The links on this page assume a connection between
predatory capitalism, corporatism, fascism, and other forms of tyranny. Although capitalism has been
deceptively conflated with democracy and liberty, corporate capitalism is
anti-democratic and has, in fact, become imperialistic. The dark side of the imperialistic
adventures of Western civilization is manifesting in many ways. This perspective is discussed in detail
in Positive Disintegration, Economic Meltdown Links, The Dark Side, Demons in
Our Midst, and Psycho-Spiritual Evolution. For the eco-psycho-spiritual perspective of this
website, see the Dharmagaians Introduction.
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Psychopathology of the Dark Side
Empire, Fascism, and Predator Culture
The Danger of American Fascism by Henry
A. Wallace 4/9/44
Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a
Blackshirt by Umberto Eco 1995
Education is Ignorance: Noam Chomsky interviewed by
David Barsamian 1996, excerpted from Class Warfare.
Fascism Anyone? By Laurence
W. Britt 2003
Fascist
America, in 10 easy steps by Naomi
Wolf 4/24/07
Psychopathology
of the Dark Side
C.G. Jung on the European Shadow: The face of a bird of prey
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"What we from our point of view call colonization,
missions to the heathen, spread of civilization, etc., has another face--the
face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel intentness for distant quarry--a face
worthy of a race of pirates and highwaymen. All the eagles and other predatory
creatures that adorn our coats of arms seem to me apt psychological
representatives of our true nature.” This short article on how a chief of the Taos Pueblo, New Mexico,
changed Jung’s view of Western Civilization is the introduction to several articles
on depth psychology and colonialism. Highly recommended!
Shedding Light On Evil by Paul
Levy 2008 - To deal with evil as it
manifests in the world, we have to be able to look at and embrace the evil
within ourselves. If we refuse to look at the evil within our own heart,
however, our refusal simply feeds the evil. If we look away and allow evil to
be acted out, thinking we are innocent, we are unconsciously colluding with
evil. Evil, like a vampire, can’t stand to be seen, for once it is
seen and made conscious, it loses its omnipotence and autonomy, as it can no
longer act itself out through us. As each of us recognizes and integrates our
own darker halves, we liberate the energy that was bound up in the compulsion
to unconsciously act out our darker side in the external world. Instead, this
archetypal energy of the shadow is assimilated into the wholeness of our
personality and becomes available for the expression of creativity and love.
Any one of us making the darkness conscious lightens the weight for all of us,
as we are all connected.
What Makes People Vote Republican? Jonathan Haidt 9/9/08 - Conservative positions on gays, guns, god, and
immigration must be understood as means to achieve one kind of morally ordered
society. When Democrats try to explain away these positions using pop
psychology they err, they alienate, and they earn the label
"elitist." But how can Democrats learn to see—let alone
respect—a moral order they regard as narrow-minded, racist, and dumb?
Obama and the Palin Effect by Deepak Chopra 9/4/08 - Sarah
Palin is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his
idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses. In psychological
terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering
our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face:
anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of "the
other."
Moral Endo-skeletons and Exo-skeletons: A Perspective on America’s Cultural Divide and
Current Crisis by
Andrew Bard Schmookler 7/29/08 - People with a “moral
exo-skeleton” rely on external moral structures – laws, punishments, etc.
– to keep them within the moral confines in which they believe. Those with a “moral endo-skeleton” have
internalized and integrated their moral beliefs. The latter need to understand the psychology of the former.
Twilight of the Psychopaths by Dr.
Kevin Barrett 7/29/08 - Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary
history, is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their
disproportionate power. And as that power grows ever-more-threatened, the
psychopaths grow ever-more-desperate. We are witnessing the apotheosis of the
overworld—the criminal syndicate or overlapping set of syndicates that
lurks above ordinary society and law, just as the underworld lurks below it.
Like the Little Satans We Are by Jason Miller 7/26/08 - Despite the slow and choppy moral
progress we’ve made in how we treat our fellow human animals, we are still
acculturated to view non-human animals as enslaved property or lesser beings,
unworthy of the basic rights to life, freedom, and protection from torture.
Like the little Satans we are, we ply our sadistic crafts of animal
exploitation, subjugation, and murder with a narcissistic zeal– simply to
satiate our desires. Tragically, we are oblivious to the tremendous cost to our
victims and to our own souls.
Pain And Conscience by
Charles Sullivan 5/30/08 (6 p) - With so much attention given to Bush, people are failing to confront
the root cause of which George W. Bush is but a single manifestation: the
sociopolitical system that put the present criminal regime in power. Beyond
capitalism, other destructive paradigms are operating to produce a hybridized
and even more virulent form of economics. One might call it hyper capitalism.
This explains why the American form of capitalism is so much more destructive
than most of its European counterparts.
Beware Of The Psychopath My Son by Clinton Callahan 5/12/08 - When you understand the true nature
of psychopathic influence, that it is conscienceless, emotionless, selfish,
cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards, you are
horrified, but at the same time everything suddenly begins to makes sense. Our
society is ever more soulless because the people who lead it and who set the
example are soulless - they literally have no conscience.
Political Ponerology: Relinked Review, By Carolyn Baker 4/14/08 - Political ponerology (originating from the Greek word for evil,
poneros) is a science of the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes,
which ultimately on a larger scale results in a pathocracy.
The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes
from Others by Silvia Cattori 1/31/08
(44 p) - Ponerology
is the science of evil, of understanding its origins scientifically, and how it
can infect individuals and societies like a disease. When you come to understand that the reins of political and
economic power are in the hands of people who have no conscience, who have no
capacity for empathy, it opens up a completely new way of looking at what we
call "evil". Evil is no longer only a moral issue; it can now be
analyzed and understood scientifically. People of conscience are being ruled by people with no
conscience. This fact is the primary injustice and is the basis for the other
ills of society. One cannot really
designate the issues that confront us today as "political", using the
ordinary names of political ideologies, because pathological deviants operate
behind a complete mask, by deception.
The Concept of Evil – Why It is
Intellectually Valid and Politically and Spiritually Important by
Andrew Bard Schmookler 6/05 - I’ve come lately to
believe that the concept of evil captures a vital human reality. So vital that
its disappearance from the cognitive maps of many modern sophisticated people
is a dangerous development—dangerous because when people do not recognize
the nature of the forces they are up against, they will be less able to deal
with them effectively.
Demons
in Our Midst: Facing the Tyrant Inside and Out by Suzanne Duarte 12/04, updated 5/08 -
It cannot be an accident, or mere "coincidence," that the movie
trilogy of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings became box office
hits during the George W. Bush’s first four years as the U.S. president. We
needed those images of leathery-winged monsters with huge teeth and claws, of
the pathetic Gollum with the vicious shadow, of the goodness of fellowship and
the evil of greed for absolute power over the world. Why did we need them? I
think we needed those visual images to remind us of the nature of evil and the
existence of demons because, in our secularlized, mechanistic world, we had
forgotten about them. We thought we were safe.
The Trouble With Politics by
Stuart Hertzog 9/23/04 - Politics is systemically
pathological in the same way that many people now accept that the big
corporations are pathological. The trouble with politics is that being based on
power relationships, it attracts and promotes people who have a pathological
need for power over others and thus who are psychopaths in the strict
definition of the term.
Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein 1949 – We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is
to survive. The real purpose of socialism is to overcome and
advance beyond the predatory phase of human development. Unlike capitalism, socialism has a
social-ethical purpose.
Predators: The Shaman’s View - A
conversation between Carlos Casteneda and Yaqui shaman don Juan - What we have against us
is not a simple predator. It is very smart and organized. It follows a
methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is
destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat. There are
no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to
become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic.
Empire, Fascism, and Predator Culture
Corporate
Anarchy: Wall Street and BP Criminals At Large by Danny
Schechter 6/23/10
- The BP oil spill is part of the same problem as the
financial crisis: The BP oil spill and the banking crisis are two examples of
the era we are living in, the era of corporate anarchy. In a nutshell, in
this era of corporate anarchy, corporations do not have to abide by any rules—none
at all. Legal, moral, ethical, even financial rules are irrelevant. They have
all been rescinded in the pursuit of profit—literally nothing else
matters. As a result, corporations currently exist in a state of almost
pure anarchy—but an anarchy directly related to
their size: The larger the corporation, the greater its absolute freedom to do
and act as it pleases. In many
ways, we have been here before in our one nation under the dollar sign.
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Quelling the WTO Protests in Seattle, WA, 1999 |
No Nukes/No Empire: The Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Requires the End
of the U.S. Empire by Robert Jensen 6/15/10 - If we are serious about the abolition of nuclear
weapons, we have to place the abolition of the U.S. empire at the center of our
politics. Working toward a world
free of nuclear weapons demands we not only critique the reactionary wing of
the U.S. power structure, the reckless hawks. A serious commitment to a future
free of nuclear weapons also demands critique of the moderate wing, the
reasonable hawks. The former group is psychotic, while the latter is merely
cynical. After eight years of reckless reactionary psychotics, it's easy to be
lulled into a false sense of security by reasonable moderate cynics. But we
should remember that a hawk is a hawk. The next step is asking whose interests
are advanced by the hawks. Even though the hawks have sometimes differed on
strategy and tactics, they have defended the same economic system: a predatory
corporate capitalism. Let's call those folks the vultures. Different groupings
of hawks might be associated with different groupings of vultures, giving the
appearance of serious political conflict within the elite, but what they have
in common is much more important than their differences. The political empire
of the contemporary United States serves the corporate empires that dominate
not only the domestic but the global economy, and it all depends on U.S.
military power, of which the nuclear arsenal is one component.
A "Prophecy" Worth Watching by Chris Hedges 6/13/10 - The corporate and government censorship – practiced in the name
of sponsorship – is the censorship that has decimated the arts, the
universities, the press and the church and destroyed the theater. These liberal
institutions have been bought off. Corporate money, grants and government
support reward those who stay on script, who do not challenge the cruel
structures of American imperialism, our permanent war economy and unfettered
capitalism. And those theater productions that break the rules are tossed
aside. It is this kind of insidious censorship that takes cutting-edge
productions, such as Malpede's fierce new anti-war play, "Prophecy,"
and relegates them to obscurity.
Disaster in the Amazon by Bob Herbert 6/5/10 - BP's calamitous behavior in the Gulf of
Mexico is the big oil story of the moment. But for many years, indigenous
people from a formerly pristine region of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador have
been trying to get relief from an American company, Texaco (which later merged
with Chevron), for what has been described as the largest oil-related
environmental catastrophe ever. Texaco operated more than 300 oil wells for the
better part of three decades in a vast swath of Ecuador's northern Amazon
region. When it left in 1992, it left behind widespread toxic contamination
that devastated the livelihoods and traditions of the local people, and took a
severe toll on their physical well-being. The quest for oil is, by its nature, colossally destructive. And
the giant oil companies, when left to their own devices, will treat even the
most magnificent of nature's wonders like a sewer. But the riches to be made are so vastly
corrupting that governments refuse to impose the kinds of rigid oversight and
safeguards that would mitigate the damage to the environment and its human and
animal inhabitants.
A Warning From Noam
Chomsky on the Threat Posed By Elites – A review of Chomsky’s Hopes and Prospects by Fred Branfman 6/7/10 - As America’s
economy and politics continue to unravel, it is clear that the elite mentality
and the system it has created will produce more and more victims in the years
to come. The many Americans whose lives have been damaged by
financiers’ single-minded focus on short-term profits at the expense of
everyone else are only a harbinger of what is to come. And, as U.S.
competitiveness continues to decline and it cannot afford its endless wars
without drastically cutting social spending, countless more Americans will find
themselves paying the price for U.S. elites’ imperial mentality. This mentality described by Chomsky
includes the following elements: (1) a single-minded focus on maximizing
short-term elite economic and military interests; (2) a refusal to let other
societies follow their own paths if perceived to conflict with these interests;
(3) continual and massive violations of international law; (4) indifference to
human life, particularly in the Third World; (5) massive violation of the U.S.
Constitution, especially through the executive branch’s seizure of the power to
wage unilateral and unaccountable war in every corner of the globe; (6)
indifference to U.S. and international public opinion, which is often more
progressive and humane than that of the elites; (7) a remarkable ability to
“manufacture consent,” aided by the mass media and intellectuals, that has
blinded most Americans to the truth of what their leaders actually do in their
names.
The Christian Fascists Are Growing Stronger by
Chris Hedges 6/7/10 - Ideological,
theological and political debates are useless with the Christian right. It does
not respond to a dialogue. It is impervious to rational thought and discussion.
The naive attempts to placate a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to
it that we too have “values,” only strengthens its legitimacy and weakness our
own. If we do not have a right to be, if our very existence is not legitimate
in the eyes of God, there can be no dialogue. At this point it is a fight for
survival. Those gathered into the
arms of this Christian fascist movement are desperately struggling to survive
in an increasingly hostile environment. We failed them; we owe them more: This
is their response. The financial dislocations, the struggles with domestic and
sexual abuse, the battle against addictions, the poverty and the despair that
many in the movement endure are tragic, painful and real. They have a right to
their rage and alienation. But they are also being used and manipulated by
forces that seek to dismantle what is left of our democracy and abolish the
pluralism that was once the hallmark of our society.
The Black Art of "Master Illusions" by John
Pilger 6/3/10 -
Revenge of the
Zombies: Palin, Beck, Limbaugh and the Return of Dark Times by
Henry A. Giroux 6/2/10 - 21st century zombies
no longer emerge from the grave; they now inhabit the rich environs of Wall
Street and roam the halls of the gilded monuments of greed such as Goldman
Sachs. In this way, the zombie - the immoral, sub-Nietzschean, id-driven
"other" who is "hyper-dead," but still alive as an avatar
of death and cruelty - provides an apt metaphor for a new kind of
authoritarianism that has a grip on contemporary politics in the United
States. This is an
authoritarianism in which mindless self-gratification becomes the norm, and
public issues collapse into realm of privatized anger and rage. The rule of the
market offers the hyper-dead an opportunity to exercise unprecedented power in
American society, reconstructing civic and political culture almost entirely in
the service of a politics that fuels the friend/enemy divide. The new zombies are not only wandering
around in the banks, investment houses and death chambers of high finance; they
have an ever increasing presence in the highest reaches of government and in
the forefront of mainstream media.
The Financial Oligarchy Reigns: Democracy’s Death Spiral From Greece to the United States by David DeGraw 6/9/10 - As the Economic Elite continue their plunder, the people in Greece riot and the big banks score yet another big blow against the people of the United States. Democracy throughout the world is under attack. Many people can make the argument that our democracy here in America is only an illusion, but even the illusion of democracy is crashing down. Tragedies are currently playing out across the world on an epic scale. Unprecedented economic and environmental catastrophes have become the norm. Billions of people, the overwhelming majority of humanity, have been sentenced to a slow death due to a concentration of wealth and resources within humanity’s economic top 0.5%. Ultimately, short-sighted greed has proven to be humanity’s most severe disease.
The
Business Roundtable: The Most Powerful Corporate Business Club Most Americans
Have Never Heard Of - by David DeGraw 3/12/10 - It
has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic
parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off
by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of
life. The harsh truth is that 99% of the US population no longer has political
representation. The US economy, government and tax system is now blatantly
rigged against us. Current statistical societal indicators clearly demonstrate
that a strategic attack has been launched and an analysis of current
governmental policies prove that conditions for 99% of Americans will continue
to deteriorate. The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup and have
brought war to our doorstep. . . and make no mistake, they have launched a war
to eliminate the US middle class.
Calling All Rebels by Chris Hedges 3/8/10 - There are no constraints left
to halt America's slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Those singled out as
internal enemies will include people of color, immigrants, gays, intellectuals,
feminists, Jews, Muslims, union leaders and those defined as
"liberals." They will be condemned as anti-American and blamed for
our decline. The economic collapse, which remains mysterious and enigmatic to
most Americans, will be pinned by demagogues and hatemongers on these hapless
scapegoats. And the random acts of violence, which are already leaping up
around the fringes of American society, will justify harsh measures of internal
control that will snuff out the final vestiges of our democracy.
What Do Empires Do? by Michael Parenti 2/13/10 - While we hear a lot about empire, we hear very little about imperialism. Now that is strange, for imperialism is what empires are all about. Imperialism is the process whereby the dominant investor interests in one country bring to bear their economic and military power upon another nation or region in order to expropriate its land, labor, natural resources, capital, and markets – in such a manner as to enrich the investor interests. Empires do not just pursue "power for power's sake." Empires are enormously profitable for the dominant economic interests of the imperial nation but enormously costly to the people of the colonized country. In addition to suffering the pillage of their lands and natural resources, the people of these targeted countries are frequently killed in large numbers by the intruders. The purpose of all this killing is to prevent alternative, independent, self-defining nations from emerging.
Zero Point Of Systemic Collapse by Chris Hedges 2/12/10 - The increasingly overt uses of force
by the elites to maintain control should not end acts of resistance. Acts of
resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience understand
the moral imperative to challenge systems of abuse and despotism. They should
be carried out not because they are effective but because they are right. Those
who begin these acts are always few in number and dismissed by those who hide
their cowardice behind their cynicism. But resistance, however marginal,
continues to affirm life in a world awash in death. It is the supreme act of
faith, the highest form of spirituality and alone makes hope possible. Those
who carried out great acts of resistance often sacrificed their security and
comfort, often spent time in jail and in some cases were killed. They
understood that to live in the fullest sense of the word, to exist as free and
independent human beings, even under the darkest night of state repression,
meant to defy injustice.
Wall Street Will Be Back For More by
Chris Hedges 1/11/10 -
How you make money and how you climb the ladder of the corporate structure are
irrelevant. Success becomes its own morality. Those who do well in
this environment possess the traits often exhibited by psychopaths –
superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant
stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation, and the
incapacity for remorse or guilt. They, like competitors on a reality television
program, lie, cheat and betray to climb over those around them and advance.
These demented individuals are admired and envied within the firm. They achieve
heroic status. The lower-ranking employees are supposed to emulate them. And this makes Goldman Sachs and other
speculative financial firms upscale lunatic asylums where the inmates wear
Brooks Brothers suits and drink expensive chardonnay. Our problem is that the
lunatics have been let out of the asylum. They have been empowered to
cannibalize the government on behalf of the corporations that spawned them like
mutant carp.
Zombie Politics and
Other Late Modern Monstrosities in the Age of Disposability by
Henry Giroux 11/17/09 - Zombie politics
reveals much about the gory social and political undercurrent of American
society. This is a politics where the undead, or more aptly, the living dead,
rule and rail against any institution, set of values, and social relations that
embrace the common good or exhibit compassion for the suffering of others.
Zombie politics supports megacorporations that cannibalize the economy, feeding
off taxpayer dollars while undercutting much-needed spending for social
services. The vampires of Wall Street reach above and beyond the trajectories
of traditional politics, exercising an influence that has no national or civic
allegiance, displaying an arrogance that is as unchecked as its power is
unregulated. One of the cardinal policies
of zombie politics is to redistribute wealth upwards to produce record high
levels of inequality, just as corporate power is simultaneously consolidated at
a speed that threatens to erase the most critical gains made over the last
fifty years to curb the anti-democratic power of corporations.
Dismantling the Empire: Three Good Reasons To Liquidate
Our Empire And Ten Steps to Take to Do So by
Chalmers Johnson 7/30/09 - The 800-pound gorilla in the American living room
is our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our relations
with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases
that goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military
establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is
hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather than later, condemn the United
States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual
war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former
Soviet Union.
Daniel Estulin's "True Story of The Bilderberg
Group" And What They May Be Planning Now by
Stephen Lendman 6/1/09 - For over 14 years, Daniel Estulin has investigated
and researched the Bilderberg Group's far-reaching influence on business and
finance, global politics, war and peace, and control of the world's resources
and its money. His book, "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group,"
was published in 2005 and is now updated in a new 2009 edition. He states that
in 1954, "the most powerful men in the world met for the first time"
in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, "debated the future of the world," and
decided to meet annually in secret. The Bilderberg Group is Predator Culture incarnate.
The Bilderberg Plan for 2009: Remaking the Global
Political Economy by
Andrew G. Marshall 5/26/09 - From May 14-17, the global elite met in
secret in Greece for the yearly Bilderberg conference, amid scattered and
limited global media attention. Roughly 130 of the world’s most powerful
individuals came together to discuss the pressing issues of today, and to chart
a course for the next year. The main topic of discussion at this years meeting
was the global financial crisis, which is no surprise, considering the list of
conference attendees includes many of the primary architects of the crisis, as
well as those poised to “solve” it.
Masters of Defeat: Retreating Empire and Bellicose
Bluster by James Petras 9/13/08 - Everywhere one
looks, US imperial policy has suffered major military and diplomatic defeats.
With the backing of the Democratic Congress, the Republican White House’s
aggressive pursuit of a military approach to empire-building has led
to a world-wide decline of US influence, the realignment of former client
rulers toward imperial adversaries, the emergence of competing hegemons and
loss of crucial sources of strategic raw materials. Failed military imperialism
brings in its wake a burgeoning police state — backed by both political
parties — in the face of economic crises which threaten the political and
social foundations of the empire.
Military Industrial Complex 2.0: The Pentagon Legacy of the MBA President by
Frida Berrigan 9/14/08 - In
these last seven years, the Pentagon's key role as war fighter has increasingly
become a privatized operation. The U.S. has already spent at least $100 billion on private contractors. Private contractors
now outnumber the 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. At 180,000, they represent a
second, private army, larger than the United States military force, and one
whose roles and missions and even casualties among its work force have largely
been hidden from public view. Top to bottom, the Pentagon's war machine is no
longer just driven by, but staffed by, corporations. Given the spectrum of
services offered and the level of integration that has already taken place
between the Pentagon and these private companies, the United States can no
longer wage a war or even run payroll without them.
War With Russia Is On The Agenda by Paul Craig Roberts 8-26-08 - Americans have
become perfect subjects for George Orwell's Big Brother. They sit stupidly in
front of the TV news or the New York Times or Washington Post and absorb the
lies fed to them. What is wrong
with Americans? Why do they put up
with it? Are Americans the nation
of sheep that Judge Andrew P. Napolitano says they are? Americans flaunt
"freedom and democracy" and live under a Ministry of Propaganda.
A New Rush to Spy by The New York Times 8/22/08 - There is apparently no limit to the Bush administration's
desire to invade Americans' privacy in the name of national security. According
to members of Congress, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is preparing to give
the F.B.I. broad new authority to investigate Americans - without any clear
basis for suspicion that they are committing a crime.
The Plot Against Liberal America by
Thomas Frank 8/17/08 - Liberalism, as we know it, arose out of a
compromise between left-wing social movements and business interests. It
depends on the efficient functioning of certain organs of the state; it does
not call for all-out war on private industry. Conservatism, on the other hand,
speaks not of compromise, but of removing its adversaries from the field
altogether. While de-funding the left is the north star of the conservative
project, there is no comparable campaign to “de-fund the right”; indeed, it
would be difficult to imagine one.
Local Police May Get Broader Spy Powers by Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie
Johnson 8/16/08 - The Justice Department
has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state
and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive
data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years. The proposed
changes would revise the federal government's rules for police
intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of
the nation's 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6
billion each year in federal grants. Quietly unveiled late last month, the
proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and
planned by the Bush administration in its waning months.
Washington's Lords of Creation – Follow This Dime: Why
Misgovernment Was No Accident in George W. Bush's Washington by Thomas Frank 8/4/08 - Author of The
Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, Frank offers nothing short of a how-to history
of the conservative era -- specifically how to destroy a government, leave Americans
in the lurch, and enrich yourselves all at the same time.
Adventures in the Poison Factory by Chris Floyd 8/1/08 - There is no place left for the kind of action that Thoreau advocated. His way - and that of Gandhi and King, who took so much from him - envisions a state opponent which one could hope to shame into honorable action by the superior moral force of principled civil disobedience. But the very hallmark of the present regime is its shamelessness, its utter lack of any sense of honor or principle, its bestial addiction to raw power.
The Military-Industrial Complex: It's
Much Later Than You Think by
Chalmers Johnson 7/27/08 - The privatization of military and intelligence
functions in the US is breeding incompetence and corruption while dismantling
democracy.
Post-Peak
Politics by John
Michael Greer 7/23/08 - If Weimar America is to have a less disastrous future
than its 20th century counterpart, we need to move toward serious debate over
the shape that future is going to have, and our economically ruinous empire,
our disintegrating national economy, and our extravagant lifestyles need to be
among the things up for discussion. The first political movement to come up
with a plausible response to peak oil will likely define the political
discourse around energy and society for decades to come.
Naomi Klein: Bush Sees Crises in Fuel, Food,
Housing and Banking as Chance to Exploit Us More by Amy Goodman 7/16/08 - As the country and the world reel from crises
ranging from skyrocketing oil prices and global food shortages to housing and
climate change, the government pushes through policies that don't
solve the crises but are highly profitable for corporations.
Court: US Can Jail Civilians Indefinitely 7/16/08 - A federal
appeals court has ruled President Bush can order the indefinite jailing of
civilians imprisoned in the United States. The five-to-four decision
effectively reverses last year's ruling that the administration cannot label US
residents "enemy combatants" and jail them indefinitely without
charge. This decision means the president can pick up any person in the
country-citizen or legal resident-and lock them up for years without the most
basic safeguard in the Constitution, the right to a criminal trial.
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Berlusconi
& Bush |
Duce Bags: Italy Leads Fascist Revanche in Western Democracies by Chris Floyd 7/13/08 - The rise of neo-fascism in Italy, and elsewhere, is tied to the
collapse – or rather the surrender – of center-left parties to the
pernicious doctrines of the Right. Everywhere, these parties --- Democrats in
America, Labour in the UK, various Social Democrats throughout Europe –
have turned themselves into pale copies of conservative parties, adopting
policies that have degraded society, destroyed communities, entrenched injustice,
rewarded greed, poisoned the earth, embraced militarism and aggression,
inflicted vast suffering on developing nations (through the straightjacket of
"market reforms," i.e., corporate-crony welfare), subverted
democracy, diminished liberty and gutted the very notion of the common good.
Is the Fourth Estate a Fifth Column? Corporate media colludes with
democracy’s demise by Bill
Moyers 7/11/08 - We
now know that a neoconservative is an arsonist who sets a house on fire and six
years later boasts that no one can put it out. You couldn't find a more
revealing measure of the state of the dominant media today than the continuing
ubiquitous presence on the air and in print of the very pundits and experts,
self-selected message multipliers of a disastrous foreign policy, who got it
all wrong in the first place. It just goes to show, when the bar is low enough,
you can never be too wrong.
Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion by
Naomi Klein 7/1/08 -
Free speech and the fate of
humanity by Kurt Cobb 6/29/08 – James Hansen, speaking
before the U. S. Congress, said that the CEOs of fossil fuel companies should be
tried for "high crimes against humanity and nature." He said they
deserve this fate because they know full well that continued burning of fossil
fuels threatens the stability of the climate and with it civilization. Yet,
they have huge sums of money to exercise their ‘freedom of speech’ in the media
in order to purposely confuse the public and forestall the day when limits will
be placed on carbon emissions.
With so much at stake, is there a
way of addressing free speech that preserves the basic principles of an open
and democratic society, but still allows for those who have the evidence and
the logic on their side to prevail in time to avoid the worst?
The Big Outcome of the '60s: The Triumph of
Capitalism by Slavoj Zizek 6/27/08 - The commons of
external nature are threatened by pollution and exploitation; the commons of
internal nature (the biogenetic inheritance of humanity) are threatened by
technological interference; and the commons of culture -- the socialized forms
of "cognitive" capital, primarily language, our means of
communication and education, but also the shared infrastructure of public
transport, electricity, post, etc. -- are privatized for profit. We are gradually becoming aware of the
destructive potential, up to the self-annihilation of humanity itself, that
could be unleashed if the capitalist logic of enclosing these commons is
allowed a free run.
Techno-Fascism: Every Move You Make by
Chellis Glendinning
Food, Water And Fuel. Three Fundamental
Necessities Of Life In Jeopardy By
Michel Chossudovsky 6/6/08 (24 p) - We are
dealing with a complex and centralized constellation of economic power in which
the instruments of market manipulation have a direct bearing on the lives of
millions of people. The prices of
food, water, fuel are determined at the global level, beyond the reach of
national government policy. The price hikes of these three essential
commodities constitute an instrument of "economic warfare", carried
out through the "free market" on the futures and options exchanges. These hikes in the
prices of food, water and fuel are contributing in a very real sense to
"eliminating the poor" through "starvation deaths". With charts/graphs.
Global Famine by Michel Chossudovsky 5/2/08 - Humanity is undergoing in the post-Cold War era an economic and
social crisis of unprecedented scale leading to the rapid impoverishment of
large sectors of the world population. National economies are collapsing,
unemployment is rampant. Local level famines have erupted in Sub-Saharan
Africa, South Asia and parts of Latin America. This "globalization of
poverty" was initiated in the Third World coinciding with the debt crisis
of the early 1980s and the imposition of the IMF's deadly economic reforms.
The Terror President by Anthony Lewis 5/1/08 - I grew up believing that Americans did not torture
prisoners, as Hitler's and Stalin's agents did. There were rogue episodes of
American brutality, but to make torture a national policy? Unthinkable. No one should be in any doubt that
torture was what President Bush had in mind. No one should be fooled by
Orwellian talk of "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Green Scare State Terrorism by
Stephen Lendman 4/29/08 - The "war against terrorism" was
planned and ready before 9/11 to defile the law, wage aggressive wars, usurp
unprecedented powers, destroy civil liberties, and convince the public to
sacrifice freedom for security they never got. “Ecoterrorism” was the key target in the war against
“domestic terrorism,” which criminalizes First Amendment activities like
peaceful protests, leafleting, undercover investigations, whistleblowing and
boycotts.
Message Machine: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s
Hidden Hand by
David Barstow 4/20/08 (23 p) - War profiteers posing as experts present the news according to
Pentagon talking points – with a pro-war bias, of course.
False Flag Terror Attacks: a History 4/10/08
What schools didn't teach about empire by
Howard Zinn 4/4/08
Bill Moyers Acceptance of Courage Prize (Bill Moyers acceptance speech for the Ridenhour Courage Prize) 4/3/08
- The job of trying to
tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is almost as
complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place. We
journalists are of course obliged to cover the news, but our deeper mission is
to uncover the news that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden.
Is An International Financial Conspiracy Driving
World Events? By Richard C. Cook 3/27/08 - Isn’t it a little
strange that the means which have been selected to achieve "peace and
prosperity for the whole of humanity" involve so much violence, deception,
oppression, exploitation, graft, and theft? In fact it looks to me as though "our plan for the
world" is one that is based on genocide, world war, police control of
populations, and seizure of the world’s resources by the financial elite and
their puppet politicians and military forces. One thing is certain: The voters
of America have never knowingly agreed to any of this.
Seeds of destruction by
Stephen Hume 3/19/08 - The concentration of more and more of the world's
crop seeds in fewer and fewer hands is a threat to global agriculture and
everyone's food supply. So it's fascinating to observe how we appear to be
collectively sleepwalking toward precisely such a potential catastrophe with
that most strategic of all things, a sustainable, secure, equitably distributed
global food supply.
Food, Fuel, And Fascism: Their Election Or Your
Life? by Carolyn Baker 3/13/08 - I must ask what
you are doing to prepare yourself and your loved ones for living in a world of
famine, thirst, lawlessness, lack of health care, a worthless dollar, and
possible martial law. How are you building community with others to weather
this scenario?
Overcoming Human Nature: The Revolution of the
Meek by Peter Chamberlin 03/09/08 - The closing of minds is the cornerstone of all efforts to claim illegitimate
power on this earth. Conversely, the opening of minds must be the foundation
for any effort to call forth the new man, who will naturally assume his
rightful place between the majority of the human race and the evil minority
that seeks to enslave all life.
The Global Water Crisis And The Coming Battle
For The Right To Water by
Maude Barlow 2/28/08
When Change Is Not Enough: Seven Steps to
Revolution by Sara Robinson 2/22/08 - It turns out
that, historically, liberal nations make very poor grounds for revolution --
but deeply conservative ones very reliably create the conditions that
eventually make violent overthrow necessary. And our own Republicans, it turns
out, have done a hell of a job.
America’s Blinders by Howard Zinn 2/08/08
A short history of big
lies and how to protect ourselves from deception.
Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business by
Matthew Rothschild 2/7/08 - Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private
industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland
Security. The members of InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist
threats before the public does. In
return, they provide information to the government.
US Politics Have No Left Wing by Martin Rundkvist 2/3/08
Pentagon: The internet needs to be dealt with as
if it were an enemy "weapons system" by Brent Jessop 2/2/08
Western Civilization: An Idea Whose Time Has Come by Amy Goodman 1/31/08
- On
American torture policies and support for dictators.
NATO Must Prepare For Nuclear First Strike, Report Urges by Bill
Van Auken 1/24/08
An Iron Fist In A Velvet Glove by Ted Rall 1/5/08
How to Erode and Destroy Democracy: a Dozen Tested Strategies by Rob Kall 1/2/08 - Tips to fascists,
dictators, corporatists, militarists, imperialists, neocons, right-wingers,
theocrats, theofascists and terrorists.
How
Bush Took Us to the Dark Side - Journey to the Dark Side, The Bush Legacy (Take One) by Tom Engelhardt 1/2/08 - Let no one tell you that
the institution of a global network of secret prisons and borrowed torture
chambers, along with those "enhanced interrogation techniques," was
primarily done for information or even security. The urge to resort to such
tactics is invariably more primal than that.
The Future that Wasn't, Part Two: The Phantom of Empire by John
Michael Greer 1/2/08
The
Post-Bush Regime: A Prognosis by Richard K. Moore 12/27/07
Hidden agendas of Federal
Reserve elites/Bilderbergers, biofuels, food, genocide, capitalism, power and
empowerment.
Thought Control on the Internet by Michael
Collins,
Part 1 12/19/07
Reconciling
Fascism with Reality By
Pervez Dastoor 12/14/07
International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance 12/ 10/07
The Emergence of a Global Infrastructure For Mass
Registration and Surveillance: 10 Signposts
"Doomsday Seed Vault" in the Arctic - Bill Gates,
Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t. by F. William Engdahl 12/4/07
The Planned Collapse of
America by Peter
Chamberlin 12/4/07
Fascism, Feudalism,
and the Future by John
Michael Greer 11/14/07
Why Even If You Have Nothing To Hide, Government
Surveillance Threatens Your Freedom by
John Dean 10/19/07
Police State America - A
Look Back And Ahead by Stephen Lendman 10/17/07 Catalogues the steps taken by Bush Administration
towards police state.
American Tears by
Naomi Wolf 10/12/07
The Mean Streets of the Homeland Security State-let: NYC,
the NYPD, the RNC, and Me - Fortress Big Apple, 2007 By Nick Turse 9/30/07
America’s Guardian Myths by
Susan Faludi 9/7/07 - By returning us to the
trauma that produced our national myth, the 9/11 attacks present the
opportunity to look past the era of buckskin bravado and unlock the cabinet
wherein lies America’s deepest formative fear, the fear of home-soil terrorism.
'A Coup Has Occurred' By Daniel Ellsberg 9/26/07 (Text of a speech
delivered September 20, 2007)
The
Necessary Embrace of Conspiracy by Robert Shetterly 8/31/07
Tales of Angst, Alienation and Martial Law: Roasting Marshmallows on the
American Reichstag Fire to Come by Phil Rockstroh 7/26/07
Fascist America, in 10 easy steps by Naomi
Wolf 4/24/07 - From Hitler to Pinochet
and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator
must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George
Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.
Project Censored: Media Democracy in Action, Top Censored Stories
BuzzFlash.com Talks with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., About his indictment of the Bush anti-environmental
record and fascism. 12/15/03
Operation Northwoods in ABC News Report
: Top US Generals Approved Terror Acts in US 5/1/01 - The revealing ABC news
article at the link below begins, "In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly
drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S.
cities to create public support for a war against Cuba." The
article goes on to say that the plans, code-named Operation Northwoods, were
approved in writing by the top US military chiefs. These plans, revealed in
declassified US government documents, even proposed that the US military
secretly blow up an American ship and hijack US planes as a false pretext for
war. You can read all four pages of this vitally important article on the ABC website.
The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the Twenty-first
Century by Susan George, a review by David Cromwell 1/2000 - The
planet's future may be reserved for an exclusive, self-selecting elite few,
while the rest of us are shut out if we do not serve their needs. Welcome to a
world riven by a million virtual Berlin Walls.
The seeds of this
potential future are with us already. Public resources - civic services, land,
the atmosphere, the genetic blueprints of life - are being transferred into
private hands. The rising dominance of corporations over our daily lives is
increasingly acknowledged - and resisted - by people everywhere, though not by
the corporate media that tell us what to think (or
not to think). The ongoing liberalisation of global trade and investment, with publicly-funded government stacking the odds in
favour of big business - using corporate-friendly tax breaks, subsidies and
legislation - are enabling international investors and transnational corporations to ‘enclose the commons.’
 |
Torheit der Furcht (Foolishness
of Fear) by Francisco Goya |
Denial, Irrationality, and Collective Delusion
Facing our Demons - Or Not by Judith Gayle 6/18/10 -
The BP Disaster Marks
the End of the Age of Arrogance About the Environment ... Can We Change? by Chip Ward 6/10/10 - This spill will mark the time we started to
learn about ecocide; as a turning point in our realization that our industrial,
carbon-dependent way of life is ruinous and cannot last. We dreamed we were living
in a fabulous mansion but are waking up in a greasy gutter. The
ecological and economic catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico makes our most
infamous oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, look miniscule by comparison. This
time we have fouled our nest on an epic scale. How many more of these
wrenching experiences must we endure before we finally get it and
change? The age of hubris, a time when all things are knowable, all
problems can be fixed, and all limits surpassed is crashing all around
us. We granted ourselves an exemption from the limits of a natural realm
where there is only so much fertile soil, so much fresh water, so many fish in
the ocean. The atmosphere can only absorb so much CO2 and stay
benign. You can shred just so much biodiversity and expect nature to be
resilient and recover from the wounds we recklessly inflict.
The
Mental Environment: Where our fate as
humans will be decided - by
Bill Mc Kibben 6/1/10 – Perhaps earlier in
our primate evolution our brains worked differently, but for millions of years
we have been shaping our own minds and the minds of those around us. Our mental
environment is not the Yosemite of John Muir or Ansel Adams. It has always been
more like Central Park, a landscaped reflection of human notions. Every
generation, every community, has had a mental environment. The culture. The
zeitgeist. It is that almost invisible fog of assumptions in which we live our
lives, the set of images and ideas we barely notice because they are so common
as to be both banal and overwhelming. This is not the first moment that our mental environment has
been polluted. The state, the church have time and again become mentally
oppressive until eventually a resistance emerged — a resistance that,
from Martin Luther to Vaclav Havel, said at least in part: “We want our minds
back.” The mental environment is under siege from a particularly difficult
variety of pollution. We are the first few generations to receive most of our
sense of the world mediated rather than direct, to have it arrive through one
screen or another instead of from contact with other human beings or
with nature.
Knowledge, Truth, And Human Action: Americans Hit
The Wall by John
Kozy 5/16/10 - Americans
have a problem with the truth. They seem to be unable to accept it, which is
difficult to understand at a time in history when knowledge plays a larger and
larger role in determining human action. The debasement of truth stems from two misguided beliefs that many
Americans hold. They affect much of American society and define the American
psyche. One belief is that the truth emerges from a debate between adversaries.
The other is the belief that everyone has a right to his/her own opinion. Many
American activities are based on these beliefs.
Is humanity
inherently unsustainable? by Alex Smith 4/15/10 - A
milestone lecture by Dr. Bill Rees about our three brains: the reactive reptile
stem, mammalian emotions, and the late-coming attempt at rationality. Which
wins? After explaining years of research showing humanity has passed a
biological condition known as "overshoot" - Rees is examining an
evolutionary weakness in the human brain, which may explain our failure to
react to dangerous threats to our own survival. Full transcript or audio.
Haiti: There's So Much More To The Story... by Tom Atlee 1/20/10 - The global response to the tragedy in Haiti is an
excellent example of our readiness to respond to challenges that present
obvious immediate personal suffering or danger and our inability to respond to
challenges whose dangers are more diffuse in space or time, or are invisible to
our immediate senses -- even when they have potential for far greater
disaster. I believe addressing our
blindness to long-term less-visible dangers is the most important lesson of all
because behind every shortcoming -- as well as behind most future disasters --
are systems and cultures that make them virtually inevitable. And what will support every positive
possibility will be changes in our social systems -- especially political,
governance, and economic systems -- and changes in the cultural stories we tell
ourselves about who we are and what we are doing here on Earth. Haiti's crisis is only one step on a
long journey we will be traveling together during this new century. Let us build a better path as we walk
it.
America the Traumatized: How 13 Events of the Decade Made Us the PTSD
Nation by Adele M. Stan 12/30/09 - In America today, it
seems we all have a touch of post-traumatic stress disorder, as evidenced by
our increasingly vitriolic political environment, where reality is denied and
histrionics run riot. Anger, we're told, is the natural reaction to trauma; in
people with PTSD, the anger is out of control. By that measure, the millennial
decade has brought us 10 years of PTSD politics -- with no end in sight.
A Battle to Redefine Humanity by George Monbiot 12/15/09 - It's hard for a species used to
ever-expanding frontiers, but survival depends on accepting we live within
limits. This is the moment at
which we turn and face ourselves. Here, in the plastic corridors and crowded
stalls, among impenetrable texts and withering procedures, humankind decides
what it is and what it will become. It chooses whether to continue living as it
has done, until it must make a wasteland of its home, or to stop and redefine
itself. This is about much more than climate change. This is about us. The
meeting at Copenhagen confronts us with our primal tragedy.
The Common Link with
Climate Change, Peak Oil, Limits To Growth, Etc. - Belief Systems by Nate Hagens 12/10/09 - Many of the issues discussed on this bandwidth are
large, long term, and threatening. Consider the three primary society-wide
topics of analysis and discourse: climate, energy and the economy. It is my
belief these 3 are linked by an underlying cultural growth/debt imperative
running into a planet with finite sources and sinks. But within each category
you have, still, despite the same access to facts and considerable
passage of time, widely disparate and strongly held opinions. If you find
yourself in a debate about any of these issues you'll find apathy or you'll
find cognitive biases underlying a polarized opinion. This post will address some social and psychological reasons
why the urgency of our resource situation may not be being addressed on an
individual level and only at a snails pace on the governmental level. Among the
phenomena we will explore are a) why we have
beliefs and how they are changed, b) our propensity to believe
in authority figures, c) our penchant for optimism, d) cognitive load theory,
e) relative fitness, f) the recency effect, and several others.
Thelma, Louise and Six Degrees by Tim Bennett 12/9/09 - If "Thelma & Louise" shows us the Geist, it’s the Geist of
our own Zeit. Did not the
culture of civilization, at some point, take off on a weekend fling of
unexpected exhilaration that spiraled out of control, bringing the entire
planet face to face with our present predicament? And have not many
people’s lives, at least those lived here in the heart of Empire, become so
loveless, abused and unsatisfying that we’re poised now to do almost anything
to get out of them? Have we not truly managed to do something no other
living creature has managed to do, which is to make ourselves, individually and
collectively, miserable? And I wonder if we’re not buying any attempt to fix
this problem that has as its goal the preservation of the culture of
Empire. I think, collectively, our bodies are not buying that. Our
sane essential selves are not buying that. iPods and duck confit DO NOT
outweigh the costs to our souls of lives lived in prison and the destruction of
the community of life. And sadly, we do not see that anything less than
global catastrophe will free us from our collective insanity.
Chris Hedges warns of
pageantry's perils by Brad Buchholz
12/5/09 - Chris Hedges, who wrote Empire of Illusion, examines America's identity crisis in an age of
consumerism and spectacle. He sees, in America, a nation that has lost its way. He sees
a country that places prosperity above principle, celebrity above substance,
spectacle above nuance and introspection. He sees a "timid, cowed,
confused" populace disconnected from language, governed by consumerism,
ambivalent toward the common good, enamored by an American myth that has no basis
in the American reality.
The Dark Side of the Bright Side: an interview with
Barbara Ehrenreich by Anis
Shivani 11/4/09 - In her new book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion
of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, Barbara Ehrenreich
traces the origins of contemporary optimism from nineteenth-century healers to
twentieth-century pushers of consumerism. She explores how that culture
of optimism prevents us from holding to account both corporate heads
and elected officials. This mania for looking on the bright side has given us
the present financial collapse; optimistic business leaders—assisted by
rosy-eyed policymakers—made very bad decisions.
Strange Bright Banners by John Michael Greer 10/21/09 - It’s quite possible to replace a bad system with one that is
much, much worse. The collapse of American democracy, or what is left of it,
into one or another form of autocracy may be a foregone conclusion at this
point. Oswald Spengler argued that the great struggle of the century or two
ahead of his time would pit failing democracies corrupted by wealth in a long
but ultimately losing struggle against the rising force of what he called
Caesarism – the rise of charismatic leaders who would finish destroying
crumbling democratic institutions and rule by a combination of force of
personality and raw physical violence. For more than
two centuries, the glue that has held American society together has been the
hope that each generation, no matter how difficult its own life might be, could
hope for better things for its children. That faith is breaking apart where it
has not already shattered. In its wake, strange bright banners are all too
likely to be unfurled, and I suspect that a great many people who imagine
themselves immune from the temptation of simple answers will end up marching
beneath those banners toward some terrible destiny.
Six Degrees of Separation from Reality by Tom
Atlee 9/30/09 - Evolution
demands that we be aligned with reality as it really is. When any organism gets out of alignment
-- when it doesn't fit, when its ways don't work any more -- reality steps in
to correct the dissonance. Organisms, ideas, governments, businesses and technologies die or go
extinct while new ones arise that are more in alignment with What Is. There are
many ways to view civilization in this dynamic. One of them is that civilization is an exercise in making us
invulnerable to the efforts of reality to limit or correct our behaviors,
ideas, and systems. Whenever nature intervenes and says to us "Don't Do
That!", we take that as a problem to be solved -- and measure our
cleverness by our ability to keep doing that thing that got us in trouble. We
are geniuses at impacting the world while preventing impact on ourselves. As we solve our lives into greater and
greater separation from the built-in learning mechanisms of evolution, nature
has to stretch further and further to heal itself, to get us to pay attention, to stop treating feedback as a
problem and see it as an increasingly urgent invitation -- indeed a demand --
to change.
The War on Language by Chris Hedges 9/28/09 - The debasement of language, which Shakespeare
understood was a prelude to violence, is the curse of modernity. We have
stopped communicating, even with ourselves. And the consequences will be as
extreme as in a Shakespearean tragedy. Those who seek to dominate our behavior
first seek to dominate our speech. They seek to obscure meaning. They make war
on language. And the English- and Arabic-speaking worlds are each beset with a
similar assault on language. An impoverished language solidifies a binary world and renders us
children with weapons.
Beyond Statecraft; Navigating The Collapse Of
Industrial Civilization by Frank Joseph Smecker 9/17/09 - In an interview with Carolyn Baker on her book Sacred Demise, she talks about the collapse of industrial civilization – what it
may look like, reasons for its occurrence, the effects of collapse and, how to
relocalize and create sustainable communities in the throes of collapse.
Through the lenses of psychology, spirituality, and history, Carolyn discusses
denial and addiction, how whatever we deny or ignore only becomes a larger
threat, how collapse is a drawn-out process of erosion that will test our
sanity while shaking off old paradigms, and what we can do to maintain a sense
of peace, pragmatism, and community.
The
Spectacle of Illiteracy and the Crisis of Democracy by Henry A.
Giroux 9/15/09 - I don't mean illiterate in the sense of not being able to read, though
we have far too many people who are functionally illiterate in a so-called
advanced democracy. But I am talking about a different species of ignorance and
anti-intellectualism. Illiterate in this instance refers to the inability on
the part of much of the American public to grasp private troubles and the
meaning of the self in relation to larger public problems and social relations.
It is a form of illiteracy that points less to the lack of technical skills and
the absence of certain competencies than to a deficit in the realms of
politics—one that subverts both critical thinking and the notion of
literacy as both critical interpretation and the possibility of intervention in
the world. The type of illiteracy is not only incapable of dealing with complex
and contested questions; it also glorifyies the principle of self-interest as a
paradigm for understanding politics.
Are We Possessed? by
Paul Levy 9/09 - This is a long, very
thorough description of the process, characteristics and symptoms of archetypal
possession and inflation in individuals and in groups and masses of
people. Liberally supported by
quotes from C.G. Jung, Paul Levy shows how, through consciousness, individuals
can access the creative genius of an archetype and thus avoid its diabolical
and destructive manifestations. Only by developing psycho-spiritual fluency can we avoid getting caught
up in the psychic epidemics that lead to mass psychosis and catastrophic
destruction.
The Problem of Denial by
William R. Catton, Jr. 8/6/09 - This 1995 article, resurrected by Culture Change in mid-2009, remains
one of the best on the psychology of denial. This is Catton’s abstract, lightly
edited: Abundant
evidence suggests industrial civilization must be "downsized" to curb
damage to the ecosphere by the "technosphere." Trends behind this
prospect include prodigious population growth, urbanization, cultural
dependence upon ravenous use of fossil fuels and other nonrenewable resources,
consequent air pollution, and global climate change. Although these trends have been well publicized, eminent
writers persist in denying that human carrying capacity (Earth's maximum
sustainable human load) has now been or ever will be exceeded. Denials of
ecological limits resemble anosognosia (inability of stroke patients to
recognize their paralysis). Some denial literature resembles their
confabulations (elaborately unreal stories concocted as rationalizations).
Denial by opponents of human ecology seems to be a way of coping with an
insufferable contradiction between past convictions and present circumstances,
a defense against the cognitive dissonance created by intolerable anomalous
information. (Includes an
extensive literature review up to 1995.)
Don't
Turn the Page on History: Facing the American World We
Created by Tom
Engelhardt 7/23/09 - Given the last eight years of disaster piled on
catastrophe, who in our American world would want to look backward? The urge to
turn the page in this country is palpable, but -- just for a moment -- let's
not. Whatever the Obama administration may want to do, or think should be done,
if we don't face the record we created, if we only look forward, if we only
round up the usual suspects, if we try to turn that page in history and put a
paperweight atop it, we will be haunted by the Bush years until hell freezes
over. However busy we may be, whatever tasks await us here in this country --
and they remain monstrously large -- we do need to make an honest, clear-headed
assessment of what we did (and, in some cases, continue to do), of the horrors
we committed in the name of... well, of us and our "safety." We need
to face who we've been and just
how badly we've acted, if we care to become something better.
The Psychological and Evolutionary Roots of
Resource Overconsumption Revisited by Nate Hagens 6/25/09 - This post examines our own history on the planet, outlines how the
ancient-derived reward pathways of our brain are easily hijacked by modern
stimuli, and concludes that in very real ways, we have become addicted to the
'consumptive behaviors' linked to oil.
Selling
Education, Manufacturing Technocrats, Torturing Souls by William Astore 5/28/09 - I'm convinced that American education, even in the worst of times,
even recognizing the desperate need of most college students to land jobs, is
far too utilitarian, vocational, and narrow. It's simply not enough to prepare
students for a job: We need to prepare them for life, while challenging them to
think beyond the confines of their often parochial and provincial upbringings.
And here's one compelling lesson all of us, students and teachers alike, need
to relearn constantly: If you view education in purely instrumental terms as a
way to a higher-paying job -- if it's merely a mechanism for mass customization
within a marketplace of ephemeral consumer goods -- you've effectively given a
free pass to the prevailing machinery of power and those who run it.
Silent Armageddon? by Alexis
Ziegler 2/28/09 - The greatest danger of the
ecological collapse of civilization is that we might not notice. There are a
few taboos in political and academic discussion that serve to make our leaders
look important and moral. We are not supposed to admit that our minds are
directly influenced by the Earth on which we walk, or the degree to which we
benefit from the exploitation of the global underclass. Our failure to
recognize these things hides the impacts of ecological collapse. A simple
extrapolation of current trends would indicate that those in power are going to
try to stay in power, try to maintain their privilege, and will be willing to
use many different schemes, overt and covert, to do so. They are going to try
to shuffle the distress downward.
How To Control A Herd Of Humans by
David Robson 2/4/09 - Hitler
and Mussolini both had the ability to bend millions of people to their fascist
will. Now evidence from psychology and neurology is emerging to explain how
tactics like organised marching and propaganda can work to exert mass mind
control.
Confronting the Terrorist Within by Chris Hedges 12/1/08 - The fantasy of an enlightened West that
spreads civilization to a savage world of religious fanatics is not supported
by history. The worst genocides and slaughters of the last century were
perpetrated by highly industrialized nations. Those who externalize evil and seek to eradicate that evil
through violence lose touch with their own humanity and the humanity of others.
They cannot make moral distinctions. They are blind to their own moral
corruption. In the name of civilization and high ideals, in the name of reason
and science, they become monsters. We will never free ourselves from the
self-delusion of the "war on terror" until we first vanquish the
terrorist within.
A Letter to America by
Anwaar Hussain 11/20/08 - Before
you can join Barack Obama’s sweet lilting voice in singing, Free at last! Free at last!, Thank God
Almighty, we are free at last!, you have one last ritual to perform. And
that is the killing of the demons of your recent past lest they come back to
haunt you yet again. Unless you perform that sacred rite too, this
transformation stands incomplete.
America the Illiterate by Chris Hedges 11/10/08 - We live in two Americas. One America, now the
minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with
complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The
other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based
belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for
information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It
cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic,
childish narratives and clichés. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is
illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2
million a year.
Apocalypse Later: A Futurologist Looks Back at 2008 by John Feffer 8/20/08 - We seek out the
comfortable middle at our own peril. Not too hot and not too cold, not too hard
and not too soft, it's a strategy guaranteed to lull anyone into a dangerous
complacency. After all, once you've made your bed, however comfortable it may
be, you have to lie in it. And it's then, after a few brief moments of
self-satisfied sleep, that you're bound to hear the scratching at the door.
The Delusion Revolution: We're on the Road to Extinction and in
Denial by Robert
Jensen 8/15/08 - Our
current way of life is unsustainable. We are the first species that will have
to self-consciously impose limits on ourselves if we are to survive. We're in trouble, on all fronts, and the trouble
is wider and deeper than most of us have been willing to acknowledge. We should
struggle to build a road on which we can walk through those troubles -- if such
a road is possible -- but I doubt it's going to look like any path we had
previously envisioned, nor is it likely to lead anywhere close to where most of
us thought we were going.
Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to
Knowledge? By Patricia Cohen 2/14/08 Not only are Americans ignorant about essential scientific, civic and
cultural knowledge but they also don’t think it matters.
The Absurd Persistence Of Domination by Jason Miller 1/2/08 - Capitalism, the
systemization of greed, selfishness, subjugation, and exploitation camouflaged
by the narcotic of consumerism, the irresistible illusion of equal opportunity
for all, and its ostensible compatibility with liberal democracy, has seduced
hundreds of millions of people into ignoring its contradictions, injustices,
and malevolence.
The Madness Of George W. Bush:
A Reflection Of
Our Collective Psychosis by Paul Levy - George W. Bush is ill. He has a psycho-spiritual dis-ease of
the soul, a sickness that is endemic to our culture and symptomatic of the
times in which we live. It is an illness that has been with us since time
immemorial. Because it is an illness in the soul of all of humanity, it
pervades the field and is in all of us in potential at any moment, which makes
it especially hard to diagnose. The malignant egophrenia epidemic has induced a
form of criminal insanity in the entire Bush regime that we are all complicit
in by allowing it to happen.
The Value of the Truth
by
Andrew Bard Schmookler, Summer 2005 - There’s a good reason why the truth has a good reputation. One need only look at where untruth
gets us. The quest for truth may
at times lead to confusion, but in the long run such confusion is a lot less
dangerous than a disastrously false certainty. Reality may not always be what we might wish it were, but
reality doesn’t go away even when we close our eyes to it. And those who don’t
grab that bull by the tail are likely to end up getting trampled by it.
What Makes Americans Susceptible to Manipulation?
by
Andrew Bard Schmookler 10/04 - The
powerful used to just take what they wanted by the sword. The rise of democracy
required the powerful to trade in the sword for the con job: just manipulate
the people into choosing against their own true interests. It is only when the
people can see through the lies that they reclaim the power that is their
birthright as citizens of this American democracy.
Truthdig – drilling beneath the
headlines – 2010 best political blog
Boiling Frogs: home of the irate minority – Sibel Edmonds’ podcasts and
blogs.
International Forum on Globalization (IFG) - (IFG) is a
North-South research and educational institution composed of leading activists,
economists, scholars, and researchers providing analysis and critiques on the
cultural, social, political, and environmental impacts of economic
globalization.
Global Research – Centre for Research on
Globalization
The Transnational Institute (TNI) – TNI carries out
cutting-edge analysis on critical global issues, builds alliances with
grassroots social movements, develops proposals for a more sustainable and just
world.
The American Empire Project – At this moment of unprecedented economic and military strength, the
leaders of the United States have embraced imperial ambitions openly. How did
we get to this point? And what lies down the road?
Project
Censored – Media Democracy in Action. Top censored stories.
Want to Know – Our website focuses on providing reliable, verifiable facts which are being hidden from public view. By spreading this important information, each of us can make a difference.
The Zeitgeist Movement - Fluid social change
can only materialize if two circumstances are met. One, the human value system,
which consists of our understandings and beliefs, must be updated and changed
through education and thoughtful introspection. Two, the environment
surrounding that value system must change to support the new world view. The
interaction between a person's value system and their environment is what
influences human behavior.
Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy
in the American Imperium – Chris Floyd’s blog
Ebullient Skepticism – Phil Rockstroh’s blog - Commentary on the current
political and cultural climate of America and the internalization of corporate
capitalism.
Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine Blog
Big Brother Media Articles: Excerpts of Key Big Brother Media Articles from Major
Media
Social Pathology: the Invisible Prison, Part1/11 by Peter
Joseph 4/10 – We can no
longer rely on government institutions to steer us in the right direction. Every government on this planet is
locked into an economically oriented social program, which is self-serving,
unsustainable and destructive, to one degree or another.
The Real News Network – “The Future Depends on Knowing”
Dennis Kucinich at the DNC: Wake Up America!
Naomi Klein on China and the Olympics 8/9-18/08 – "Corporations are built to be opportunistic.
That's their mission. If there's an opportunity, they must take advantage of
it, and it's in the interests of their shareholders, and they shouldn't be
sentimental about it. So that's what capitalism is supposed to do: take
advantage of opportunities. What I'm talking about, and what I mean by disaster
capitalism, is a political strategy." 5-part interview includes Is China a new disaster-capitalism trough? China
security tech supplied by US companies, Is China’s authoritarian capitalism a
global trend?, Shock doctrine opens way for oil
drilling.
The Way of the World: Ron
Suskind - How
the Bush Admin deliberately faked an Iraq-al-Qaeda connection and undermined
diplomacy and democracy in Pakistan and Iran. 8/13/08 (1
hour)
Democracy Now: American Fascists Pt. 1 – Chris Hedges on Democracy Now!
- Hedges
draws striking parallels between 20th-century totalitarian movements and the
highly organized, well-funded "dominionist movement" in the United
States, an influential theocratic sect within the country's huge evangelical
population.
Democracy Now: American Fascists Pt. 2 - Chris Hedges
With Crises in Fuel, Food, Housing and Banking,
What Gvt. Policies Are Being Pushed Through? Naomi Klein Reexamines "The Shock Doctrine"
7/15/08 - Klein: What I mean by “the shock doctrine”
is that there is a clear political strategy, and has been for several decades,
to exploit these moments when people are desperate for quick-fix solutions and
more inclined to believe in a kind of a magical cure, to push through very,
very unpopular policies that don’t actually solve the crisis at hand, that
don’t actually help people, but are incredibly profitable for multinational
corporations.
A People's History of American Empire by Howard
Zinn – an animated video of Zinn’s "Empire or Humanity? What the
Classroom Didn't Teach Me about the American Empire," read by Viggo Mortensen.
CAUGHT: Pentagon pundits on TV news
Skimbleshanks 3/21/08 - Of all the books on 9/11, Peter Dale Scott's learned The Road To 9/11 deserves special recognition for situating the events of 9/11 in an
intelligible, albeit complicated, context. Unlike other social critics who see
a simple narrative in government actions, Peter sees rich textures in what he
calls 'the deep state.' An agnostic about what actually happened on 9/11 Peter
nevertheless convincingly argues that everything is not as it seems. Here, we
take up 9/11 as well as larger philosophical themes. Audio: 1 hour, 16 min.
TomDispatch interviews Nick Turse on The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday
Lives (3/08)
Privacy is Dead: Get Over It - Part I by
Steven Rambam
Privacy is Dead: Get Over It – Part 2 by
Steven Rambam
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the American Media – Americans
are the most entertained and least informed people in the world.
Torture and Democracy: Scholar Darius Rejali Details
the History and Scope of Modern Torture 3/12/08 - Darius Rejali has
been described as “one of the world’s leading thinkers and writers on the
subject of torture and the consequences of its use for modern society.” Rejali
is a professor of political science at Reed College and author of the new book Torture
and Democracy.
American Unreason - Bill Moyers talks with Susan Jacoby about her new book, THE AGE OF
AMERICAN UNREASON. 2/15/08
Taxi to the Dark Side: Oscar-winning
documentary film explores U.S. abuses in “War on Terror - director Alex Gibney
interview on Democracy Now! 2/1/08
Dramatic Voices of Dissent: Celebrities Film Zinn's 'The People Speak' by Sue Katz 1/26/08
Author and Social Critic Susan Faludi on “The
Terror Dream: Fear
and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America” examines
the cultural impact of the 9/11 attacks and concludes that the United States
has been living in a myth since. She explores how the attacks led to the
denigration of women here in the United States, the magnification of manly men
and the call for greater domesticity. 10/4/07
“The End of America”: Naomi
Wolf Warns U.S. in Slow Descent into Fascism on Democracy Now!
Talk by Naomi Wolf - The End of America - The
Fascist Blueprint, it can happen here
The Shock Doctrine Short Film - A Film by Alfonso Cuarón and
Naomi Klein, directed by Jonás Cuarón.
A Big Easy North American Union – A complete restructuring of US laws and transportation infrastructure
is taking place behind closed doors, without Congressional oversight or
approval. This shows the
disastrous consequences of NAFTA for New Orleans and the US.
Edward Bernays
and the Assassination of Democracy - Mind manipulation USA - It's possible that
Americans are single most manipulated people on earth. How did we get this way? Here's some essential history you
weren't taught in school.
The
Century Of The Self by Adam Curtis 2007, Parts 1-4
(58 min each) - A BBC series
on the manipulation of the American public by using Freud’s theories in order
to control the masses in an age of democracy. The appeal to the public‘s baser instincts by business and
then politicians has promoted narcissism and confusion, and debased democracy.
Economic Hitman - John Perkins interviewed on Democracy Now! 2/15/06 - The US has long exploited countries throughout Central and Latin
America for the natural resources, labor and land. Over the decades, this
exploitation has been backed up by force and through devastating policies
dictated to puppet regimes. Our next guest says he helped the U.S. cheat poor
countries in Latin America and around the globe out of trillions of dollars by
lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over
their economies.
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Hijacked Future - Canadian documentary examines the increasingly
fragile base of the North American industrial food system in order to bring
consumers to a better understanding of what’s at stake with our daily
bread. It asks us to question the wisdom of a system precariously based
on oil and corporate seeds while we’re witnessing the impact of climate change.
Zeitgeist (2 hrs.) - 9/11, military industrial complex, religious
institutions, total information awareness, global control, the federal reserve,
what global corporate power is planning for us all.
Unconstitutional: the War on our Civil Liberties - A documentary that investigates the ways in which
the civil liberties of American citizens and immigrants have been rolled back
since the September 11 and the Patriot Act.
Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War
Best Videos Available for Free Viewing – many surprises here!
Blimp TV – Humor!
The Secret Government videos by Brasscheck TV
Paul Hawken
on Blessed Unrest – The largest social movement in the world has no
(white male) leader and nobody’s in charge. It is about ideas, not
ideologies. Social and
environmental justice movements have merged under an ethos of connection and
sacredness. We’re moving into a
world created by community. It’s humanity’s immune response to corruption and
injustice. (1 hr.)
Zeitgeist: Addendum - Instead of weapons of mass
destruction, it is time to unleash something much more powerful… Weapons of
Mass Creation. Our true divinity is our ability to create, and armed with the
understanding of the Symbiotic connections of life, while being guided by the
emergent nature of reality, there is nothing we cannot do or accomplish. Of
course, we face strong barriers, in the form of established power structures
that refuse to change. At the heart of these structures is the monetary system.
The fractional reserve policy is a form of slavery through debt, where it is
literally impossible for society to be free. These financial and corporate
structures are now obsolete and they must be outgrown.
Taxi to the Dark Side - An
in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan,
Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.
911 False Flag - This
73 min. documentary focuses on the inconsistencies in the official version of
the events as well as on the evidence that has been suppressed regarding
September 11th. In addition, it answers the questions of why we still know
nothing about it to this day and why we are being deceived – also in European
countries. A German film with
English subtitles.
Manufactured Landscapes - A
documentary by Jennifer Baichwal on the work of renowned artist Edward
Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of
“manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and
dams—Burtynsky creates beautiful art from industrial civilization’s
materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the
evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution, inspiring
us to meditate on our impact on the planet as we witness both the epicenters of
industrial endeavor and the dumping grounds of its waste. Manufactured Landscapes powerfully
shifts our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it, without
simplistic judgments or reductive resolutions.
The Lives of Others -
Children of Men feature film by Alfonso Cuarón
The Corporation - a
film and a campaign for corporate harm reduction
The Black Pimpernel– Swedish film about Swedish ambassador
Harald Edelstam and his fight for human rights in Chile during the military
coup that replaced Salvador Allende with Augusto Pinochet in 1973.
Amazing Grace – A film about social change,
and the compassion and courage it took to end the slave trade in Britain.
Extraordinary Popular
Delusions and The Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay - Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of
idiocy when they engage in collective action? Why do financially sensible
people jump lemming-like into hare-brained speculative frenzies--only to jump
broker-like out of windows when their fantasies dissolve? We may think that the
Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, and over-valued high-tech stocks
of the '90s are peculiarly 20th century aberrations, but Mackay's
classic--first published in 1841--shows that the madness and confusion of crowds
knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds. These are extraordinarily
illuminating, and, unfortunately, entertaining tales of chicanery, greed and
naivete. Essential reading for any student of human nature or the transmission
of ideas. If you want to know how
many times the world has been gripped by madness then look no farther than
MacKay's classic. Written in that wonderful Olde English style of the early
19th century, MacKay takes us on a tour of the world's most horrifying manias -
up to about 1840 anyway. It deals with irrational behaviour and mass stupidity
in all walks of life.
Hopes and Prospects by
Noam Chomsky 6/10 - As not only American
foreign policy but its domestic economy accelerates its decline to a point that
only the blind or obtuse can ignore, people who have dismissed Noam Chomsky in
the past as "too radical" may now want to read Hopes and Prospects in order to understand what is really going on.
Empire of Illusion: The
End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges 7/09 - Pulitzer prize-winning Chris Hedges
charts the political, social and cultural consequences of the dramatic and
disturbing rise of a post-literate America that craves fantasy, ecstasy and
illusion. Hedges exposes the mechanisms used to divert us from confronting the
economic, political, and moral collapse around us. The cultural embrace of
illusion, and the celebrity culture that has risen up around it, have
accompanied a growing system of casino capitalism, with its complicated and unregulated
deals of turning debt into magical assets to create fictional wealth for us,
and vast wealth for our elite. Corporations, behind the smoke screen, have
ruthlessly dismantled and destroyed our manufacturing base and impoverished our
working class. The free market became our god and government was taken hostage
by corporations, the same corporations that entice us daily with illusions
through the mass media, the entertainment industry, and popular culture.
Delusions of Normality: Sanity, Drugs, Sex, Money and Beliefs in
America by J.P.
Harpignies 2/09 - In Delusions of Normality: Sanity, Drugs, Sex,
Money and Beliefs in America, J P Harpignies argues convincingly that many
of the unspoken assumptions underlying our media's discourse about our society
are at serious odds with the reality of our lives. Delusions offers a bracing but entertaining look at some of the
darker corners of American life, providing a corrective lens to our
rose-colored myopia about how we really are. It offers compelling evidence that
we are collectively far less sane, far more corruptible, and far 'druggier',
kinkier and zanier than we generally admit. Educators, social scientists,
therapists and the merely curious, take note. Harpignies says, “A
remarkably dynamic strain of corruption, bottom-feeding con artistry and
predatory financial behavior at all levels, some technically legal, some
borderline, some blatantly criminal, is an integral aspect of American life,
central to the evolution of our economic system. It’s not a disease. It's long
been a core attribute of the organism itself.”
The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned
the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too by James Galbraith 2008 - The cult of the free market has dominated economic
policy-talk since the Reagan revolution of nearly thirty years ago. Tax cuts
and small government, monetarism, balanced budgets, deregulation, and free
trade are the core elements of this dogma, a dogma so successful that even many
liberals accept it. In this
riveting book, Galbraith first dissects the stale remains of Reaganism and
shows how Bush and company had no choice except to dump them into the trash. He
then explores the true nature of the Bush regime: a "corporate
republic," bringing the methods and mentality of big business to public
life; a coalition of lobbies, doing the bidding of clients in the oil, mining,
military, pharmaceutical, agribusiness, insurance, and media industries; and a
predator state, intent not on reducing government but rather on diverting
public cash into private hands. In plain English, the Republican Party has been
hijacked by political leaders who long since stopped caring if reality
conformed to their message.
The Madness Of George W. Bush: A Reflection Of Our Collective Psychosis by
Paul Levy - Paul Levy explores whether the madness that George W.
Bush has fallen into is showing us something particularly important about
ourselves. What if Bush’s madness is a reflection of our own potential for
madness? What if Bush has been collectively dreamed up to play out, in
full-bodied form, a pathological role existing deep within the collective
unconscious of all humanity? Though this book centers on George Bush, it is
ultimately about ourselves.
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into
a War on American Ideals by
Jane Mayer - This hard-hitting expose
examines both the controversial excesses of the war on terror and the
home-front struggle to circumvent legal obstacles to its prosecution. Mayer
details the battle within the Bush Administration over a new anti-terrorism
policy of harsh interrogations, indefinite detentions without due process,
extraordinary renditions, secret CIA prisons and warrantless wiretappings.
Fighting with memos and legal briefs, hard-liners led by Dick Cheney rejected
any constraints on the treatment of prisoners or limitations on presidential
power in fighting terrorism, while less militant administration lawyers invoked
the Constitution and international law to oppose their initiatives. As a
counterpoint to the wrangling over the definition of torture and the Geneva
Conventions, the author looks at the interrogation techniques used by the
American military and CIA; her chilling account compellingly argues that this
"enhanced interrogation" regimen constitutes torture. The result is a
meticulous behind-the-scenes reconstruction of policymaking that demonstrates
how legal abstractions became an ugly reality.
The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule by Thomas Frank - Casting back to the early days of the conservative revolution, Frank describes the rise of a ruling coalition dedicated to dismantling government. But rather than cutting down the big government they claim to hate, conservatives have simply sold it off, deregulating some industries, defunding others, but always turning public policy into a private-sector bidding war. It is no coincidence that the same politicians who guffaw at the idea of effective government have installed a regime in which incompetence is the rule. Nor will the country easily shake off the consequences of deliberate misgovernment through the usual election remedies. Obsessed with achieving a lasting victory, conservatives have taken pains to enshrine the free market as a permanent creed of the state.
The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in
an Age of Extremism by Ron Suskind - A startling look at how
America lost its way and at the nation’s struggle, day by day, to reclaim the
moral authority upon which its survival depends. From the White House to
Downing Street, from the fault-line countries of South Asia to the sands of
Guantánamo, Suskind offers an astonishing story that connects world leaders to
the forces waging today’s shadow wars and to the next generation of global
citizens. Tracking down truth and hope within the Beltway and far beyond it,
Suskind delivers historic disclosures with this emotionally stirring and
strikingly original portrait of the post-9/11 world.
It's Getting Ugly Out There: The Frauds, Bunglers,
Liars, and Losers Who Are Hurting America by Jack Cafferty - Newsman
Cafferty has made a career of saying whatever he damn well pleases: "I get
paid to ask questions I don't know the answers to and to complain about the
things that bother me." Reading the television news correspondent's first
book feels much like watching his segments on CNN's The Situation Room, in which he follows a similarly straightforward
formula: denounce bad leadership, media shortcomings and government missteps
with a satirical tone just above withering. Without his rich vocal presence,
Cafferty's tough talking cynicism can become grating, but also cuts through,
with ease, a media climate thick with rigid ideology and tabloid excess.
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War
on America by Chris
Hedges - Citing the psychology
and sociology of fascism and cults, including the work of German historian
Fritz Stern, Hedges draws striking parallels between 20th-century totalitarian
movements and the highly organized, well-funded "dominionist movement"
in the United States, an influential theocratic sect within the country's huge
evangelical population. Rooted in a radical Calvinism, and wrapping its
apocalyptic, vehemently militant, sexist and homophobic vision in patriotic and
religious rhetoric, dominionism seeks absolute power in a Christian state.
Hedges's reportage profiles both former members and true believers, evoking the
particular characteristics of this American variant of fascism. This urgent
book forcefully illuminates what many across the political spectrum will
recognize as a serious and growing threat to the very concept and practice of
an open society.
American Mania: When More Is Not Enough by Dr. Peter Whybrow - The indictment of American society offered
here—that America's supercharged free-market capitalism shackles us to a
treadmill of overwork and overconsumption, frays family and community ties and
leaves us anxious, alienated and overweight—is familiar. What's more
idiosyncratic and compelling is the author's grounding his treatise in
political economy (citing everyone from Adam Smith to Thorstein Veblen) as well
as in neuropsychiatry, primatology and genetics. Psychiatrist Whybrow (Mood Apart) diagnoses a form of clinical
mania in which "the dopamine reward systems of the brain are...
hijacked" by pleasurable frenzies. Whybrow's analysis of the contemporary rat race is acute, and by medicalizing
the problem he locates it in behavior and genetics—away from the arena of
conventional political and economic action where more systemic solutions might
surface, but toward a place where individual responsibility can turn
"self-interest into social fellowship."
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder by Vincent Bugliosi
The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday
Lives by Nick Turse - Here is the new, hip, high-tech military-industrial complex -- an
omnipresent, hidden-in-plain-sight system of systems that penetrates all our
lives. Mapping out what should more properly be called the Military -
Industrial - Technological - Entertainment - Scientific - Media - Intelligence
- Corporate Complex, historian Nick Turse demonstrates just how extensively the
Pentagon, through its little-noticed contacts (and contracts) with America's
major corporations, has taken hold of the nation.
Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the
Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson - In this richly detailed and passionately argued
book, Jackson warns that modern society's inability to focus heralds an
impending Dark Age—an era historically characterized by the decline of a
civilization amid abundance and technological advancement. Jackson posits that
our near-religious allegiance to a constant state of motion and addiction to
multitasking are eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive
attention—the building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural
progress—and stunting society's ability to comprehend what's relevant and
permanent.
Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About
the American Voter by Rick Shenkman – Shenkman makes the
provocative argument that as American voters have gained political power in the
last 50 years, they have become increasingly ignorant of politics and world
affairs—and dangerously susceptible to manipulation. The book provides a
litany of depressing statistics as Shenkman inquires whether Americans are
capable of voting in the nation's or even their own best interests. In lucid,
playful prose, he illustrates how politicians have repeatedly misled voters and
analyzes the dumbing down of American politics via marketing, spin machines and
misinformation. He makes welcome suggestions to reinvigorate civic responsibility
and provide people with the knowledge and tools necessary to effictively
participate in the political process.
No Contest: The Case Against Competition by Alfie Kohn -
The End of America by
Naomi Wolf
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster
Capitalism by Naomi Klein
The True Story of the Bilderberg Group by Daniel Estulin
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful
Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill
The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century by Susan George, Pluto Press, 2003 - A new edition of Susan George's prophetic satire on capitalism: Fictional experts recruited by world leaders to discuss the future of global capitalism provide their assessment of the dire state of the current economy and put forward new ideas for ensuring the survival of the system. But at what cost? Susan George provides a brilliant and chilling vision of the way the winners in the globalisation game profit from poverty and reveals, with relentless logic, the dark future that lies ahead under corporate globalization.
See Positive Disintegration Links for more links related to empire and fascism, and the Cassandra Club for more links to blogs by those who are facing and writing about the disintegration of empire.
Pity
the Nation
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are
silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation -- oh, pity the people who allow their
rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.
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Land of the Free © Michele
Waters |
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