zaterdag 17 september 2016

U.S. Air Force Violates Syrian Truce

Over 80 Syrian soldiers killed by US airstrikes in Deir Ezzor

DEIR EZZOR, SYRIA (10:00 P.M.) - A military source from the Qassem Units told Al-Masdar moments ago that over 80 Syrian Arab Army soldiers were killed by the U.S. airstrikes in Deir Ezzor.
The source added that the death toll will likely rise in the coming hours as more bodies are discovered in Jabal Thardeh.
Originally, the Syrian Armed Forces were able to pull 20 bodies from the rubble; however, since recovering most of Jabal Thardeh, they have discovered dozens of dead soldiers.
Most of the soldiers were killed when the U.S. Air Force dropped phosphorous bombs on their positions, killing the men instantly.

Non Racist Jewish Brazilians

Photo of the Week: Palestinians Celebrate Eid al-Adha in Israel 

Posted on Sep 17, 2016

    Brazilian Jews, left, and Palestinian Muslims encounter each other on a beach in Tel Aviv during the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha. (Oded Balilty / AP)

Every week, Truthdig’s editors seek to present an image that singularly renders the world’s triumph, trouble or toil.

Diversely clad, smiling and conversing in the kind of setting from which state authorities forcibly drove conservative Muslim women over the summer, the image above depicts Muslims and Jews together in a way Americans are rarely shown. What could they be discussing?
The Associated Press says the three Jewish women on the left are from Brazil. The Palestinians are from the city of Nablus, 30 miles northeast of Tel Aviv, where the groups encountered each other on a beach Tuesday during the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha. Translating as “Festival of the Sacrifice,” the holiday celebrates the devotion of Abraham—a major figure in both Judaism and Islam—to God, to whom the Old Testament says Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son.
The Israeli government permitted 100,000 Palestinians from the West Bank to travel to Israel’s beaches for Eid al-Adha. In the area of Jaffa, travelers were “ecstatic” to be at the beach, The Jerusalem Post reported. “[B]ut this did not change their negative image of the [Israel Defense Forces].” A visitor identified as Mohammed told the Post, “The army makes it so hard for us to travel and to be here. I’m happy, but the fact that I have to ask the army to see the ocean is crazy.”

The Times of Israel reports that the permits allowed the travelers to stay from 8 a.m. till 8 p.m. Alaa Tahboon, a 13-year-old from the city of Hebron in the southern West Bank, said it was her first time swimming in the sea. “I am really happy,” she told the paper. Others who crossed into Israel spent their time in prayer at the Al-Aqsa mosque atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The mosque is known as Islam’s third-holiest site. A bus driver transporting Palestinians said they used three times as many buses this year as last year.
Even more revelers poured into Jaffa on Wednesday night. “The boardwalk was jam-packed as numerous Palestinian couples smiled for selfie pictures at sunset,” the Post reported. Many restaurants had no tables to spare. Mohammed told the Post: “I’ve visited a lot of cities in Israel and Palestine, but Jaffa—Jaffa is just perfect.”

Frank Westerman's Provinciale Schrijverij 21


Een systeem dat volledig berust op technologie kan per definitie niet democratisch zijn. Een technocratische elite die de belangen van de economische elite dient, hanteert andere wetten dan die van de democratie, omdat, in de woorden van de Franse socioloog Jacques Ellul:

Techniek voorspelbaarheid [vereist] en, evenzeer, precisie in de voorspellingen. Het is dus noodzakelijk dat de techniek prevaleert over het menselijk wezen. Voor de techniek is dit een zaak van leven of dood. De techniek moet de mens reduceren tot een technisch dier, de koning van de slaven er techniek. Voor deze noodzaak moet de menselijke grilligheid vermorzeld worden; de technische autonomie gedoogt geen menselijke autonomie. Het individu moet worden gekneed door technieken, hetzij negatief (door de technieken om de mens te kunnen begrijpen) of positief (door de aanpassing van de mens aan het technisch kader), om de schoonheidsfouten die zijn persoonlijke wil veroorzaakt in het perfecte patron van de organisatie te kunnen wegvagen.

In zijn boek The Technological Society (1967) zet Ellul uiteen dat het moderne leven gebaseerd is op 'the standardization and the rationalization of economic and administrative life’ en ‘From then on, standardization creates impersonality, in the sense that organization relies more on methods and instructions than on individuals.' Daarbij geldt dat ‘technologie’ niet alleen de machine is -- zij is slechts de uiterlijke vorm ervan -- maar dat technologie vandaag de dag elke discipline beheerst, dus ook alle sociale wetenschappen die onderzoeken hoe de mens het best gekneed kan worden. Reclame en propaganda zijn technologische wapens bij uitstek die de consument/burger dwingt langs de weg van de geconditioneerde reflexen te reageren. Zelfs via zijn onderbewustzijn wordt de massamens gemanipuleerd. Wat dat betreft had de Duitse auteur Ernst Jünger gelijk: de technologie is de ware metafysica van de moderne tijd. Alles is ondergeschikt maakt aan nut en efficiency, en in deze cultuur is er ‘no room in practical activity for gratuitous aesthetic preoccupations,’ aldus Ellul. De Amerikaanse historicus, wijlen Theodore Roszak, die ondermeer aan Stanford University doceerde, werkte dit in zijn wereldwijde bestseller Opkomst van een tegencultuur (1971) als volgt uit:

In de technocratie is niets meer klein of eenvoudig of overzichtelijk voor de niet-technicus. In plaats daarvan gaat de omvang en de complexiteit van alle menselijke activiteiten — politiek, economische, cultureel — de competentie van de amateur-burger te boven en vergt onmiddellijk de aandacht van speciaal opgeleide deskundigen. Rond deze centrale kern van experts die zich bezighouden met de grote publieke zaken van algemeen belang groeit een kring van subsidiaire experts die, gedijend op het algemene sociale aanzien van technische bekwaamheid in de technocratie, zich een invloedrijk gezag aanmatigen over de schijnbaar meest persoonlijke levensfacetten: seksueel gedrag, de opvoeding van kinderen, geestelijke gezondheid, recreatie, enz. In de technocratie streeft alles ernaar puur technisch te worden, het voorwerp van beroepsmatige aandacht. Daarom is de technocratie het bewind van deskundigen — of van degenen die de deskundigen in dienst kunnen nemen.

Hoewel dit proces zich op elk niveau heeft voltrokken, is de technocratische macht het meest gevaarlijk geworden op het gebied van de bewapening. Massavernietigingswapens bedreigen vandaag de dag de overlevingskansen van de hele mensheid. In dat opzicht is de staat de grootst denkbare terroristische organisatie, als ‘wij’ tenminste uitgaan van de definitie van het Amerikaanse leger dat ‘terrorisme,’ omschrijft als ‘het bewust geplande gebruik van geweld of dreiging van geweld om doelen te bereiken die politiek, religieus, of ideologisch van aard zijn.’ Juist daarom verzwijgen bestseller-journalisten als Frank Westerman en Geert Mak met klem elke verwijzing naar deze vorm van terrorisme. Toch waarschuwt niemand minder dan de Amerikaanse oud-minister van Defensie William J. Perry in zijn boek met de veelzeggende titel My Journey at the Nuclear Brink (2015) voor het immense gevaar van een nucleair armageddon. Onder de kop ‘A Stark Nuclear Warning’ schrijft  de Gouverneur van Californië Jerry Brown in een recensie voor The New York Review of Books dat:

Perry makes it clear that the danger of nuclear terrorism is great and that even Washington, D.C., is not safe from attack. In fact, he lays out a plausible scenario of how terrorists could fashion an improvised nuclear device and blow up the White House and Capitol Hill, killing more than 80,000 people and totally disrupting our society. Perry also warns that a regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan could occur — with devastating global impacts.

Since the book’s publication, the dangers identified by Perry have only intensified: the latest US defense budget proposes spending $1 trillion on nuclear modernization over the next several decades.9 This modernization plan contemplates a complete update of our nuclear triad, including new cruise missiles, nuclear submarines, ICBMs, and bombers. The Russian defense minister recently announced in response that Russia will ‘bring five new strategic nuclear missile regiments into service.’ This comes after President Putin revealed that Russia will add more than forty new intercontinental ballistic missiles to its nuclear arsenal.

And, just this month, as the US broke ground on a future missile defense site in Poland and formally activated a missile defense site in Romania, Putin warned: ‘Now after the placement of these missile defense elements, we have to think how to neutralize the threats for the security of the Russian Federation…’

No one I have known, or have even heard of, has the management experience and the technical knowledge that William Perry brings to the subject of nuclear danger. Few have his wisdom and integrity. So why isn’t anyone paying attention to him? Why is fear of a nuclear catastrophe far from the minds of most Americans? And why does almost all of official Washington disagree with him and live in nuclear denial? Perry himself may provide the answer:

‘Our chief peril is that the poised nuclear doom, much of it hidden beneath the seas and in remote badlands, is too far out of the global public consciousness. Passivity shows broadly. Perhaps this is a matter of defeatism and its cohort, distraction. Perhaps for some it is largely a most primal human fear of facing the “unthinkable.” For others, it might be a welcoming of the illusion that there is or might be an acceptable missile defense against a nuclear attack. And for many it would seem to be the keeping of faith that nuclear deterrence will hold indefinitely — that leaders will always have accurate enough instantaneous knowledge, know the true context of events, and enjoy the good luck to avoid the most tragic of military miscalculations.’

Hoe juist ook William Perry’s analyse is, toch denk ik dat de ware oorzaak van het feit dat nagenoeg niemand reageert op de nadrukkelijke waarschuwingen van één van de grootste deskundigen op het gebied van massavernietigingswapens gezocht moet worden in de rol die de massamedia spelen. Op ‘the subject of nuclear danger’ rust namelijk een taboe, omdat een werkelijk publieke discussie over dit onderwerp de belangen van zowel het westers militair-industrieel complex ernstig zullen beschadigen als die van de politieke macht in Washington en Brussel. En dus is er niemand ‘paying attention’ aan de waarschwingen van oud-minister Perry en is de ‘fear of a nuclear catastrophe far from the minds of most Americans.’ Daarnaast doen journalisten als Frank Westerman het voorkomen alsof ‘we weerloos zijn’ tegen juist het kleinschalig ‘terrorisme, en leiden zij op die manier de aandacht af van hun publiek. Toch is de dreiging met ‘nucleair terrorisme’ door de grootmachten ook nog eens in strijd met het Non-Proliferatie Verdrag uit 1968, dat expliciet bepaalt dat de kernwapenstaten hun nucleair arsenaal dienen af te bouwen. Bovendien is er de ‘advisory opinion delivered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 8 July 1996,’ die nog eens bevestigde dat 

it is illegal for a combatant specifically to target civilians and certain types of weapons that cause indiscriminate damage are categorically outlawed. All states seem to observe these rules, making them a part of customary international law, so the court ruled that these laws would also apply to the use of nuclear weapons.

Het hoogste rechtscollege ter wereld, het Internationaal Gerechtshof in Den Haag, stelde bovendien vast dat

A threat or use of force by means of nuclear weapons that is contrary to Article 2, paragraph 4, of the United Nations Charter and that fails to meet all the requirements of Article 51, is unlawful,

en dat

There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.

Desondanks verzwijgt het merendeel van mijn mainstream-collega’s al deze feiten, alsof ze slechts irrelevante details zijn. Meer dan één van hen hebben tegenover mij als ‘argument’ gebruikt dat ‘de rechter niet op de stoel van de politicus mag gaan zitten,’ en dat dus beroepspolitici gerechtigd zijn te bepalen wanneer de mensheid moet worden uitgeroeid. Met hun totalitaire opvattingen heeft de 'vrije pers' het geloof in de trias politica, waarbij de staatsmachten gescheiden zijn, al lang geleden verloren. De postmoderne journalist is domweg niet in staat te begrijpen dat in een ‘democratie’ zelfs de politieke macht het recht niet mag schenden. Hier komt nog een element bij dat de filosofe Hannah Arendt in haar boek On Violence (1969) behandelde toen zij de overtuiging ter discussie stelde dat het verzet tegen ‘de opkomende wereld van een wetenschappelijke beschaving’ moet worden afgedaan als ‘nihilistisch,’ aangezien een dergelijke veroordeling er blind vanuit gaat dat dit de ‘enig mogelijke wereld’ zou zijn, en dat men daardoor geen oog heeft voor wat onder andere de Amerikaanse geleerde ‘Sheldon Wolin' heeft gesteld, namelijk dat 

momenteel het grootste gevaar eruit bestaat dat de gevestigde en respectabele burgers […] bereid lijken om gehoor te geven aan de meest verregaande nihilistische ontkenning die maar mogelijk is, namelijk de ontkenning van de toekomst door de ontkenning van hun kinderen, de dragers van de toekomst.

In zijn essaybundel Hidden History. Exploring Our Secret Past (1987) wees de prominente Amerikaanse historicus en voormalig directeur van de Library of Congress, Daniel J. Boorstin op het feit dat 

Advertising, of course, has been part of the mainstream of American civilization, although you might not know it if you read the most respectable surveys of American history... Never was there a more outrageous  or more unscrupulous or more ill-informed advertising campaign than that by which the promoters for the American colonies brought settlers here. Brochures published in England in the seventeenth century, some even earlier, were full of hopeful overstatements, half truths, and downright lies... How has American civilization been shaped by the fact that there was a kind of natural selection here of those people who were willing to believe advertising? […] One of the tendencies of democracy... is the danger that rhetoric would displace or at least overshadow epistemology; that is, the temptation to allow the problem of persuasion to overshadow the problem of knowledge. Democratic societies tend to become more concerned with what people believe than with what is true, to become more concerned with credibility than with truth.

De ‘waarheid’ is ondergeschikt gemaakt aan de ‘geloofwaardigheid,’ omdat, in de rechtvaardiging van journalist/schrijver Frank Westerman, ‘de duiding’ alles zaligmakend is, met als gevolg dat ‘[b]etogen en beschrijven dan ineen[vloeien].’Deze cocktail van meningen en feiten moet ‘overtuigen,’ want pas dan heeft het ‘bouwsel waarde,’ terwijl alleen feiten niet meer kunnen overtuigen, aldus de door de polderpers zo geprezen Westerman. Aan deze stelling kleeft een groot gebrek, zoals de auteur Milan Kundera heeft duidelijk gemaakt toen hij erop wees omdat de hierachter schuil gaande mentaliteit die van de kitsch is, waarbij

Het woord kitsch verwijst naar de houding van degene die tot elke prijs zoveel mogelijk mensen wil behagen. Om te behagen dien je je te conformeren aan wat iedereen wenst te horen, in dienst te staan van de pasklare ideeën, in de taal van de schoonheid en de emotie. Hij beweegt ons tot tranen van zelfvertedering over de banaliteiten die wij denken en voelen… Op grond van de dwingende noodzaak te behagen en zo de aandacht van het grootst mogelijke publiek te trekken, is de esthetiek van de massamedia onvermijdelijk die van de kitsch en naarmate de massamedia ons gehele leven meer omsluiten en infiltreren, wordt de kitsch onze dagelijkse esthetiek en moraal.

Wanneer men het grote publiek wil ‘overtuigen’ moet men de taal van de massa spreken en haar beperkte begripsvermogen niet te overschrijden. Het probleem hierbij is dat ‘er grote delen van de’ westerse ‘arbeiders en middenklasse bestaan die zich niet helder kunnen uitdrukken als gevolg van de grootscheepse culturele deprivatie,’ aldus de Britse auteur John Berger. ‘De middelen om datgene wat ze weten te vertalen in gedachten is hen ontnomen,’ zij beschikken niet over de woorden om hun vaak complexe gedachten en gevoelens in uit te drukken. ‘Ze bezitten geen voorbeelden die ze kunnen volgen, waarbij woorden ervaringen duidelijk maken.’ Kortom, een populistische schrijver moet zo diep door de knieën gaan om een zo groot mogelijk publiek te kunnen behagen, dat zijn ‘literatuur’ niets anders is dan ‘kitsch,’ zoals al snel blijkt bij een serieuze bestudering van de boeken In Europa, De eeuw van mijn vader, Reizen zonder John van Geert Mak en Een Woord Een Woord over ‘het terrorisme’ van Frank Westerman. Dat is onvermijdelijk, want ‘[w]at kan er, uitgezonderd halve waarheden, grove simplificaties of onbenulligheden, overgebracht worden aan dat halfgeletterde massale gehoor, dat… overal de voorstelling mag bijwonen?’ zoals de taalkundige George Steiner uiteenzette in zijn essaybundels Het verval van het woord (1974). Men krijgt dan onvermijdelijk de ‘kitsch’ van Frank Westerman, waarbij hij zichzelf en zijn lezers de retorische vraag stelt: ‘Wat kun je uitrichten met het woord tegenover iemand die de wapens opneemt?’maar daarbij verzuimt te vermelden waarom hij die vraag niet stelt aan ‘onze’ bondgenoot de VS, die volgens de eerste vrouwelijke minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, Madeleine Albright, ‘het de prijs waard’ vond dat een half miljoen Iraakse kinderen onder de vijf jaar waren gedood om Amerikaanse politieke doeleinden te verzekeren. Ik bedoel, wanneer men zelfs een bondgenoot niet kan overtuigen om te stoppen met het op grote schaal schenden van de mensenrechten, waarom zou ‘onze’ vijand ISIS dan wel naar Europa luisteren? Dan is er alleen maar sprake van kitscherige retoriek om zoveel mogelijk lezers te behagen. De Amerikaanse hoogleraar Henry Giroux wijst er in zijn boek Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism (2011) terecht op dat:  

While all governments resort to misrepresentations and lies, we appear to have entered a brave new world in which lies, distortions, and exaggerations have become so commonplace that when something is said by a politician, it is often meant to suggest its opposite, and without either irony or apology. As lies and deceit become matter of policy, language loses its grip on reality, and the resulting indeterminacy (gebrek aan eenduidigheid. svh) of meaning is often used by politicians and others to embrace positions that change from one moment to the next. Witness Dick Cheney, who once referred to torture as ‘enhanced interrogation’ so as to sugarcoat its brutality and then appeared on national television in 2009 only to defend torture by arguing that if such practices work, they are perfectly justified, even if they violate the law. This is the same Cheney who, appearing on the May 31, 2005, Larry King show, attempted to repudiate (te loochenen. svh) charges of government torture by claiming, without irony, that the detainees ‘have been well treated, treated humanely and decently.’ This type of discourse recalls George Orwell's dystopian world of 1984 in which the Ministry of Truth produces lies and the Ministry of Love tortures people… President Obama also indulges in this kind of semantic dishonesty when he substitutes ‘prolonged detention’ for the much-maligned (verguisde. svh) ‘preventive detention’ policies he inherited from the Bush-Cheney regime. While Obama is not Bush, the use of this kind of duplicitous (dubbelzinnige. svh) language calls to mind the Orwellian nightmare in which ‘war is peace, freedom is sliver, and ignorance is strength.’ 

When lying and deceit become normalized in a culture, they serve as an index of how low we have fallen as a literate and civilized society. Such practices also demonstrate the degree to which language and education have become corrupted, tied to corporate and political power, and sabotaged by rigid ideologies as part of a growing authoritarianism that uses the educational force of the culture, the means of communication, and the sites in which information circulate to mobilize ignorance among a misinformed citizenry, all the while supporting reactionary policies. Especially since the horrible events of September 11, 2001, Americans have been encouraged to identify with a militaristic way of life, to suspend their ability to read the word and world critically, to treat corporate and government power in almost religious terms, and to view a culture of questioning as something alien and poisonous to American society. Shared fears rather than shared responsibilities now mobilize angry mobs and gun-toting imbeciles who are praised as ‘real’ Americans. Fear bolstered by lies and manufactured deceptions makes us immune to even the most obvious moral indecencies, such as the use of taser guns on kids in schools. Nobody notices or cares, and one cause and casualty of all of this moral indifference is that language has been emptied of its critical content just as the public spaces that make it possible are disappearing into the arms of corporations, advertisers, and other powerful institutions that show nothing but contempt for either the public sphere or the kind of critical literacy that gives it meaning.

Obama’s presence on the national political scene gave literacy, language, and critical thought a newfound sense of dignity, interlaced as they were with a vision of hope, justice, and possibility — and reasonable arguments about the varied crises America faced. But as Obama compromised, if not surrendered, some of his principles to those individuals and groups that live in the language of duplicity, the idealism that shaped his vocabulary began to look like just another falsehood when measured against his continuation of a number of Bush-like policies. In this case, the politics of distortion and misrepresentation that Obama’s lack of integrity has produced may prove to be even more dangerous than what we got under Bush, because it wraps itself in a moralism that seems uplifting and hopeful while supporting politics that reward the rich, reduce schools to testing centers, and continue to waste lives and money on wars that should have ended when Obama assumed his presidency. Obama claims he is for peace, and yet the United States is the largest arms dealer in the world. He claims he wants to reduce the deficit but instead spends billions on the defense industry and wars abroad. He says he wants everyone to have access to decent health care but makes backroom deals with powerful pharmaceutical companies. Orwell's ghost haunts this new president and the country at large. Reducing the critical power of language has been crucial to this effort. Under such circumstances, democracy as either a moral referent or a political ideal appears to have lost any measure of credibility. The politics of lying and the culture of deceit are inextricably related to a ritualized incantation, just as matters of governance are removed from real struggles over meaning and power.

In dit uitzichtloos vacuüm komen als vanzelf journalisten van het allooi Geert Mak, Frank Westerman en Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal bovendrijven. Bij gebrek aan gewicht en gedreven door het verlangen om een zo groot mogelijke publiek te behagen, sluiten hun smaak, onwetendheid en ééndimensionale overtuigingen naadloos aan bij die van de massa. Daarom kon Geert Mak begin november 2012 onweersproken via de EO-radio beweren dat ‘het beter v[is] oor Nederland en de internationale gemeenschap dat Obama de verkiezingen wint,’ terwijl september 2016 Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal — eveneens onweersproken — in de VPRO-gids kon verkondigen dat Obama ‘een baanbrekende president’ is, terwijl in werkelijkheid iedere kritische Amerikaanse intellectueel de ‘eerste zwarte president’ verwijt dat diens ‘lack of integrity... may prove to be even more dangerous than what we got under Bush.’ Giroux heeft gelijkt wanneer hij stelt dat ‘[w]hen lying and deceit become normalized in a culture, they serve as an index of how low we have fallen as a literate and civilized society.’ De commerciële hoerigheid van de Makken, Westermannen en Bosch van Rosenthalen is symptomatisch voor de diepe culturele crisis waarin het Westen is beland. Bij gebrek aan een sociaal betrokken intelligentsia in de polder kunnen deze ‘journalisten’ ongestoord hun propaganda voortzetten. De redenen van dit verschijnsel moeten niet alleen gezocht worden in individuele karakterloosheid, maar tevens in de grote sociaal-culturele omslag die de kapitalistische 'democratie' heeft veroorzaakt, waarbij het paradoxale fenomeen optreedt dat hoe meer het individualisme wordt verheerlijkt des te dwingender het conformisme wordt afgedwongen. Binnen deze ziekmakende context opereren de huidige opiniemakers, en is het niet verwonderlijk dat bijvoorbeeld een Frank Westerman in zijn boek over ‘het terrorisme’ de massale terreur verzwijgt van het Amerikaanse militair-industrieel complex dat miljoenen slachtoffers op zijn geweten heeft. In zijn boek Unwarranted Influence. Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex (2011) beschrijft de Amerikaanse journalist/schrijver James Ledbetter, ‘editor in charge of reuters.com,’  het ontstaan en de ontwikkeling van dit machtige terroristisch ‘complex,’  waarvoor president Eisenhower al in 1961 waarschuwde toen hij in zijn afscheidsspeech opmerkte dat

[i]n the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted  (ongerechtvaardigde. svh)influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,

waarbij dit complex, volgens Ledbetter, gezien moet worden ‘as a network of public and private forces that combine a profit motive with the planning and implementation of strategic policy.’ Zelfs de grootste propagandist kan niet ontkennen dat een macht die alleen al in 2014 meer dan de helft van het toewijsbare ‘federale budget’ opslokte, geen vijanden en oorlogen nodig heeft om haar bestaan te rechtvaardigen. De pro-NAVO mainstream-pers is ook niet in staat het feit te weerleggen dat, aldus Ledbetter: 

The MIC (military-industrial complex. svh) creates wasteful military spending. This charge seems consistent with Eisenhower's concern, both in his farewell address and throughout much of his career. For decades, critics have charged that entire weapons systems have been kept alive at great expense, despite the absence of military need, largely or exclusively because they serve the interests of particular contractors or influential members of Congress…

The MIC takes away from spending on social needs. This charge follows closely from the previous one: the MIC always finds ways to fund its needs, regardless of cost or necessity, while pressing American social problems such as poverty, illiteracy, infant mortality, and the shortage of affordable housing always seem to lack for money. Although this point of view was not explicit in Eisenhower's farewell address, it is consistent with his 1953 ‘Chance for Peace’ speech. 

The MIC distorts the American economy. This concern, too, follows directly from Eisenhower's parting speech: 'We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent(berooide. svh) phantom of tomorrow.’ While Eisenhower focused specifically on military spending and the dangerous debt it could ring about, subsequent critics have raised much larger economic issues, arguing that MIC distorts the value of the dollar, the volume and substance of U.S. trade, the types and locations of manufacturing jobs, and the markets for civilian applications of military technologies such as aircraft, satellites, and telecommunications. 

Despite the obvious deviation that a military-industrial complex represents from the notion of a purely capitalist economy, military spending and influence have rarely been a target for those who otherwise preach the virtues of free markets. 

This makes the MIC a conspicuous anomaly (opvallende afwijking. svh); the postwar American political system has tolerated a commingling (vermenging. svh) of private enterprise with the public purse in a military context far more willingly than in most other contexts (such as industrial policy, welfare, socialized medicine, or direct government funding of mass media — all relatively uncontroversial features of many Western democracies). Indeed, more far-reaching critics have described the MIC as a method by which vast amounts of wealth are transferred to the American economic elite more effectively and smoothly than could be done any other way. 

Vandaar ook dat Amerikaanse critici van deze officiële politiek spreken van ‘socialisme voor de rijken.’ Bovendien heeft het

MIC institutionalized an outsized role for the military in American society, even during peacetime. Before delivering his farewell address, Eisenhower and his advisors closely studied George Washington's farewell, which… urgently advised his countrymen to ‘avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.’ Although Eisenhower was a pragmatist who fully believed in America's modern role as a military superpower, he nonetheless was struck by how vast, pervasive, and permanent the American military had become since Washington's time, and he was deeply concerned about the implications. As America's involvement in the Vietnam War escalated, institutions such as the draft, military training on university campuses, and the long reach of military contractors into civilian life would cause many Americans to share his concern. 

The MIC creates and extends a culture of secrecy. In focussing on science, technology, and university research, Eisenhower clearly intended to warn the nation that the MIC — even in his relatively modes formulation — could warp (scheeftrekken. svh) the very nature of intellectual inquiry by imposing strict secrecy requirements on fundamental research.  In the late 1950s and 1960s, a ballooning portion of American university research was funded by the federal government, with military priorities usually taking the lead. To critics, this represented a colonization and corruption of institutions of learning, and a perversion of purpose for both individuals and communities who might well have taken a different path…

The MIC leads to the suppression of individual liberty. For Eisenhower, this risk was grave but seemed mostly a concern for the future: ‘The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination [the military and industry] endanger our liberties or democratic processes.’  For subsequent critics, the MIC became the all-suppressing octopus, responsible for the denial of free speech, economic rights, academic freedom, the right to dissent, and even freedom of movement. Such charges have a stubborn longevity, stretching beyond the Cold War era and into the twenty-first century, as some argue that the fear of terrorism has become the new justification for the curtailing of freedom. 

Het zal duidelijk zijn dat Frank Westerman’s boek over ‘het terrorisme’ het sentiment versterkt dat ‘we weerloos’ zijn ‘tegen zaaiers van dood en verderf,’ en daarnaast de roep om nog meer wapens en staatsgeweld doet toenemen, waardoor de macht van het militair-industrieel complex almaar blijft toenemen. Vandaar dat het optreden van Geert Mak zo weerzinwekkend kan zijn. Via de Nederlandse televisie riep hij op om naar aanleiding van ‘de Krim’ onze ‘defensie’ meer geld te geven, zeer tot het genoegen van de Commandant der Strijdkrachten, generaal Tom Middendorp, die op 20 mei 2014 via zijn weblog liet weten dat

de schrijver Geert Mak in het programma ‘Eén op Eén’ [liet] weten: 'We waren zo bezig met die soft power — en dat is ook goed — alleen Poetin reageert op een 19e-eeuwse manier.' Mak, ooit pacifist, meende daarom dat we 'Defensie niet moeten afbreken' 

Deze propagandisten van een systeem dat 64 individuen zo rijk heeft gemaakt dat zij nu evenveel bezitten als de helft van de hele mensheid tezamen, verzwijgen daarbij niet alleen het feit dat in de VS 

[t]here is no longer, on the one hand, an economy, and on the other hand, a political order containing a military establishment unimportant to politics and to money-making. There is a political economy linked, in a thousand ways, with military institutions and decisions. On each side of the world-split running through central Europa and around the Asiatic rimlands, there is an ever-increasing interlocking of economic, military and political structures. If there its government intervention in the corporate economy, so is there corporate intervention in the governmental process,

aldus de constatering van de nog steeds invloedrijke Amerikaanse socioloog C.Wright Mills in zijn uit 1956 daterende klassieke studie The Power Elite. De strekking van zijn beschrijving is dat de VS niet zozeer een militair-industrieel complex bezit, maar er één is, zoals de Britse kernfysicus Frank Barnaby het formuleerde toen hij in de jaren zeventig directeur was van het Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Met betrekking tot de ‘Merchants of Death’ schrijft James Ledbetter:

For nearly as long as a munitions industry has supplied the U.S. military with weapons and supplies, there has existed a worry that private companies would pursue profit over duty to the national interest… Beginning in the 1880s, the U.S. government began commissioning new steel cruisers, at the time the largest peacetime expansion ever undertaken by the U.S. military. The steel industry in this period was dominated by a handful of companies, and the relationship between steel magnates, the shipbuilding industry, and the Navy became very close. For example, Benjamin F. Tracy, who was secretary of the Navy from 1889 to 1893 and an important proponent of constructing steel battleships, became an attorney for the Carnegie Steel Corporation upon leaving office.

Deze dubieuze praktijk is sindsdien drastisch toegenomen. Zo berichtte The Boston Globe op 26 december 2010 onder de kop ‘From the Pentagon to the private sector’ het volgende:

In large numbers, and with few rules, retiring generals are taking lucrative defense-firm jobs

In almost any other realm it would seem a clear conflict of interest — pitting his duty to the US military against the interests of his employer — not to mention a revolving-door sprint from uniformed responsibilities to private paid advocacy.

But this is the Pentagon where, a Globe review has found, such apparent conflicts are a routine fact of life at the lucrative nexus between the defense procurement system, which spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and the industry that feasts on those riches. And almost nothing is ever done about it.

The Globe analyzed the career paths of 750 of the highest ranking generals and admirals who retired during the last two decades and found that, for most, moving into what many in Washington call the “rent-a-general’’ business is all but irresistible.

From 2004 through 2008, 80 percent of retiring three- and four-star officers went to work as consultants or defense executives, according to the Globe analysis. That compares with less than 50 percent who followed that path a decade earlier, from 1994 to 1998.

In some years, the move from general staff to industry is a virtual clean sweep. Thirty-four out of 39 three- and four-star generals and admirals who retired in 2007 are now working in defense roles — nearly 90 percent.

And in many cases there is nothing subtle about what the generals have to sell — Martin’s firm is called The Four Star Group, for example. The revolving-door culture of Capitol Hill — where former lawmakers and staffers commonly market their insider knowledge to lobbying firms — is now pervasive at the senior rungs of the military leadership.

Among the Globe findings:

■ Dozens of retired generals employed by defense firms maintain Pentagon advisory roles, giving them unparalleled levels of influence and access to inside information on Department of Defense procurement plans.

Deze corruptie, een ander woord is er niet voor, is al geruime tijd dusdanig genormaliseerd dat de Duitse auteur Peter Koch al begin jaren tachtig in zijn boek De Waanzin van de Wapenwedloop (1982) kon melden:

De Amerikaanse politicoloog Gordon Adams werkte vier jaar lang aan een studie over de verstrengelingen tussen wapenindustrie, militairen en politici. Hij publiceerde het resultaat in zijn boek ‘The Iron Triangle.’ Eén van de geheimen, die hij over dit, de openbaarheid schuwende, verbond aan het daglicht bracht, was het feit, dat de wapenfirma's in hun contracten met de regering de lobbykosten terug lieten betalen. Bijvoorbeeld: Van de 16,8 miljoen dollar, die Boeing, General Dynamics, Grumman, Lockheed en Rockwell International in het midden van de jaren zeventig voor hun lobbyisten in Washington uitgaven, eisten zij 15,8 miljoen van het Ministerie van Defensie als 'verwervingskosten' terug. In duidelijke taal: De belastingbetaler moet niet alleen de dure wapenprogramma's financieren, hij moet ook nog de dure propaganda van het succesvolle bewapeningsbedrijfsleven betalen. 'De scheiding tussen particuliere en publieke sector valt weg, waarbij een sector van de industrie in feite regeringsbevoegdheid opeist,' volgens de beschrijving van de situatie door senator Aiken. 



De zwendel van het militair-industrieel complex begon in feite al tegen het einde van de negentiende eeuw. In 1894 verklaarde de voorzitter van de commissie van het Huis van Afgevaardigden, die onderzoek had gedaan naar de misdadige praktijken bij het Carnegie-staalconcern, dat de werknemers ‘seem to have been somewhat animated by the desire to cheat the Government inspectors in every manner possible.’ In haar rapport concludeerde de commissie dat ‘the frauds,’ die werden aangetroffen, ‘are worthy to be called crimes,’ die ‘the dearest interests of the nation’ bedreigden. James Ledbetter voegt hieraan toe dat 

Ever since then, charges of profiteering have regularly surfaced in the area of military procurement. Those charges took a qualitative leap around the time that World War I broke out. Not only would arms manufacturers cheat the order to preserve their profits, went the new argument, they deliberately encouraged countries to start wars, join wars, or prolong wars to create demand for their products. This was a more complicated and sinister charge, involving not only American companies but also arms dealers in Britain, France, and Germany. 

While arms manufacturers formed patriotic leagues and ‘preparedness campaigns’ with the goal of convincing America to enter the war, a handful of congressmen launched a far-reaching attack on munitions makers and suppliers of war materiel… When the League of Nations was established in 1919>its Article 8 of statutes cited the ‘evil effects of private traffic in munitions,’ which was also the focus of a League conference in 1925. The merchants of death theory reached a kind of peak in the mid-1930s. The year 1934 saw the publication of three muckraking books: ‘Iron, Blood and Profits’ by George Seldes; ‘Merchants of Death’ by H. C. Engelbrecht; and a new edition of ‘War for Profits,’ by Otto Lehmann-Russbueldt, translated from German. The books were notably similar; they were polemical histories of the arms industry going back as far as the Roman Empire. The principal indictments were that:

Armament manufacturers operate outside the law, international treaties, or any system of accountability;

They whip up war panics in order to secure a market and higher profit for their products; 

They directly cause some wars to happen, and prolong the duration of other wars; 

They justify their existence through appeals to patriotism, when in fact they undermine national security by selling materiel to their home countries enemies; 

They engage in bribery, bid-fixing, and other manipulative business practices that distort the free market…

‘Merchants of Death’ became a bestseller and was translated into French, Dutch, and Spanish.

The timing of the books coincided with the most sustained and critical American legislative interrogation of the arms industry, which became known as the ‘munitions inquiry,’ led by Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota. In April 1934, the Senate passed a resolution — without a dissenting vote — asserting that ‘the influence of the commercial motive is an inevitable factor in considerations involving the maintenance of the national defense,’ and indeed that it is ‘one of the inevitable factors often believed to stimulate and sustain wars.’ When Nye began his hearings… in September 1934, he was poised like few before or since to fundamentally alter the way in which America arms itself. He had, at least officially, the support of President Roosevelt to conduct a far-reaching inquiry, and he began to take seriously the notion that the U.S. government ought to have absolute control over the production of war materiel, a position supported by a majority of Americans according to opinion polls of the time. ‘There is certainty that the profits of preparation for war and the profits of war itself constitute the most serious challenge to the peace of the world… The removal of the element of profit from war would materially remove the danger of more war,’ Nye said in November 1934…

Yet despite holding numerous hearings and eliciting many embarrassing details about the arms trade, the Nye committee never accomplished much more than issuing reports filled with salacious charges but few viable alternatives. Nye charged that powerful interests were conducting ‘a large effort to slow up the investigation,’ which was probably true; committee hearings about arms shipments abroad caused much diplomatic flurry. But there were other problems. Nye and Roosevelt had never gotten along well, and Nye felt that a separate committee appointed by the president to examine the profits of war was designed to undermine his own. Noting that the president's committee was loaded with military personnel, Nye bitterly compared it to appointing John Dillinger to write the anti-crime laws.

Nadat senator Nye en senator Bennett Champ van Missouri ‘put into evidence documents indicating that Woodrow Wilson and his secretary of state,’ die aantoonden dat deze Amerikaanse president en zijn regering voorjaar 1917 hadden gelogen dat zij niets hadden geweten van ‘secret treaties tying Great Britain to various plans to carve up Europe upon an armistice to end World War I,’ betekende dit ‘the end of Nye’s ability to conduct an effective inquiry, and the merchants of death thesis — at least in Washington’s power centers — went into hibernation for decades.’ Destijds al was de macht van het Amerikaanse militair-industrieel complex zo groot dat democratische controle onmogelijk was geworden. Meer daarover de volgende keer. Dan ook meer over het feit dat journalisten als Geert Mak, Frank Westerman en Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal in feite functioneren als  woordvoerders van dit systeem. 



Trump is the Symptom. Clinton is the Disease

Trump is the Symptom, Clinton is the Disease

trumillary
I asked you who is the lesser evil when even the Washington Postposits Hillary Clinton to the “political right” of Trump on international issues?
And you responded: “So I guess I should vote for Trump?”
Gimme Shelter: Fleeing Trump to the Democrat’s Big Tent
You are right that there are differences between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. No one recognizes that better than the ruling elites who are tripping over each other to join the Clinton bandwagon.
Mainstream Republicans, such as Romney and the Bush bunch, are gravitating in droves to the better Republican who happens to be a nominal Democrat. To the right of them, practically the entirety of the neo-conservative establishment is converting to born-again Hillaryistas.
Charles and David, the ultra-libertarian Koch brothers and Republican Party kingpins, have rejected Trump, cutting him off from a major source of funding. Another billionaire politico and sometimes Republican, Michael Bloomberg gave Clinton his endorsement at the Democratic National Convention.
Refugees fleeing the land of the GOP are finding succor in Clinton’s big tent. Clinton’s New Democrats are actively courting the conservatives being pushed out of the GOP by the embarrassing Mr. Trump.
The ruling elites are practically unanimously opposed to Trump for two reasons: he’s unreliable and he is not a good snake oil salesman for their cause. Those of us to the left of Attila the Hun also oppose Trump, but not for the same reasons. See, for instance, Peace and Freedom Party presidential candidate Gloria La Riva’s description of Trump as a “disgusting bigot, the embodiment of the worst excesses of the capitalist system.”
First, the ruling elites find Trump untrustworthy to carry their water. Maybe Trump will come around on “free trade” issues or maybe he won’t. But with Clinton they have a proven faithful servant.
Back in 2008, when Wall Street demanded a bailout with no strings attached, mainstream Republican President Bush devotedly accommodated the banksters as did Democratic presidential candidate Obama. But Republican presidential candidate McCain thought that some conditions should be put on this gift of free money from the American tax payers.
That is when former CEO of Goldman Sachs and architect of the bailout, Hank Paulson – incidentally serving as Bush’s treasure secretary – blackmailed McCain to either genuflect to Wall Street, or Paulson would come out publically for Obama. Wall Street got the bailout and later trillions of dollars more under Obama’s “quantitative easing.” The financial elite migrated en masse to the new Democrats.
That migration continues with Hillary Clinton, Wall Street’s anointed retainer. Unlike in the past when the big financial interests hedged their bets by contributing to both Democrats and Republicans, the smart money is going to the donkey party in 2016.
Second, Wall Street understands that not only will Clinton be more compliant, but she will also be better at legitimizing their class rule. Trump with his open chauvinism and nativism would be too obvious and could provoke a greater resistance to the neoliberal project. It’s not that the ruling elites are squeamish about racism and imperialism, but they are adverse about making it so plainly obvious.
Sympathy for the Devil: Voting for Clinton
Absent the few Bernie-or-busters, the net result of the Sanders candidacy has been to deliver a new generation of voters into the Democratic Party. A Pew poll predicts 90 percent of unwavering Sanders supporters plan to vote for Clinton in November. There they join the great majority of African American voters as a captured constituency to be flagrantly ignored by Clinton.
Given the logic of the lesser-of-two-evils voting, these citizens have no recourse but to suck it up as Clinton rushes to the right to woo the remnants of the Republican Party. Gallup polls reports Republicans want leaders who stick to their beliefs, while Democrats more readily accept compromise.
December’s Children: Opposing Neoliberalism by Voting for It
The lesser-of-two-evils defense dictates that we vote for Clinton – despite all her admittedly bad stuff – for fear that a Trump presidency would dismantle public health care, attack the unions, and stack the Supreme Court to the right. This argument fails on two counts: it perpetuates a drift to the right with no prospect of reversal and it creates the conditions for an even more noxious phenomenon than Trump come 2020.
On the first count, you say that you’ll hold your nose and vote for Clinton in November and then in December you’ll lobby against her. But Clinton isn’t stupid. As long as she knows that lesser-of-two-evils adherents will still vote for her, she’ll continue feinting to the left and moving to the right. Unions will still be targeted, because Clinton knows Wall Street will abandon her if she doesn’t deliver low wages and high profits.
Bill Clinton was able to end welfare as we know it, pass the NAFTA “free trade” scam, enable the incarceration of multitudes of poor people of color, conduct “humanitarian” bombing of Yugoslavia to achieve regime change, etc. This was a rightist Republican agenda, which the Republicans could not enact. Yet a slick Democrat could deliver precisely because the lesser-of-two-evils adherents voted Bill Clinton into a second term.
Privatizing Social Security was next on the Bill Clinton’s chopping block. But Monica Lewinsky, my favorite Democrat, thwarted that plan. Now it is Hillary Clinton’s “turn” to continue that legacy.
I Can’t Get No Satisfaction: A Clinton Presidency 
On the second count, there is a curious relationship between the Clinton and Trump candidacies. In short, Trump is the symptom; Clinton is the disease. In other words, the conditions that have allowed for a candidacy such as the likes of Trump were the product of neoliberal policies personified by the likes of Clinton.
Trump has been able to tap into a genuine sense of powerlessness and dispossession among the American people. These sentiments are materially based on rising income inequality. We are working longer hours – surpassing even the Japanese work week – and we are more efficient than ever, but our living conditions are stagnating or depressing.
This time around, we got a repugnant blowhard like Trump. But we don’t have to worry about him getting elected in 2016. The ruling elites will take care that he will be lucky to win Alaska. Trump’s already fatally shaky presidential prospects will be enormously even less impressive as the corporate media continues to whittle him and his big hands down.
But what will the prospects be after four years of Clinton’s police and security state, imperial wars without end, austerity for working people, and free money bonuses for Wall Street? Come 2020, the conditions – as the US heads into a deeper and more damaging recession – for an even more ominous and threatening rightist reaction will be created by Clinton’s neoliberal agenda. The lesser-of-two-evils adherents will again admonish us to re-elect Clinton for fear that an even more dangerous demagogue is running against her.
Wild Horses: Breaking with the Two-Party Duopoly
Every four years the American people are treated to a beauty contest, euphemistically called elections, where only two billionaire-sponsored contestants are allowed to compete, thanks to the exclusively private Commission on Presidential Debates. Little wonder that someone as unpopular as Hillary Clinton will win on the basis of (I’m not making this up) congeniality, because her recognized opponent in this dichotomized universe of two-party politics is Trump. Bottom line, Clinton’s biggest asset is Trump.
So the choice dictated by with the lesser-of-two-evils strategy is either Big Sister or Big Hands, because it’s two-horse race. But now is the time to vote for someone who reflects our politics and begin the protracted process of building an opposition movement outside the two corporate parties.
Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate succinctly sums it up: “[voting for] the lesser evil paves the way for the greater evil.”
Roger D. Harris is on the State Central Committee of the Peace and Freedom Party, the only ballot-qualified socialist party in California.



More articles by:



De Holocaust Is Geen Rechtvaardiging meer Voor Joodse Nazi's

Eitan Bronstein, bezig de geschiedenis van straten, wijken en steden terug te geven aan Palestijnen en daarmee aan de Joden in Israël. . Zev...