Mr. President, are you and Elon Musk on the same page? More precisely, do you support his current decision concerning the Palestinians?
My friend Elon has ideas, not decisions. I'm the one who makes decisions. Elon is a smart guy. Some would say he's a very smart guy. He thinks outside of the box, which is a good thing, and then he brings his idea to me. I'm the commander in chief and I decide if his idea is a good one. Elon, who is merely my assistant by the way, has lots of ideas; he's like an idea machine. Ideas pop out of his head like toast popping out of a toaster. Some would say he makes too much toast. So, I'm the decider. I'm the one who decides if the toast gets buttered or not. Now what slice of toast are you referring to?
It's the one about Gaza and the Palestinians, sir. Musk said the Palestinians will be emigrated to Mars.
Oh yes! That's one of the good ones. It's one of the best outside-of-the-box ideas that Elon has ever come up with.
But Mr. President, isn't it a rather unorthodox, or even a dangerous idea?
No, it's an outside-of-the-box idea. "Dangerous" is what libs say about any good idea that they haven't thought of themselves, and by the way, they haven't had a good idea for years. Elon's idea, which I will supervise, solves a big problem. Look, their place is a mess; anyone can see it's true. Gaza is an unlivable pile of rubble. When Hamas viciously attacked Israel, which, by the way, never would have happened had I been president, Israel did what any other country would have done; it dropped 2,000-pound bombs on anything that could hide a Hamas terrorist, which unfortunately was everything. So, there's nothing left for the Palestinians; Gaza is a just dangerous pile of broken bricks and half-destroyed buildings, many of which might still hide bombs that have yet to explode. By the way, do you know we still find unexploded bombs from WWII all over the place in Europe? We find them all the time. Anyway, it's too dangerous for them. The Palestinians aren't equipped to safely meddle in the debris. For their own sake, they need to be moved out of Gaza while more capable hands clean up the mess and turn it into something beautiful. It will take us years, by the way, maybe even decades. That's why we have to get the Palestinians out of the way. It's for their own safety of course, but it's for ours, too. One can never know when a peaceful Palestinian is going to turn into a violent terrorist. Some say it's in their blood. Anyway, we can't have them lurking about while our brave and patriotic workers are cleaning up the debris and erecting grand hotels and casinos. So, it will be a big job, a really big job, but when we're finally done, it will unbelievable, it will be something so beautiful; so beautiful, the likes of which the world has never seen before.
But to Mars, Mr. President? Is that safer than Gaza?
So, where exactly would you send them? Jordan said they can't house many more refugees, and Egypt is reluctant to take them in. Nobody really wants them. I mean they can be a fine people if given the chance to dust themselves off, but where on Earth can they go? No one in the Middle East wants them. No one in Europe or Asia wants them. The United States certainly won't import two million Palestinians into its borders. I mean look, I was elected to kick people out, not to let them in. Let me just say it again; for their own safety, we couldn't let them stay in Gaza, and no country on Earth wanted to take them in. We were confronted with a dilemma, but then, just when it seemed there was no practical solution, Elon Musk's brilliant out-of-the-box piece of toast popped up: He said, why don't we send them to Mars?
Okay, to Mars, but how?
Well, it's not really a new idea at all, except for using the Palestinians. Elon has been thinking about it for a long time. He's had plans to create a big city on Mars for years. With my help, he'll just move his timeline up a bit. Instead of 2050, we'll aim for 2030 or maybe even sooner. We're Americans; with God on our side, we can do whatever needs to be done. Sure, it's complicated, but just imagine the magnificence of it: all those rockets taking off! And it won't be from just one place either; it will take thousands upon thousands of rockets launched from different launch pads all around the world! It will be like a giant 10 or 20-day Fourth of July festival that the whole world will celebrate together. It will be an extraordinary extravaganza, the likes of which the world has never known!
It sounds like quite a send-off Mr. President, but will the Palestinians want to even go there?
Well, I don't see why they wouldn't. They don't have anything here except a big pile of rubble and a neighbor who hates them. Look, here they lived on a tiny sliver of land that many say was never really theirs to begin with, and now it's destroyed. On Mars they'll have a whole planet to themselves, and with no rubble! There will be no Israel next door to threaten or control them, and no 2000- pound bombs falling from the sky. They'll be free to live in peace and prosperity! So, what Palestinian in their right mind wouldn't want to go there? I mean it's a whole planet, for God's sake, and it will all be theirs. They'll have it all to themselves, at least for a very long time.
Mr. President, it's never been done before, and with such magnitude! Mars is hardly habitable, and just getting there will be dangerous in itself.
Look, when Moses guided the children of Israel to the shores of the Red Sea, do you think it had ever been done before? Moses was chosen by God to lead them there. With Egyptians in hot pursuit, God told Moses to stretch out his hand, and then He parted the sea and even dried the mud to make the crossing easier. When the children of Israel were safely on the other side, God closed the sea back up, and His chosen people found themselves safely standing on their sacred promised land, which many say included Gaza, by the way.
But Mr. President, wasn't that a little different? That was all on Earth, and are you saying that God's hand is involved in this mission? Will God protect the Palestinians as they cross the vast ocean of space? And what about their safety when they finally get there?
Look, I might not be Moses, but there are many who say, many who have real conversations with God every day by the way, that I have been chosen to do God's work and make America great again. Who's to say they're wrong? And you know, when that bullet whizzed past my ear in Pennsylvania, it was like a whisper from God that only I could hear. It was like He was saying, "Listen Donald, I have a little more work for you to do before I bring you up to sit beside me in Heaven." So, while I might not be Moses, I'm here to carry out the will of God. I will lead the children of Palestine to the shores of space, and then my faithful disciple Elon will ferry them across the vastness of space to their promised land on Mars.
Wait, did I hear that right? Did you just say that Musk will actually go to Mars with the Palestinians?
Well sure, it was his idea after all. There's no denying that I will miss him, but the Palestinians will need him more than I do. They'll need his ideas. Elon's the only one who will know exactly what needs to be done. He's been studying it for years. He will be there with them, showing how to set up the space tents and all kinds of other little tricks needed for survival. It won't all be easy, but remember this: when the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea, they didn't even have tents, yet they did survive, and just look at them now!
Elon has been so important in your second term. Can you get along without him?
Well, it won't be the same as having him right here by my side every day at Mara Logo, but he will be leaving me with so many ideas, a lot of which I haven't even had time to look at yet. It will take a long time to sift through all of them, so in a way, it will almost be like he's still here. It is true though, Elon Musk has been more than just my never-leaving and ever-present assistant; he has been a dear friend. He will truly be missed. So yes, it will be tough trying to get along without him, but I will take some comfort in knowing that Elon and two million Palestinians will soon be in a better place.
The post Palestinians to be Expelled from Gaza and Emigrated to Mars first appeared on Dissident Voice.In the midst of growing repression faced by Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian freedom, the VP team has worked on a new visual that addresses anti-Palestinian racism in mainstream media, exposing the pervasive dehumanization of Palestinians. The visual was created in partnership with the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association.
The post Anti-Palestinian Racism in the Media first appeared on Dissident Voice.In short: Our species was not "born" stupid, but started to become so late in our history. It then started on a downward course, and will "soon" go extinct.[1]
We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.[2]
Preface
January, 2025, was a busy month for me![3] First, on January 6, I celebrated my 85th birthday—on what has come to be called Insurrection Day (because of the events of 2021 in support of Donald J. Trump). Given that Trump supporters were trying to overthrow our government, I prefer to call it Treason Day!
Second, during my appointment with my nephrologist, on January 15, we jointly decided that it was time for me to begin dialysis, and the plan was to start on Monday, January 27. Third, on Sunday, January 26, I started to have some intestinal problems, and they became serious enough for my wife to call an ambulance on Tuesday, January 28, and I was taken to St. Luke's hospital in Milwaukee; after a wait of about 10 hours (!) I was admitted, assigned a room, then another room. Fourth, while in the hospital, my intestinal problem was treated, and I received three treatments of dialysis, the last one on Wednesday, February 5, after which I was discharged. My wonderful wife (of almost 59 years!) has been caring for me since, and I had my first dialysis treatment at a clinic that Friday, February 7, my wife driving me there. While in the hospital, I started creating this paper "in my head," and when I arrived home on the 7th started writing a little bit each day since, when able to do so,. I completed a first draft on February 10.
*****
Our species—Homo sapiens—appeared on the scene about 270,000 years ago, and for most of our existence since then we have been foragers:[4]
The forager way of life is of major interest to anthropologists because dependence on wild food resources was the way humans acquired food for the vast stretch of human history. Cross-cultural researchers focus on studying patterns across societies and try to answer questions such as: What are recent hunter-gatherers generally like? How do they differ from food producers? How do hunter-gatherer societies vary and what may explain their variability?
As our ancestors spread across the globe, they encountered environmental differences, and they adapted to those differences in what they ate (e. g., whether or not they ate aquatic life), whether or not they wore clothes or created shelters for themselves, etc. But they retained certain similarities as well. For example, the late anthropologist Colin Turnbull [1924 – 1994] wrote this in 1983:
If we measure a culture's worth by the longevity of its population, the sophistication of its technology, the material comforts it offers, then many primitive cultures have little to offer us, that is true. But our study of the life cycle will show that in terms of a, conscious dedication to human relationships that are both affective and effective, the primitive is ahead of us all the way. He is working at it at every stage of his life, from infancy to death, while playing just as much as while praying; whether at work or at home his life is governed by his conscious quest for social order. Each individual learns this social consciousness as he grows up, and the lesson is constantly reinforced until the day he dies, and because of that social consciousness each individual is a person of worth and value and importance to society, also from the day of birth to the day of death.
In other words, each individual was "born to be good," was "good natured," born to live by the principle "love thy neighbor" (!)
There's also this interesting statement by the late anthropologist William E. H. Stanner [1905 – 1981][5] (p. 31) regarding the Aborigines in Australia:
The Aborigines have no gods, just or unjust, to adjudicate the world. Not even by straining can one see in such culture-heroes as Baiame and Darumulum the true hint of a Yahveh, jealous, omniscient, and omnipotent. The ethical insights are dim and somewhat coarse in texture. One can find in them little trace, say, of the inverted pride, the self-scrutiny, and the consciousness of favour and destiny which characterised the early Jews. A glimpse, but no truly poignant sense, of moral dualism; no notion of grace or redemption; no whisper of inner peace and reconcilement; no problems of worldly life to be solved only by a consummation of history; no heaven of reward or hell of punishment. The blackfellow's after-life is but a shadowy replica of worldly-life, so none flee to inner sanctuary to escape the world. There are no prophets, saints, or illuminati. There is a concept of goodness, but it lacks true scruple. Men can become ritually unclean, but may be cleansed by a simple mechanism. There is a moral law but, as in the beginning, men are both good and bad, and no one is racked by the knowledge.
Those of us USans[6] who were raised in Christianity may find it difficult to recognize that the concept of deity is not a universal one. A fact that suggests that where that concept exists, it may have been invented there—or borrowed, with modifications, from a neighboring society. With the concept functioning to explain why things exist and why they "behave" as they do. We have been taught that things exist because a Being "out there" created them; it's possible, however, is that we created god(s) rather than the other way around!
Or, it may be that God exists, but is a monster! How else explain the fact that this omniscient/omni-present Being was aware that the Nazis were killing millions of Jews, but failed to use His omnipotence to stop the slaughter?!
*****
We humans have been foragers for over 99% of our existence; it should not, therefore be surprising to learn that we became "designed"[7] for that way of life; so that it's the way of life that's natural for us.
And of particular importance is the fact that we became designed for small-group living:[8]
Many of our problems seem traceable to Homo sapiens being a small-group animal, most comfortable in collections of under 150 people or so, the so-called Dunbar's number.[[9]] It was proposed by anthropologist Robin Dunbar based on studies of primate brain size and group size. That's roughly the maximum size of most hunter-gatherer groups, as it is today of typical groups of colleagues, lengths of Christmas card lists, and so on.
From an empirical standpoint:
The fact that small-group living has become uncommon helps explain many of our problems today—including the likelihood that we are now headed for extinction!
A shattering collapse of civilisation is a "near certainty" in the next few decades due to humanity's continuing destruction of the natural world that sustains all life on Earth, according to biologist Prof Paul Ehrlich.
And what adds to that certainty is the recent election of the clueless Donald J. ("drill baby drill") Trump as our President!! (More on the threat of our extinction later.)
*****
Let me pause for a moment here to say that I wish that I could say that "I can see clearly now …." But when we are born into a society, we learn to see through the "lens" provided to us by that society; what I am trying to do here is see through that lens—which is very difficult to achieve! I must continue with that effort here, though!
*****
Agriculture began to replace foraging in some groups about 12,000 years ago, and that was most certainly our "worst mistake" as humans!! For the new sedentary way of living associated with a dependence on agriculture fostered a growth in a group's population size, and that development created a situation in which individuals with a tendency to dominate others were now able to do so.
While a group was still dependent on foraging it had developed means to control such behavior.
On the basis of … observations, Christopher Boehm:
proposed the theory that hunter-gatherers maintained equality through a practice that he labeled reverse dominance. In a standard dominance hierarchy—as can be seen in all of our ape relatives (yes, even in bonobos)—-a few individuals dominate the many. In a system of reverse dominance, however, the many act in unison to deflate the ego of anyone who tries, even in an incipient way, to dominate them.
According to Boehm, hunter-gatherers are continuously vigilant to transgressions against the egalitarian ethos. Someone who boasts, or fails to share, or in any way seems to think that he (or she, but usually it's a he) is better than others is put in his place through teasing, which stops once the person stops the offensive behavior. If teasing doesn't work, the next step is shunning. The band acts as if the offending person doesn't exist. That almost always works. Imagine what it is like to be completely ignored by the very people on whom your life depends. No human being can live for long alone. The person either comes around, or he moves away and joins another band, where he'd better shape up or the same thing will happen again. In his 1999 book, Hierarchy in the Forest, Boehm presents very compelling evidence for his reverse dominance theory.
As some in a group began to dominate/exploit the others, the eventual result was the formation of a social class system. So that one became born into a social class.[10]
It was within early Hebrew society that there seemingly first arose individuals who objected to what was occurring (that is, the creation of social class systems with their exploitation). And a Tradition arose within early Hebrew society which began with Law creation, saw the rise of prophets (like Amos), and, finally,[11] the "ministry" of Jesus.[12]
The basis of those objections seems to have been a remembrance-of-sorts of an earlier way of life, one for which we had become "designed" (or a subsequent one, such as nomadism). As Warren Johnson has written:[13]
The Biblical legend of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden seems clearly to describe the invention of agriculture.
The reference to a Garden of Eden being spedifically to an earlier foraging way of life. Our ancestors were not, however, expulsed from the Garden; their development of agriculture led "naturally" to their leaving it.[14]
Although it was likely the abandonment of foraging for agriculture that somehow led to the early Hebrews objecting to the creation of social class systems during the Neolithic Revolution, the Tradition that developed as a result of that abandonment was misguided![15] As Barrie Wilson notes,[16] the Torah—the Holy Book of the ancient Hebrews—"presupposes the view that people are decision makers and can choose their path in life."
What that assumption failed to recognize is that it was the societal system changes that occurred during the Neolithic Revolution that were responsible for the problems that began to arise during that Revolution. So that—and given that we are designed for a way of life based on foraging—the solution to those problems (if there is one now!) is societal system change in a reversionary direction.[17]
In a sense, the utopians over the centuries,[18] in recognizing a need for societal system change, sensed this. But their writings are not notable for recognizing that we humans are a small-group animal.
*****
The societal system changes that have occurred since the Neolithic Revolution—described well by Eugene Linden in his Affuence and Discontent (1979)—have been in a downward direction; we have been headed for (p. 178) "apocalypse," for extinction! I next, then, present a case for such a conclusion.
*****
If "love of neighbor" should be the primary principle that guides our behaviors today—after all, that's how we are "designed"!—then the Neolithic Revolution made following that principle difficult![19] For the development of social class systems fostered the development of invidious thinking[20] (of both a qualitative and quantitative nature) which, first, served to perpetuate class systems.
Second, invidious thinking is incompatible with the "love of neighbor" principle: If one thinks of another as "below" one, it will be difficult to demonstrate any degree of love for that person. It will, then, not be surprising if a high degree of inequality arises in one's society. With the wealthy establishing residential enclaves for themselves to enable "out of sight, out of mind" so far as the society's "unfortunates" are concerned.
Doing so is not only unfortunate—it's STUPID!! For there's this:
If you're fortunate to be in reasonably good health, how should you live your life? I believe there should be a quest behind the question, which is, you should do all you can to maintain your health to live a purposeful life and serve those less fortunate. Instead of taking your health for granted, it can be an invaluable resource to support a loved one, a friend, a neighbor or your community. Your efforts to maintain your health and willingness to help those in need become a model of compassion to serve a greater good in society, rather than for self-serving motives. Plus, helping others can improve your own well-being and sense of self-worth.
Given that we humans are "born to be good," we go against our nature when we fail to engage in helping behaviors.
And this:
Consider the positive feelings you experienced the last time when you did something good for someone else. Perhaps it was the satisfaction of running an errand for your neighbor, or the sense of fulfillment from volunteering at a local organization, or the gratification from donating to a good cause. Or perhaps it was the simple joy of having helped out a friend. This "warm glow" of pro-sociality is thought to be one of the drivers of generous behavior in humans. One reason behind the positive feelings associated with helping others is that being pro-social reinforces our sense of relatedness to others, thus helping us meet our most basic psychological needs.
Research has found many examples of how doing good, in ways big or small, not only feels good, but also does us good. For instance, the well-being-boosting and depression-lowering benefits of volunteering have been repeatedly documented. As has the sense of meaning and purpose that often accompanies altruistic behavior. Even when it comes to money, spending it on others predicts increases in happiness compared to spending it on ourselves. Moreover, there is now neural evidence from fMRI studies suggesting a link between generosity and happiness in the brain. For example, donating money to charitable organizations activates the same (mesolimbic) regions of the brain that respond to monetary rewards or sex. In fact, the mere intent and commitment to generosity can stimulate neural change and make people happier.
Those facts, reported above, may make one ask:
Why, then, isn't loving behavior the norm in societies such as ours.
My answer to that question is that when one is born and raised in a society—such as ours—in which competition[21] plays such an important role—for example, the Super Bowl today (February 9, 2025—one is virtually forced to "join the crowd" of those who engage in some competition for their very survival.
*****
A reason why it's UTTERLY STUPID to engage in invidious thinking is that it fosters consumption behaviors—"conspicuous consumption," in fact. This was enabled especially since the Industrial Revolution, when technological developments enabled an expansion of production efforts. The use of fossil fuels—coal first, then petroleum—for that production had the unintended effect of affecting the "operation" of Earth System—in the direction of making Earth increasingly unlivable for humans (along with other species[22]).
Our burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming; and global warming, in turn, is having various consequences—all of them negative:
Climate change [[23]] affects all regions around the world. Polar ice shields are melting and the sea is rising. In some regions, extreme weather events and rainfall are becoming more common while others are experiencing more extreme heat waves and droughts. We need climate action now, or these impacts will only intensify.
Climate change is a very serious threat, and its consequences impact many different aspects of our lives. Below, you can find a list of climate change's main consequences. Click on the + signs for more information.
A current consequence of extreme importance is the thawing of permafrost caused by the warming that we humans have caused:
A thawing permafrost layer can lead to severe impacts on people and the environment. For instance, as ice-filled permafrost thaws, it can turn into a muddy slurry that cannot support the weight of the soil and vegetation above it. Infrastructure such as roads, buildings, and pipes could be damaged as permafrost thaws.4 Infrastructure damage and erosion, due in part to permafrost thaw, has already caused some communities in western and southern Alaska to have to relocate. Additionally, organic matter (like the remains of plants) currently frozen in the permafrost will start to decompose when the ground thaws, resulting in the emission of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This contributes to further global climate change.1
That latter fact—the decomposition of organic matter—is of particular importance for it causes further warming and global warming then "feeding on itself" and, then, being impossible to halt ("runaway"). If that is now occurring, warming will continue until most of Earth's permafrost thaws—and we will go extinct!! The graph below shows global temperature change over the past 2,000 years:
Note that since about 1850 the trend has been steeply upward! There's no reason to believe that that trend won't continue—with our extinction "soon" being highly likely! There are articles "out there" with titles such as these:
"Humans may be extinct in 2026" (during the "reign"of Trump—which would be fitting!)
"Will the human race go extinct by 2030?"
"MIT Forecasts Civilization Will Fall By 2040" (but not necessarily go extinct).
Etc.
In 1984 (!) I published a strategy for bringing about societal system change, thereby possibly "saving" our species from extinction: "Ecotopia: A 'Gerendipitous' Scenario." I lacked the financial means to act on that proposal; and although I have brought it to the attention of literally dozens of individuals and organizations, I've yet to receive a response from any of them!! It's as if most humans have a death wish (or drive)!!
A more likely reason, however, is media failure to inform/educate the public about the threat posed by global warming. That failure is at the height of STUPIDITY! While also being understandable, though: The commercial media are dependent on advertising for their existence, and advertisers want people to continue to consume—thereby causing continued production and, as a consequence, continued global warming!
As one with three wonderful children and five fantastic grandchildren, my hope is that they all will have a future. I find it virtually impossible, however, to have any degree of optimism regarding the human future!!
Endnotes:
[1] Available upon request (from moc.liamgnull@5743nevs) are these two related papers of mine: "Ten Reasons Why We are Doomed" and "A More Relevant Gaia Hypothesis."
[2] "The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth," by William J. Ripple et al. [13 co-authors], 2020. The authors of this report are more cautious than I would be. I'm retired, so I cannot be terminated! I should add that little of my life has been spent in academia, my most recent employer being an avionics company (27 years), from which I retired in 2014.
[3] Ph.D. in Urban Economic Geography, University of Cincinnati, 1970.
[4] The term "hunter-gatherer" is also used, but I avoid that term because it's a male chauvinist term: It suggests that hunting—typically done by males—was more important as a source of food than gathering—done typically by females. Not true!
[5] Author of White Man Got No Dreaming (1979); also see this.
[6] A resident of the United States—whether or not a "citizen"!
[7] The late anthropologist Alan Barnard [1949 – 2022], Hunters and Gatherers: What Can We Learn from Them (2020), p. 56.
[8] Also of relevance here is this article by the Ehrlichs; in it they state: "Today's view of normality is possible because everyday thinking about human history largely ignores its first 300,000 years and does not recognize how extremely abnormal the last few centuries have been, roughly just one-thousandth of the history of physically modern Homo sapiens. Knowing how genetic and cultural evolution over millennia shaped us helps explain today's human predicament, how hard that predicament is to deal with, and underlines how abnormal human life is in the twenty-first century."
[9] See this on Dunbar's number.
[10] At a later point in time (during the Commercial Revolution, which began in the 11th century?) one's position in a society—although still influenced by one's birth—became based on the wealth one was able to acquire. Which helps explain Trump's choice of Elon Musk as an advisor. (Or did Gaia have a hand in this?! See the second paper listed in note 1 above.)
[11] Christianity did not continue the ministry of Jesus! And per the normative definition of "religion" given in James 1:27, doesn't even qualify as a "religion"! Because its focus (except for Quakerism, as one example) is on orthodoxy and rituals, rather than orthopraxy.
[12] See my What Are Churches For? (2011).
[13] Muddling Toward Frugality (2010), p. 43. Here's a discussion of Hebrew origins.
[14] Deuteronomy 26:5 says this about Hebrew origins: "'Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: 'My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous.'" And Morris S. Seale (The Desert Bible, 1974) notes the many desert references in the Bible—which suggests that the early Hebrews were nomads—and only earlier foragers. Here's an article on Hebrew history.
[15] This is not to say, though, that the ethics of Jesus are not as relevant today as they were 2,000 years ago!
[16] How Jesus Became Christian (2008), p. 28. I am puzzled by Wilson's lack of reference to L. Michael White's slightly earlier (2004), closely related, From Jesus to Christianity.
[17] The current Ecovillage Movement can be thought of this way. Unfortunately, it has been too "weak" to accomplish much!
[18] There have AA many! I used to own a copy of Henry Olerich's [1851 – 1927] A Cityless and Countryless World (1893); on the inside of the end cover is a list of utopian literature, and it is a long one!
[19] But not impossible—as the life of the recently-deceased President Jimmy Carter [1924 – 2024] demonstrates!
[20] This sort of thinking played an important role in the writings of Wisconsin-born intellectual Thorstein Veblen [1857 – 1929]. In his classic The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), for example, "invidious" occurs 104 times!
[21] Rather than the cooperation advocated in this book.
[22] "One million species at risk of extinction, UN report warns."
[23] I dislike the use of that term for reasons that I give in my "The Los Angeles Fires 'Climate Change' the Cause?" Available upon request; see note 1 above.
The post Our Stupid Species first appeared on Dissident Voice.Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!' they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: 'Abolition of the wage system!' Karl Marx, Value, Price, and Profit
Today, the point that Marx made in his 1865 address to the First International Working Men's Association is largely lost on the trade unions and even with many self-styled Marxists. The distinction between the goal of "a fair day's wage" and the goal of eliminating exploitation– the wage system embedded in capitalism– is lost before a common, but unfocused revulsion to the exploding growth of inequality. It is one thing to deplore the growth of inequality, it is quite another to establish what would replace the logic of unfettered accumulation.
Marx offered no guidelines for a "fair wage". Indeed, his analysis of capitalism made no significant use of the concept of fairness. Instead, he made the concept of exploitation central to his political economy. He used the concept in two ways: First, he employed "exploitation" in the popular sense of "taking advantage of" — the sense that the capitalist takes advantage of the worker. "Exploitation of man by man" was a nascent concept, arriving in discourse with the expansion of mass industrial employment and borrowed from an earlier, morally-neutral usage regarding the exploitation of non-humans. Its etymology, in that sense, arises in the late eighteenth century.
Marx also uses the word in a more rigorous sense: as a description of the interaction of the worker and the capitalist in the process of commodity production. Even more rigorously, it appears in political economic tracts like Capital as a ratio between the axiomatic concepts of surplus value and variable capital.
As a worker-friendly concept, exploitation is most readily grasped by workers in the basic industries, especially in extractive and raw-material industries. Historically, an early twentieth century coal miner– bringing the tools of extraction with him, responsible for his own safety while risking a more likely death than a war-time soldier, and accepting the "privilege" of going into a cold, damp hole to dig coal for someone else's profit– intuitively understood exploitation. A reflective miner would recoil from the fact that ownership of a property could somehow– apart from any other consideration– confer to someone the right to profit from a commodity that someone else had faced mortal danger to extract from the earth. What is a "fair day's wage" in such a circumstance?
Organically, from its intuitive understanding by workers, and theoretically, from class-partisan intellectuals like Marx and Engels, as well as their rivals like Bakunin, exploitation became the central idea behind anti-capitalism and socialism.
Today, most workers' connection to the exploitation relation appears far removed from the direct relation of a coal miner to the coal face and to the owner of the coal mine. The immediacy of labor and labor's product in extraction is often of many removes in service-sector or white-collar jobs. Moreover, the division of labor blurs the contribution of the individual's efforts to the final product.
Well into the twentieth century, "labor exploitation" fell out of the lexicon of the left, especially in the more advanced capitalist countries, where Marx thought that it would be of most use. Left thinkers, as well as Marxists, rightly attended to the colonial question, focusing on the struggle for independence and sovereignty; they were discouraged by the tendency for class-collaboration in many leading working-class organizations; Communist Parties correctly felt a primary duty to defend the gains of the socialist and socialist-oriented countries; and the fight for peace was always a paramount concern.
Exploitation was attacked from the academy. The Humanist "Marxist" school trivialized the exploitation nexus to a species of the broad, amorphous concept of alienation. The Analytical "Marxist" school congratulated itself by proving that given an inequality of assets, a community of exchange-oriented actors would produce and reproduce inequality of assets, a proof altogether irrelevant to the concept of exploitation, which the school promised to clarify. Both schools influenced a retreat from Marxism in the university, followed by a stampede after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Liberal and social-democratic theory revisits the "fair day's wage" with the explosion of income inequality and wealth inequality of the last decades of the twentieth century that was too impossible to ignore. But what is a "fair wage"? What level of income or wealth distribution is just, fair, socially responsible, or socially beneficial? The questions are largely unanswerable, if not incoherent.
Thanks to the empirical, long-term study of inequality shared in Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-first Century, we learn that capitalism's historical tendency has been to always produce and reproduce income and wealth inequality, a conclusion sobering to those who hope to refashion capitalism into an egalitarian system and making a "fair wage" even more elusive. Piketty's work offers no clue to what could constitute a "fair wage."
Others point to the productivity-pay gap that emerged in the 1970s, where wage growth and productivity took entirely different courses at the expense of wage gains. Researchers who perceptively point to this gap as contributing to the growth of inequality often harken back to the immediate postwar era, when productivity growth and wage growth were somewhat in step, when the gains of productivity were "shared" between capital and labor. But what is magical about sharing? Why shouldn't labor get 75% or 85% of the gain? Or all of the gain? Is maintaining existing inequalities the optimal social goal for the working class?
Where the concept of a "fair wage" offers more questions than answers, Marx's concept of exploitation suggests a uniquely coherent and direct answer to the persistent and intensifying growth of income and wealth: eliminate labor exploitation! Abolish the wage system!
Thus, the return to the discussion of exploitation is urgent. And that is why a serious and clarifying account of exploitation today is so welcome.
*****
Jack Rasmus takes a step toward that end in a carefully argued, important paper, "Labor Exploitation in the Era of the Neoliberal Policy Regime." I have followed Rasmus's work for many years, especially admiring his respect for the tool of historical inquiry and his scrupulous research, interpretation, and careful use of "official" data. On the other hand, I thought that his work failed to fully consider the Marxist tradition, unduly drawn to engaging with the pettifoggery of academic "Marxists."
However, his new work proves that assessment to be mistaken. Indeed, his latest work reflects an admirable reading of Marx's political economy and offers an important tool in the struggle to end the wage system.
Rasmus understands that we are in a distinct era of capitalism, forced by the failure of the prior "policy regime" and typified by several features: intensified global penetration of capital and trade expansion ("globalization"), a massively growing role for financial innovation and notional profits ("financialization"), and most significantly, the restoration and expansion of the rate of profit ("the intensification of labor exploitation in both Absolute and Relative value terms that has occurred from the 1980s to the present").
It should be noted that Rasmus does not discuss why a new "policy regime" became necessary in the 1970s. Both the stagflation that proved intractable to the reigning Keynesian paradigm and the attack on the US profit rate by foreign competition (see Robert Brenner, The Economics of Global Turbulence, NLR, 229) necessitated a sea change in the direction of capitalism.
I might add that while so-called globalization was an important feature of "the neoliberal policy regime," the 2007-2009 economic crisis has diminished the growth of global trade. Indeed, its decline has fostered the rise of economic nationalism, the latest wrinkle on the "neoliberal policy regime."
Rasmus carefully and methodically documents and explicates the intensification of labor exploitation in commodity production (what he calls "primary exploitation") over the last fifty years. He recognizes the important and growing role of the state in enabling this intensification. This is, of course, the process that Lenin foresaw with the fusing of the state and monopoly capitalism– a process associated in Marxist-Leninist theory with the rise of state-monopoly capitalism. Today's advanced capitalist states fully embrace the goal of defending and advancing the profitability ('health') of monopoly corporations ('a rising tide lifts all boats'), including intensifying labor exploitation.
Just how that intensification is accomplished is the subject of Rasmus's paper.
*****
Rasmus is aware that Marx expressed the exploitation nexus in terms of labor value. He avoids the scholasticism that side-tracks academically trained economists who obsess over the price/value relationship — the so-called transformation problem. Value– specifically a labor theory of value — is central to Marx because it explains how commodities can command different, non-arbitrary exchange values and how the different proportionalities between the exchange values of commodities are determined. That is the problem Marx sets forth in the first pages of Capital, and value — as embodied labor — is the answer that he gives.
Using labor value as his theoretical primitive enables Rasmus to discuss exploitation in Marx's framework of absolute and relative surplus value– exploitation by extending the working day or intensifying the production process. While Rasmus offers a persuasive argument that his use of "official" data couched in prices can legitimately be translated into values, it is unnecessary for his thesis. The relations are preserved because the proportionalities are, in general, preserved. It is a reasonable and adequate assumption that prices and values run in parallel, though a weaker claim than that prices can be derived from values.
Methodological considerations aside, Rasmus sets out to show — and succeeds in showing — that exploitation has accelerated in the "neoliberal" era in terms of both relative and absolute surplus value:
Capitalism's Neoliberal era has witnessed a significant intensification and expansion of total exploitation compared to the pre-Neoliberal era. Under Neoliberal Capitalism both the workday (Absolute Surplus Value extraction) has been extended while, at the same time, the productivity of labor has greatly increased (Relative Surplus Value extraction) in terms of both the intensity and the mass of relative surplus value extracted.
Regarding Absolute Surplus Value, he demonstrates:
[I]t is true the work day was reduced during the first two thirds of the 20th century—by strong unions, union contract terms, and to some extent from government disincentives to extend the work day as a result of the passage of wages and hours legislation. But that trend and scenario toward a shorter work day was halted and rolled back starting in the late 1970s and the neoliberal era. The length of the Work Day has risen—not continued to decline—for full time workers under the Neoliberal Economic Regime.
Through a careful combing and analysis of government data, as well as original arguments, Rasmus shows how capital has succeeded in extending the workday. His discussion of changes in mandatory overtime, in temporary employment, in involuntary part-time employment, in paid leave, in changing work culture, in job classifications, in work from home, internships, and other practices form a persuasive argument for the existence of a trend of the lengthening of the average workday.
Similarly, Relative Labor Exploitation has accelerated in the "Neoliberal" era, according to Rasmus:
Rising productivity is a key marker for growing exploitation of Labor. If real wages have not risen since the late 1970s but productivity has—and has risen at an even faster rate in recent decades—then the value reflected in business revenues and profits of the increased output from that productivity has accrued almost totally to Capital.
In this regard, the numbers are widely recognized and non-controversial. Labor productivity has grown significantly, while wages have essentially stagnated. Rasmus tells us that it is even worse than it looks:
So, wages have risen only about one-sixth of the productivity increase. But perhaps only half of that total 13% real hourly wage increase went to the top 5% of the production & nonsupervisory worker group, according to EPI 10 (Economic Policy Institute, February 2020). That means for the median wage production worker, the share of productivity gain was likely 10% or less. The median wage and below production worker consequently received a very small share in wages from productivity over the forty years since 1979. It virtually all accrued to Capital…
According to the US Labor Department, there were 106 million production & nonsupervisory workers at year end 2019—out of the approximately 150 million total nonfarm labor force at that time. Had they entered the labor force around 1982-84, they would have experienced no real wage increase over the four decades.
Rasmus notes that the US maintained the same share of global manufacturing production through the first two decades of the twenty-first century, but doing it with six million fewer workers. This, of course, meant a rising rate of exploitation and a greater share of surplus value for the capitalists. Though the job losses struck especially hard at an important section of the manufacturing working class relegated to unemployment, the remaining workers lost further from concessionary bargaining promoted by a business-union leadership. Thus, they were unable to secure any of the gains accrued by rising productivity. They experienced a higher rate of exploitation.
*****
Demonstrating that labor exploitation has increased in the last 45-50 years in terms of absolute and relative surplus value does not, according to Rasmus, close the book on labor exploitation. Drawing on a suggestive quote in Volume III of Capital, he develops an original theory of "secondary exploitation." Marx writes:
That the working-class is also swindled in this form [usury, commerce], and to an enormous extent, is self-evident… This is secondary exploitation, which runs parallel to the primary exploitation taking place in the production process itself. Capital, Volume III, p. 609
Rasmus explains secondary exploitation this way: "Secondary Exploitation (SE) is not a question of value being created in exchange relations. It's about capitalists reclaiming part of what they paid initially in wages. It's about how capitalists maximize Total Exploitation by manipulating exchange relations as well as production relations."
To be clear, Marx is not using the technical sense of "exploitation" here, but the popular sense. However, the fact that the worker has "earned" a measure of value and that capitalists can wrest some of it away in various ways is exploitation and important and worthy of study.
Here, however, Rasmus digresses, reverting back to the price form in his explanation of secondary exploitation. He seems to assume, without elaboration, that systemic "taking advantage of workers" outside of the production process must be explained in terms of prices and not values. He also seems to believe that all means of secondary exploitation must be within the exchange nexus. And he seems to believe that all secondary exploitation must be systemic. It is not clear why these assumptions should be made.
These methodological questions, however, bear little relevance to his fresh and original insights on secondary exploitation. Rasmus presents five mechanisms for capital to "claw back" from the working people the variable capital captured by the class in the value-producing process: credit, monopolistic price gouging, wage theft, deferred or social wages, and taxes. Importantly, Rasmus connects much of this exploitation to the active intervention of the state on behalf of capital.
Credit: Allowing workers to acquire commodities through deferred payment is not a sympathetic act by the capitalist, but a method of furthering accumulation in an environment where demand is restricted by the inequalities of income and wealth. The capitalist extracts additional value from the worker through interest charges. Additional value is "swindled" from the worker through the credit mechanism. Rasmus points out that interest-bearing loans to working people have expanded from $10 trillion-plus in 2013 to $17 trillion-plus in 2024, with dramatically higher interest rates in the last few years.
Monopolistic price gouging: Rasmus is fully aware that when prices go up, they are the result of decisions by capitalists to secure more revenue– that action is not to benefit society, not to help the workers, but to secure more for investors. Insofar as they succeed, their gains are at the expense of workers– a form of secondary exploitation.
Our current run of inflation is the result of a cycle of price increases to capture more of the consumers' (in the end, the workers') value and to catch up with competitors. But the impression must not be left unchallenged that this price gouging is painlessly left to the capitalist at his or her whim or that it is without risk. The impression must not be left, as it was in the 1960s with Sweezy/Baran, Gillman, and others, that monopoly concentration meant a sharp decline in the power of competition to retard and even thwart monopoly power to do as it liked. That lesson was sharply brought home in the 1970s with humbling of the US big three automakers and the US electronics industry. Monopoly and competition play a dialectical role in disciplining price behavior around labor values.
Wage theft: While theft is not exploitation, when it is common, frequent, and rarely sanctioned, it resembles exploitation more than theft! Rasmus provides an impressible list of common ruses:
The methods [of wage theft] have included capitalists not paying the required minimum wage; not paying overtime wage rates as provided in Federal and state laws; not paying workers for the actual hours they work; paying them by the day or job instead of by the hour; forcing workers to pay their managers for a job; supervisors stealing workers' cash tips; making illegal deductions from workers' paychecks; deducting their pay for breaks they didn't take or for damages to company goods; supervisors arranging pay 'kickbacks' for themselves from workers' pay; firing workers and not paying them for their last day worked; failing to give proper 60-day notice of a plant closing and then not paying workers as required by law; denying workers access to guaranteed benefits like workers' compensation when injured; refusing to make contributions to pension and health plans on behalf of workers and then pocketing the savings; and, not least, general payroll fraud.
Deferred or Social wages: Rasmus shows how the government mechanisms that are meant to socially meet needs are skewed to draw more from workers proportionally while benefiting them less proportionally. He has in mind retirement, health care, and welfare programs that politicians persistently demand more sacrifices from working people to fund, while restricting their ability to draw the benefits through various tests of eligibility.
Taxes: Rasmus reminds us that the dominant political forces espousing the "Neoliberal policy regime" have dramatically increased the tax burden on workers:
Since the advent of Neoliberalism, the total tax burden has shifted from capitalists, their corporations, businesses, and investors to working class families.
In the post-World War II era the payroll tax has more than doubled as a share of total federal tax revenues, to around 45% by 2020. During the same period, the share of taxes paid by corporations has fallen from more than 20% to less than 10%. The federal individual income tax as a percent of total federal government revenues has remained around 40-45%. However, within that 40-45%, another shift in the burden has been occurring—from capital incomes to earned wage incomes…
Not just Trump, but every president since 2001 the US capitalist State has been engaged in a massive tax cutting program mostly benefiting capital incomes. The total tax cuts have amounted to at least $17 trillion since 2001: Starting with George W. Bush's 2001-03 tax cuts which cut taxes $3.8 trillion (80% of which accrued to Capital incomes), through Obama's 2009 tax cuts and his extension of Bush's cuts in 2008 for another two years and again for another 10 years in 2013 (all of which cost another $6 trillion), through Trump's massive 2017 tax cuts that cost $4.5 trillion, and Biden's 2021-22 tax legislation that added another $2 trillion at minimum—the US Capitalist state has reduced taxes by at least $17 trillion!
Reducing capital's taxes, as a proportion of tax revenue, increases future national obligations– national debt– that will ultimately be paid by working-class taxes. Or, if that proves unfeasible, it will be met by a reduction of social spending, which reduces social benefits for workers. Either way, the working class faces secondary exploitation through ruling-class tax policy.
Interestingly, Rasmus acknowledges that the state plays a big role in what he deems "secondary exploitation." Yet, he also suggests that the proper province of secondary exploitation is in the bounds of exchange relations. This seeming anomaly can be avoided if we understand the increasing role of the state in engaging, broadly speaking, in the arena of exchange, as well as regulation. It is precisely this profound and broad engagement that many twentieth-century Marxists explained as state-monopoly capitalism.
*****
Jack Rasmus's contribution is most welcome because it argues that returning to the fundamentals– the concept of exploitation– can be a fruitful way of looking at contemporary capitalism. It establishes a firm material base for an anti-capitalist politics that addresses the interests of working people as a class, the broadest of classes.
Further, the theory of exploitation unites people as workers, but allows for the various ways and degrees of their exploitation. And it links the material interests of the protagonists in the class struggle to the many forms of social oppression and their contradictory interests in promoting or ending those oppressions: the capitalist sows oppressive divisions to gain exploitative advantage; the worker disavows oppressive divisions to achieve the unity necessary to defeat exploitation. That is, exploitation motivates the capitalist to divide people around nationality, race, sex, culture, social practices, and language. Ending exploitation motivates the worker to refuse these divisions.
In an age where capitalism owns a decided, powerful advantage because of the splintering of the left into numerous causes and where capitalism elevates individual identity to a place superseding class, the common goal of eliminating exploitation is a powerful unifying force.
Today's left has too often interpreted anti-imperialism as simply the struggle for national sovereignty, rather than through the lens of exploitation. Consequently, the dynamics of class struggle within national borders is often missed.
Of course, for Lenin and his followers, an advanced stage of capitalism — monopoly capitalism — was the life form of imperialism. And its beating heart was exploitation.
The vital tool that Marx, Engels, and Lenin brought to the struggle for workers' emancipation was the theory of exploitation.
The post A Return to Basics: Rasmus, the "Neoliberal" Turn, and Exploitation first appeared on Dissident Voice.How does our great nation send billions in weaponry to a country that is committing the worst genocide of the 21st century? The slaughter of civilians is beyond any description. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been bombed, burned, and starved to death. Tens of thousands more have been crushed beyond recognition under mountains of twisted concrete and ash. The children who have survived are almost unrecognizable in their rags and wasted bodies. They carry empty pots, looking for food and water amid the massive rubble. Amid the charnel house that is now Gaza.
Should I mention our two party, one genocide political system that pays for these horrors? Or the tens of millions that our weapons makers use to bribe our elected representatives? Or the even greater amounts that the Israel Lobby stuffs in each Congressional pocket? Or the Zionist media that helps us look the other way?
Or should I focus on you who have read this far? Yes, we have a system that only serves the rich, be they political leaders, weapons manufacturers, or billion dollar religious fanatics. Most people like you want to end the Israel/American genocide. Most can't believe our national leaders are acting like members of another murderous regime that killed six million in their ovens. Is our political class criminally insane?
And am I absolved by writing this short letter? Or am I still that "good German" who knew something was happening, but did nothing to end the continuous slaughter of the innocents?
The post Good German first appeared on Dissident Voice.A Review
Much has been written in the alternative press over the past year about the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians and its other war crimes in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, etc. This has often been viewed within the historical context of the self-declared Zionist Israeli state's founding in 1948 up to the present day. But far less has been said about the Zionist's racial-nationalist-settler-colonialist movement's history of terrorism to seize Palestine and kill and drive the Palestinians into exile that goes back for more than a century
For those who think Donald Trump's recent announcement that the United States will take over Gaza and force the besieged Palestinians to leave their country is shocking, the history presented by Thomas Suárez will disabuse them of that notion. The Zionist Trump is stating baldly the ultimate goal of the ethnic cleansing of all non-Jews from Palestine, which has been the Zionists' goal from the beginning and lies behind Biden, who considers himself a Zionist, and Trump's recent support for Israel's genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
When questioned why he supported the Zionist leaders' efforts to drive the Palestinians from their land, Winston Churchill, in 1937, replied, "I do not admit the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time."
As Suárez, a London-based historical researcher, former West Bank resident, violinist, and composer, writes, "He denied that 'a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the Black people of Australia' by their replacement with 'a higher grade race'." This higher grade race rhetoric is racism, pure and simple, and it has been applied to the Palestinians by the Zionists from the start. Dogs, vermin, etc. Hitler would be proud.
It is nothing new. Ethnic supremacy and a pure Jewish state have always been the goal, even as the Zionists used Nazi rhetoric and tactics that they allegedly abhorred while working with the Nazis to get German Jews into Palestine but nowhere else. What became known as The Haavara Transfer Agreement is proof of that.
In January 1933 when Hitler came to power as German Chancellor, there were international calls for a boycott of German goods and services, supported by prominent Jews and Christians. The boycott caused a severe blow to the Reich's economy. But an agreement with Hitler was arranged by Zionists to circumvent the boycott and provide Germany with needed capital, with Hitler allowing German Jews with sufficient wealth to emigrate to Palestine in return for their purchase of German goods and equipment, a quid pro quo arrangement that provided Germany with a propaganda win by claiming the boycott-breaking deal was made by Jews. Four years later, Adolph Eichmann, on a trip to Palestine, was involved in a follow-up effort with the Zionist terrorist militia, the Haganah, and its representative Feival Pokes, for the Nazis to pressure German Jewish groups to urge Jews to go only to Palestine and no other countries.
The irony of Churchill's racist statement is that the Zionists, despite the UK's Balfour Declaration of 1917 declaring its support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," turned on their British accomplices, who were in Palestine as "administrators" under a League of Nations mandate following WW I, with a savage terrorist campaign to drive the British out. This gave the Zionists a narrative propaganda myth that they have exploited to the present day that they were the victims of occupation in their own land, while it was the Zionists who, through terrorism, were driving the Palestinians from the land that was theirs for a very long time.
Treachery of this nature defines the history of all those arrayed against the Palestinians from the start – as today, with Trump being no exception.
Suárez makes it clear that the "Palestinians also committed terror attacks, and this book's focus on Zionist and Israeli terror must never be misinterpreted as excusing Palestinian violence against innocents," but the "Palestinian terror occurred principally during the uprisings of the late 1920s and late 1930 after years of being institutionally discriminated against and killed for the benefit of the Zionists, and after non-violent resistance – diplomacy, entreaties, strikes, boycotts – proved futile." His focus in this book, therefore, is to document and offer a comprehensive and structural analysis of the decades-long terror campaign the Zionist racial-nationalist settler movement used to obliterate the "inferior" Arabs who were "dogs in the manger."
The Zionists' twin terror campaigns against the Palestinians and the British forced the British to withdraw in 1948. They then turned their full attention to exterminating the Palestinians, which resulted in the what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba – the purging of nearly a million Palestinians from their land and the destruction of more than five hundred of their villages – (what Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, called "a miraculous simplification of our task" ). It was then that the siege of Gaza began, not as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his accomplices claim began after Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack.
As Suárez writes, "The siege of Gaza began in 1948, fifty-eight years before the 2006 election of Hamas, which Israeli now uses to justify it. It served then the same purpose it serves today: to block people of the wrong ethnicity from returning home."
From its start, the Zionist settler project was rooted in a fanatical messianism marketed as the myth of these modern Jewish settlers simply sailing back to the Hebrew land of the Bible after a 2,000 year absence, a land that belonged to them even though they had never lived there. They were just returning to their sovereign home, decreed by God, and those Palestinians living there, no matter for how long, were usurpers who had to be driven from their homes, killed, or forced into exile. The branding of the Jewish state "Israel," a name entrenched in the messianic Jewish and Christian culture of the West, was crucial since it called up all the nostalgia for the Holy Land of yore and all the images of one's "true" homecoming. This was crucial to get Christian support in the West.
Palestine Hijacked (2022) is a book of deeply documented historical research (686 detailed endnotes) that tears the mask off the narrative that paints Zionism as a benign force. Through assiduous archival research in poorly accessed and newly declassified archives of the Central Intelligence Agency, the British National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Zionist Organization of America, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, etc., Suárez uses original source documents to hoist the well-known Zionist leaders with their own petards, often in their own words, words never meant to see the light of day. Chaim Weizmann, Theodore Herzl, David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Moshe Sharett are exposed as liars, and the latter three as ruthless terrorists, with the former three in complete accord with their terror tactics. The same is shown to be true for those Western leaders who supported the terrorist seizure of Palestine by a Zionist racial-nationalist settler movement that had zero legal or moral right to the land, as they still do not.
Suárez sets the scene early on page 14:
Through the decades to come [from the early days of Zionism], from mainstream leaders like David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann to the fanatical terror gang Lehi, the ideological pronouncements of the settler project were couched in the language of messianism. Zionism was building the final Kingdom, the Biblical Third Temple, a resurrection rising from the ashes of the fabled Second Temple and Solomon's Temple. Zionism's battles, its enemies, its conquests, its tragedies, were Biblical, and its establishment of the Israeli state in 1948 was sold as the resumption, the reconstitution, of the Biblical realm. As Ben-Gurion put it, "the Bible is our mandate" to take Palestine.
[my emphasis above]
Again, as with Trump's pronouncement, the old is new and the new, old; thus today we have American conservative Christian evangelicals' (Christian Zionists) passionate support for Netanyahu's war crimes, justified and blessed by the Biblical canard that lives on in the propagandistic narrative promoted by Israel and the corporate media.
It's all here in Suárez's chronicle. Not just details about the rather well-known Zionist terror attacks such as the bombing of The King David Hotel that could be turned into Zionist propaganda, but all the years of the slaughters of Palestinians, old and young, men and women and children in small villages and markets, in homes and on the roads and in the fields, done without mercy and carried out with a Biblical gleefulness by fanatics doing their "God's will." It chills the soul to read the details of such genocide's long history.
Suárez writes:
The King David bombing endures as the iconic terror attack of the Mandate years, and history books falsely cite it as the most deadly. The 1940 bombing of the Patria [an immigrant ship] bombing was three times deadlier, killing about 267 people, and the two atrocities are identical in the claim that only infrastructure, not people, were the targets.
Of the attacks in which the killing was the acknowledged purpose, at least one of the Irgun's bombing [the Irgun, the Lehi, and the Haganah were the Zionist's three main terror groups] of Palestinian markets killed more (July 6, 1980, about 120), and the Zionist armies coming slaughter of villages such as Deir Yassin – still during the Mandate – would also kill more people than the King David attack.
If you wish to understand the terrorist nature of today's Israeli government, you need to read this book.
If you think the recent Israeli use of exploding pagers has no history, learn about the Zionist use of exploding leaflets long ago.
If you think critics' use of the term Nazi to describe the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians is over-the-top, learn about the history of Zionist collaborations with Hitler and the Italian fascist Mussolini.
If you think the Israel designs and attacks on Lebanon and Syria are something new, think again.
If you are shocked by the question: Does Israel have a right to exist?, discover the illegal and immoral nature of its claims to that right. Then ask yourself to answer.
If you are afraid to learn these things for fear of being called antisemitic, learn how the Zionist founders of Israel weaponized that term long ago, against fellow Jews and anyone else who dared question their legitimacy, and how their progenitors and the U.S. government that supports them now stand rightly condemned as supporters of genocide.
If you think Zionism and Judaism are synonymous, you have swallowed a package of lies wrapped as a treacherous gift; for Jews with a conscience know that the Zionist project is a terrible stain on their name.
Thomas Suárez has written a brave and great book. He should have the last word:
The reason Israel holds millions of human beings under various levels of apartheid, the reason it keeps millions more languishing in refuge camps, is not that they are Palestinians, not that they are Arab.
It is rather, strictly, because they are not Jewish. If they were Jewish, whether Palestinian or Arab or anything else, they would be welcomed and given a generous subsidy to move in from whatever part of the world they live and take over a house whose owner was expelled because s/he is not Jewish.
Nothing in the history of Zionism, of the Israeli state, or the so-called conflict can be understood divorced from this.
"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen" – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, (The New Idol)
At present, according to recent polling, 52 percent of the US citizenry approve of Donald Trump's performance in office, this is, even as Trump pulls from his bloated ass Joseph Goebbels' grade lies e.g., Diversity hires are responsible for the recent aviation tragedy over the Potomac River. Hyperbole? The insidious declaration is right out of the Nazi era playbook. For example, the Nazi "stabbed in the back by international and internal parasitic Jews" lie, promulgated by the Nazi propaganda machine, was deployed to blame shift the cause of Germany's defeat and the attendant economic miseries in the wake of World War I.
In my lifetime, the following varieties of shame-rancid fabulation arrived during waves of rightwing inflicted political/cultural regression. In my native city of Birmingham, Alabama, during the Civil Rights era, segregationist demagoguery went thus: The end of Jim Crow would embolden sexually feral Black men to endanger fragile flowers of southern womanhood; during the Vietnam era, pro war propaganda warned, the Vietnamese are bereft of respect for human life and will be headed westward to endanger all of freedom-loving Christendom by means of falling dominoes if the war ends before the surrender of the North Vietnamese communists; during the Reagan era, gold tooth-adored, Cadillac-driving Welfare Queens, purchasing steak, lobster, and cases of malt liquor at supermarkets, are destroying the nation's economy; and, over the last two hideous years, Zionist propaganda warned, murderous-by-nature Palestinians must forever live with an IDF boot on their collective neck or a second Holocaust would be imminent.
"The question is precisely to know whether the past has ceased to exist, or ceased to be useful…" ― Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will
Moreover, on an historical basis, myths told by conquering Athenians wove tales of a sexually insatiable, Cretin witch queen who had carnal relations with a monstrous bull risen from the Mediterranean Sea, and as a consequence birthed a labyrinth-dwelling half bull/half man beast possessing an appetite for virgin youth. Across the Mediterranean, in the Levant, a tale went as follows, promised by their sky-father God, Israelites crossed the Jordan river, and, in a preview of horrors to come, annihilated the people of Canaan and claimed the land as their own.
Returning to the present toxic mythos of the present era, if I attempt to confront Trump's true believers on the outright lies he and his clutch of sub-reality television grade grifters retail in, I suspect, my attempts at persuasion would carry the dismal degree of efficacy as when I attempt to reach my eleven year son old on his compulsion to be sucked into the storylines of Grand Theft Auto and attendant, dopamine-jacking narratives unfolding in the video game are an accurate depiction of how criminal activity plays out in the non-pixel world. I cannot compete against thrills freighted in the phenomenon known as the suspension of disbelief.
What are the cultural/political circumstances that allow prevarication to be perpetrated sans impunity? Will our destinies, both individual and collective, continue to be determined by pervasive deceit — by pernicious storylines, concocted by cadres of elitist fabulists, and perpetuated with the agenda of frightening and bamboozling a perpetually credulous citizenry?
Sadly, as noted above, there is not a granule of novelty in the great dismal of it all; nations, tribes, and families spin tales composed of sacred lies. Most of us are compelled to find rationales to live with ourselves and to tolerate the presence of those close to us. On a personal basis, such tales serve to repackage self-deception as self-confidence. Glaring case in point, the malevolent smirk and risible swagger of the present Manqué-in-Chief.
Jean Renoir, piquantly, put it, "You know, in this world there's one thing that's terrible, that everyone has their reasons." — The Rules Of The Game
During times of trauma and uncertainty, we seek narratives of reassurance — even clinging to ones that are spurious — even preposterous. Trump's resolute visage should be placed on Mount Rushmore for restoring confidence and purpose to the citizenry of the US. Sure thing, and Diddy should be feted for restoring dignity to drug-fueled orgies.
Thus, during my lifetime, decade after decade, the anxious minds of neoliberal conservatives have evinced a compulsive need to believe it is possible to return to a fictional past, to a golden era populated by well-turned out, obedient children, dutiful wives, and docile minorities. All of whom were lorded over by morally upright white men who wielded their righteous power guided by the grace, mercy, yet perpetually brittle temper of an All-Powerful, All-Knowing, Everlasting, Long-Bearded, Bony Ass White Man enthroned beyond the blazing blue sky.
Authoritarian rightists go round-heeled for this kind of hokum. In the 1980s, they swooned, gazing upon Ronald Reagan's stiff, Pomade-lacquered pompadour — which he held high and steady against the changes that blew in from the odious 1960s; then, as now, with Trump, his klavern of looney muffin smitten insist The Gipper's 1940-era coiffure should be carved into Mount Rushmore. Next, as noted, MAGA cultists swoon, Trump's combover disaster coiffure should be chiseled in glory upon the (stolen) mountain's rock face – where the two television grifter ubermenschs' (closer to uberdouches') visages would defy rain, snow, and lashing wind — and would be, axiomatically, impervious to the reality of change.
But all monuments to delusion need not be as epic in scale as the above. Even objects as quotidian and seemingly innocuous as the naming of places can and will deceive us. Moreover, these everyday — seemingly trivial — misapprehensions can waylay the citizenry into internalizing false mythos.
"Everything that deceives may be said to enchant." — Plato
For the next case in point, I'll travel southward and back in time, a number of decades.
I was born in the Deep South industrial city of Birmingham, Alabama, another example of a locale in possession of an origin myth as fraudulent as it was odious.
Birmingham was founded by steel and coal barons from Pittsburgh, PA, who, in an attempt to ameliorate the worldwide perception of American southerners as being dumb as dirt, backwoods, genetic retreads, too-ignorant-to-hit-the-
Subsequently, the bloodsucking Yankee bastards (I mean, visionary captains of capitalism) known in Birmingham as the "Big Mules" went about the business of exploiting — rather, in their words providing gainful employment — to said dumb-as-dirt, backwoods, genetic retread, too-ignorant-to-hit-the-
"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen." ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (The New Idol)
As the riches, plundered from the Appalachian Hills, flowed northward to banks in Pittsburgh and New York, the compensation the laboring class received in return was a life of ceaseless toil and perpetual debt. These harsh realities made the people of Birmingham hard and mean. In the early 1960s, the city was unofficially re-christened "Bombingham."
Birmingham had been transformed into a hateful, little colonial outpost. If a white man, for example, my father, complained about low wages and poor working conditions, the bosses told him, "If you don't like your job — there are ten n-words (but they didn't clean up their racist lexicon for public consumption) who, right now, will take your position for a fraction of your pay." It's self-evident why Birmingham was not exactly known as a beacon of racial harmony.
Nonviolent Black student demonstrators were met with fire hoses and dogs in May 1963 during the 10-week Birmingham desegregation campaign organized in part by Martin Luther King Jr. (Frank Rockstroh / Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)
When in the mid-1960s, my family moved from Birmingham to Atlanta, Georgia i.e., a city (or more precisely, a contrived collection of corrupt zoning practices and real estate developer larcenies) we settled again into a city bearing a contrived name. Whereas Birmingham's fraudulent name was meant to evoke an aura of industry, Atlanta's was contrived to conjure an image of the ancient grandeur of a great city of antiquity. Call the theme: Classical Age Cracker.
By illustrating the types of cultural confabulation and communal causitry defining White dominated Atlanta of the time and many still refer to "as their way of life" — I will digress, a bit. I will attempt to limn in prose the lives, fates, and legacies of two famous residents of the city: Blind Willie McTell and Margaret Mitchell, both of whom resided there in overlapping intervals during the first half of the twentieth century.
I first heard the music of Blind Willie McTell, in the mid-1960s, when in tow of my father, I visited friends of his who comprised the dozen or so members of Atlanta's "beatnik" community.
They were flopped in a run-down, mafia-owned building at the intersection of Peachtree and Tenth Street, and bizarrely enough, in the building that contained the apartment that Margaret Mitchell had christened "The Dump" — the location where she had conceived and written Gone with the Wind.
Upon the turntable of a battered record player, belonging to the building's resident manager, the late Bud Foote, a professor at nearby Georgia Tech, author, poet, musician, and all around Beat polymath, spun rare and exquisite LPs. It was at The Dump that I first heard the works of Mctell and other Blues, Folk, and Jazz greats. The building was located a short distance from where, on Ponce De Leon ave., according to local bohemian (all seven of them) lore an aging, increasingly disconsolate from poverty, racism, and his own obscurity, McTell used to busk for change from redneck Babbits and country-come-to-town parvenus, shortly before he gave up playing the blues and took up lay preaching and gospel music.
The Margaret Mitchell House, as it has been subsequently christened by the Atlanta Tourism Board, is now a city landmark. Both obtuse locals and gullible tourists seem oblivious or indifferent to the fact that the building, thrice burned to the ground and rebuilt by the city, doesn't, at present, in any way, shape or form resemble the original structure where the epic racist, bodice-ripper, Gone with the Wind, was confabulated onto the page.
"We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves." – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
Not far down the road exists, to this day, a bar named Blind Willy's, a place that, on any given night, by populated who scant few would have knowledge the joint's namesake, a man spat upon when he was busking on Ponce De Leon Avenue, a few blocks down the street.
Perhaps if we were to take a closer examination of these sorts of everyday misperceptions, distortions, and cultural based false mythos it would reveal a great deal about our present day lives within the duopolist, high-dollar hack-conjured narratives and concomitant Trump era griftathon of the present day.
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is
I'm gazing out the window
Of that old Saint James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell — Bob Dylan, Blind Willie McTell
So where does this leave us? Are we condemned to live out our lives in the enthralling dazzle of these glittering fragments of self-serving lies?
Is it for the bards of the extant dictatorship of wealth and attendant Trump-tide of pummeling shitwit — a psychical landscape of lies as banal as they are noxious — to wail out the blues into the obtuse face of the present era — for blues-mans, scions of their times, born of the hybrid lawn-seeded soil of our nation of vast suburban subdivisions and weaned on its pharmacological subsistence crops, perhaps going by the moniker Medicated Willie McMansion — to sing out,
"I got the medication blues/ from my iPhone head to my sweatshop-shod shoes…"
Conversely and finally, what would a soul-driven resistance look like. In what kinds of forms would a propitious mythos arrive? Where do seeds of effective defiance brood?
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke posited, I'm paraphrasing, every individual has a letter written to themself, dispatched from their own heart. The letter warns, if you fail to live the life your heart was demanded by destiny to live — you will not be allowed to read said letter before you die.
Ask yourself, is there a dead letter office within you piled with letters from your heart? Query your heart, is it mortified by the extant culture reeking of Nazi-level lies? The heart is not merely a pump — it is a reservoir of visions, that are dispatches from Anima Mundi I.e., the soul of the world. Step one: Stand up and confront believers of the lie. Crash the comfort zones of denialists. Regard the confrontation as a love letter from your heart, thus you cultivate and allow to rise from within you an elan vital serving as an antidote to the banality of normalized insanity.
Hang a hammock between Death and the Abyss, take sanctuary in the space between musical notes, greet as a steady friend the evening air, listen to the brooding of seeds and soliloquies of stone, and the parting words of dying stars…
Give deference to empty spaces; therein, the impetuous present pauses to breathe, thus the future is provided with the solace required to dream the world into existence.
When some insistent fool demands that you explain yourself, strike fear in him by brandishing flowers of infinity, their efflorescence rages into the world your true name — your immutable destiny chanted by troubadour heartbeats — and the fool, if he possesses a scintilla of dignity, will withdraw the question.
…Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on this refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.
― Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
1922, Affected Place [Betroffener Ort], Paul Klee
The post Lies Too Big To Fail: The Culture of Grift first appeared on Dissident Voice.Romeo Dallaire has greatly enabled the "Butcher of Africa's Great Lakes" region. The Canadian general's fairy tale has repeatedly justified Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame who has once again unleashed horrible violence in Congo.
Two months ago a man in front of me at Salon du livre de Montréal asked Dallaire if his "opinion of Rwanda has changed since the M23 movement emerged in the Congo?" The retired general's response to this question about a Kigali spurred force, which has recently killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands in capturing the Congolese city of Goma, was extreme Kagame propaganda. He said: "No because the M23 is but one group who are trying to save the lives of Tutsis, who are Congolese Tutsis, while the Kinshasa government has a dozen or so rebel forces and so on who are slaughtering them. So the M23 are defending. And then the philosophy of Kagame has always been one to be on the offensive so he's not going to [be] waiting to cross the border into his country to fight; he's going to sort them out on the other side. So he's simply continuing to get rid of the threat of extremists on the Congolese side and the Rwandan extremists who are there in the Congo still seeking the elimination of the Tutsis."
Twenty-nine years after Rwanda first invaded Congo purportedly to target genocidaires, Dallaire is promoting Kigali's apologia for mass slaughter. The Globe and Mail, New York Times, and Financial Times no longer even promote this framing of Rwandan aggression.
It's not a one off. Dallaire has repeatedly called Kagame an "extraordinary man" and raved about his government. In April, Dallaire stated, "the past thirty years in Rwanda have stood as the most profound example of noble and brave peacemaking I have ever witnessed; perhaps that ever existed…. I join you in celebrating Rwanda and its people, who are leading all of Africa by the example of moral strength and commitment to harmony and prosperity."
Dallaire made that statement two years into a new wave of Kigali/M23 instigated violence against its highly impoverished neighbour. Over the past three decades Rwanda's repeated invasions have killed millions of Congolese.
Dallaire has assisted the US military college-trained Kagame since leading the military component of a UN mission designed to help end the conflict caused by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)/Uganda invasion of Rwanda. Between fall 1993 and July 1994, Dallaire is credibly accused of favouring the US-backed RPF in contravention of UN guidelines. In response to the Canadian general's self-serving portrayal of his time in Rwanda, the overall head of the 1994 UN mission in Rwanda, Jacques-Roger Booh Booh, published Le Patron de Dallaire Parle (The Boss of Dallaire Speaks). Almost entirely ignored by the Canadian media, the 2005 book by the former Cameroon foreign minister claims the Canadian general backed the RPF and had little interest in their violence despite reports of summary executions in areas controlled by them.
Dallaire has propagated Kagali's wildly simplistic account of the Rwandan Genocide. He has ignored the overwhelming evidence and logic that points to the RPF's responsibility for blowing up the plane carrying the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi (and much of the Hutu-led Rwandan military command), which unleashed the mass genocidal killings in April 1994.
To align with Kagame's claim of a "conspiracy to commit genocide," Dallaire has changed his depiction of the Rwandan tragedy over the years. Just after leaving his post as UNAMIR force commander, Dallaire replied to a September 14, 1994 Radio Canada Le Point question by saying, "the plan was more political. The aim was to eliminate the coalition of moderates…. I think that the excesses that we saw were beyond people's ability to plan and organize. There was a process to destroy the political elements in the moderate camp. There was a breakdown and hysteria absolutely…. But nobody could have foreseen or planned the magnitude of the destruction we saw."
To a large extent the claim of a "conspiracy to commit genocide" rests on the much celebrated January 11, 1994, "genocide fax". But, this fax Dallaire sent to the UN headquarters in New York is not titled, to quote International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda lawyer Christopher Black, "'genocide' or 'killing' but an innocuous 'Request For Protection of Informant.'" The two-page "genocide fax", as New Yorker reporter Philip Gourevitch dubbed it in 1998, was probably doctored a year after the mass killings in Rwanda ended. In a chapter devoted to the fax in Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Year Later, Edward Herman and David Peterson argue two paragraphs were added to a cable Dallaire sent to UN headquarters about a weapons cache and protecting an informant (Dallaire never personally met the informant). The two (probably) added paragraphs said the informant was asked to compile a list of Tutsi for possible extermination in Kigali and mentioned a plan to assassinate selected political leaders and Belgian peacekeepers.
Mission head Booh-Booh denies seeing this information and there's no evidence Dallaire warned the Belgians of a plan to attack them, which later transpired. Finally, a response to the cable from UN headquarters the next day ignores the (probably added) paragraphs. Herman and Peterson make a compelling case that a doctored version of the initial cable was placed in the UN file on November 27, 1995, by British Colonel Richard M. Connaughton as part of a Kigali–London–Washington effort to prove a plan by the Hutu government to exterminate Tutsis.
Even if the final two paragraphs were in the original version, the credibility of the information would be suspect. Informant "Jean-Pierre" was not a high placed official in the defeated Hutu government, reports Robin Philpott in Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction. Instead, "Jean-Pierre" was a driver for an opposition political party, MRND, who later died fighting with Kagame's RPF.Incredibly, the "genocide fax" is the primary source of documentary record demonstrating UN foreknowledge of a Hutu "conspiracy" to "exterminate" Tutsi, a charge even the victors justice at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) failed to convict anyone of. According to Herman and Peterson, "when finding all four defendants not guilty of the 'conspiracy to commit genocide' charge, the [ICTR] trial chamber also dismissed the evidence provided by 'informant Jean-Pierre' due to 'lingering questions concerning [his] reliability.'"
At the end of their chapter tracing the history of the "genocide fax" Herman and Peterson write, "if all of this is true, we would suggest that Dallaire should be regarded as a war criminal for positively facilitating the actual mass killings of April-July, rather than taken as a hero for giving allegedly disregarded warnings that might have stopped them."
Thirty-one years later Dallaire continues to cover for Kagame's crimes, claiming Rwanda has the right to destabilize and kill millions in Congo.He's gone beyond words. As part of his support for the most bloodstained dictator on the continent, the Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace and Security established their headquarters in Kigali. It works closely with the Rwandan military. In August 2023, Dallaire met with Kagame and Rwandan Minister of Defence Juvenal Marizamunda. The Rwandan military's website has multiple posts about working with Dallaire's Institute. The institute trains Rwandan forces as part of the 2017 Vancouver Principles on Peacekeeping and the Prevention of the Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers.
Global Affairs Canada has provided over $20 million to the Dallaire Institute. According to the Globe and Mail, a Global Affairs director wrote a memo raising concerns about funding the Dallaire Institute because it worked closely with a Rwandan military using child soldiers in Congo.
When the regime in Kigali finally falls, the history books will not look kindly on Romeo Dallaire. Rather than a humanitarian who worked to stop violence, he'll be seen as someone who enabled mass killings in Africa's great lakes region.
The post Dallaire Continues to Justify Kagame's Crimes first appeared on Dissident Voice.After World War 2, the US set its sights on becoming the dominant superpower. As a benevolent dictator — an enlightened hegemon — it would spread peace and prosperity across the globe. Its first objective was to defeat what it perceived as the #1 threat to the economic and political system it represented, which was capitalism and democracy, that being communism.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the US decided to leverage its new positioning as the world's most militarily and economically powerful nation into becoming a full-blown empire. This was the beginning of a period of unprecedented military expansion, i.e. endless wars and defense budget increases which have now all but bankrupted the country. There are a lot of narratives out there about why things are as they are, why the economy is poised on the verge of collapse, but the one offered by War Is Making Us Poor makes the most sense. At least it explains why the excesses of DOD funding is the main reason for many of our current crises.
This short, powerful book, War Is Making Us Poor, packs more punch and understanding than volumes ten times its size. It presents unmistakeable proof of the mess our country is in, and it points the finger at rampant, accelerating militarism. The sub-title is "Militarism Is Destroying the U.S."
Why aren't people talking about this? Why is this never discussed or debated in the mainstream media?
The "War Is Making Us Poor" campaign is the beginning of this necessary, vital conversation.
Why did I write this book at this time?
It's simple.
America is at the end of its ropes. It's in a tailspin. It's accelerating its own decline and demise. If we as a nation are not consumed by a nuclear war, then we will be cannibalized by horrible policies which will eventually lead to our destruction as a functioning nation.
Our fortunes are declining on every front. Our international standing is plummeting. Our power is shrinking. Our economic viability is fatally compromised. As a society, we are unraveling, increasingly more divided, constantly bickering and at each other's throats. Desperation is the new normal. We are losing our sense of what it is to be "an American".
While not the sole cause, it is our military and foreign policy which is largely responsible. We have lost our perspective and are now incapable of cooperation with and respect for other countries. We see the main thrust of this in our militarization both overseas and at home, and our exclusive exercise of military power when dealing with the rest of the world. It's our way or bombs away. Now with our provoking Russia and China, we are crossing existential red lines. It's Russian Roulette with bullets in every chamber.
Domestically, the U.S. — despite the propaganda and spin — is a mess. A crash — a HUGE crash — is coming. The U.S. as a country is becoming insolvent. Individually, we are in debt up to our eyebrows. And both are only getting worse. The U.S. now pays $1 trillion annually just to service the national debt. That debt is increasing by $1 trillion every three to four months. As individual citizens, with inflation so severe, people are so overwhelmed, they're charging food on their credit cards. There's no end in sight to any of this, other than a complete implosion.
In order to slow, and hopefully prevent, our complete bankruptcy, I say we have to target the DOD. As I explain in the book:
Can we blame all of America's crises and deficiencies on the military? Perhaps not directly. But we certainly can blame our chronic inability to find the money to fix things on the endless wars and exorbitant DOD budgets.
The DOD consumes the biggest portion of our national budget. That makes it the "Achilles heel" for the entire edifice of catastrophic priorities.
Folks, it's time to get real. We're at an existential moment in our history as a nation and society. If we don't begin to act decisively and immediately, then it's all over.
Understand, our current national leaders will not solve the problem. They continue to exacerbate the problem. They are the problem. At the end of this very short volume, I'm offering a controversial but realistic proposal. It's a modest beginning but at least it's a beginning. I see nothing else out there other than whining and pleading to the very people who are responsible for the disaster, an exercise in futility.
We can still save America from collapse. But hesitation, no matter how conveniently rationalized, will guarantee failure.
The post War Is Making Us Poor first appeared on Dissident Voice.