One way or another, what goes around comes around and it did not take more than ten years for the securitization inflicted on Baghdad to come back and bite the citizens of Boston.
[continue reading].
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Miranda as Prophecy - A Better Subversion
Along with news of the Marathon Bombing, the F.B.I. disclosed that an unknown person had mailed letters containing suspected ricin powder to the president and senator Wicker. Far more important than the tittle-tattle risk which neither of the "intended victims" came close to incurring was the more ominous inference, which could be deduced from the incident, that the country has been taken into custody.
Within hours, it was reported that the F.B.I. had detained a man "in the area" with a backpack in which sealed envelopes had been found. (BBC) [1] Aha! Sealed envelopes. Q.E.D.
What area? we wondered; and how did the agents know that that backpack on thatperson had contained suspicious "sealed envelopes"? The reports were devoid of such details -- the question of probable cause apparently is of no interest to the Fourth Estate. Well they must have had something.... Indeed, but what? Apparently nothing because the man with the suspicious envelopes was released.
However, the following day it was reported that the F.B.I. had located a suspect on the basis of tell-tale word patterns. As it turns out, both letters had used the phrase "I am KC and I approve this message." The suspect, Kevin Curtis, had also used the identical phrase in an online comment on a blog post in 2007, the only difference being the use of his full name. (REUTERS) [2]
The speed and efficacy of the F.B.I. was breathtaking. They had managed to obtain and serve warrants on an untold number of I.S.P's in a plethora of jurisdictions and plow through six years of global chat in order to discover the telltale needle in a heaping haystack of billions upon billions of chitter in the chatter.
Or, had they merely flipped a switch in a massive datamine of internet traffic filtering bytes through algorithms in search of a phrase? In either case: Chill out dude -- Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
Although the press was content to repeat whatever facts F.B.I. news releases presented to them, they appeared oblivious to the disturbing inferences which might be drawn from the facts the authorities saw fit to disclose.
If the incriminating phrase had been retrieved from a massive datamine of all our on-line (and telephone) communications, then the Government should at least give all of us the proverbial Miranda warnings.
As a legal matter, Miranda warnings are required only upon being taken into custody. By the same token, the giving of them implicates being in custody. But equally significant is the fact Miranda states; i.e. that anything said will be used against the declarant. When anything we say "can and will" be used against us we are no longer free.
It is no doubt true that any statement anywhere can be used to a person's detriment. But statements made in the open air of freedom get disbursed and lost. There is a natural haphazardness to their being remembered or, just as likely, forgotten. In contrast, statements made in custody are recorded. They are taken down as much as the suspect is locked up and this applies equally to statements made during interviews or personal telephones calls. There is no privacy in custody; and where there is no privacy, there is no freedom.
Most people think of "custody" as a restraint of movement -- of being locked up in a tight space. But that is only a derivative meaning. More primarily the word custody means: "A keeping or guarding; care, watch, inspection, for keeping, preservation, or security." (Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), p. 358.)
It is necessary to distinguish confinement as punishment and custody as a precaution. Accused miscreants were locked up in earlier times because it was next to impossible to keep watch over them otherwise. But it is not always necessary to lock up in order to watch over. Black slaves in the United States and collared Roman slaves in Rome were allowed to roam with an appearance of freedom because their colour or their collar rendered them under watch and inspection automatically. No one would argue that these slaves were not in custody. On the contrary their status was their detention.
Similarly, the fact that our words are being taken down for keeping and inspection means that we ourselves are being watched for security and are therefore ipso facto in custody even if we are allowed every appearance of free roaming.
The elimination of privacy -- that is to say, the taking custody of a nation -- was most irreversibly the creation of the Patriot Act. But the ideological underpinnings which allowed the Act to be rationalised under an appearance of logic go back to California v. Greenwood (1988) 486 U.S. 35, which held that there is no expectation of privacy in garbage. Having deposited one’s garbage “in an area particularly suited for public inspection and, in a manner of speaking, public consumption,” a person “could have had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items that they discarded.” (Ibid.)
Yes, the High Court, actually said that. They said it on the precedent of Smith v. Maryland (1979) 442 U.S. 735 which had held that dialled telephone numbers were not private. Entrusting garbage, the Greenwood Court intoned, was no different than dialling telephone numbers and “we doubt that people in general entertain any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial.” To be sure they did not; for, after all, the most very High Court had told them they did not.
We reported on Greenwood back in 2006 because we felt that it was significant in view of the Security Actions being taken by the Government at the time. (And the Lord will not hear You on that Day ) But little heed was taken of chips in the wind as the Nation moved with determination to eliminate all potential dangers (as they have been called).
The vice of Greenwood is that it perverts our concept of privacy and, doing so, degrades our understanding of freedom. The premise of Greenwood was that a person has no privacy in public because in public one is exposed to general view. But, to say as much is to resort to a tautology masquerading as an argument.
It is true that "in public" a person is "in general view" but these two terms are not interchangeable with "no privacy." What the tautology overlooks is the equally salient fact that "general view" and "surveillance" are not the same thing. The former is haphazard and indifferent and it is these qualities which create the space for freedom. In public, others may notice what we do but for the most part are indifferent to our doings. Because passers-by are not keeping us under watch we are able to go about our private business in public being left alone. In contrast, ongoing, purposeful surveillance is the very core definition of custody because it does not leave one alone but rather follows, tracks, records one's every move with the very opposite of indifference. What Greenwood allows is for the Commons to be turned into a jail and for freedom to be confined to the privacy of one's closet.
To say as much is not a sophistical switching of terms between "privacy" and "freedom." It is an interchanging of terms which reflects the true meaning of "custody". Freedom is not simply a question mobility and action. It is, most essentially, a question of being not under guard. We are free in public because we are not being watched and, not being watched, we are about our private business in the open.
The roots of Greenwood's misnformed constitutionalism lie in an 1890 Harvard Law Review article by Samuel D. Warren, Louis D. Brandeis entitled, and inceptionally defining, The Right to Privacy. Not atypically, Brandeis' quill cut both ways. While the article is credited with birthing the concept of "the right to be left alone," it used medieval English property law as a paradigm and analogised the right of privacy to the fee simple absolute. In a much quoted paragraph, Warren and Brandeis wrote,
In so stating, the authors analogised "privacy" to "curtilage" and "publication" to "conveyance." While the analogy suited the article's overriding purpose of delineating the contours of intellectual property it did not deal with and thus provided only a defective basis for assessing privacy in a constitutional context.
In that context, the focus must as much be on the limits of governmental power as on the individual's supposed choice to "disclose" himself. Between the privacy of one's curtilage and ambit of restrained governmental power lies that in-between space known as "public freedom".
The concept of voluntary "exposure" may be an adequate foundation for assessing the extent of commercial rights granted or retained in remainder. But it is not adequate for determining the political contours of freedom. The idea that civic privacy is "lost" by a decision to "expose" one's self (or to "publish" one's garbage) tacitly assumes that everywhere else, not hidden, is government's unimpeded domain to do whatever it wants. Likewise, it implicitly converts public conduct to an at-risk activity.
Taken to extremes, as it has been by the Government's asserted "right" to monitor and record e-mail and social chats, the ambit of privacy gets reduced to the curtilege of our skin. Any contact outside of one's self becomes an "exposure" subject to surveillance, search, seizure. Society is effectively atomized and the individual is left to what the Germans once called "inner emigration." Life is turned into loneliness.
From all time, the world has understood how the existence of spies and delatores (professional snoops and denouncers) chills and snuffs out freedom. The Roman historian Tacitus called them "a class invented to destroy the commonwealth." (Annals of Imperial Rome Bk IV, ch. 30) But the United States Supreme Court has been impervious to the obvious. While it has prohibited direct and specific infringements on freedom of expression it has consistently bent over acutely to affirm the Government's prerogative to gather intelligence.
Thus, in Laird v. Tatum (1972) 408 U.S. 1 the Supreme Court famously rejected a claim that First Amendment rights were chilled "by the mere existence, without more, of a governmental investigative and data-gathering activity." The information gathered, the Court intoned, was "nothing more than a good newspaper reporter would be able to gather by attendance at public meetings and the clipping of articles from publications available on any newsstand." Previously in Uphaus v. Wyman, (1950) 360 U.S. 72 the high Court upheld a State's prerogative to "gather and publish information on a person's potentially subversive associations."
Specious as it is, the High Court's doctrine could be summarised as, "Far be it from us to second-guess the Government's legislative purposes; if you don't like it, stay at home." We may now add, "And avoid chat or email."
Within hours, it was reported that the F.B.I. had detained a man "in the area" with a backpack in which sealed envelopes had been found. (BBC) [1] Aha! Sealed envelopes. Q.E.D.
What area? we wondered; and how did the agents know that that backpack on thatperson had contained suspicious "sealed envelopes"? The reports were devoid of such details -- the question of probable cause apparently is of no interest to the Fourth Estate. Well they must have had something.... Indeed, but what? Apparently nothing because the man with the suspicious envelopes was released.
However, the following day it was reported that the F.B.I. had located a suspect on the basis of tell-tale word patterns. As it turns out, both letters had used the phrase "I am KC and I approve this message." The suspect, Kevin Curtis, had also used the identical phrase in an online comment on a blog post in 2007, the only difference being the use of his full name. (REUTERS) [2]
The speed and efficacy of the F.B.I. was breathtaking. They had managed to obtain and serve warrants on an untold number of I.S.P's in a plethora of jurisdictions and plow through six years of global chat in order to discover the telltale needle in a heaping haystack of billions upon billions of chitter in the chatter.
Or, had they merely flipped a switch in a massive datamine of internet traffic filtering bytes through algorithms in search of a phrase? In either case: Chill out dude -- Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
Although the press was content to repeat whatever facts F.B.I. news releases presented to them, they appeared oblivious to the disturbing inferences which might be drawn from the facts the authorities saw fit to disclose.
If the incriminating phrase had been retrieved from a massive datamine of all our on-line (and telephone) communications, then the Government should at least give all of us the proverbial Miranda warnings.
As a legal matter, Miranda warnings are required only upon being taken into custody. By the same token, the giving of them implicates being in custody. But equally significant is the fact Miranda states; i.e. that anything said will be used against the declarant. When anything we say "can and will" be used against us we are no longer free.
It is no doubt true that any statement anywhere can be used to a person's detriment. But statements made in the open air of freedom get disbursed and lost. There is a natural haphazardness to their being remembered or, just as likely, forgotten. In contrast, statements made in custody are recorded. They are taken down as much as the suspect is locked up and this applies equally to statements made during interviews or personal telephones calls. There is no privacy in custody; and where there is no privacy, there is no freedom.
Most people think of "custody" as a restraint of movement -- of being locked up in a tight space. But that is only a derivative meaning. More primarily the word custody means: "A keeping or guarding; care, watch, inspection, for keeping, preservation, or security." (Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), p. 358.)
It is necessary to distinguish confinement as punishment and custody as a precaution. Accused miscreants were locked up in earlier times because it was next to impossible to keep watch over them otherwise. But it is not always necessary to lock up in order to watch over. Black slaves in the United States and collared Roman slaves in Rome were allowed to roam with an appearance of freedom because their colour or their collar rendered them under watch and inspection automatically. No one would argue that these slaves were not in custody. On the contrary their status was their detention.
Similarly, the fact that our words are being taken down for keeping and inspection means that we ourselves are being watched for security and are therefore ipso facto in custody even if we are allowed every appearance of free roaming.
The elimination of privacy -- that is to say, the taking custody of a nation -- was most irreversibly the creation of the Patriot Act. But the ideological underpinnings which allowed the Act to be rationalised under an appearance of logic go back to California v. Greenwood (1988) 486 U.S. 35, which held that there is no expectation of privacy in garbage. Having deposited one’s garbage “in an area particularly suited for public inspection and, in a manner of speaking, public consumption,” a person “could have had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items that they discarded.” (Ibid.)
Yes, the High Court, actually said that. They said it on the precedent of Smith v. Maryland (1979) 442 U.S. 735 which had held that dialled telephone numbers were not private. Entrusting garbage, the Greenwood Court intoned, was no different than dialling telephone numbers and “we doubt that people in general entertain any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial.” To be sure they did not; for, after all, the most very High Court had told them they did not.
We reported on Greenwood back in 2006 because we felt that it was significant in view of the Security Actions being taken by the Government at the time. (And the Lord will not hear You on that Day ) But little heed was taken of chips in the wind as the Nation moved with determination to eliminate all potential dangers (as they have been called).
The vice of Greenwood is that it perverts our concept of privacy and, doing so, degrades our understanding of freedom. The premise of Greenwood was that a person has no privacy in public because in public one is exposed to general view. But, to say as much is to resort to a tautology masquerading as an argument.
It is true that "in public" a person is "in general view" but these two terms are not interchangeable with "no privacy." What the tautology overlooks is the equally salient fact that "general view" and "surveillance" are not the same thing. The former is haphazard and indifferent and it is these qualities which create the space for freedom. In public, others may notice what we do but for the most part are indifferent to our doings. Because passers-by are not keeping us under watch we are able to go about our private business in public being left alone. In contrast, ongoing, purposeful surveillance is the very core definition of custody because it does not leave one alone but rather follows, tracks, records one's every move with the very opposite of indifference. What Greenwood allows is for the Commons to be turned into a jail and for freedom to be confined to the privacy of one's closet.
To say as much is not a sophistical switching of terms between "privacy" and "freedom." It is an interchanging of terms which reflects the true meaning of "custody". Freedom is not simply a question mobility and action. It is, most essentially, a question of being not under guard. We are free in public because we are not being watched and, not being watched, we are about our private business in the open.
The roots of Greenwood's misnformed constitutionalism lie in an 1890 Harvard Law Review article by Samuel D. Warren, Louis D. Brandeis entitled, and inceptionally defining, The Right to Privacy. Not atypically, Brandeis' quill cut both ways. While the article is credited with birthing the concept of "the right to be left alone," it used medieval English property law as a paradigm and analogised the right of privacy to the fee simple absolute. In a much quoted paragraph, Warren and Brandeis wrote,
"The common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent histhoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others. ... [H]e can never be compelled to express them. ... The right is lost only when the author himself communicates his production to the public, -- in other words, publishes it. ... [But] the common-law right is lost as soon as there is a publication."
In so stating, the authors analogised "privacy" to "curtilage" and "publication" to "conveyance." While the analogy suited the article's overriding purpose of delineating the contours of intellectual property it did not deal with and thus provided only a defective basis for assessing privacy in a constitutional context.
In that context, the focus must as much be on the limits of governmental power as on the individual's supposed choice to "disclose" himself. Between the privacy of one's curtilage and ambit of restrained governmental power lies that in-between space known as "public freedom".
The concept of voluntary "exposure" may be an adequate foundation for assessing the extent of commercial rights granted or retained in remainder. But it is not adequate for determining the political contours of freedom. The idea that civic privacy is "lost" by a decision to "expose" one's self (or to "publish" one's garbage) tacitly assumes that everywhere else, not hidden, is government's unimpeded domain to do whatever it wants. Likewise, it implicitly converts public conduct to an at-risk activity.
Taken to extremes, as it has been by the Government's asserted "right" to monitor and record e-mail and social chats, the ambit of privacy gets reduced to the curtilege of our skin. Any contact outside of one's self becomes an "exposure" subject to surveillance, search, seizure. Society is effectively atomized and the individual is left to what the Germans once called "inner emigration." Life is turned into loneliness.
From all time, the world has understood how the existence of spies and delatores (professional snoops and denouncers) chills and snuffs out freedom. The Roman historian Tacitus called them "a class invented to destroy the commonwealth." (Annals of Imperial Rome Bk IV, ch. 30) But the United States Supreme Court has been impervious to the obvious. While it has prohibited direct and specific infringements on freedom of expression it has consistently bent over acutely to affirm the Government's prerogative to gather intelligence.
Thus, in Laird v. Tatum (1972) 408 U.S. 1 the Supreme Court famously rejected a claim that First Amendment rights were chilled "by the mere existence, without more, of a governmental investigative and data-gathering activity." The information gathered, the Court intoned, was "nothing more than a good newspaper reporter would be able to gather by attendance at public meetings and the clipping of articles from publications available on any newsstand." Previously in Uphaus v. Wyman, (1950) 360 U.S. 72 the high Court upheld a State's prerogative to "gather and publish information on a person's potentially subversive associations."
Laird's reasoning was beyond specious. Reporters do not have the power to prosecute, imprison and execute. Government does not investigate to inform but to suppress. State activity can simply never be analogised to private conduct. In fact, because of what the State is as such, government participation in or open access to data-gathering of itself transforms the nature of the process. A billing error can be corrected, a libel can be sued; but no imprisoned dissident has successfully sued his government for malicious prosecution.
Equally specious is the argument that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. Because all meaning is contextual a speaker who is being recorded is forced to pre-check and reconsider anything he says for possible misinterpretation and use against him in the future.
Equally specious is the argument that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. Because all meaning is contextual a speaker who is being recorded is forced to pre-check and reconsider anything he says for possible misinterpretation and use against him in the future.
Specious as it is, the High Court's doctrine could be summarised as, "Far be it from us to second-guess the Government's legislative purposes; if you don't like it, stay at home." We may now add, "And avoid chat or email."
Historically speaking, the very most High Court is in the highest of company. Tacitus reports that when the Senate sought to prohibit the use of roving, undercover spies, Tiberius "with a harshness contrary to his manner, spoke openly for the informers, complaining that the laws would be ineffective, and the state brought to the verge of ruin if their use were abolished 'Better,' he said, 'to subvert the constitution than to remove its guardians.'" (Annals Bk. IV, ch.30.)
Hail Caesar!
©Barfo, 2013
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22190031
[2] http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/04/18/uk-usa-obama-letter-idUKBRE93G0OW2013041
[3] http://wcg-journal.blogspot.com/2008/12/and-lord-will-not-hear-you-on-that-day.html
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Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Die Volk Gefühlschaft
Why, we have wondered, do people from coast to coast emote over the "tragedy" in Boston? Although the press churns out one trivial-detail after another, blaming the emote-fest on the press falls short. People needed little prompting to fill walls on social networks with poster pictures of the little boy... of the hero who... of flickering candles on the pavement and the full detritus of sentimentality. We stand by you, Boston! Like. The press simply feeds what it knows the people want.
What then do the people want? It occurs to us that what people want is a sense of community, of belonging and social empathy which we otherwise lack. But it is the same absence of social empathy, community and belonging which gave rise to the bombing in the first place. In the end, we are trapped in a circle of anomie which feeds on itself.
There is no doubt that those who were directly impacted by the explosion suffered true and grievous losses which will stay with them for a long time. There is nothing false or superficial about loosing one's child or an arm or a leg.
Those who were present at the event but who were not injured will suffer a psychological impact which arises from a consciousness of uncertainty and vulnerability. Most humans live within a hermetic bubble of confidence, acquired from the time we take our third, fourth and fifth baby steps. We could not live otherwise if we were paralysed by intimations of danger and misfortune lurking at every pass. From time to time, however, some event brings upon us an awareness of our mortality and this fills us with hesitancy until we regain our forgetfulness.
But as for the vast rest of us -- are we affected? No. We have not lost a leg or a loved one and any danger of a like bombing on our own morning jog is far more remote than that of being struck by an impatient and inattentive motorist.
We are not affected but we want to be. Or, more precisely, we want to feel as if we are because that feeling is the type of feeling we would feel if we were family, neighbours and friends with those who did suffer.
True community arises out of shared experience in work, success, suffering and defeat. We feel as one because we have felt together in living our common experience. Even enemies in battle have a sense of community because they have both felt the common experience of war, as the meeting between Priam and Achilles so exquisitely symbolised. The aged father and the young warrior were able to weep together and share their sorrows because they had each suffered grief at the hand of the other.
This was not forgiveness but it was compassion. The two men shared meat and drink. They shared rest. And Achilles gave Priam 12 days to fittingly bury Hector before resuming the war.
There are happier communions but, howsoever they are, they all arise from real work and proximate living together. In contrast, the shared experience and interests San Francisco has with Boston are remote and abstract. The two cities are united by a vast economic engine and a shared deluge of consumer brands, styles and motifs. But if either were to disappear from the map, the other would not be affected any more than the rest of the country was affected by the swamping of New Orleans. The connections are real but they are not essential.
The same communal disconnect between Boston and San Francisco exist even between the denizens of Boston itself. It is, after all, hardly a secret that mass industrial societies suffer from anomie; and it is the individual's estrangement from a society which denies him a connection that nurses and ultimately triggers the despaired reactions of suicide or homicide.
It is thus that the marathon bomber's act serves to remind us that we are estranged from ourselves. If we were not, then such alienated crimes would not arise, as they do, among us. To repeat: the bomber's destructive act reminds us that it is we who are alienated - not just him. This is why in ancient Rome, for example, when a murder occurred within the walls, the entire city had to be evacuated and purified before being reoccupied.
The ancients acknowledged, in this manner, that there is in truth no such thing as an "individual crime." The alienation that manifests itself in crime is a hole in our social fabric and it is the fabric which requires mending. In contrast, the intense atomisation of American society (going under the brand of "individualism") masks the alienation which it itself produces so that we do not see the we in the matter.
But we do feel its absence -- that is, we sense our own lacking -- which is why the alienated action of the bomber(s) triggers an immediate and equally alienated reaction: the junk compassion of feeling as if we were affected.
Since the symptom was diagnosed by Durkheim, Western societies have struggled to deal with the problem of anomie. For the most part, they have relied of "symptom relievers." The most direct and candid attempt to deal with societal anomie was mounted by Germany's National Socialists whose Volk Gemeinschaft sought to create a palpable and real sense of "national community" without abolishing the industrialised, mechanised, regimented means of production which engendered the feeling of metropolitan isolation in the first place.
The United States has not been lacking in the attempt. The difference is in the style of the kitsch. And although we do crowd masses onto the Mall on Independence Day where they can sit, eat and listen to insipid speeches and equally bad music, the Miracle of Television has allowed us to create all manner and layers of false community without having to jam people onto a field.
But the fact remains: we are an alienated non-community and all the sympathetic emoting from coast to coast only serves to underscore that fact.
What then do the people want? It occurs to us that what people want is a sense of community, of belonging and social empathy which we otherwise lack. But it is the same absence of social empathy, community and belonging which gave rise to the bombing in the first place. In the end, we are trapped in a circle of anomie which feeds on itself.
There is no doubt that those who were directly impacted by the explosion suffered true and grievous losses which will stay with them for a long time. There is nothing false or superficial about loosing one's child or an arm or a leg.
Those who were present at the event but who were not injured will suffer a psychological impact which arises from a consciousness of uncertainty and vulnerability. Most humans live within a hermetic bubble of confidence, acquired from the time we take our third, fourth and fifth baby steps. We could not live otherwise if we were paralysed by intimations of danger and misfortune lurking at every pass. From time to time, however, some event brings upon us an awareness of our mortality and this fills us with hesitancy until we regain our forgetfulness.
But as for the vast rest of us -- are we affected? No. We have not lost a leg or a loved one and any danger of a like bombing on our own morning jog is far more remote than that of being struck by an impatient and inattentive motorist.
We are not affected but we want to be. Or, more precisely, we want to feel as if we are because that feeling is the type of feeling we would feel if we were family, neighbours and friends with those who did suffer.
True community arises out of shared experience in work, success, suffering and defeat. We feel as one because we have felt together in living our common experience. Even enemies in battle have a sense of community because they have both felt the common experience of war, as the meeting between Priam and Achilles so exquisitely symbolised. The aged father and the young warrior were able to weep together and share their sorrows because they had each suffered grief at the hand of the other.
"So the two men there both remembered warriors who’d been slaughtered. Priam, lying at Achilles’ feet, wept aloud for man-killing Hector, and Achilles also wept for his own father and once more for Patroclus. The sound of their lamenting filled the house." (Iliad, Bk 24.)
This was not forgiveness but it was compassion. The two men shared meat and drink. They shared rest. And Achilles gave Priam 12 days to fittingly bury Hector before resuming the war.
There are happier communions but, howsoever they are, they all arise from real work and proximate living together. In contrast, the shared experience and interests San Francisco has with Boston are remote and abstract. The two cities are united by a vast economic engine and a shared deluge of consumer brands, styles and motifs. But if either were to disappear from the map, the other would not be affected any more than the rest of the country was affected by the swamping of New Orleans. The connections are real but they are not essential.
The same communal disconnect between Boston and San Francisco exist even between the denizens of Boston itself. It is, after all, hardly a secret that mass industrial societies suffer from anomie; and it is the individual's estrangement from a society which denies him a connection that nurses and ultimately triggers the despaired reactions of suicide or homicide.
It is thus that the marathon bomber's act serves to remind us that we are estranged from ourselves. If we were not, then such alienated crimes would not arise, as they do, among us. To repeat: the bomber's destructive act reminds us that it is we who are alienated - not just him. This is why in ancient Rome, for example, when a murder occurred within the walls, the entire city had to be evacuated and purified before being reoccupied.
The ancients acknowledged, in this manner, that there is in truth no such thing as an "individual crime." The alienation that manifests itself in crime is a hole in our social fabric and it is the fabric which requires mending. In contrast, the intense atomisation of American society (going under the brand of "individualism") masks the alienation which it itself produces so that we do not see the we in the matter.
But we do feel its absence -- that is, we sense our own lacking -- which is why the alienated action of the bomber(s) triggers an immediate and equally alienated reaction: the junk compassion of feeling as if we were affected.
Since the symptom was diagnosed by Durkheim, Western societies have struggled to deal with the problem of anomie. For the most part, they have relied of "symptom relievers." The most direct and candid attempt to deal with societal anomie was mounted by Germany's National Socialists whose Volk Gemeinschaft sought to create a palpable and real sense of "national community" without abolishing the industrialised, mechanised, regimented means of production which engendered the feeling of metropolitan isolation in the first place.
The United States has not been lacking in the attempt. The difference is in the style of the kitsch. And although we do crowd masses onto the Mall on Independence Day where they can sit, eat and listen to insipid speeches and equally bad music, the Miracle of Television has allowed us to create all manner and layers of false community without having to jam people onto a field.
But the fact remains: we are an alienated non-community and all the sympathetic emoting from coast to coast only serves to underscore that fact.
©
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
The Germ of Tyranny
On the tenth "anniversary" of the Invasion of Iraq, the media is aslosh with the usual postgnostications about the mistakes made and the lessons learned from the disaster the United States inflicted on Iraq.
Meanwhile, the detainees in "Camp Delta" at Guantánamo continue to starve themselves to death in protest against their continued and indefinite confinement. Needless to say, those that have lost too much weight for official comfort are on "internal feeds," as camp spokesmen refer to force-feeding. As everyone outside of official Washington knows, solitary confinement and force-feeding are both forms of torture so that, in a brutal parody of Wall Street practices, torture is compounded on torture.
Equally needless to say, the kindergarden that passes for an American press is incapable of seeing the lesson to be learned from the very fundamentals of the so-called War on Terrorism. Simple questions are beneath its sophistications.
Why are these people being held? Virtually none of them have had a trial much less been convicted of anything. One would think that 12 years' detention without trial was something minimally civilised governments did not do.
The official answer to the simple question is that the detainees are enemy combatants. With an air of insulted, incredulity, proponents of the detentions rhetorically ask whether anyone in their right mind would demand trials for prisoners of war.
If one counters that the detainees are not enemy soldiers, the rejoinder is that "terrorism" is a different kind of war in which the "enemy" is unseen, amorphous and chameleon. Not wanting anyone to pause and ponder the implications in the concept of an "unseen enemy," the official apology rushes on to assure us that, in compliance with Supreme Court decisions, the detainees are afforded a"minimal due process" hearing at which a determination is made by the detaining authority that the detainee is in fact a de facto enemy combatant. What more could one ask for?
One might ask for some minimum due process which is grounded in the ancient maxim of Roman law: nemo iudex in causam suam.
The reason uniformed enemy combatants can be detained without trial is that a determination has been made by the enemy government itself that people wearing its uniforms are doing its belligerent bidding. It is as simple as that. No hearing is required because the enemy himself has declared himself to be an enemy. The determination of enemy status is valid because it is not made by the authority making the detention. The act of detention and its justification are, in this sense, independent of one another.
The case is totally different when there is no enemy government or country which has declared war and with whom we are thereby engaged in hostilities. In that case, the identification and determination as to who is an enemy is an entirely unilateral act by the capturing party. There is absolutely no independent check or verification or determination on the issue. One and the same party has effected the capture and has asserted the justification for the capture. And, of course, since the assertion is that the person so detained is "an enemy combatant" there is no need for trial. This is the very element essence of tyranny.
What other image is there of a tyrant than the ruler whose ipse dixit declares someone to be an enemy and throws him into black hole to rot without more? When asked why prisoner X languishes in an iron mask the self-serving answer is that "it has been determined" he is an enemy.
But it has not been "determined" in any independent way either by an independent judiciary or by any other government. The detention is arbitrary precisely because its validates itself. Under the rule of law, the measure of law determines justification. In tyranny, the act is the justification.
The heap of legal cotton-picking that has attended the Guantánamo detentions has obscured the true seed of tyranny under the fluff. International law has long drawn a distinction between "lawful and unlawful" combatants. (Ex Parte Quirin (1942) 317 U.S. 1) The former are member of "opposing military forces" -- i.e., they wear uniforms. The latter are those "who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property." (Ibid) Lawful combatants are "entitled" to the status of "prisoners of war" whereas illegal combatants are "subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals." (Ibid.)
Prisoners of war are combatants who have simply been temporarily removed from the chessboard of war. As such, they are "entitled" to a long list of amenities and to military respect. Illegal combatants may be locked up and punished, provided they have been tried and convicted. What has occurred at Guantanamo is a monstrous perversion of law whereby alleged "prisoners of war" are incarcerated as criminals without trial.
But this perversion, as bad as it is, hides the deeper more fundamental germ of tyranny. Once it is accepted that the act of designating and detaining a person as an enemy is its own justification, there is no reason to exempt citizens. Why not? Because by "becoming" enemies they "forfeit" the rights of citizenship. The logic is impeccable once the false premise of auto-justification is granted. It is in this way that tyrannies always end up consuming the people who beget and tolerate them.
What is occurring in Guantanamo is a brutal, barbaric monstrosity hiding under the sophisms of tyranny. Americans will pay the price... and sooner rather than later. "My dear Caligula, Rome deserves you!!!"
.
Monday, March 18, 2013
March 15th -- A Date to Remember
15 March 2013 will go down in history as the date the Nation State ceased to exist; for it was on that date that the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the Eurozone finance ministers imposed a direct capitation on ordinary saving accounts in Cypriot Banks.
The story is simple. The Government of Cyprus applied for a € 10 billion bailout loan from Eurozone banks. As with any loan, the banks wanted collateral. Large reserves of natural gas have been found in Cypriot territorial waters and the Government of Cyprus pledged one third of the income-stream from gas to secure the loans. The banks were not interested. They insisted on an immediate and direct one-time "tax" on all deposits held in Cypriot banks. The Government caved. Under the plan, savings accounts under € 100,000 are to be debited three percent and savings over that amount will be debited 12.5 percent. The seizure went into effect overnight with accounts and withdrawals being frozen in the required amounts.
Reaction around the world was swift, stunned and critical. Conservative comment decried the blow to investor confidence. Left-liberal comment lamented the blow to pensioners and working class depositors. All agreed that what had taken place was state-sanctioned robbery.
State-sanctioned? Barely. The Government of Cyprus has ceased to exist except as an enforcer for the shadowy godfathers of international finance. Tony-the-Greek would be a better name for the erstwhile sovereign state.
In truth, the loss of sovereign control is nothing very new. As far back as 1994, Le Monde Diplomatique warned that nation states were loosing control over their economies and were being reduced to mere agencies which could do little more than react to international corporate behemoths. (See Une Capitalisme Hors de Control -Les Chantiers de la Démolition Sociale par Serge Halimi Le Monde Diplomatique (July 1994).) But there is always a point at which a change in degree results in a change of kind. That point was reached last Friday.
Under the nation-state system, the collective assets, energies and enterprise of a people are represented by a government which is the official embodiment of national sovereignty. Of course, there has never been any question that foreign banks and foreign governments could exercise indirect control over a nation's domestic policies. The entire premise of the IMF is that it can make loans on such terms and conditions which will indirectly require the government to adjust its monetary, economic and social policies -- usually to the detriment of ordinary people. But even when governments were "doing the IMF's bidding," they retained sovereign control.
An example of retained control was Argentina's 2005 repudiation of its international debt. Argentina was being rolled (literally) by the IMF and the U.S. Treasury which had got the country into a cycle of debt refinance at higher and higher interest rates with each come-around of the carousel. Finally, President Kirchner blew the whistle on the scam and offered the banks their choice between two high-and-tight haircuts. (Amusing Account of the Incident) [1]
In actual fact, Argentina did not "repudiate" its debt so much as it renegotiated its loans on terms which allowed it to implement domestic economic policies which stimulated growth and were more favourable to the country's overall welfare. It had acted in parens patriae -- as parent for the nation, doing its best vis a vis outsiders for its own people.
In short, there is a formalistic but nonetheless important difference between a government which raises taxes, diminishes benefits or otherwise adjusts policies in order to obtain and/or repay a loan and a government which becomes a mere transparency for takings by foreign entities who, under but the thinnest of tissues, reach directly into citizens' pockets to rifle change. In the former case, a government itself is the borrower and its treasury is the collateral. It still retains ultimate control over its own house, even if that control is influenced from outside. In the latter case, the nation no longer controls natural or corporate persons within its operating system, rather global corporations use subsidiary states as mere user-interfaces for their direct plunder and control of citizens. That is why the German newspaper, Handelsblatt, wrote that "Cyprus sets a precedent." The precedent is that national governments no longer count.
The year 2013 will be as significant as 476 A.D. when the last western Roman Emperor was replaced by the Goth chieftain, Odoacer. For 100 years, the western half of the Roman Empire had been ruled, in actual fact, by various Barbarian chieftains, acting in the name of the Roman Emperor. The "abdication" of Romulus Augustulus, did not substantially change anything. But the cat was out of the bag and it could no longer be said that the empire called "Rome" existed. Consciousness had been forever altered.
Day by day, governments around the world are increasingly like the later Roman emperors, tending chickens in their palace gardens and stupidly putting their ring to whatever is placed before their noses by the real rulers of the world. Last week, even the pretence of sovereignty was dispensed with. It is a matter of short time before national sovereignty becomes a distant memory at which point it will be impossible to commit treason.
=======
[1] http://noelmaurer.typepad.com/aab/2008/05/the-barber-of-b.html
©Barfo
©Barfo
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Spitting on an Outstretched Hand
It is amusing -- in a spitting sort of way -- to watch the media and bloggerati speculate whether Pope Francis will alter the Church's stance on homosexuality. That some should even ask reflects a childish incomprehension as to what the Church is and how it operates. That others should caution not to expect an "overnight" change leaves one wondering what happened to their voice of moderation during Benedict's tenure.
We have written at length, before and elsewhere, on how Benedict was laying the groundwork for a radical repositioning of the Church's teaching on sexuality. To summarise very briefly,
Benedict's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, was on love. Within the first few paragraphs he managed to quote Nietszche and allude to Aristophanes. To anyone familiar with what Aristophanes had had to say about love -- and about the three sexes -- it was the hint of a clanging gong.
But Benedict did not leave it at hints. In the ensuing paragraphs he espoused the doctrine of "ascending love" which naturally begins in eros and matures into mutual caring. "The essential nature of love," he wrote, is "a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery" (Deus Caritas Est., § 6.) If eros is merely the enticement that pulls us out of ourselves, what possible difference does it make if a person is led to care for one of the same or the opposite sex? None. In the Christian lexicon, caritas, agape, "love," is absolutely not gender-conditioned.
It is within this context, that what Benedict omitted to say was as significant as what he did say. Nowhere did he quote from Humanae Vitae, the previously enunciated doctrine that the redeeming purpose of sex is to transmit life. While Benedict did acknowledge that matrimony between man and woman "tends" toward the transmission of life, in the next breath he went on to caution that love should not be "relegated to the purely biological sphere." (Deus Caritas Est, § 5.)
At least as critical was Benedict's volte face on relevant Scriptural passages. Anyone knows that the Christian condemnation of homosexual acts is based on Corinthians 6:9, Romans 1:18-32 and Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Ghost writing for John Paul II, then cardinal Ratzinger certainly knew the drill. But as pope, Benedict interpreted these passages as condemnations against ecstatic fertility cults in which humans were "exploited" as mere "means of arousing divine madness." That was a very different (and essentially liberal) reading of the passages.
But it is on the reading of Scripture generally that Benedict showed his true colours. In the Introduction to his book “Jesus of Nazareth” (Ignatius Press, 2007), Benedict took as his premise that historical criticism was “indispensible” to Biblical exegesis. (Op. Cit., p. xv.) "A voice greater than man’s echoes in Scripture’s human words; the individual writings [Schrifte] of the Bible point somehow to the living process that shapes the one Scripture [Schrift].” (Op. Cit., p. xviii.) Thus, he continues, the Bible “does not speak as a self-contained subject” but “in a living community... in a living historical movement." The writings in the Bible "become Scripture by being read anew, evolving in continuity with their original sense, tacitly corrected and given added depth and breadth of meaning."
In so saying Benedict was not so much being a "radical" as a tradtionalist in the true sense of espousing change within continuity. The Church is not guided by a merely present consensus on things, like a political party. It is a trans-generational community of "saints" whose experiences and inspirations are all alive in the present which shapes the past as it is shaped by it.
A cycnic may be excused a smile at the notion of "tacit corrections" by "deeper understandings." But the process is not one of rhetorical exploitation for present purposes. Traditionalism has to be practiced in good faith with circumspection and constraint; but it does seek to evolve, permute and change.
I cannot but view these writings of Benedict's as other than an invitation to participate in a movement toward a deeper understanding of human love -- one that transcended (without denying) the biological and aimed at loss of ego in caring for another. But the liberal Catholics and the majoritairan gay community spat in his hand.
Not only that, but in its incessant drumbeat the media fabricated out of whole cloth "condemnations" which Benedict never uttered. Of course, Benedict publicly urged support for the heterosexual family. Why wouldn't he? Most of the world is heterosexual and the Church must speak for them. But he was very cautious not cast that support in dichotomous terms.
In January 2012, Benedict spoke of social settings necessary for personal and social development. Of these, he said, "pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman." The phrase "pride of place" necessarily implied other places. How this got translated into the screeching headling "Pope says Homosexuality Imperils Civilization" is any monkey's guess.
Alas, three months later, "pride of place" gave way to language cribbed directly from Humanae Vitae. Matrimony, the pope said was "essentially rooted in the complementarity of the sexes and oriented to procreation."
People we talked to, who are more in tune with subterranean currents at the Vatican, were convinced that Benedict had been ambushed by conservatives on his speech writing staff. But ambushed or not, the media turned it into a kill. The pope delivers scores of homilies, addresses and greetings in any given week -- all chock full of pre-approved phrases and researched references. While they are not "meaningless" they do not involve the careful word-weighing process that goes into an encyclical and for that reason do not carry much doctrinal weight. But the Hate Benedict Crowd -- as if needing a bugbear for their own self-definition -- treated it as the bull of the century and drove the nail into the very change they avowedly sought.
Nine months later, an exhausted Benedict resigned. He has been replaced by a "humble" pope who in all humility has said that gay matrimony is an affront to God. That's the kind of crime against nature language that reverts back to the 19th century. Tacit corrections? Not likely.
We have written at length, before and elsewhere, on how Benedict was laying the groundwork for a radical repositioning of the Church's teaching on sexuality. To summarise very briefly,
Benedict's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, was on love. Within the first few paragraphs he managed to quote Nietszche and allude to Aristophanes. To anyone familiar with what Aristophanes had had to say about love -- and about the three sexes -- it was the hint of a clanging gong.
But Benedict did not leave it at hints. In the ensuing paragraphs he espoused the doctrine of "ascending love" which naturally begins in eros and matures into mutual caring. "The essential nature of love," he wrote, is "a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery" (Deus Caritas Est., § 6.) If eros is merely the enticement that pulls us out of ourselves, what possible difference does it make if a person is led to care for one of the same or the opposite sex? None. In the Christian lexicon, caritas, agape, "love," is absolutely not gender-conditioned.
It is within this context, that what Benedict omitted to say was as significant as what he did say. Nowhere did he quote from Humanae Vitae, the previously enunciated doctrine that the redeeming purpose of sex is to transmit life. While Benedict did acknowledge that matrimony between man and woman "tends" toward the transmission of life, in the next breath he went on to caution that love should not be "relegated to the purely biological sphere." (Deus Caritas Est, § 5.)
At least as critical was Benedict's volte face on relevant Scriptural passages. Anyone knows that the Christian condemnation of homosexual acts is based on Corinthians 6:9, Romans 1:18-32 and Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Ghost writing for John Paul II, then cardinal Ratzinger certainly knew the drill. But as pope, Benedict interpreted these passages as condemnations against ecstatic fertility cults in which humans were "exploited" as mere "means of arousing divine madness." That was a very different (and essentially liberal) reading of the passages.
But it is on the reading of Scripture generally that Benedict showed his true colours. In the Introduction to his book “Jesus of Nazareth” (Ignatius Press, 2007), Benedict took as his premise that historical criticism was “indispensible” to Biblical exegesis. (Op. Cit., p. xv.) "A voice greater than man’s echoes in Scripture’s human words; the individual writings [Schrifte] of the Bible point somehow to the living process that shapes the one Scripture [Schrift].” (Op. Cit., p. xviii.) Thus, he continues, the Bible “does not speak as a self-contained subject” but “in a living community... in a living historical movement." The writings in the Bible "become Scripture by being read anew, evolving in continuity with their original sense, tacitly corrected and given added depth and breadth of meaning."
In so saying Benedict was not so much being a "radical" as a tradtionalist in the true sense of espousing change within continuity. The Church is not guided by a merely present consensus on things, like a political party. It is a trans-generational community of "saints" whose experiences and inspirations are all alive in the present which shapes the past as it is shaped by it.
A cycnic may be excused a smile at the notion of "tacit corrections" by "deeper understandings." But the process is not one of rhetorical exploitation for present purposes. Traditionalism has to be practiced in good faith with circumspection and constraint; but it does seek to evolve, permute and change.
I cannot but view these writings of Benedict's as other than an invitation to participate in a movement toward a deeper understanding of human love -- one that transcended (without denying) the biological and aimed at loss of ego in caring for another. But the liberal Catholics and the majoritairan gay community spat in his hand.
Not only that, but in its incessant drumbeat the media fabricated out of whole cloth "condemnations" which Benedict never uttered. Of course, Benedict publicly urged support for the heterosexual family. Why wouldn't he? Most of the world is heterosexual and the Church must speak for them. But he was very cautious not cast that support in dichotomous terms.
In January 2012, Benedict spoke of social settings necessary for personal and social development. Of these, he said, "pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman." The phrase "pride of place" necessarily implied other places. How this got translated into the screeching headling "Pope says Homosexuality Imperils Civilization" is any monkey's guess.
Alas, three months later, "pride of place" gave way to language cribbed directly from Humanae Vitae. Matrimony, the pope said was "essentially rooted in the complementarity of the sexes and oriented to procreation."
People we talked to, who are more in tune with subterranean currents at the Vatican, were convinced that Benedict had been ambushed by conservatives on his speech writing staff. But ambushed or not, the media turned it into a kill. The pope delivers scores of homilies, addresses and greetings in any given week -- all chock full of pre-approved phrases and researched references. While they are not "meaningless" they do not involve the careful word-weighing process that goes into an encyclical and for that reason do not carry much doctrinal weight. But the Hate Benedict Crowd -- as if needing a bugbear for their own self-definition -- treated it as the bull of the century and drove the nail into the very change they avowedly sought.
Nine months later, an exhausted Benedict resigned. He has been replaced by a "humble" pope who in all humility has said that gay matrimony is an affront to God. That's the kind of crime against nature language that reverts back to the 19th century. Tacit corrections? Not likely.
.©Barfo, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Obama's Poisoned Condolence
On the occasion of Hugo Chavez's death, President Obama's condolences are a stunning example of his country's imperialist hypocrisy and arrogance. "At this challenging time of President Hugo Chávez's passing," Obama said, "the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government. As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the US remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law and respect for human rights."
Most stunning in this poisoned condolence is the absence of any recognition of Chavez's role in bringing a measure of structural relief to the masses of Venezuela's poor. If the streets of Caracas are filled with mourners it is only because Chavez brought them the food, the housing, the medical care, the educational opportunities and the employment denied to them since the country's founding.
Chavez's socialistic reforms were far from perfect or complete but they were leaps forward from what had been. But not a word of this in Obama's condolence. Why not? Because Obama and the regime he leads couldn't give a shit. People talk about what is important to them and if they don't talk about something it is because it is either shameful or not important.
We say "regime" because, in truth, Obama is not the head of a country but of a global apparatus that uses countries for its own selfish and destructive ends. He is simply the Chief Toady of a gaggle of official toadies who scurry, palaver and machinate on behalf of hedge funds, banks and global corporations. Their vision for the world is a two-tier society comprised of Owners and their retainers of managers, technocrats and thugs, insulated from and lording over masses of desperate worker-drones and still greater masses of people left to be starved and stepped over.
To put it simply, Obama's vision of America in the future is of what Venezuela used to be. Of course, neither he nor the corporate mudia want to acknowledge that Chavez put the lie to their regime. And of course, the rest of what Obama says is a stinking lie.
For those who might not see it, let us provide a translation.
"The United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people..." Translation: "We don't recognise the political legitimacy of the government in power." Normally, nation states deal government to government. By drawing a distinction between the government and the people it represents, Obama sought to by-pass and marginalise the former.
"... and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government." Translation: "The United States is ready to re-model Venezuela's government." Obama's self-evident platitude has to be read in light of what preceded and what follows. All governments seek to develop "constructive" relationships with others. The fact that Obama restated the obvious was an implicit assertion that such a relationship does not exist at present, which is why Obama avowed support for the people of Venezuela and stands ready to bring about change in "As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history...."
And what kind of change might that be?
"The US remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law and respect for human rights." Translation: the United States remains committed to free-trade on terms beneficial to the U.S. corporatocracy and to laws which protect their property rights and economic privileges.
When a creature like Obama or Clinton use the word "democracy" they are referring to the America's long standing policy of creating "zones of democratic freedom" -- a diplomatic term of art meaning a country or region subserviently coupled to American economic interests and adhering to such political and juridical norms as will protect and promote those interests. Simply put, "zones of democratic freedom" are to the United States what "client states" and "colonnae" were to Rome.
Of course the pax americana is drecked out in the happy-talk of Jeffersonian Liberalism. "Respect for human rights" means "respect for free speech" which in turns effectively means "respect for the power of corporate media to flood the airwaves with its mono-culture of thought." Oh yes, and being very liberal, every poor, hungry, descalzado, on the street has just as much right as anyone else to speak his mind; but in a liberal democratic society it is not for government to insure that everyone's voice gets an equal airing; that would be interference.
Chavez saw through this despicable charade and how U.S. dominated corporate media were pursuing a regime of infotainment aimed at turning Venezuelans (as they have turned Americans) into self-alienated, acquiescent morons. The historical narrative these media pursue is, of course, the one that most justifies their past and benefits their future. The cultural ideal held up by this media, of course, promotes their economic interests and political entrenchment.
Ten years ago, while in Oaxaca, Mexico, we saw a stunning example of how this propaganda works. Oaxaca is a state with a high concentration of Mixtec and Zapotec indians who, as a rule, have copper coloured skin and vaguely oriental features. But hanging in the clothing sections of Walmarts, Sears and other outposts of American consumer goods and junk, were big posters of skinny, white, pouting, Calvin Klein French boys and girls to match. What kind of message does this convey to a young Mixtec, other than: you should aspire to what you can never be?
This is what I mean by "self-alienation" and what Chavez and Che and others on the Ibero-American left refer to as U.S. cultural imperialism. Global capitalism carries with it a global culture that serves its interests and ipso facto represses the true popular interests of others. It has already destroyed Mexico. Why not Venezuela.
Obama has made clear the extent to which the United States is prepared to "constructively" go. It was obvious as of last year that Chavez was not long for this world, and that an "opportunity for change" would soon open up in Venezuela. So what did Obama say? He "warned" that the United States would not tolerate Iranian interference in South America.
Seriously, Iran needed to be reminded of the Monroe Doctrine? Struggling as it is under a U.S. and Israeli engineered economic blockade, Iran is hardly in a position to invade the Americas. But as a member of the oil producing block with some independent technological expertise of her own, Iran is in a position to help form and to strengthen regional retaining walls against U.S. and Western European domination. Obama's warning was a signal to Iran, to back off from America's upcoming opportunity to develop a "(re)constructed relationship" with Venezuela.
While the Venezuelan people mourn, the drones in Albrecht's Cave are hammering overtime. Ahh, the allure of the ring!
©
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