVP? More on this later.

Further still, the flagrant misuse of presidential power in the commuted sentence, a tacit pardon, of I. Lewis Libby only thickens the plot. Libby, a longtime associate of neo-Con interests and former chief of staff for the aforementioned VP, escaped a single minute of incarceration by divine ... er.. Presidential intervention. A decree from the President short-cut the due process of appeals and court-dates; a process to which so many disenfranchised Americans owe their time, effort, and life-savings. Why is this Libby so special? Glad you asked.

Libby, now a convicted criminal and one-time lawyer, offended the public trust by obstructing justice and committing perjury. He lied under oath to a Congressional panel that was investigating leaked information. The sentence that warranted, in the opinion of a federal judge, was thirty months incarceration. The crime of perjury is a long-standing and necessary component of the justice system as it prevents unscrupulous individuals from committing fraud on other individuals, groups, or, in this case, the people of the United States and the rest of the world. Here, the President has utilised his prerogative and excepted I. Lewis Libby from punishment.Obstruction of justice is a crime that speaks for itself -- a crime, I would say, the President committed in commuting his sentence. It is apparent that the President is not interested in justice.

Libby, being a close-confidant to the White House, became privy to many secrets. The notable secret here is the one he leaked: the identity of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame. The leak of her identity was, allegedly, the political price paid for contesting the desires of the President and the administration in the march to war from Afghanistan to Iraq. Libby, a good soldier to the Commander-in-Chief, was, ostensibly, only following orders. It has all come back around again, and again, and again. The Iraq War was only the beginning.

Having a world view, whether your vantage point is the OVP or simply a concerned citizen, in a war-torn, cloak-and-dagger world, one would suspect that leaking the name of a spy, active or not, is a bad idea. It is especially interesting that Valerie Plame is married to Joseph Wilson, a former US-ambassador. Joseph Wilson was engaged to report from Niger whether Iraq and, then president, Saddam Hussein sought nuclear materials from Niger. During the 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush clearly and concisely uttered the "sixteen words" that would make the Iraq War happen. Colin Powell's stop at the UN thereafter, making a case for war in front of the world, was a mere formality.

The war started on 17 March 2003, Baghdad was 'captured' in a mere fifty days, leading the President to dramatically -- really dramatically -- declare Mission:Accomplished on 6 May. The story is still only beginning. By the first week of July, the lies were becoming clearer. There were no weapons of mass destruction found. No labs with chemical or biological weapons. No 500 tons of nuclear material. Nothing. Perhaps, it was at this point that I. Lewis Libby blinked. Then the insurgency started. The Iraqis wanted the Americans out. But they just wouldn't, they couldn't, leave.

The lies would come to light in the months and years thereafter. There were indictments of Congressmen, scandals, revelations. Worse, there were questions. What had the PATRIOT ACT actually said? Were Americans being spied on? What of Gunatanamo Bay? Or Abu Ghraib? Or the secret CIA prisons overseas? What is extraordinary rendition? American foreign policies began filtering toward the daylight and out of the dark recesses of the Administration. The actions of the CIA are reported directly to the OVP. The lies began to unravel in the daylight.

America has done, and is doing, some very un-American things to non-Americans in the name of American freedom. There are warrantless wire-taps to be explained. There is faulty intelligence to be explained. There is a video on the Internet that says that 9/11 could not have happened the way the official story read. It says that there are too many inconsistencies. The film aligns -- or maligns -- the 'official story on 9/11' with another official story of note; the 'Magic bullet theory.' The 9/11 Commission report, completed five years after the event, cannot contest the authority of two kids with editing software in the public eye.

Oil and other energy prices are on the rise. The American dollar is falling. All the while the war in Iraq just won't die. American soldiers are dying, though. So are Iraqi militants, Iraqi civilians, andIraqi children. There are whispers of massacre, of war crimes, of civilian deaths at the hands of American troops; whispers of America destroying the nation they are acting to save. The clear message is, "we have to fight terror abroad so we don't fight it at home." Everything is justifiable as long as America is and remains untouched.

A report released by a reputable medical journals, the Lancet, claims that the death toll in Iraq, attributable to the invasion, war, and endless insurgency, is nearing genocide. 655 000 dead. "Impossible," they thought, "we are saving them from terror." Aren't we? The report is spun and discredited in America.

The war rages on. It is false but it is happening. Other things are happening too. More indictments of government officials; I. Lewis Libby among them. The Democrats regain authority in the halls of Congress. A woman ascends the seat of Speaker of the House for the first time. She openly challenges the neo-Cons and the Bush camp. More questions emerge about conduct in the Administration and the Iraq war. What was Jack Abramoff doing? What is happening in the OVP? Why were those US attorneys fired? Is Iraq the Vietnam war of this generation?

The spiral dives downward. Guarding against the possibility of damaging testimony, Libby is silenced with quickie commutation of sentence. The stiffest upper lip in politics belongs to Dick Cheney and he isn't going to change his tack despite what the constitution says. The Vice-President, the President and all those who surround him are above the law, above the checks and balances of the vaunted democracy, and beyond the reach of Congress; though Congress inches closer to restraint of the Administration with each passing day.

One day in September, not too long ago, a singular event set the United States -- and much of the rest of the world in various reactions -- on this course. Within America 9/11 defines an age and it's ramifications continue to be felt in daily conduct. To some of the rest of the world, the attack on America is no different than the Madrid bombings of 2003 or the 7 July bombings of 2005, tantrums of an established terrorist organization. To others it is another in a daisy-chain of events that stretches across time from the second World War to the present; an attack of the weak against the mighty.

What, then, causes me to believe that the fever pitch of conflict can only be undone by permitting the terrorists a victory? It is the unthinkable, but, what remains is this: the American government is proving itself, almost daily now, to be a loathsome enemy. Further, the American government leads the world in military operations world wide, leads the world in economic enterprise throughout the world, thus is the single leading oppressor in the world.

It is for these reasons that the singular event of a September six years past occurred.

The strike against America would not have led to massive bloodshed abroad if, and only if, America had stood and taken responsibility for the root causes of the attack; a severe imbalance in the authority and practice of political, social, and economic institutions. America may have freed their slaves in 1865, but America has, since 1945, economically enslaved the rest of the world. Only in a successful, symbolic, and galvanizing defeat of America, one that does not result on the rain of hellfire over foreign cities, will the prospect of peace present itself again.

This, the path not taken, may yet be the path of salvation. Lies, deceptions, an approach of Orwellian horror, has not produced any increase in security. Perhaps, if the stick lies broken on the ground, instead of reaching for another, the proverbial carrot may be employed instead.

All Things

I refuse to believe that nothing changed that day. That everything could remain the same or that they would be the same but better after that day. Everything had to change. More people had to be awake, jarred from their coma by the event. More people had to realized that all of their assumptions, their comforts, and their securities are for naught. Further, that the government and the security that it promises in the homeland is vulnerable to the simplest of plans. Since that day, all bets were off.

Of course, the day I'm speaking of is the day of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. At 9:02 am, Timothy Mc Veigh solemnly demonstrated that the American homeland is susceptible to attack by a small, yet disciplined force. Several school shootings, office shootings, and other such terrible non-terrorist attacks later, the vulnerability of the American homeland was rocked again at the foundation by 19 men armed with box-cutters.

Six years, and three American military engagements, later the crucial impetus that emerged from that time has fallen apart. "They hate US and our freedoms." It is on this basis that America TM undertook to expand, diversify, and secure its interests.

Any who sought dissent or expressed reservations about the new righteous path were, initially marginalized. Now, the dissident voice is much more the mainstream, even in the face of a lack of divergence in the centres of power and authority. The mass is turning against the leadership, the proletariat against their betters, and, despite the police checks and gross imbalances, the revolution that was promised in 1964 may come to pass in 2009.

What has changed? Oh, its the little things. The expansion of executive authority, the corruption of justice, the demise of constitutional rights and freedoms, extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, warrantless wiretaps, extensive monitoring of internet traffic, war profiteering and the privitization of military intelligence, puppet governments and client states upholding corporate interests, and the use of deadly force against alleged terrorists -- you know, the little things.

Since terrorism became an American reality in 1919, and a recognizable one in 1993, precious little was done to combat it until after 2001 when there were enough people in enough of the "right" places to make profitable decisions from it. Nothing preventative was undertaken to ensure that the forces that culminated in any of the past attacks would result in a future attack. And, now that these forces are better understood and prove even more concrete examples of the, pardon the pun, bases for terrorist attacks, what changes will be made.

The message from on high remains the same. None. Nothing will change. The world itself will continue to be exploited. The people in the world will continue to be impoverished and offered only a fragment of freedom. Justice will follow only the mighty. The purposes of life will be commerce, consumption, and capital.

The battle lines are drawn.