After obviously sitting on the story for weeks or months, now that the Iranian elections are over, and the man has won whom Washington is no doubt delighted has won, the propaganda offensive against Iran begins to once again pick up steam in the United States Military Industrial Media Complex. The latest story to hit the top headlines is that the shocking truth of the matter is that the new President of Iran is, you guessed it, a terrorist.And we all know what that means...
New Iranian president among 1979 captors: hostages ... Some Americans who were held hostage in Iran in 1979 are claiming that the country's president-elect was one of their captors ... A close aide to Ahmadinejad denied the allegations. But the White House said Thursday it is taking the reports seriously. "I think the news reports and statements from several former American hostages raise many questions about his past," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "We take them very seriously and we are looking into them to better understand the facts." ... Mohammad Ali Sayed Nejad, a longtime friend of the president-elect, told the Associated Press that in 1979, "Ahmadinejad had focused his fight against communism and Marxism and he was one of the opponents of seizing the U.S. Embassy. He was a constant opponent." ... former hostage William Daugherty said ... "Clearly the way he acted, the fact he gave orders, that he was older, most certainly he was one of the ringleaders." Daugherty said the revelations put the Bush administration in an interesting position. "You know how he said, 'You're either for us or you're for the terrorists.' Well, now the leader of Iran is a terrorist."
Down the memory hole
A media retrospectiveIn reviewing the course of the media revelations concerning 'the war against terrorism' it is worth noting here that the upcoming attack on Iran has bipartisan support in both the Congress and Senate, and is not merely just a George Bush project. For example we know that the illustrious bipartisan commission tasked with 'investigating 911' paved the road to war with Iran with blacktop last year. You might recall how clumsy George Bush was becoming, still repeating the same tired old lies about Iraq getting bomb material from Nigeria (the evidence was condemned by the intelligence community as an 'obvious fake') and then Bush continued to use that worthless report from 'British Intelligence', which it turned out was plagarized from some grad students report written before the first gulf war, and then paraded out as the 'latest results from British Intelligence'. Well that was getting really embarrassing for the political establishment, both Democrat and Republican, and since George Bush just cannot stop telling falsehoods once he gets started (becoming one of those skipping broken records) it fell to the 911 commission to kill two birds with one stone, and both pave the way for the upcoming attack on Iran and bail out George Bush at the same time. And so the story became that George Bush was not committing perjury, but rather he had been misled by faulty intelligence from the CIA, and thus because of the sloppiness of the CIA George Bush attacked Iraq, when, actually, if that intelligence was done right, George Bush should have attacked Iran, which the 911 commission suggested, was the really guilty country. You might recall how this was followed by a big Stalinist Show Trail engineered by the American Supreme Soviet, during which the head of the CIA was made a patsy, and dragged down before the congress to explain himself and his sloppy work, and dragged back and forth over the coals before finally he was fired from his job. I am sure that this particular show trial must have caused a lot of CIA analysts to choke and gag, since they had been saying all along that those worthless reports were just that, worthless, and George Bush was so angry at the CIA for not producing the (faked) goods on Iraq that this was then followed by what became known as The Night of the Long Knives, wherein George Bush cleaned house over at the CIA, so that from now on only propaganda reports useful to the Military Congressional White House complex would be barfed up by that newly trained lap dog, the CIA.
After these sensational revelations about Iran's terrorist history and secret ties to Osama bin Laden and regarding Iran's suspicious involvement in 911 was uncovered by the superb investigators of the bipartison 911 commission, (and thus indicating that these were the desired conclusions of the American Supreme Soviet and tthe entire Politburo) the following are a selection of media stories that then hit the Soviet airwaves of the Americ an Military Media Complex at the time.
9/11 Commission Finds Ties Between al-Qaeda and IranNow if we go a little further down into the memory hole, we find out that Iran was not always a terrorist, but for a brief time, while it was convenient, Iran was you might recall (or then maybe not) that Iran was at one time a partner with Washington in the 'War against Terrorism'. The reason Iran was a partner at that time is that Iran borders Afghanistan, and thus the Iranian government was brought on board by Washington, tempted no doubt by the highly lucrative carrot on a stick that Washington was dangling at the time, which was the prospect of Oil and Gas pipelines through Iran, which, given the geograpy of the Southern Muslim region of what once the old Soviet Union, is the most logical and inexpensive route for such oil and gas pipelines (first down throuigh Afghanistan and then through Iran).
9/11: The Iran Factor ... The final report of the 9-11 Commission reveals troubling new evidence that Tehran was closer to Al Qaeda than Iraq was.
WORLDTHREATS - 911 Links To Iran 9/11 Commission Finds Ties Between Al-Qaeda and Iran
THE Sept 11 commission's report, due out on Thursday, says Iran 'gave safe passage to 9/11 hijackers'
9/11 commission finds Qaeda-Iran ties.
Gloing a little further down the memory hole, you might recall how the attack on Afghanistan was already through the final planning stages by the summer of 2001, months before 911, with the reason for the attack on the Taliban being a desire to secure control of the world's largest remaining oil and gas reserves which are found just the north of Afghanistan in the muslim states of what used to be the Southern Soviet Union.
The following story from June of 2001 accurately describes the battle plan against the Taliban, and at this time Iran was temporarily a partner with Washington, since Afghanistan was not yet a done deal, and Iran's turn would come later.
The article reports on the agreement of both India and Iran to be 'on board' for the attack on Afghanistan as the American government was already busy in the region building an anti-Afghanistan war coalition. Note that at the end of May 2002, the ink was dry on the Afghan pipeline deal...We can also note that Iran is not in on the deal, having become a terrorist state since then...Now a little further up the memory hole we find that all this was conveniently forgotten, as suddenly American had to mobilize to attack Afghanistan because of 9-11. As it states (a little further down in the memory hole) in the documents of the Project for a New American Century, the Hawks of America had a golden opportunity given that there was no other super power in the world, to use military force to establish an American imperialist empire that would then dominate the whole world for a century, but they stated that this wonderful project might prove politically impossible, well, that is, unless Americans had a real stroke of good fortune and Americans lucked out big time by having someone do another Pearl Harbor on the United States, in which case, the hawks noted, the gloves came off and suddenly that Imperialistic military adventure became possible. Well, as we know, despite all the advance warnings that came in concerning Bin Laden's specific plan of using civilian air craft as flying bombs, airport security remained surprisingly slack during the summer and fall of 9-11 until the inevtiable happened and Americans got damned lucky on 9-11 (another bit of information dredged up from the memory hole, but, which, for some damn strange reason, never made into that official bipartisan 9-11 report, but then I guess no one is perfect, and given all the resources devoted to investigating Iran, well time is limited and you can't do everything).
India in anti-Taliban military plan India and Iran will "facilitate" the planned US-Russia hostilities against the Taliban.
By Our Correspondent
26 June 2001: India and Iran will "facilitate" US and Russian plans for "limited military action" against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new economic sanctions don't bend Afghanistan's fundamentalist regime ...
Indian officials say that India and Iran will only play the role of "facilitator" while the US and Russia will combat the Taliban from the front with the help of two Central Asian countries, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, to push Taliban lines back to the 1998 position 50 km away from Mazar-e-Sharief city in northern Afghanistan. (Note that this is exactly what happened.) ...
Diplomats say that the anti-Taliban move followed a meeting between US Secretary of State Collin Powel and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and later between Powell and Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh in Washington. Russia, Iran and India have also held a series of discussions and more diplomatic activity is expected ...
Officials say that the Northern Alliance requires a "clean up" operation to reduce Taliban's war-fighting machinery to launch an attack against the Taliban advance to the Tajik-Afghan border. This "clean up" action is being planned by the US and Russia since the Taliban shows no "sign of reconciliation". (Note: once again everything went exactly as planned last summer)...
Such Central Asian countries as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are threatened by the Taliban that is aiming to control their vast oil, gas and other resources by bringing Islamic fundamentalists into power. Now all the CIS nations are seeking assistance of Russia's Federal Border Guard Service to overcome the Taliban threat ... India, Iran and Russia, for example, are working on a broad plan to supply oil and gas to south Asia and southeast Asian nations through India but instability in Afghanistan is posing a great threat to this effort ... ... India plans to raise the Afghanistan issue in the forthcoming G-8 summit in Genoa in mid-July.
Well of course, it became neccesary for 9-11 to not be about those pipelines or the oil and gas of the Southern Soviet Union, and so naturally it became neccesary for Osama bin Laden to 'confess' which he then did, and which was diligently reported by the entire American Military Media Complex.
Osama bin Laden gets a nose job
The caption on the photo reads... "Living high on the hog on the Afghan food aid on which the multi-trillionaire terrorist has come to depend, Osama slaps on weight. As well in terror for his life, Osama gets a nose job in a desperate attempt to hide his identity...(have a nice day)"
You might recall this completely phony video that was front page news in December, wherein that obviously phony fat actor played the role of Osama bin Laden and boasted and bragged about doing 9-11 from his cave somewhere in Afghanistan. I remember walking into a store one morning and there in our local newspaper was the entire frontpage filled with that fat grinning face under a banner headline which screamed that Osama had confessed to 9-11. Now it was pretty obvious that this fat faced actor was not Osama bin Laden, and it must have been pretty obvious to those fact checking editors around the country. I was appalled and for me that was the clearest evidence of just how rotten and corrupted the Stalinist Joe Goebbels media system has become in the two decades since Ronald Reagan deregulated the media, allowing everything to be gobbled up by his rich capitalist friends, even though, at the time, those with understanding were warning that just this very sort of scandalous fraud would be the end result of that bad policy. But then, even Reagan knew that, which is why he did that, and which is why the rubber stamp Reichstag rubber stamped that bad policy, on the theory that in the future this would made capitalist imperialism and capitalist neo-liberalism just that much easier, although in retrospect that proves to be not the case at the end of the process (quite the contrary really, but never mind).
Well then as we move up the memory hole, it became time to punish Saddam Hussein for 9-11. And given the way things are, naturally the American Military Media Politburo Complex carried screaming headlines as Osama bin Laden once again appeared to confess to a link between Al Queda and Iraq and Saddam.
BREAKING NEWS!!!! bin Laden reveals Iraq/al Queda links! .... WASHINGTON -- A message has surfaced believed to be Osama bin Laden claiming a "partnership with Iraq," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday. Powell said he reviewed a transcript of the message, which he said was to air on Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arab satellite news network. "(Bin Laden) speaks to the people of Iraq and talks about their struggle and how he is in partnership with Iraq," Powell said at a congressional hearing. Asked for reaction, Al-Jazeera denied that it had such a bin Laden message and said that it was a rumor that has been circulating for several weeks. But Powell seemed to be taking the message seriously, telling lawmakers they would be hearing it "during the course of the day" on Al-Jazeera.
Now if we go a little further down in the memory hole, we find the adminstrations oil policy document which was on the desk of Dick Cheney in April 2001, months before 9-11, which is titled, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century" , which recommends an invasion of Iraq as a strategy to be employed in dealing with the American energy reaquirements. According to the document, "the American people continue to demand plentiful and cheap energy without sacrifice or inconvenience" and therefore this requires military intervention in Iraq.
Pacifist Activism
A polemic
Now over the past few years this Karl Rove figure has become almost legendary to some people in what you might call the resistance movement, owing to what we are told is the man's incredible albeit evil genius. But if you just take a deep breath, and take a step back, emotionally detach from the situation, and take the long term view, another picture emerges which is quite different. For example we know that just after the last election George Bush stated that there was growing alarm and concern about America's fast approaching bankruptcy as a nation, and Bush stated, following the Karl Rove script, that he, as the responsible chief executive had heard these concerns and was preparing to act by making the tough choices to take the ax to the budget. So then, after years of deliberate mismanagement of the nation's finances, by giving trillion dollar tax breaks to his political base, those exclusive elite have mores, the capitalists, for whom George Bush is actually working (although he is no employee, being an elite have more himself, and an ultra capitalist), and then after years having George Bush deliberately allow the country to plunge into bankruptcy, by not balancing the budget to match those big have mores tax cuts, the time now comes for that economic savior, George W. Bush, to rise to the occassion, and save America once again, by destroying the New Deal. Now as Karl Rove must know, every good propaganda ploy requires a villain, in this case the really bad scoundrel who was responsible for bankrupting America on purpose. Now just who that might be is the really good question, and I suppose that all one can do is to leave Karl Rove to more of his brilliant work, and see what he can come up with to explain that one. Personally I prefer to think of that bankruptcy money as a loan, which the really rich friends of George Bush can now kindly begin to pay back, keeping in mind here that this was only their tax cut, you know, just shave a little off the side, so it is not like they can't afford it. Now what Karl Rove has working for him is the fact that capital has become 'globalized', another little gift of Reagan and Thatcher, even though people warned at the time how everyone was going to be royally screwed by those robber barons, which is just what happened, but then that didn't stop Reagan and Thatcher because that was the intention. Therefore if capitalists get squeezed in one country they can wire their money to some other country and high tail it out of town, and leave the economy to crumble until everyone learns their lesson and have been suitablly disciplined by the boss. Fortunately, working against Karl Rove and Bush and their rich friends is the fact that capital has become globalized, which might at first seem counter intuintive, until you realize that given time, this means that resistance is also becoming globalized, which it must to be effective. So we see the Europeans getting pissed off, as demonstrated by the French and the Dutch, and of course the Bolivians are just hopping mad, and the Venezeulans have been pissed for years now, and Iraq is boiling, and the whole Muslim world is stewing, but you have to expect this to happen when you put a pot onto a stove and leave it their to boil. Sooner or later it does, which is the secret wisdom which informs pacifist activism, a wisdom which always alludes the oppressor, since oppressor's have minds filled with greed fatally combined with arrogant hubris, which causes them to tumble and fall over and over again.
There are so many other good examples of this sort of thing. For example, we know that the Florida election in 2000 was stolen. Most notably there was the corruption involved in illegally throwing hundreds of thousands of black voters off the rolls, on the grounds that they were really bad criminals, without giving them ample time, as prescribed by the laws of the land, to contest their exclusion and get their names reinstated. This is a fine example of that contemptible disregard for 'law and order' by the powerful in today's America, which nevertheless does not stop them from campaigning on a law and order plank and hypocritically persecuting poorer Americans who are disproportionately the perpetrators of crime in America. All this occurs in spite of the fact that America has an official policy of maintaining what is called 'the ideal umemployment rate', typically said to be between 4 and 6 percent, depending on which capitalist economist you ask. You see, if there is full employment, then power passes into the hands of the workers who can then demand higher wages and benefits packages, to the detriment of those capitalist have mores. Therefore when umemployment begins to fall, the Federal Reserve Board issues one of those statements about 'cooling the overheated economy', which is just Orwellian talk for throwing millions of Americans into the poor house, this being done by the instrument of jacking up interest rates until unemployment climbs, and then once the capitalists have been kept safe and secure, the rates can once again come down and stabilize once again, at least until the next time more Americans get jobs, in which case the attack on the workers of America is mounted once again. Thus America constantly has a cesspool of poverty, since poverty in America is the official policy of America since it is in the selfish interest of the robber barons, and the policy of America's politicians is the policy of those capitalists, who have bought and purchased just about every politician in the country. These facts of life do not stop some ultra capitalist elite have more like George Bush or that Karl Rove character from deliberately bankrupting America's finances, so as to thoroughly gut such New Deal programs as food stamps, and hopefully forever end welfare as we know it, for people of that social mileu just hate paying taxes, and being Social Darwinists to the core, believe only in the survival of the fittest - better to be a wolf than a lamb, and as for those lambs a certain number of those lambs will have to be tossed into the cesspool generation after generation, the difference being know that George Bush intends to deepen the cesspool and throw in more shit and piss, before throwing in those sacrificial lambs, which will lead to more crime, which will then lead America's capitalist politicians to campaign on law and order, while at the same time as this bald faced hypocrisy is practiced, the politicians break every law in sight themselves and go unpunished, since they are now above the laws, which includes international law, which we hear so many bad things about these days, even though according to the Constitution of the United States of America, international law and treaties once signed, become the law of the land of the United States of America, which means that politicians when they break these laws and treaties are guilty of criminal conduct which makes these crimes of theirs impreachable offenses.
One more good example of this sort of machievellian scheming is the fact that the big scandal of the Florida election, which, given the illegality involved in throwing those black voters off the rolls at the last minute, brought into public view the impotence and general corruption of the American 'injustice system', for it is not possible for America to have a justice system when the entire economic system of America is predicated upon the perpetuation of injustice which is at the rotten core of all crime in America. It was however then decided by the Karl Rove types and the Bush administration that something must be done to 'address public concerns' over the Florida vote. This something was to 'update the voting system' and this involved going shopping for new voting machines. There was a clear choice between the machines that were the most respectful of democracy in America, in that they left a clear paper trail, and thus were subject to audit by concerned and activist citizens, and a second voting machine that left no traces, was not subject to audit by citizens, but only subject to what might pass for an audit by elites controlling the system, and naturally, given that America needed to address the concerns raised by the Florida election (the so called hanging chads problem) the decision was made that this would be a perfectly machiavellian opportunity to pull off another one of those scams and buy the highly suspect voting machines, the machines the least respectful of democracy, and the most susceptible to fraud, and entirely under the control of elites and not ordinary citizens or activist citizens groups. At the same time as the 'concerns raised by Florida' were being 'addressed' throiugh the purchase of those squirrley voting machiens, strangely enough the concerns being raised about the law breaking of the Florida governor, who also happens to be the President's brother, were not addressed, but rather sent so far down the memory hole that there is talk going around that this criminal politician is a prime candidate for the Presidency in 2008 after his brother steps down (or rather if he steps down, you know, what with the talk in the last term about Bush staying on in case of 'national emergency' around election time, which would be unprecedented, and even such talk is unprecedented, given how countries have held elections even in the most hellish of times, but then one must suppose that America is a special case).
Now we know how far out of touch the powerful oppressors of America really are, as this is revealed by some of their recent fiascos which reveal them to be not masterful in their genius at playing the old propaganda game, but seriously confused and out of their depths, unaware of the emerging consequences of their past victorious actions. For example we know that the Bush administration, being ultra capitalist and a tool of the elite have mores Capitalists of America, find Venezuelas state owned oil industry to be just odious, not to mention a bad example for other countries, who might use their profits for some other purpose than giving them to capitalists, who want them, and thus the scheming begins. To facilitate the further enrichment of the American elite the Bush administration and Karl Rove master minded a splendid plot to overthrow the government of Venezuela in one of those right wing Latin American coups. This was quickly done, after the media gave the old propaganda boost, that bit about how angry Venezuelans were demanding 'a return to democracy' in Venezuela. I saw film clips of these demonstrations, and I was amazed at just how white skinned the average Venezuelan really is, not to mention damned rich and well dressed, and all those expensive SUVs driving up to that demonstration. It was remarkable. Actually that was Venezuelas post colonial wealthy white elite who showed up for those demonstrations as part of the masterful propaganda offensive being mounted by Washingtron and the American media, although most Americans would not know that, because the media hid the video tapes, because one look at the racism of Venezuela would ruin everything, so American's got talking heads and decietful propaganda instead. The so called 'new President' of Venezuela promptly wasted no time and on his first day on the job promised privatization of the Venezuelan oil industry. The Bush administration then issued a statement welcoming the 'return to Democracy' in Venezuela. Unfortunately the promise to turn over Venezuela's oild wealth to America's elite have mores was a promise not to be kept given the huge uprising that then took place, and turfed out that phoney fake in just a couple of days. Having been clueless about the level of rising world wide fury after decades of that neo-liberalism, the Bush administration then went back to plotting and decided that the best thing to do would be to demand 'democracy' in Venezuela by forcing a referendum. Now it was obvious to anyone doing any head counts that this was a worthless idea, since the referendum would be soundly defeated, since only the wealthy white elite were in favor, and they are outnumbered by the brown skinned natives who are the true Venezuelans. But the Bush administration proceeded with that stupid plan, and the reason is obvious. They intended to rig the election, and then use the stolen election as an excuse to put in their puppet and carry on with that plan of giving Venezuela's oil wells to the elite have mores of America. Once again, these powerful oppressors proved to be really out of touch with reality, for the Venezuelan people mounted a huge operation to prevent vote fraud, with massive vote counting surveillance, with the result being that the measure was soundly defeated, as anyone with any brains would have known, thus making that poll unneccesary, but the poweful oppressor lacks wisdom, being filled instead with arrogant hubris that leads them astray, in addition to being part of a highly exclusive group of elite have mores, and thus completely out of touch with ordinary life on the planet, causing them to be completely clueless with no idea of what is actually boiling up from below, and for these reasons Washington was planning to rig the vote thus solving that problem, but miscalculated, for the reasons I just mentioned, and that plot backfired once again.
Karl Rove reportedly told a British reporter that he was the man through whose propaganda genius the Bible was being placed into America's public school system. Apparently he felt the need to do some boasting (this happened just a couple of months ago). Now if Karl Rove was a true genius, he would understand that one of the most hated institutions in America today is the religious right, which is held in disregard by the vast majority of Americans. In Canada the new 'Conservative Party' has hitched its wagon to the religious right as well, and consequently when the leader of that party wanted to force an election his MPs panicked and decided to put it off, since the polls indicate that the Conservatives would have a hard time getting elected to the post of dog catcher in Canada at this time, due to the wide spread dislike of the religious right by Canadians. Now I have noticed that there are those who are increasingly alarmed by Karl Roves stage managed rise of the religious right in America, but actually that is not such a bad thing, because if you take the long view you will realize that Karl Rove is leading both the religious right and the Republican party into a headlong collision with the American public. The huge public backlash that followed that stage managed Terri Schiavo affair demonstrates not only how far out of touch with the reality of America someone like that Karl Rove really is, it is also a foretaste of what is to come as the religious right rises to power and the end result is a huge public backlash that destroys all the supposed 'gains' and so called 'progress' those fundamentalists fancy they have been making under the masterful orchestration of Karl Rove and George Bush.
All of these are examples which illustrate that Pacifist Activism involves a test of endurance, patient waiting, combined with the wisdom of a true pacifist, secure in the knowledge that pots placed on stoves eventually boil. Key to this understanding is that is a requirement to defeat oppressors that oppressors must triumph, and this once again is grueling ordeal of patient endurance and oppressors go on from 'victory' to 'victory', While someone like Karl Rove has been given the unwarranted reputation as a machiavellian genius the truth of the matter is that he is just some really inept schemer who cooks up one really bad scam after another that just winds up getting everyone into a hell of a lot of trouble later. As I have attempted to sketch out in the examples above Karl Rove has already served up quite a few specially prepared dishes that are going to be making a lot of people choke, indeed they are already starting to choke on his cuisine, and he is still busy slaving over a hot stove in his kitchen, doing some more of that baking of his, so we can think of the current repast as just the appetizers, and he is still working on the main course, which is certain to be making a lot of people puke and become violently ill.
So the key poiint to be made here is that if you are a member of 'the resistance movement' the most important thing is not to be discouraged or overwhelmed, and while none of this is an enjoyable experience, since the grueling ordeal of patient endurance is not a picnic in the park, nevertheless it is important to maintain that correct political perspective on events which is informed by that deep wisdom which makes that unpleasant ordeal endurable, while you wait patiently for the inevitable, with the understanding that the key to pacifist activism is to understand that oppressors must triumph, indeed they must emerge victorious over you if they are to be soundly defeated, and in the end, the really heavy lifting is always done by oppressors themselves, who proceed, amazingly, to do just that, since to be an oppressor is to lack wisdom and instead be informed by an arrogant hubris and a brutish stupidity. First they ignore you, then they fight against you, then you win.
Now to call someone a pacifist is not to say that they are inactive. To be a pacifist is not to be passive, and it is possible to be a pacifist and at the same time to be actively engaged. The dilemma confronting a pacifist is how to go about resisting and defeating evil without becoming evil yourself. When confronted with acts of cruelty and wickedness how can one react without becoming cruel and wicked in response, for the doing of evil could easily provoke a like response, and here I am referring to that militaristic philosophy that always claims to be ‘fighting Hitler' by taking up the methods of Hitler, violence meeting violence, and eye for an eye, and in the end what you wind up with is a choice between two evils, rather than a choice between what is good and what is evil. The end result is that obnoxious and perpetual philosophy of the human race, which endlessly promotes what is called ‘lesser evilism', which in the end means that all you get is evil all the time, and you never ever see anything good, since even what is good has been polluted and destroyed by being evil all the time.
There are many clear examples of the ruinous results of ‘lesser evilism'. For example, we can turn to the military industrial complex to ‘save the world'. One good example of this is the history of leftist communism in the 20th century, whereby violent murderous military revolution was the norm, and the end product was a military dictatorship and a hated police state. This philosophy of military salvation is justified on the grounds that it is the ‘lesser of two evils' in that if oppressors want to try evil and violence on people, which they do as a matter of course, then we will meet them blow for blow, bullet for bullet, fighting a military war for a good cause, which at the end of it all, turns out be just one more form of evil, and results in evil every single time, in the form of a police state and a Stalinist dictatorship. Those who want to continue to promote lesser evilism as being required as the only realistic response to greater evilism, will then have to explain why in every single instance the end product of 20th century communism was that perversion typically referred to as ‘Stalinism'. Obviously the problem here is systemic, and not a problem of rotten apples, and when you consider that dictatorship creates a throne, and that therefore the throne is available and waiting, it should come as no surprise to see that in just a matter of months you would some despot like Stalin settling his sorry butt onto that throne, since the throne was already in place.
One of the arguments that could be made against Pacifism, and in favor of ‘lesser evilism' is that Pacifism does not work. For where evil and oppression are confronted by Pacifism, it is always certain the evil and oppression will ‘triumph'. On the other hand, we know that when evil is confronted by evil, evil triumphs, and so therefore one could conclude that truly there is no hope, since nothing works.
It is only in recent times that I have begun to appreciate Pacifism, and accommodate myself to the methods of Pacifist Activism. And what I have learned is that if Pacifism is to succeed it is a requirement that evil and oppression must triumph. This understanding is counter-intuitive to the way that human beings normally think, conditioned, as we have been, to a world where the highest good is always some form of ‘lesser evilism', with the consequence being that there is nothing good here, only varieties of evil. If you want to be dismissed with contempt, you can analyze some problem, and then propose a good solution, instead of one of those corrupted, bankrupted ‘lesser evilisms', and people will look at you like you are some kind of a nut case, before they dismiss you out of hand and go back to considering the various corrupted lesser evil options, doing so on the theory that being good is such a far fetched idea, that it will never happen, and therefore, in order to be practical, they had best accommodate themselves to evil and start choosing among the available selection of lesser evilisms,. This happens every single damnable time, by the way, without exception, and so therefore I find it difficult to feel much sympathy should anyone complain about the evil nature of reality, since life consists of choices, and people have been so deeply conditioned and brain washed into choosing evil that even thought that good might be a choice is considered alien in this place.
To be a pacifist is not to be passive. There is a difference. For example, the truth is an active principle. One weapon in the fight against oppression is the truth. For this reason tyrants crush dissidents, because the truth is a sword, a weapon, and while it does not cut flesh and bone as does the sword of the oppressor, nevertheless it cuts. One of the most elementary forms of activism is to tell the truth, in season and out of season, when it is popular and when it is not, when the lie is held in high regard, tell the truth. When they want to hear it and when they don't. For some people this seems counter intuitive, since we don't want to 'alienate' people and therefore perhaps we should water down the wine, since watered down wine is more popular at the given moment. However, once again, if you think long term, those who serve watered down wine fade away and are dismissed, when the time comes for the drinking of wine. Tyrants understand these things and so should you. As for the sword of the tyrant, and the fear of death they exploit, the road ahead is clearly marked out by the blood of martyrs, and the sword of tyrants is the undoing of tyrants. When tyrants turn to the sword they destroy their credibility and there is no longer any point in that facade they attempt to maintain, and they clear the path of the thorns and thistles that block the truth. Sooner or later disaster comes, for the discredited tyrants carrying rifles and swords and crosses on which to crucify their victims and terrify the oppressed, can only hold their victims under a reign of terror, while as the saying goes, still waters run deep, and the truth makes rapid progress below. Sooner or later the time comes when the eruption occurs, the time when everyone knows that everyone else is thinking the same thing they are, and those tyrants cannot kill everyone. We can see the end result of that process beginning to manifest itself in Bolivia when once again confronted with the need to gun down some Bolivians to terrify and oppress the rest, that corrupted Bolivian system is in a quandry because the more you shoot the angrier the rest get, and by now, after years of oppression and shooting, the truth has made significant inroads, since the task of tyrants is to spread the truth through the mechanism of violently attempting to crush the truth, thrus destroying themselves and their own ability to spread decietful propaganda. This is another example of one of those terrible ordeals of patient endurance, as tyrants destroy themselves, for their is no solution to be found in evil, and understanding these processes is one of the secrets of pacifist wisdom.
One of the struggles of the pacifist activist is to discover creative ways of being active, without being 'lesser evil' and remaining true to the spirit of pacifism, and thus unpolluted by contact with the world. For example, one idea I fancy is that of setting up an alternative voting system. If you think it through you can understand how over a period of time such a people's forum would undermine the legitimacy of the current Politburo voting system of the Supreme Soviet, and in the end would burn the place to the ground. After all, there are many ways to rig an election and deny people the franchise, the more blatantly obvious way being to kick people off the voters rolls at the last minute, or purchase squirrley voting machines. Then there is the more traditional, and more subtle way which is to control who gets to run in the election. Another is to control the agenda, making sure that none of the concerns of the people are ever placed before the ballot. I offer this idea of mine as just one example of what I mean when I insist that pacifism is not passive.
Now when we are informed, and we then look back at the history of the nation, we see clearly that oppressors have gone from victory to victory and triumph to triumph while it would seem all pacifists ever accomplished was that they gave lectures that no one attended. Oh sure, they built statues celebrating pacifists,after they were safely dead, even though they villified pacifists endlessly while they were alive, and they even made divine gods out of pacifists, but no one was taking notes.
We have seen the results, in that the world is full of violence and want and human suffering. As a result of all this, it turns out that powerful oppressors can now come and take a bow to the thunderous applause of their admirers, for many and obvious to all are their accomplishments. Yes after all the death and destruction and the fact that humanity was lied to consistently and persistently and kept under a yoke of the cruelest oppression for a long time, now those oppressors, who were the ones with power, and thus obviously the ones responsible for it all, can come out in public and take a bow and take credit for it all. Which it turns out they don't want to do, They would rather tell even more lies and try to blame somebody or something else for everything that has gone wrong,? Yes, success is killing the powerful and the great and the mighty, and they are in so deep now that they can't get out, and even then they just keep on digging. Yes, they were in triumph the great and the rich and the powerful, which is just their absolute ruin at the end of it all. Really, all you have to do at the end of it all, to destroy a powerful oppressor, after the suitable amount of time has passed, is to turn the lights on, and its no surprise that powerful oppressors will be kept busy smashing light bulbs for that very reason, which just makes matters worse, since even their supposed victory in having smashed light bulbs just adds onto the ruinous destruction of those oppressors. Pacifists, who are called to be cunning and wise beings themselves and thus full of that particular kind of secret wisdom that should inform the pacifist, should therefore understand these things, and thus begins that dreadful orcdeal, that test of endurance, holding one's nose forwhat seems far to long while powerful and victorious oppressors go about that business of being real successful and totally triumphant, so that in the end they can wind up doing what they also do, thus destroying themselves completely and once and for all at the end of it all.
A proper political perspective
Second, both George Bush and Tony Blair have been praised for the debt reduction initiative, even though the conditions attached to the debt reduction are that these countries open themselves up to unrestricted robber baron capitalism of the most brutal kind, such as was practiced during the time of Charles Dickens, and this form of 'neo-liberalism' will also soon enough be practiced on Americans as well, as soon as George Bush gets through bankrupting the country with his deliberate and reckless budgetary policy (no doubt Karl Rove will have to promote him as the one to restore fiscal responsbility to America, which should be a real interesting twist). Apparently both Bono and Geldof are converts to the less evilism doctrine, and thus are praising this robber baron capitalism initiative, probably on the theory that its the least evil option, although that is questionable in this case. People should be aware that no country ever achieved development under a regime of 'free trade' or 'free enterprise'. Rather the history of economics reveal that countries develop first by protecting their domestic industries from compettiion. Only later on, once those industries are over producing for the local market do those countries then look for a place to dump their surplus, and thus begin promoting free trade. As well robber baron neo-liberalism allows robber barons to not only boss people around at work, but also take that same fascist type economic mentality into the political realm, and soon enough they are able to blackmail and extort every country in the world, and boss everyone around in politics as well, which, I suppose, for that particular social mileu seems normal, and consistent, because they are the boss after all, and everyone should know that. This also leads to the famous 'race to the bottom' as countries compete to lower wages and gut social programs and become more and more Dickensian so that their countries will appeal to the boss, the boss in this case being some more of those notorious 19th century robber barons, the difference being that this time they are taking their robbery global, and so the response to them must be global solidarity, since everyone's struggle is now the struggle of everyone else. So then that political perspective of lesser evilism being promoted by Geldof and Bono is actually doing a hell of a lot of harm and not much good, paving the road for robber barons, giving both Bush and Blair a propaganda coup, and faciliating the attacks of the future, by hiding the truth.
Now Geldof has said that he wants to 'bring Bush onboard' and thus no one is allowed to criticize Bush.' Now keep in mind here that when you bring on board a robber baron you bring on board that robber baron's policy, which is exactly what has happened here, and not something we need or that anyone in the poorer countries wants, so certainly no one is doing them some charitable favor by bringing in some robber baron. This is especially true when you consider all the world wide struggle that is going on right now to get that robber baron out, and so you wind up making a choice here. Either you are for those like the Bolivians or the oppressed people of Iraq locked into one of those messy wars of liberation, or you are for George Bush and the robber barons. As for bringing on board a robber baron, no thanks, and that robber baron could use less help and more resistance, since everything that someone like Geldof or Bono do to help a robber baron really hurts the poorer people of the world, as you can tell by examining those really bad robber policies which are not being feted as something grand and a real accomplishment, when actually it is just recycled crap done over again and more and more and more of the same. The poor are receiving exactly the same message just one more time, this time backed up by those who are supposedly helping them, that message of some robber baron being, 'this is a stick up,privatize and hand over your wealth and no one gets hurt.'
Now there may those who say that I am to hard on poor George, and should ease up on the man, thus giving him a chance to climb on board. Let me just say that as is obvious, I just find those robber barons to be appalling and greedy cruel brutes with a twisted view of the value of human life as compared to value of a great big stack of money. On the otherhand there is something good I can say about a robber baron, and that is that they are brutalized and thus are themselves brutal brutalizers of the human race, who have never known anything but that gun slinging brutality that characterizes that social mileu from which they have emerged, and thus know nothing but brutality, that brutality of theirs then flowing downward and outward until it fills the whole planet with vicious brutality, just as was the case with the equally brutalized brutishly stupid landlords who preceeced the capitalists, and the slave drivers who preceeded them. So that being the case maybe there is some hope for a robber baron at the end of it all, robber barons being nothing more than gun slinging wild west brutes who have been brutalized and who brutalize everyone else while being brutalized some more until the whole planet is brutalized by their brutish stupidity which is then used as evidence to justify brutishness, at least in the mind of one of those brutishly stupid really greedy cruel blood shedding robber barons.
Now lest someone should try to sell me on that flawed political perspective that states that we should not actively resist George Bush, or that we should be content to leave George Bush and the robber barons in power, then work with them, even though that means more robber baron policies, all I can say is that in case anyone forgot the man just did the big Hitler thing only a few months ago and using his brutish superiority in arms to crush a liberation movement by destroying an entire modern urban metropolis. His orders to his soldiers at the time were to kill every living thing they encountered in the city, the type of order we have not heard given by a major power since the days of the second world war. Every international law was violated that you could possibly dredge up at that time, which makes George Bush an indictable criminal under American law according to the Constitution of the United States of America. So then, the concept of accomodating an emerging Nazism and chumming around with unindicted war criminals doesn't fly with me, and I must say that I am astounded by the lack of political perspective displayed by Geldof as evidenced by those remarks of his, and thus I would encourage people not to stand in solidarity with him, because he is obviously badly out of touch with reality. Now should George Bush become somebody else, and this would entail a complete transformation of the man's personality, then perhaps I could get along with him. You know, perhaps he could 'accept Jesus' and 'repent of his sins', something a little more major than just stopping snorting coke and drinking by the way. Until then you can just forget it, because I am in a high state of alarm here, as a person should be considering the monstrous nature of what just took place, and the ominous signs that hang over the future of this place. You know people ask questions about Nazism, such as, 'how could it have happened.' Well Nazism is an expression of ultra capitalism, when it encounters no resistance, just that damnable appeasement, so if you really want some historical answers you might want to study the present and some of that lack of resistance you see happening today, and that should answer any questions anyone might have about what happened yesterday.
For as the saying goes, those who do not learn from history are damned to repeat it again and again and again, until they do learn something, a redundant process by the way, which I would hope would bring us at the present time to the very last of one of those again and agains, making this time unnecessary, but if it proves not to be the case, then one must adapt to reality and go through that terrible ordeal of patient endurance while people learn that lesson one last time (and hopefully it will be the last time, if it isn't right now...)
For those who get mad when you talk about emerging Nazism I will just point out something that maybe you didn't know, which is that Germany under the Nazis was not a total tyrant state before the war, which is a myth many people believe, thus causing them to make an erroneous historical analysis. Under the Nazis you could go down to the newspaper shop and buy the foreign papers and read lots of bad things about Hitler while sipping a capucinno. You know, just like in America today. And sure they had concentration camps like Guantonomo Bay, and the Germans knew about it, but people just got along quite fine with that development. And yes Hitler did bring in that German version of the Patriot Act after the Reichstag fire, which is exactly the same thing as the American version, but people just got along quite fine after that. And sure Hitler introduced arrest without calling for lawyer and indefinite detention under the Fuhrers orders and sure Hitler trashed provisions of the constitution, but people got along quite fine. Hell they even had their freedoms, for a while. How many more historical parallels do people need before they start connecting the dots and realize that you don't take someone like that on board, but rather you impeach them, or you endure to the bitter end, waiting for the ultimate disaster which must come at the end of it all....
