“A promise
bigger than hope
sat on the tip of a leaf
and laughed at conventional priorities,
blushed unashamedly
and giggled with the wind
like a brazen waitress
pouring coffee and sweet-hot words
to a booth of truckers.
The promise
walked through my veins
as though it owned my blood
throwing sparks of light
at any shadow
that dared come in the way
of the force of life
as it articulated obscenities
at dried up traditions
questioning
the holiness of beauty.”
Dartwill Aquila
*
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Corridors of Power
F. Scott Fitzgerald described the Ivy Club at Princeton University as being “breathlessly aristocratic”. That was in 1920. It was no less aristocratic in 1970 when Philip Bobbitt was its president. Bobbitt can trace his pedigree to the early southern colonies in the 1600s and names his uncle Lyndon Johnson as one of his mentors.
“Public servant” Bobbitt has served as advisor to presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now Barak Obama on the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on International Law. He frequents The White House as if it was his local pub and seems to have a pass key to all the influential institutions of the government. He’s worked on the charter of the CIA, counseled the Iran-Contra Committee, was director for Intelligence Programs for the National Security Council, etc., etc. & etc. When not whispering in the ears of power, he speaks authoritatively as a professor of international law at Harvard, Colombia, Yale, Princeton, Oxford and the University of Texas. His fan club includes Tony Blair, David Cameron, John Howard and Henry Kissinger who described him as “the* outstanding political philosopher of our time.”
(* Note that Henry says “the” and not “an”.)
You get the picture.
What is the philosophy radiating out of this “outstanding political philosopher”? His book The Shield of Achilles (2002) spells out his philosophy candidly.
Bobbitt doesn’t believe in peace. The search for peace is “fruitless.” War is inevitable and the wise policy makers anticipate it and prepare for it so that they can shape the form it takes. Philip B regards war as a strategic struggle to legitimize the formation of state authority and establish its constitutional order. He uses the term epochal war to designate a greater conflict and exemplifies this with what he calls The Long War that extended from 1914 to 1990 (from the Soviet Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall). It consolidated the nation-state.
The Market-State
Now that the nation-state has been established the next epochal war is under way to see who will dominate the market-state. Where the nation-state carried the promise of material welfare for its citizens, the market-state promises opportunities. (Note that I refrain from using sarcasm about the difference between material welfare and opportunities.) Bobbitt encourages leaders to create new forms for the use of force to promote and defend the market-state. Citizens should be employed as mercenaries, civil privacy should be abandoned and surveillance should be increased.
Recognize any of these policies? Bobbitt knew that they would upset some people. “Unaided by the assurance that the political process will not be subordinated to the most powerful market actors, markets can become targets of the alienated and of those who are disenfranchised by any shift away from national or ethnic institutions.”
Are you feeling alienated by corporate rule (“the most powerful market actors”) or disenfranchised by the rulers trashing the country’s traditions and laws (“shift away from national or ethnic institutions”)? Thank Bobbitt!
But don’t be too hard on Professor Phil. When his book The Shield of Achilles came out prestigious people and reviewers calloused their fingertips writing its praises. The entire intellectual, academic and politic elite shower acclaim over this apostle of fascism. Yes, fascism. And I’m not using the word loosely.
The term market-state itself is basically a declaration of fascism. Wiktionary defines fascism as:
“a political regime ideologically based on a relationship between business and the centralized government, business-and-government control of the market place, repression of criticism of opposition.”
Philip B’s market-state goes beyond a mere business-government relationship. It subordinates the political process “to the most powerful market actors.”
“… the market-state promises a ‘virtuous’ circle to those states that copy its form and obey its strictures*. The privatization of state-owned firms brings immense capital gains to the state as it liquidates vast monopolies; this windfall supplements the savings from cuts in welfare programs…” (*Note the aristocratic expression, “obey its strictures”. Also note that public ownership is described as monopolies.)
A Monument of Twisted Logic
In an interview in 2007 on Global Axess Bobbitt claimed the invasion of Iraq was necessary because “we couldn’t predict when Saddam Hussein could acquire nuclear weapons.”
This clearly proves that a monument of academic knowledge can produce ugly twisted reasoning. If the ultimate international crime, the initiation of war, can be justified with Bobbitt’s argument, there is no such thing as international law. Many progressive brats of America are fond of complaining about the stupidity of the “sheeple”. The majority of Americans however know more about the difference between right and wrong—and crimes of aggression—than American professors of international law.
Prof. Phil excels in twisted reasoning. “It takes two states to go to war. /—/ States … may employ aggression, but they do not seek war. Rather it is the state against whom* the aggression has been mounted, typically, that makes the move to war, which is a legal and strategic act”.
(* Note the reference to the state as a person rather than a thing.)
Phil claims that the Vietnam War was “fought to stop aggression by going to war.”
And speaking of twisted logic and Vietnam, Bobbitt wrote an eulogy to former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in the NY Times (July 7, 2009). How did Professor Phil describe the man who initiated the bombing campaign that killed millions of Vietnamese? He characterize him as “a man of compassion”.
Many people will be surprised to learn that the intellectual elite of the empire can’t tell the difference between good and evil and worship the prospects of fascism. I suggest they read Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The seldom-mentioned journey to Laputa (Spanish for whore) describes the illogical scientific fools of this island in the air. Among other things, the titled fools believed that they could determine the guilt of conspiracy suspects (terrorists) by examining their turds.
Turds! Fascist shit doesn’t just happen. It’s dark, hard values are produced by the constipated minds of the aristocrats of power.
“If hypocrisy were a crime we’d have to build a cage around the government”
Dartwill Aquila
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Proof of complicity in the destruction of the human environment.
The rulers of the world and their political administrators are unwilling to stop global warming.
Fact: The beverage industry (commercial water and soft-drinks) aids global warming. This is indisputable.
The production of water bottles alone and only in the USA can fuel 1 million cars a year. This extravagance does not include distribution and disposal, or does it include production outside the USA or the soft-drink industry (Pepsi, Coke, Red Bull, etc) that is hundreds of times larger than the bottle water industry.
Were world ”leaders” serious about cooling the environment they would encourage people to refrain from packaged beverages and would invest in the infrastructure supplying drinking water. Global warming is already killing hundreds of thousands of people in extreme weather events. They could at least demand labeling on beverages as on cigarettes. This product strains the environment and contributes to global warming.
That’s not going to happen because the greed-diseased rulers would lose a source of income. They’d rather trash the planet.
They are trashing the planet.
They will continue to trash the planet.
As will anyone who supports the sale of unnecessary packaged beverages.
Read Captain K on Water before or after watching The Story of Bottled Water
“It’s easier to blame the wrong doings of others
than to do the right thing ourselves.”
Dartwill Aquila
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To sneeze at something means that you don’t take it seriously. The expression survives as ”nothing to sneeze at” meaning the opposite. Winning 10 000 is not a million, but it’s nothing to sneeze at.
I’ve often used the term greed-diseased to describe the people who rule the course of events in today’s world, that is to say, the 1% who can be described as a Greed-diseased Gang.
Unfortunately, this term is regarded as a curse word, an invective, rather than a description of an actual condition. So let’s set the record straight. The accumulation of money breeds greed. Like Frodo’s ring, the power that money gives captures the owner. Those who succeed in making a million want to make more. When they’ve made 60 million, the desire for even more money has become stronger than ever. And long before they ever get to a billion, they’re obsessed with the accumulation of money. They sneeze at all other considerations. And so would you or I.
That’s how money works. The person afflicted can come from any background, religious or political. Saints and revolutionaries fall under the spell of money as readily as criminals. We can see how moss attacks the cement grave stone in the picture above. The moss cares little if the concrete formes the base of a school or the wall of a prison. Money eats away at the character of people as predictably as moss eats away at the elements of concrete.
It has been shown in psychological experiments that even people primed with irrelevant visions of money on a screen saver tend to be less helpful than a control group. Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow states, ”reminders of money may shape our behavior and our attitudes in ways that we do not know about and of which we may not be proud.”
We are ruled by greed-diseased individuals. They care not for people or nature. They are sick! If they can find a way to get more money they will follow that course of action regardless of the consequences for anyone or anything. They are obsessed. We can no more reason with them than we can reason with moss. There may be exceptions, but, if so, they are so rare, we can sneeze at them.
These people who control the course of events also control the cultural atmosphere. They promote the pursuit of money as an honorable and intelligent ideal. This justifies and glorifies their own positions and helps maintain the prevailing order that runs on consumption and money-generating distractions.
Don’t sneeze at the people suffering from greeditis. Their disease is highly contagious and deadly. In its advanced global form it threatens the life of humanity. If we cannot destroy the money-oriented form of society and replace it with one dedicated to the well-being of people we will perish as a species. Fortunately system humanity has the ability to win this apocalyptic battle for survival. The outcome however is uncertain and the battle is definitely nothing to sneeze at.
“Staring at money, like starring at the sun, blinds us to life.”
Dartwill Aquila
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“A lack of roots
does not free them from the earth.
But their lack of knowledge
—and respect—
will free the earth from them.”
Dartwill Aquila
*
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Saturday rerun from 2013-05-06
Make no mistake about it. Fracking (Hydraulic Fracturing) is a crime. Calling it legal doesn’t make it less of a crime.
Fracking murders people and nature. It destroys vast supplies of water and contaminates the air with carcinogens and other toxins killing lakes, rivers, forests, bugs, birds and beasts. It ravages ancient strata of the earth and pours tons of harmful chemicals into the ground and the atmosphere. People? It steals their health, infects them with pain, destroys their homes, devastates their dreams and plunders their future.
It’s war! Like all war it is an enterprise of conquest. The frackers (corporate managers blessed by their political whores) invade an area and wreak havoc on everyone and everything within the territory of their invasion – plus damaging nearby towns and cities. They pump tons and tons and tons of highly chemicalized water deep into the earth at high pressure to break up (frack) rock formations and extract the gas that flows from the cracks.
Some of the hundreds of chemicals used in the fracking-prepared water are lead, uranium, mercury, ethylene glycol, radium, methanol, hydrochloric acid and formaldehyde. There are 500 000 active gas wells in the US alone using 8 million gallons of water and 40 000 gallons of chemicals per well. Each well can be fracked 18 times. The 1000s of trucks caravaning water, chemicals and supplies back and forth from the fracking sites constitute an environmental hazard by themselves.
Those speaking for fracking will tell you that the gas they extract is a much cleaner form of energy than oil. Tell them to go frack themselves. It’s a vulgarly polluting and extremely slimy operation to make dirty money for a handful of filthy rich people diseased with greed.
“To steal with laws breeds outlaws.”
Dartwill Aquila
Read Captain K on Water before or after watching The Story of Bottled Water
(That should sound more like a command than a request.) 🙂
Then get started on the H2O Campaign.
The HHO Campaign (HHOC) aims to get people to stop drinking/buying bottled water and soft drinks. Buy doing this the people will:
1. Save money
2. Improve their health
3. Help the environment
4. Shoot a hole in a battleship of the corporate empire
You don’t have to register, submit a user name, create use a password (twice), agree to fine-print conditions, download an app or follow anyone’s instructions. Just do it! Stop drinking bottled water and soft drinks and try to get as many people as possible to do the same.
You’ll be more effective organized in a group.
Don’t forget to share your experience on social media.
Nature, life and humanity will thank you.
“Water is a love affair between the most common element in the universe, hydrogen,
and the most common element in the earth’s crust, oxygen.
Let’s drink to that.
Cheers!”
Dartwill Aquila
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I feel pretty, Oh so pretty, I feel pretty and narcissy all day.
Painful truths are avoided. Denied. A biological mechanism of the human condition generates this defensive strategy. Ridiculing or condemning the person who clings to beliefs that conflict with reality serves no purpose. We all fall victim to denial at times. Some forms of denial are minor and temporary, others major and stable. Even the best and the brightest can imprison their intellect under the denial syndrome.
Our brain consumes enormous quantities of energy in proportion to its size. It’s a very expensive organ. We form mental structures to conserve energy and these structures resist change. Reasoning has little effect on stable beliefs fashioned in strong mental structures. If they are to change, they must be battered by reality. Time and time again.
The character of the USA can serve as an example of how the denial syndrome works. Many people, particulary in the West and especially Americans, have grown up with a positive view of the USA as a great democracy. They cling to this view despite overwhelming evidence that the so-called democracy behaves like an imperialist beast, devouring justice, nature and people.
Guantanamo prison should be enough to expose the merciless and criminal character of the USA. The treatment of the prisoners violates international law and is ”malum in se”, that is to say, wrong regardless of laws.
Invading a country (Iraq) on false premises and killing a million people qualifies as the ultimate international crime, but is, at best, regarded as a mistake.
Drone bombing ”suspected militants” in foreign countries and ”collateral damaging” children to death in the process should also lay bare the merciless and criminal nature of these beasts, but it passes with barely a ho-hum.
Support of the vicious Israeli treatment and attempted annihilation of the Palestinians should function as a spotlight on immorality. Yet the rulers can parade as honorable people despite the purity of their evil.
Fracking, supporting criminal banksters, allowing exploitation of underpaid workers, overfilled prisons, lack of child and health support …
The denial of the average propaganda-saturated citizen victimized by consumerism and the me-me-me culture is understandable. The denial of many ”aware”, critical and progressive people, on the other hand, demonstrates the full extend of the denial syndrome. These people try to influence the beasts. They demonstrate for them, petition them, appeal to them, hope that they will change, etc.
The denial syndrome!
“Fear not the weapons of fire and steel,
they are not as powerful as truth,
as helpful as solidarity
or as determined as love.”
Dartwill Aquila
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IS marches on ground watered with the blood of over one million Iraqis killed by the forces of the NAE (North Atlantic Empire). They were killed because their leader might use weapons of mass destruction that he didn’t have. They were killed nicely. Well not nicely exactly, but not in the horrible way that IS has killed a few hundred people.
Israel, the best friend of the NAE, has killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians but defensively or in disproportionate response, not in the horrible way that IS has killed a few hundred.
Saudi Arabia, another friend of the NAE, beheads people regularly, several hundred over the years, but not in the horrible way that IS has beheaded a few people.
So make a note, Dorothy, when mentioning IS be sure to use a suitable adjective such as horrible, monstrous, gruesome, atrocious, repulsive, godawful or any other dreadful synonym. Remember, we want the NAE and its friends to look like good-guy killers.
“What we see is what they show us
if we don’t ignore them
and look for ourselves.”
Dartwill Aquila
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From Dennis M’s blog, Hope For Humans is Dying, 3 days ago. .
—
Dennis has ”an increasing sense of hopelessness.”
He follows ”the news morning, noon and night and sees little more than growing, worsening chaos. Conflict is everywhere and the Kill And Plunder Brigade (headed by the U.S.) seems to be in the ascendancy.”
”You’d think,” he says, ”that at least one nation in the world would stand up and question why there is no influential peace movement.”
Why are there few serious journalists writing powerful essays which pillory (attack and ridicule) the warmongers and imperialists?”
He ends the blog with a bold text:
”Yet, as hope dies, no one seems to notice or care!”
—
I choose to reply to Dennis here rather than comment on his blog because many people have a ”sense of hopelessness.” This feeling is supplied by the ”news morning, noon and night”. We are supposed to feel hopeless. And helpless. As long as we follow the news, the msm, our perpective will be managed by the people generating and controlling the news and we will be fed with our daily dose of hopelessness, anger, frustration and despair.
The nations of the world are run by the corporate elite. Expecting them to ”question why there is no influential peace movement” is like expecting the Mafia to question why the police aren’t more effective. The ”serious” journalists are, like most people, serious about keeping their jobs and they are working for corporations that produce ”the news” to generate profit and defend the prevailing order.
That fact is (and here comes my bold text) Resistance to the warmongers and exploiters is growing everywhere. Everywhere.
In every country of the world people are engaged in struggles for justice, truth and peace. More and more people. Everywhere. But don’t expect to read about it in ”the news morning, noon and night.”
Have you read about the protesting 1000 villagers in Guangdong, China last Friday?
How about the longshore workers who refused to unload a cargo from Israel in Oakland, California on Saturday?
The campaign to defend the people’s lawyer Dr. Ermogenes in Brazil?
The mass demonstrations for women and untouchables in India?
A simultaneous attack on Del Monte’s and Dole’s plantations in the Philippines?
And on and on it goes. Everywhere. More and more people. More and more actions. More and more knowledge.
The information is out there, but not in msm. Get together with some friends. Start a study group. Each person takes responsibility for one area of information. Compare notes. You are not alone.
One last point, ”the Kill And Plunder Brigade (headed by the U.S.)” is not in ascendancy. If it were, they would not be so desperate to build their enormous security and surveillance apparatus. They are afraid of the people. Everywhere.
EXTRA! EXTRA! Hear all about it!
Here’s a must-see testimony about Israel by an Israeli journalist that’s a musn’t-show in the msm: David Sheen – Russell Tribunal
“All the lonely people live in the same place,
but it’s not crowded because nobody is there.”
Dartwill Aquila
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System Humanity 