Tag Archives: political ideology

Rule Of The Transnationals

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Along Came the Transnationals, by Daniel Brandt, Name Base Newsline, July-Sept 1996

“Those who escape thought-reform at the end of history may trace our decline back to 1886, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that corporations are legal persons whose life, liberty and property are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Ratified to protect freed slaves, it took railroad-company lawyers less than two decades to turn this amendment into a loophole. By 1904, corporations controlled four-fifths of the nation’s industrial production. Today transnationals control the world’s cultural and economic production as well, and generate most of its pollution. Continue reading →

Obama Wins Nobel for Bankster Bail-Outs and Af-Pak Bombing

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In the news:

“President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.

The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama’s name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.”

My Comment:

Considering that Henry Kissinger has a Nobel prize, this is quite in tradition for the misnamed Nobel prize – a highly political award. Maybe some of the Swedish banks that got into trouble in Latvia are greatful for the Obama team’s globalization of QE (Quantitative Easing), after their lending spree in Latvia.

And nuclear disarmament? After two weeks in office?

Even the report displays skepticism:

“Rather than recognizing concrete achievement, the 2009 prize appeared intended to support initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.”

In short, it’s an astute, if blatant, piece of public relations.

Some questions for the Nobel Laureate:

Question: Is the US Govt. going to lay down most of its nuclear weapons? Or is it going to make nominal reductions, while using that to prevent any other country gaining even a single weapon?

Question: Is the US Govt. going to reduce surveillance, quit bombing in South Asia, and threatening Iran?

Question: Is the US Govt. going to modulate its own life-style of excessive consumption (subsidized by US tax-payers and artificially cheap interest rates that effectively rob savers all over the globe) or is it going to be lecturing other countries on how to live frugally after a half century of reckless living?

(more later)

Thoreau On the Dangers of Comfort

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“We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agriculture.

We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that the higher state be forgotten.

There is actually no place in this village for a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or a saint.”

          —- Henry David Thoreau, “On Practicing Economy in Life”

The Spectacle of General Secrecy

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Political theorist Guy de Bord on the spectacle of public life:

“The concentrated spectacle

The spectacle associated with concentrated bureaucracy. Debord associated this spectacular form mostly with the Eastern Bloc and Fascism, although today mixed backward economies import it, and even advanced capitalist countries in times of crisis. Every aspect of life, like property, music, and communication is concentrated and is identified with the bureaucratic class. The concentrated spectacle generally identifies itself with a powerful political leader. The concentrated spectacle is made effective through a state of permanent violence and police terror.[edit]

The diffuse spectacle

The spectacle associated with advanced capitalism and commodity abundance. In the diffuse spectacle, different commodities conflict with each other, preventing the consumer from consuming the whole. Each commodity claims itself as the only existent one, and tries to impose itself over the other commodities:

Irreconcilable claims jockey for position on the stage of the affluent economy’s unified spectacle, and different star commodities simultaneously promote conflicting social policies. The automobile spectacle, for example, strives for a perfect traffic flow entailing the destruction of old urban districts, while the city spectacle needs to preserve those districts as tourist attractions.

The diffuse spectacle is more effective than the concentrated spectacle. The diffuse spectacle operates mostly through seduction, while the concentrated spectacle operates mostly through violence. Because of this, Debord argues that the diffuse spectacle is more effective at suppressing non-spectacular opinions than the concentrated spectacle.

The integrated spectacle

The spectacle associated with modern capitalist countries. The integrated spectacle borrows traits from the diffuse and concentrated spectacle to form a new synthesis. Debord argues that this is a very recent form of spectacular manifestation, and that it was pioneered in France and Italy.

According to Debord, the integrated spectacle goes by the label of liberal democracy. This spectacle introduces a state of permanent general secrecy, where experts and specialists dictate the morality, statistics, and opinions of the spectacle. Terrorism is the invented enemy of the spectacle, which specialists compare with their “liberal democracy”, pointing out the superiority of the latter one. Debord argues that without terrorism, the integrated spectacle wouldn’t survive, for it needs to be compared to something in order to show its “obvious” perfection and superiority.”

My Comment:

Thanks to reader J. T. Gordon for reminding me of this. I’ve posted before on de Bord and the notion of the spectacle of society. Like so much powerful analysis, this one too has roots in the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the most productive thinkers of the last 150 years.

What should be noted here is that in the spectacle of secrecy, the greatest emphasis is placed on openness. Thus, “freedom of speech”  occupies a central position in the culture. By this means, all barriers to privacy are brought down, all psychological barriers between the individual and the crowd. Yet, this openness at one level (in public culture) operates side-by-side with secrecy at the highest level (governments and corporate leaders).

(More later)

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Reading through this again, I feel I need to question De Bord’s division, which corresponds to communist, capitalist and liberal democratic. It’s too neat. In fact, things are much more muddy

How the Pathocracy Stays In Power

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The question is often asked how a society that in its day-to-day workings exhibits culture and lawfulness can also support behavior at high levels that’s criminal. The question was asked of German society in the 1930s and could well be asked of the US today.

A good answer is given by Carolyn Baker

“One of the main factors to consider in terms of how a society can be taken over by a group of pathological deviants is that the psychopaths’ only limitation is the participation of susceptible individuals within that given society. Lobaczewski gives an average figure for the most active deviants of approximately 6% of a given population. (1% essential psychopaths and up to 5% other psychopathies and characteropathies.) The essential psychopath is at the center of the web. The others form the first tier of the psychopath’s control system.

The next tier of such a system is composed of individuals who were born normal, but are either already warped by long-term exposure to psychopathic material via familial or social influences, or who, through psychic weakness have chosen to meet the demands of psychopathy for their own selfish ends. Numerically, according to Lobaczewski, this group is about 12% of a given population under normal conditions.

So approximately 18% of any given population is active in the creation and imposition of a Pathocracy. The 6% group constitutes the Pathocratic nobility and the 12% group forms the new bourgeoisie, whose economic situation is the most advantageous.

When you understand the true nature of psychopathic influence, that it is conscienceless, emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards, you are horrified, but at the same time everything suddenly begins to makes sense. Our society is ever more soulless because the people who lead it and who set the example are soulless – they literally have no conscience.

My Comment:

To this I will add that the pathocracy also exhibits and encourages the exhibition of sentiments that mimic and substitute for emotion. Various kinds of false sentimentalities and emotionalism mimic authentic emotion to create a facade that deceives the onlooker. One could go further and say that this distortion extends from the affective life to the cognitive, where a false and superficial “logic” takes the place of genuine reasoning….