A Deafening Hush

A deafening hush breaks the air. Ill-kept secrets flood ears forbidden to share. Colossal stillness dams every plaint. The ashen pile of our Capital arrogantly marks protest's sepulchre.      

Sibylline 2012

Apollo sings, prosaically(no more Golden Age), through me.

1. War intensifies in Central Africa. Strife stretching from Congo to Somalia. Involving Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Congo, Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia. US and NATO will increase intervention. In years to come region will be balkanized and riven with violence.(like SE Asia in 70's, 80's)

2. Reports of P.M. Zardari of Pakistan's death from Cardiac Arrest will fail to cover up successful military coup.

3. Sectarian war tinders to a blaze in Iraq. The US desires this.

4. Assad crushes western funded resistance and holds onto power. This will lead to US intervention.

5. Russian, China, and Iran tighten alliance. Russia also becomes more offensive towards West as NATO deepens ties with Ukraine.

6. China signs new trade pact with North Korea.

7. China allies with Pakistan against India in Kashmir dispute.

8. President Obama expresses desire to openly intervene in Syria. No fly zone and bombing. Russia and China will protest.

9. VP Biden and Hillary Clinton will switch positions.

10. Jeb Bush will be selected as Republican Presidential candidate in brokered convention at Tampa. His running mate will be Senator Ayotte.

11. Economic conditions will deteriorate in the United States and Europe. The United Kingdom will enter into an economic downturn that will make Greece seem a bagatelle.

12. Bank of America, which is technically insolvent, will finally fall when UK, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and Greece default on debt. JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs will require another bail out.

13. China and Japan's deepening economic ties will further isolate US in Far East.

14. Protests will revive in Western Nations as economic conditions worsen and inequality rises. Police brutality will be fierce and protesters will be arrested under recently passed "anti-terrorism laws".

15.  Jeb Bush and Ayotte will defeat Obama/Clinton in 2012 election. Low voter turn out will be blamed.

16. Mexican drug war will escalate as US falsely ties Hezbollah to drug cartels and views intervention as part of GWOT.

17. War on Iran drumbeat continues. Posturing by both sides. Status Quo of US sponsored violence in Iran.(assassinating Scientists, bombing installations, funding opposition Iranian terrorist groups).

18. Bahrain's Monarchy falls.

19. Widespread protest in Saudi Arabia.

20. Yemeni situation becomes incredibly unstable. Saudi Arabia intervenes with troops with US permission.

21. Qatar struck with bombings for its efforts in Libya.

22. Turkey suffers unrest because of Kurds fleeing sectarian war in Iraq and Syria's civil war spilling over border.

23. Libya's US/NATO puppets will not be held accountable for atrocities. Neither will US/NATO bombers.

24. Assange will be extradited to Sweden.

25. Pfc. Bradley Manning will be convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for reporting war crimes.

26. Worldwide financial collapse in March.

27. Martial Law will be ordered in United States.

28. London Olympics will be postponed.

29. Taliban mounts offensive against occupiers in Afghanistan at the beginning of spring, record casualties and death tolls.

30. HONY SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE.


* these are predictions, not wishes or prescriptions or endorsements of predicted events

Kalends

Our cluttered wasteland,

landfill without end,

piles consumption's

protean nothing.

Have Yourself a Total War Christmas

We have detained Santa Claus for violating U.S. airspace. Keep shopping! 

Nice people of America, we wish to remind you that your lovely, and peaceful, crime-free, neighborhoods are a battlefield. At any moment a drone could whistle in and(We're the nice people you've elected, trust us.)...Over a hunch in secret, mandated by law, no possibility of redress(But we have access to information unavailable to you). All is well. It's for your safety. Enjoy the eggnog! Merry Total War Christmas!

The Price Was Worth It. You're Welcome.

Fallujah, Iraq(Depleted Uranium Gehenna)

“As difficult as [the Iraq war] was,” and the cost in both American and Iraqi lives, “I think the price has been worth it, to establish a stable government in a very important region of the world,” he added.
                                                                       ---US Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta




Sociopathy amplifies to eleven in statements from officials of the US Gov't on the horrific, and ongoing(arming and funding crony torture state), crime spree of US/NATO in Iraq. The arrogance of a serial killer taking glee in his craft rises to Imperial nostrums.


The titled defenders of the War Crime on Iraq are shit-heels of the lowest order. Look at the picture above and savor a small part of what "The Greatest Nation Forever" did in one city of Iraq. 




  

The Timely Demise of John Bull Spengler

"Spengler's theory of cultural cycles, that sociological solipsism, was presented as a doctrine of the perennial nature of sharply divided races which could associate with one another only in the form of mutual destruction."
Lukacs, The Destruction of Reason.

Christopher Hitchens was a journalist adept at exhibiting his fustian conceit in polemics against entire groups, and sometimes powerful or lauded individuals, he deemed beneath him. People of faith, especially Muslims, were subhuman. He explicitly wished death would mock their belief. An Atheist Tertullian who, while living, thrilled as he envisioned the death of countless Muslims in the depleted uranium hell fire of cluster bombs.  

When Hitchens attacked worthy targets(Kissinger, Falwell, Mother Teresa, Clinton) there was always a haughty John Bull sneer. He railed more against their manner, rather than the wrong.

Warmongering caught his eye as something beautiful to behold. Radiating from Thatcher as she went to war over The Falklands to quell civil unrest at home. Refulgent in Bush and Blair as they lied to initiate a war crime spree in Afghanistan and Iraq to appease the venality of War Contractors and Oil Cartels.

Ultimately Hitchens, like Spengler, was a vitalist dilettante. John Bull's apparent when one notes the "Clash of Civilizations", a la Toynbee, flavor of his fervor for the "Enlightened West" to wage a war of annihilation on "Medieval Islam".

The heat of contest, even slaughter, from afar sparked bonfires in his mind. Polemic was his arsenal. Lauding war criminals was the Drumhead Mass. His pen worked for the God above all Gods he worshiped, Empire.

It is timely Hitchens passed as the Empire he adored, often with paternal misgivings, crumbles to a death he'd view with rapt horror.

Principes Senatus

"There, government by Senate and People was looked upon sceptically as a matter of sparring dignitaries and extortionate officials. The legal system had provided no remedy against these, since it was wholly incapacitated by violence, favoritism, and--most of all--bribery."
Tacitus, Annals, 1, I.

Henry James' War

"We are never old, that is we never cease easily to be young, for all life at the same time: youth is an army, the whole battalion of our faculties and our freshnesses, our passions and our illusions, on a considerably reluctant march into the enemy's country, the country of the general lost freshness..."
---Henry James, The Middle Years.

More Sorrow in Belgium

We're here to rescue insolvent banks, fuck the people they loot.
Euro Summit, Brussels, 2011.

The Exceptional Pique of a Mass Murderer

“Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement,” the president fired back at an impromptu news conference at the White House.

“Or whoever’s left out there,” he added. “Ask them about that."

President Obama, the Next Roosevelt

Philippines. As Under Secretary of Navy Roosevelt aggressively backed intervention. The conflict initially began under the auspices of liberating Philippines from Spain. After "liberation" the brutality of the US occupation sparked resistance. War ravaged the islands for years as the US occupiers slaughtered nearly two million people.*


  

"All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power."


                            --President Roosevelt, "Roosevelt Corollary"




President Roosevelt rewrote the Monroe Doctrine to give the United States full rights to intervene in the Western Hemisphere as European colonies fell. The United States wanted to bring about "desirable and orderly" outcomes. It also wished to expand "decency" by enforcing "greater obligations" upon their own new colonies. Roosevelt believed Anglo-Saxon nations were burdened with the task of teaching "lesser peoples" what the "ties of civilized society" meant, no matter how many of them had to die.


In 1948 the United States globalized the Roosevelt Corollary. With the fall of the Soviet Union the ability to implement this policy anywhere it deemed fit was accomplished.


In 2008 many "progressives" heralded Obama as the "next Roosevelt". President Obama chose to favor another Roosevelt. They deserve credit for having the last name right.




* Conservative estimates of death toll of US intervention from 1890-1913 in Philippines start at 1.5 million and go much higher.


Link detailing criminal nature of US intervention---http://bulatlat.com/news/4-33/4-33-crimes.html        

The Great Year

         I

The whorl's turn
draws all
to hook's stern.

        II

Overcome by the austere 

affluence of heaven,
we erect urban
crematoria
as seared eyes
shed pale plumes.

         III

Death is life
never left alone,
like song's rush
inhumed in drone.

Smells Like

Yeah.

Foreverywhere War

Where's My Fasces?

"The imperialist war has greatly accelerated and intensified the transformation of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism. The monstrous oppression of the laboring masses by the state--which connects itself more and more intimately with the all powerful capitalist combines--is becoming ever more monstrous. The foremost countries are being converted--we speak here of their "rear"--into military convict labor prisons for the workers."
               ---Lenin, State and Revolution, "Preface to First Edition".


Today the "Conscript Fathers" of the United States Senate openly conceded what has been sub rosa since 1948. The entire planet, including the "exceptional lands"(US, Israel, Western Europe), is a war zone. No person has the right to legally challenge being held indefinitely or drone murdered once alleged "ties to terrorist groups" have been "determined" in secret by "certain authorities".

Habeas Corpus has been usurped by the Star Chamber. States have lost legitimacy and openly flout the people's will. The "Global Economy" is a rigged casino. They must call the world a battlefield and arm themselves with the time honored tools of oppression to keep it "running".

Just as in 1917, States shamelessly ally with Capital to suppress people in the enduring, ubiquitous, Class War.

As the US Funds Military Dictatorship in Egypt, its Bombs Ensure Military Coup in Pakistan

Not only does the US drone murder Pakistani civilians, it also "accidentally" bombs Pakistani military check-points. 

The United States has always preferred Dictators ruling Muslim nations. The Shah in Iran, Mubarak and the Generals in Egypt, Suharto in Indonesia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and General Zia in Pakistan. They provide "stability". If they step out of line the US can always label them Hitlers, bomb and invade their nations under the guise of humanitarian liberation and maintaining "regional stability". It's advantageous to have well armed despots beholden to the largesse of the Pentagon.

US/NATO policy suppresses democracy in Muslim nations. The United States, UK, and France have all recently announced major military sales to Middle Eastern despots intent on strengthening counter-revolution. Arms sales to states busy crushing peaceful protests does not support the "Arab Spring"(I hate this fucking term. Revolts against US backed despots who have allied themselves with the US in the "War on Terror" are not a sudden awakening. They are not as puerile as a fucking advertising slogan for a Bar of Soap.)


US military and intelligence operations inside Pakistan have exacerbated civilian mistrust of the government. The Government allows US free reign to drone murder hundreds of civilians with impunity. When the United States kills military personnel it enrages them further. They rightly view the so called legitimate government a spineless client state taking orders from Washington, D.C..

All of this uncovers the true aim behind destabilizing Pakistan. The United States wants a military dictatorship in Pakistan. If drone murdering civilians can't bring it to pass, then maybe some soldiers will have to be "accidentally" killed. "Stability" is "worth it" to the US. They weren't above mass murdering nearly a million Iraqis for it.

Classical Shout Out Friday: Empedocles and the Strife of Loving

You look for life, you look and from the deeps of Earth
A fire, divinely gleaming wells up for you,
And quick, aquiver with desire, you
Hurl yourself down into Etna's furnace.
Holderlin, Empedocles.

Double is my account: for at one time it grew to be one alone
from many, at another in turn it grew apart to be many from one.
But double is the coming-into-being of mortals, double their passing away;
for the coming together of all things begets and kills(life),
and as [all things] grow apart again [life] is nurtured, then disappears.
And, continuously changing, they never cease,
at one time through Love all of them coming together into one,
at another in turn each carried apart through the hatefulness of Strife.
                ---Empedocles, Fragment No. 17.

Kalli Kali

Great Mother, fathers have lost sight.  

Patriarchs dig.
They sow terror.
Their seed shames love.
The earth shudders.
It is your time.

U.S. Taxpayer Funded Police Brutality Here, There, and Everywhere

Here

There

Here our tax dollars fund the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. They instructed and aided mayors of various cities to break up Occupy Wall Street encampments and suppress protests with militarized police forces.

There our tax dollars fund the security apparatus of the Egyptian Military Dictatorship. SCAF is almost wholly subsidized by the Pentagon.

Everywhere tactics appear to be the same. Brutalize all protesters with aggressive force. Everywhere, despite the Police's well armed aggression, protesters are asked to remain peaceful. Interesting such requests are never made to militarized Police forces.

Classical Shout Out Friday: Catiline, Enemy of Oligarchs

"Our struggle is for fatherland, for freedom, for life; theirs is a superfluous fight, for the power of a few."
Sallust, Catiline's War.

Even Sallust, a stupendously rich Oligarch, after pages of describing Catiline as a Monstrous Beast displaying every vice at superhuman levels, didn't blush to pen fine sentiment in Catiline's voice.

Cicero once offered to defend Catiline before he, as a Consul, condemned Catiline as a grave threat to the Republic.

Catiline was the worst ingrate to them. Born into Aristocracy, he was a member of the Senatorial Class. He turned against the tyranny of his own. He had to be destroyed.

Over a decade later Caesar took the mantle, with the backing of his Legions, and subjected the Senate to the Imperator's Fasces.

Oligarchs prefer controlled demolition, even Civil Wars between Oligarchs, to sincere rebellion. Better to refine Tyranny than threaten it.



Best sources: Cicero, Sallust---Despite their polemical bent, grains of truth slip through.

Restless Beauty

For the essence of humanism is that belief of which he seems never to have doubted, that nothing which has ever interested living men and women can wholly lose its vitality--no language they have spoken, nor oracle beside which they have hushed their voices, no dream which has once been entertained by actual human minds, nothing about which they have ever been passionate, or expended time and zeal.
Walter Pater, The Renaissance, "Pico della Mirandola".

Masters of Hygiene

Disinfecting Protesters

Clean Up

"I have become increasingly concerned,--as had the park's owner, Brookfield Properties, -that the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protesters and to the surrounding community."
                --Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City.


"I want to thank everyone for the peaceful demonstration of Frank Ogawa Park tonight, and thank the city employees who worked hard to clean up the plaza so that all activities can continue, including Occupy Wall Street."
               --Mayor Jean Quan, Oakland.


Orders from the top are followed to the letter. Sentiments of those who obey vary in content. Naetheless, concern for civic hygiene remains paramount.

The DHS and FBI orchestrated the "cleansing" of protest camps ordered by mayors in 18 cities to better enforce "sanitation" and "safety" standards. Nothing cleans up messes better than pepper spray, sound cannons, rubber bullets, tear gas, and less advanced forms of Police brutality.

Hymn to Artemis

                  I

Silvery blush of sunless sky
dyes black bruised blue

Lustrous night's virgin halo,
timid brows glow anew

Laughing girls dance circles
Unbroken, she draws true

To you Fair Goddess night falls
In dulcet sways of modest hue.

                II

Night wanes and stills hearths
as heavy eyes seek

Huntress' heart, sure as her eye,
Hones e'ery point's peak

Margins are plots for prey whose
Throats are stopped with ink

For you Fair Goddess we fall
On white fields, quarry for dream.

Recurrent Folly of Demanding Non-Violent Protest When the State is an Enemy in Class War

Peterloo, 1819.

Bloody Sunday, St. Petersburg, 1905.

1. The arrogance of believing the righteousness of one's cause, and the precious manner in which it is peacefully maintained, will magically overcome enemies who have never been ashamed of using brutality is a suicidal form of megalomania. This Liberal messianism is preached in our schools and media via revisionary praise of "peaceful saints" like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr..

2. The stupidity of thinking protest is not a violent reproach to the power which stands to lose legitimacy.

3. The pride that makes one fail to see protest, by its nature, is violent. "We're refined protesters, civil but disobedient. They wouldn't dare attack us."

4. Supine protest invites massacre. Power loves to make a statement with dead bodies(US Resource Colonialism abroad). The above images(and there are countless more) prove this is a constant.

5. Stressing non-violent protest shows obedience to those who sustain a monopoly on violence.

6. The state and its institutions are an enemy in the class war. They have taken a side and are committed to fighting to the death. Prisons are sprouting up all over the country as police forces have been militarized. The past tells us well armed police, be they state operatives or private contractors hired by the state, will not hesitate to murder non-violent protesters.

7. Remove your peaceful heads from your stinking asses and realize if you really want change, you'll have to do more than obediently occupy parks. Our masters are not troubled by efforts to inconvenience them. They'll allow you to string out this morality play long enough to make it tiresome in its futility.

Past Flame

Classical Shout Out Friday: Atomic Bard

I will reveal those atoms from which nature creates all things and increases and feeds them and into which, when they perish, nature again resolves them.
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura.

Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet of the 1st century BCE. Thanks to him we have the best exposition of Epicurus' philosophy in On the Nature of Things. This great poem is admirable for its clarity and hatred of superstition. Lucretius deftly uses poetic imagery to inspire a greater appreciation for natural phenomena. He dispenses with Superstition* and in its stead sings the glorious naturalism of Epicurus' theory of the universe.  

*Even the opening Prayer to Venus implies the Goddess is revivifying Nature itself and not an anthropomorphic deity, despite the scene with Mars. Plus, as a philosophical poem, he was wise to observe the formalities established by Parmenides, Empedocles, and others. Lucretius wished to open with familiar honey to appeal to readers of his time.

Aragon, Antidote to Armistice Day

...a certain Painleve, Minister of War, signed a monstrous decree the other day: any officer or noncom, any asshole paid to march, from now on has the right to arrest me in the street. The police were not enough. And like them, they are sworn in as of now. The word of this dung is law. Well, agriculture will no longer be lacking for cows. So: since looking at them cross-eyed in the street will get me time in the slammer, I have the honor, in my own home, in this book, here and now, very consciously, to say that I shit on the entire French army.
Louis Aragon, Treatise on Style.

The Valley of Darkness (Allegiance in Sports and Politics)

The ground of an addiction to sports is an archaic spiritual constitution--the possession of the predatory emulative propensity in a relative high potency. A strong proclivity to adventuresome exploit and to the infliction of damage is especially pronounced in those employments which are in colloquial usage specifically called sportsmanship.
The addiction to sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development of the man's moral nature.
---Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Chapter X.

Sports Institutions, especially popular revenue garnering NCAA Football programs, are the beneficiaries of mass adulation. Sports Merchandise worn by fans become emblems of pride. Many invest great amounts of time and revenue in "their" team. Fans participate vicariously in the triumphs and failures of a sports franchise. This identification is analogous to the nationalism of citizens enjoying the victories of its war machine by unfurling the flag. In short, they are facets of the same Barbarism.

The Penn State scandal starkly represents the absurd lengths such identification can go. A group of students riot to protest the ouster of a revered head coach. A man who participated in a decade long effort to cover up the serial sexual abuse of minors by a colleague at the campus on multiple occasions. Odd that students aren't protesting the ring leaders of the cover up and instead riot for one ring leader to be treated with "dignity".

NCAA Football thrives on exploiting student athletes, revenue hording by schools, and the vicarious triumphalism of its students, alumni, and fan base. Like Nationalism, it is a Cult. The callous barbarism sings the epos of invested allegiance. Who cares about raped children when "JoePa" has won the most games in Division I history and earned the school millions? A corollary in politics: many still "support" Obama despite the fact he's ordered the murder of thousands of women and children with extra-judicial drone strikes because he has a "D" after his name.

Allegiance conveniently accepts evil it'd otherwise condemn. One can easily find a million comments from widely respected thinkers and "good people" celebrating such evil as "pragmatic", "worth the cost", "for the greater good", or, the most common, "Who am I to question? They know what they're doing.".

The rioting of Penn State fans after Joe Paterno's firing was inspired by the same barbarism that had thousands taking to the streets in joy after President Obama announced the US assassinated Osama Bin Laden.

Throughout history allegiance to leaders of powerful institutions has ever darkened valleys with evil.
    

Austerity

Why the long faces? Old and young must unite and pull our ship of state out of this crisis. Stimulating to know so many are sacrificing for the greater good. Reaffirms one's confidence in humanity.  

Classical Shout Out Friday: Illustrious Turn

For it was impossible either to avoid detection by swarms of spies, or if caught to escape death in its most agonizing form. Indeed, even in the company of my nearest relations I felt far from safe.
Procopius, Anecdota(widely published as The Secret History).

Tireless secretary to Belisarius, courtier to Justinian, had another history to write. He had before toiled as the stenographer of War(Gothic, Vandal, Persian) and penned tribute to imperial edifices. Even the favor of Emperor Justinian galled. The titles and sinecures, Prefect of the City, brought shame. His last task was to expose the horrors behind the narrative. Would that we had more like minded insiders now.

Humanity of Markets

The ruling class's vision of shared sacrifice.

Looters of the World Unite and Pillage Nations with Austerity!

Sun Blonde

Canvas the town and brush the back-drop. Are you sleeping?
"Surf's Up", The Beach Boys, music Brian Wilson, lyric Van Dyke Parks.

There are children blonde as the Sun.
   There's music as radiant in tone.


Brian Wilson's an Icarus.


The Beach Boys' "Smile Sessions" was released on Tuesday--a magnificent mess. I cannot sing its sumptuousness sufficiently.


Ont ouvert le printemps dans nos yeux.

Geography Disposed

"Some say that these lands were first known many centuries ago, and that their situation was written down and the exact latitudes noted in which they lay, but their geography and the sea routes by which they were reached were forgotten..."
General and Natural History of the Indies, Captain Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo.



Geography has been digitized, a matter of satellite imagery. Capital busies itself exhausting colonial expropriation. States honor alliances that better serve the effort to extract resources from weaker nations over the sanctity of borders and sovereignty; unless it's a matter of keeping undesirables away or securing the wealth of an insulated elite.
Geography disposes. Its value is in the exchange of data points to augment market hegemony. Surveillance, Security and GPS targeting by high tech weapons are Geography's Golgotha.When colonial epochs peak, geography's end pens the epitaph.

As the Crow Flies

Black wings raise
petrol bows.
Dye day's grays
livid rose.

Staid air stifles
a piercing call.
Gates part, youths run,
old dons bear scowls.

Classical Shout Out Friday: Counter Christ

Apollonius of Tyana
"Because Telemachus was young, Homer thought he needed two dogs, and he sends them to accompany the young man to the marketplace of Ithaca, unreasoning animals though they are."

He healed the sick, raised the dead, and ascended to Olympus. Honored the Pagan Gods and quoted Homer, Sophocles, Plato, and Aristotle. Augustine raged against his enduring popularity.

Philostratus' Life of Apollonius reads like an Alexandrian Gospel. The Philosopher Hero harangues Emperors(Nero, Vitellius), toadies up to them too(Vespasian, Titus), and still has time to shoot the breeze with Gymnosophists(Naked Philosophers). Entertaining stuff.

Authority Answers Peaceful Protest's Right with Might

 We demand your protest be peacefully ineffectual. The smallest violation will be punished with deadly force. We don battle gear to better serve the community. Our aim is true. God Bless America, land of the free.


    

The Winter of Our Crushed Dissent

Officers of the Peace


Out of the decay of self-seeking capitalism, it was held, would arise the flower of the ages, the Brotherhood of Man. Instead of which, appalling alike to us who look back and to those that lived at the time, capitalism, rotten-ripe, sent forth that monstrous offshoot, the Oligarchy.
Too late did the socialist movement of the early twentieth century divine the coming of the Oligarchy. Even as it was divined, the Oligarchy was there---a fact established in blood, a stupendous and awful reality.
---Jack London, The Iron Heel.

Metternich/Napoleon: Two Modes of Reaction United in NATO

        "But, Karel, history is the memory of a people. You have only to distort that memory and....."
                                           ---Hugo Claus, The Sorrow of Belgium.


Would you like popular fascism or oligarchy? How about both? The imperial expansion of "Free Markets" accommodates. NATO weds Metternich's reaction with Napoleon's imperial hubris.

Ron Paul Lacks LoveSexy

This is not music, this is a trip.

Ron Paul champions "unfettered" markets while decrying the expenses of Empire and the Drug War. He naively believes states and markets are distinct entities. Expanding Markets require War Machines and Legal Strictures, including Regulatory Oversight, to protect and secure hegemony. They saddle the State with obligations that it funds by taxing the public. States have become apparatuses to aggressively secure and defend the expansion of Market Hegemony.

The Market's control of State policy has become more pronounced. Bank Bail Outs, aggressive wars, longstanding occupations, increased military spending, and regressive taxation all remain despite widespread unpopularity. Military operations abroad and surveillance and incarceration efforts within are contracted out to private enterprise. Mr. Paul decries the expense of bases, wars, and occupations but fails to recognize private enterprises are heavily subsidized by these "expenses". There's a reason why Boeing, General Electric, Northrop Grumman, Oil Cartels, Bechtel, XE, and Banks are posting record profits in a recession.

When we turn to the Drug War we see it benefits Alcohol Distributors, Pharmaceutical Co's, and Private Prison contractors. Again, market forces demand state action and reap rewards.

I applaud Rep. Paul bringing attention to costly and insane policies, but Imperialism and the Drug War would not exist without the expanding Market's rule through the State.

(H/T to JCrow for idea of posting about Ron Paul to attract traffic. Bonus posting pic of Prince to perhaps inspire Paisley Park's attention over use of image. JCrow is not responsible for content. I love Prince's music.)

Classical Shout Out Friday: That Good Old Comedy

Why, don't you know that for Homer the word "marketeer" is a term of praise--he applies it to Nestor and all his other fountains of wisdom?
--Aristophanes, The Clouds, Act I, Scene 2.


Aristophanes is timeless. His irreverent invective towards all pomp, demagoguery, and posturing dialecticians remains a joy to read. Unfortunately his work has been shelved, deemed vulgar. Only Lysistrata remains popular because of its bawdy anti-war message.

My favorite is The Clouds. It provides the best portrait of Socrates. Presenting Socrates as the King of the Sophists is a brilliant move, superior to Plato's virtuous, honey tongued, charmer.

From this Friday forward I will post a piece on a neglected(IMO) classical writer out of kindness to long dead whiteness. I hope to, like time, wind, and water, level mountains of dust.

These pieces will be scant on detail. Best to praise and provide a small portion to prompt appetite.







    

All Our Rowdy War on Terror Friends are Gettin' Put Down

This is what you get for Neoliberal Reform.




Mubarak and Gaddafi have been deposed. Assad and Saleh are teetering. What do they all have in common? Every one assisted the US in the "War on Terror". Mubarak, Gaddafi, and Assad have kindly tortured suspected terrorists US has rendered to them. Saleh continues to crackdown on a local resistance movement(falsely placed under rubric of AQAP) and welcomes drone strikes.

Gaddafi's fall is a Pyrrhic victory. Unrest will haunt Libya for decades as rival factions vie for Western dollars. Infrastructure was destroyed by US/NATO bombs. Distress and famine will grow as Libyan splinter groups crony up to Energy Cartels. These reservations won't silence the Imperial triumphalism coming out of DC.

FBI Implicates Freed Bengal Tigers in Ohio for Plotting with Iranian Quds to Attack Heartland

The New Face of Terrorism

A Department of Justice press release claims the FBI has unearthed another plot of the Quds Force, linked with a loose network of Central Ohio Marijuana dealers, to recruit Bengal Tigers in a terrorist attack on the Heartland.
An animal trainer was commissioned by a prominent Central Ohio Marijuana dealer, distantly related to an Iranian colonel, to free a force of deadly predators. The animal trainer contacted the FBI and offered to act as an informant. Anonymous sources have confirmed 18 Bengal Tigers aided in the planning and commission of the attack. The source went on to add the lead Tiger's cousin has a plush reserve at the Tehran Zoo.
National security experts state the plot was nearly exposed earlier this year. The execution of 14 Lions at the Tehran Zoo on January 18 may have been a precautionary measure in the early stages of planning.
Celebrity Zoologist Jack Hanna was called onto the scene and described the horrific attack as "Noah's Ark crashing into a city".


(Link to Mass Execution of Lions at Tehran Zoo story: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/01/18/iran-14-lions-killed-in-zoo/ )

53%'s Rich Pageant

Proud Servant of the State

Pride rises above squalor. Obeisance treasures a kind nod from above. Consuming vicarious majesty, like manna from Heaven. "Man can't live on bread alone."

Moral of History: Kick a man one thousand times, win his fealty with crumbs. Rinse, repeat.  


Of course many of the picture testimonials are fake. Still, the message begs obedience. Petit-Bourgeois proud of being exploited and living up to their masters' ideal. There are a million MBA's who are similarly inspired.

On the Established Political Journalist

"That he defends the supreme powers, as the Geese by their cackling defended the Romans, who held the Capitol; for they favored them no more than the Gauls their Enemies, but were as ready to have defended the Gauls if they had been possessed of the Capitol."
                           ---Thomas Hobbes, Epistle Dedicatory of the Leviathan.



(feel free to replace "o" in Capitol with "a" in translating to present)

Liberals Always Dream New Gracchi

                                 "In those years only the dead smiled,
                                  Glad to be at rest:
                                  And Leningrad city swayed like
                                  A needless appendix to its prisons."
                                     ---Akhmatova, Requiem, Prologue.





1: Historical Background

Cornelia Africana bore two sons as martyrs to Republican Rome. They attempted to legally end iniquitous land distribution as Tribunes of the Plebes. Wealthy Romans(mostly Patricians) were buying up enormous tracts of lands and evicting peasants from their small holder farms. The dispossessed peasantry poured into the city as a "classical" version of a trouble making and unsightly lumpen-proletariat.

Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were part of the establishment. Their father was a Censor, a scion of the Sempronia line. Mother was the daughter of Scipio Africanus.

In the struggle against iniquitous land distribution and urban blight they both exploited the sacrosanctity of the Office of Tribune of the Plebes to pass legislation favorable to small landowners. Their efforts were rewarded with assassination. They became martyrs to a cause that was merely reformist and only attacked a symptom of inequality while leaving the true institutional malady untouched. Such is the fate of most reformists.

After their deaths Rome quickly descended into an increasingly overt violent Oligarchy fostering Civil Wars against slaves, local Italian towns, and finally ending with concentration of all power in military leaders as Consuls(Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar). The Gracchi served as martyrs in the propaganda of populist Imperators like Marius and Caesar. Sulla and Pompey upheld the Senatorial Oligarchy. Caesar vanquished Pompey in their struggle and the Oligarchy surrendered itself, and the Senate, to Patristic Fascism. Caesar was assassinated before he had a chance to fully implement his Tyranny. It took his nephew Octavian, as Caesar Augustus, after defeating Marc Antony, to assume the title Princeps Senatus and use the facade of the Senate to mask his absolute rule.

2: Contemporary Application of Model

Liberals often dream one of their class will take up the mantle of dispossessed peoples. Only they can rescue them by reforming hallowed institutions of Democracy corrupted by evil doers(Partisans point at the other side). A new Lex Hortensia based upon an arcane precedent(like the Licinian Law)must be passed. They believe individual actors, if brilliant enough and divinely favored, can work wonders within powerful Institutions. Their call for "real" leadership in contemporary protests begs the masses to adopt new Gracchi as leaders. Read establishment Liberals on the Occupy Wall Street protests. Always the same tepid support anchored by "serious reservations".  

These pedantic pipe-dreamers forget the Gracchi, though heroic and with "their hearts in the right place", were assassinated by representatives of the Institution they attempted to reform. Furthermore, their martyrdom was exploited by Fascists to create populist support for Dictatorship as an antidote to unjust Oligarchy.

Perhaps the modern Liberal secretly hopes a few of their own sacrificed for the change he or she, deep in the shady copses of their heart, desires is "worth it"? Only then will the masses demand an "effective Leader" who can "cut through" bureaucracy and "get things done"?

This is a recurring dream of "enlightened" minds throughout history. It is also an enduring nightmare for those who can't afford the luxury of dreaming.

I do not believe contemporary Liberals, as a type, actually think much, if at all, about the Gracchi. I am using the Gracchi's failed reform efforts as a timeless model Liberals always propose to escape the horrors of social unrest and reinstate their disturbed repose.

Rebirth of Security Out of the Spirit of Entrapment

                          "Before being discovered, the savage was first invented."
                            --Giuseppe Cocchiara, Il Mito del Buon Selvaggio.


After the failure of security institutions on 9-11 the FBI had to implement more aggressive forms of combating "terrorism" to regain legitimacy. Of course it is just to state it, as a National Law Enforcement institution, has a rich history of failure.

In these perilous times, when income inequality is at a record high, and the Federal Government is buried, like a Titan, under a mountain of debt, an institution must strain to justify increased funding for its practices. In the past few years we have seen the FBI "discover" outrageous plots concocted by its own agents posing as Al Qaeda, Al Quds, et "Al"(humor) operatives. They provided material and funds to the would be terrorists, and ran entire operations until the glorious moment of discovery. This process was witnessed in the alleged Al Qaeda operation to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago by some poor Haitian Americans in South Florida, and once again in the Portland Christmas Bombing plot(A 17 year old Somali American was given money for rent, provided a plan, and a detonator).

Oddly the informants' activity in these operations are cloaked in impenetrable mystery. We know they selected the patsy, planned the operation and provided material. Oddly, their statements under oath were not recorded(per usual practice), and are heavily redacted. Details of their participation are not shared with the public or with the Courts. The FBI cloaks its entrapment schemes under a cover of necessary secrecy justified by "National Security Concerns".

Rest assured alarmist stenographers of the Corpress in the United States, with its battalion of "National Security Experts", rush to exaggerate the grave danger our heroes in the FBI thwarted. "Al Qaeda", "Terrorists", "Attacks on Civilians" run in caps just under a "Breaking News" title across television screens. The Director of the FBI and the Attorney General hold a solemn press conference and reassure the nation all is safe despite the "immense danger" averted.

The latest in this series of quashing deadly plots beggars credulity and has effectively "jumped the shark" for any future "entrapment production". We're told two Iranian nationals(linked with Al Quds) were connected, through an FBI informant, to a Mexican Drug Cartel, and adopted a plan concocted by another informant to acquire explosives and bomb a fictional restaurant to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. Furthermore, bonus #1, they planned to take out a few unnamed Senators and, bonus #2, bomb the Israeli Embassy. A plot arcane and implausible as a Gothic Novel has to be credible! One hilarious detail: the "plotters" allegedly used JPMorgan Chase bank to wire money from Iran to the United States(illegal under present sanctions) to fund operations.

It is well known JPMorgan Chase was fined earlier this year(August) for wiring transactions from Iran. It is also well known major banks launder billions for Mexican Drug Cartels.

Strange how this all came together! Strange how Iran has been happy with the present cooling of relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia! Strange how the FBI is continuing, with the aid of Big Banks, DEA and Drug Cartels to entrap foreign nationals into implausible intrigues which damage its home country's interests.

The Rebirth of Security Out of the Spirit of Entrapment is an arcane endeavor. It appears foolish to the world, like all deep wisdom. Such mystery bewitches Congressional committees to zealously defend more tax dollars to security institutions to help "keep America safe". Complete secrecy is justly warranted by
recent "success".  
   

Futility of Godwin's Law

I hope the above does not offend Net sensibility via similitude. Fascism is a dirty word these days. Can't imagine why. Bulletins in Public encouraging citizens to report "suspicious types"(collaboration) are a leitmotiv of Fascist states.

"Terrorists", Muslims resisting bombs, torture, occupation, sanctions and resource looting(highest forms of terrorism), are Neoliberalism's version of "the mongrel race".

Won't be long before Americans in the "Homeland" resisting plutocrats and their political lackeys become "suspicious types". They're already treated like mongrels--prisons, military.

Notes from Liberal Heaven

                                    "Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
                                     And mark that point where sense and dullness meet."
                                      ---Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, lns-50-1.



Admiring Pope's comme il faut poesy and proudly thinking, I am not ashamed to admit, how far we've come electing an African-American President. Albeit, his rhetoric's a smidge too leftist, but still, in action, he asserts values that have made our nation a global beacon. (Long drawl from pipe, deep furrowing of brow) He's taught medieval savages in the Middle East a thing or two about civilization. Like my dear old Father, he never spares the rod. (Air of melancholy) Alas, someone has to take up the burden of destroying those who threaten our liberty with anarchy.

I was watching a news program just yesterday and witnessed the most amusing spectacle. Slovenly attired and poorly groomed citizens were camping out in public space to protest various issues. How preposterous? How can these ingrates fail to appreciate and treasure the glory of Universal Suffrage?(Shakes pipe at imaginary audience in reproval) If I had time to so easily dispose of I'd walk down to these mobs and, braving the lack of refinement and rudeness, freely convince them of their good fortune. No catering to underachievers from me. I'd refuse to champion their muddled divisiveness like the radical Lawrence O'Donnell has(two angry puffs billowing like steam from engine)! This nation has handed the gift of liberty to them. How dare they spurn such sacred largesse?

At times it dawns on me that most Americans are spoiled(sighs and taps pipe crisply three times). All the things we've accomplished. Civil Rights Legislation, American investment wealth lifting people up from poverty in third world nations, and protecting, with our valiant men and women in the Armed Services, peaceful protest movements in foreign lands from the genocidal aims of well armed and ruthless dictators(adjusting Jacket to accommodate puffed up chest). If I wasn't so Stoic about the failings of human nature I'd be incensed(benign gaze through smokey haze).

Be thankful Americans. This rough patch is transitory. Good times are ahead. We won't let you down. As one great man said, "The arc of history bends towards liberty."  Do not allow that Progress to be stymied by strife. Markets lose confidence and people go tribal. We can't have that. As a polite man of the world, I'd never create strife or sow division so close to home. It's poor form(dusts invisible motes off jacket with left hand).

                                   

                                                      FINIS

Quean of Wall Street

                                                                                    "...carrying home
                                    To her imperial couch the stink of the whorehouse."
                                                              ---Juvenal, Satires, VI, lns. 131-2.
               

Seriously!

A career of fellating the world of finance has earned Ms. Burnett a Wall Street Prince. She is this generation's Andrea Mitchell. There are tons of excellent women journalists. The Corpress pushes brainless eye candy like they're Pimps of the Principalities. We know whose interests they serve.(Commercial Break)

The same interests Ms. Burnett has engaged.

  

Distant Chill

Winter's fingers
snuff wholesome fires.

Branches snap
brittle spines.

Come cush tones
of night and honey.
Comb ripe Suns
from this blight.

Breath's faint treble
intimates the end,
brusque words descend
still as snowfall.

Steve Jobs: Gilded Age Cult of the Entrepreneur (Smothering an Asian Slave Master with Adulation)

The orgy of grief over an Asian slave master, offshorer of labor, and exploiter of copyright laws is nauseating. His products are merely diversionary and in no way did they "change the world". He used his financial clout to bring about favorable conditions through legislation(Apple was heavily subsidized by US government) for the corporation he headed to not only profit immensely from advantageous copyright laws but also to proliferate slave labor(including children) in foreign labor markets. Chinese workers(again, many children) were subjected to inhumane labor conditions by Apple. The obscenity of American corporations exploiting slave labor production in Asia is a physical, and enduring, mark of the bigotry of NeoLiberal "Globalism". To them Asian laborers are still "coolies". Steve Jobs eagerly practiced this shameful exploitation. Celebrating his life is tantamount to celebrating the "wonderful talent and innovation" of a Southern Plantation Owner in 1850's America.