Transmissions

I followed my last week of seven straight closes with this week’s six straight closes. I’m simply in survival mode. I’ll get through, I always do.  I had a lovely day before work with Sophia. Gardening is always therapeutic. Especially gardening with Sophia.

Agonizing pain aside, how about a quick,  little story about crying on the road?

So, I got off from work early one day last month and had the pleasure of driving home from work while the sun was still awake and Spring was still springing. Anyone who has been to the region can probably attest that springtime around the GW parkway near DC and my new “Homeland” McLean VA  is so absolutely and refreshingly lush with green life and beauty that it is easy to forget that we inhabitants live in the central powerhouse of global fascism.

I was turning off of Old Dominion rd. onto the small, local off-ramp during a minor traffic jam. I was in what I like to call a non-mood: neither happy nor sad. I was just getting through another day of “Life” in the Empire of Nothingness.

As I was turning onto the ramp my typical male radar noticed a women singing passionately in her car. She was all alone just like me. I was blasting music out of my Volvo speakers and she was blasting music out of her fucking skull. As I got closer to her, and her car, I realized that she was weeping. Intensely.

The surprising moment for me was my tears that were already flowing the second I saw her in that moment. It happened in a second. As I was turning right onto the ramp, she was turning left onto the street. As I was looking at her, the light changed and I started to drive. I saw her face turn to me and I turned my face away. I drove away.

I mean, who has time, right?

Who has TIME?

I wonder what would happen if we all started talking. Here is the music from the scene. Vampire Weekend are a Ruling Class band I can sink my teeth into. At least they know that they are evil!

Don’t blame the actual, real dogs here.

This, uh, looks a little uncomfortable. Is this torture? Is this terror? Is this madness? Is this FASCISM?

Yes it is. Yes we can!!

So I was reading a great article on Znet.

It makes me quite sad to report that my worst writing (and new blogger period) was dead-on accurate. Here is what I wrote in 2007:

The Torture Is Propaganda

I want to take a step back for a second and talk about framing of issues, in this case about torture. I have heard liberals say the main reason to stand against torture is that “it doesn’t even work”. This plays right into the whole Jack Bauer flim-flam about a “ticking-time-bomb” scenario horseshit. I for one suspect there is not a time-bomb at all and would add that torture does work. It works just as it was designed to do: to get false confessions out of terrified people.

If we know that these “wars” are not about what we are told they are then we can also expect that our “leaders” might have a lot of difficulty finding “perps”. We also know that our “leaders” use terrifying myths about “others” that only they can protect us against to keep us in line. Well to keep us in line then requires that they produce these “evil conspirators” from time to time right? Of course the real conspirators, like say- Osama bin Laden, are too valuable as a propaganda tool to actually arrest. So instead we get low level operatives; and I suspect we also get a few totally and/or mostly innocent people who were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Question: If you were held in an isolated cell for months and months, then years and years, tortured and then viewed your child being molested by a soldier, would you confess to anything to make it stop? I don’t have kids, but I suspect I would confess to being Osama himself to make it stop. Guess what, this really takes place.

Whether it was torturing a “witch”, a Black Panther or some poor guy from Afghanistan in Guantanamo Bay, the propaganda of torture is the same and twofold. For those that believe the war is real, it acts as reinforcement for the belief that those in power have everything under control. For those that don’t believe, it acts as a warning. I think those in power want us to know what goes on in those dungeons or, in “the Brig”. It shows those of us who might resist these “wars”, what they are capable of, and willing to do on a whim.

They want us to know that any one of us could be Jose Padilla.

Keep in mind I wrote this using nothing more than my innate bullshit detector. With all of their resources why couldn’t CNN or The New York Times reach the same obvious conclusion?

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(Photos by Dave Patten)

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So, I’ve been looking for this video I stumbled across in the middle of the night months ago and am so happy (ish!) that I rediscovered this pile of festering ruling class propaganda! It is so freaking subtle, but if you can read between the lines is so obvious and evil. But first, Wikipedia on Civilization:

“A civilization is a society or culture group normally defined as a complex society characterized by the practice of agriculture and settlement in towns and cities. Compared with other cultures, members of a civilization are commonly organized into a diverse division of labor and an intricate social hierarchy.”

Hmmm, this sounds familiar.

“Civilization is often used as a synonym for the broader term “culture” in both popular and academic circles.^[1] Every human being participates in a culture, defined as “the arts, customs, habits… beliefs, values, behavior and material habits that constitute a people’s way of life”.^[2] However, in its most widely used definition, civilization is a descriptive term for a relatively complex agricultural and urban culture. Civilizations can be distinguished from other cultures by their high level of social complexity and organization, and by their diverse economic and cultural activities.

In an older but still frequently used sense, the term “civilization” can be used in a normative manner as well: in societal contexts where complex and urban cultures are assumed to be superior to other “savage” or “barbarian” cultures, the concept of “civilization” is used as a synonym for “cultural (and often ethical) superiority of certain groups.” In a similar sense, civilization can mean “refinement of thought, manners, or taste”.^[3]

Further now..

“Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the state. State societies are more stratified than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. The ruling class, normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or bureaucracy. Morton Fried, a conflict theorist, and Elman Service, an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems and social inequality. This system of classification contains four categories:

• Hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally egalitarian.
• Horticultural/pastoral societies in which there are generally two inherited social classes; chief and commoner.
• Highly stratified structures, or chiefdoms, with several inherited social classes: king, noble, freemen, serf and slave.
• Civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments.^[9]

Economically, civilizations display more complex patterns of ownership and exchange than less organized societies. Living in one place allows people to accumulate more personal possessions than nomadic people. Some people also acquire landed property, or private ownership of the land. Because a percentage of people in civilizations do not grow their own food, they must trade their goods and services for food in a markettribute, redistributive taxation, tarrifs or tithes from the food producing segment of the population. Early civilizations developed money as a medium of exchange for these increasingly complex transactions.

“Writing, developed first by people in Sumer, is considered a hallmark of civilization and “appears to accompany the rise of complex administrative bureaucracies or the conquest state.”^[10] Traders and bureaucrats relied on writing to keep accurate records. Like money, writing was necessitated by the size of the population of a city and the complexity of its commerce among people who are not all personally acquainted with each other.”

Ok, nothing against the written word obviously, but I think anyone can see the alienating effects (and alienating intentions) of modern commerce and  civilization. Right?

Speaking of THEIR Intentions

What do the Ruling Class want exactly? To borrow from Michael Parenti: EVERYTHING. They want the whole fucking world (and, as we’ll see, the universe.) They don’t just want every measurable piece of land, sea and air. They don’t just want all of the fresh water, minerals, oil, uranium and everything they covet inside of the earth. Here is what they really want and have always wanted: immortality. They want to become GODs.

Does this sound a little crazy to you? I feel pretty sane for bringing it up. Now check out this “scientist” in the video. He is probably a respected professional in his field. In his political and personal life is probably considered a “visionary progressive” with a “commitment to human rights.” But if you break down his words, he basically concedes that this culture is going to destroy everything. Everything! He basically says that “our” culture is going to consume everything, but we should not worry because we are going to colonize space!

I’m sure to some science fiction fans that sounds fine, maybe even thrilling! However, to the sane (or even semi-sane!) uh, this guy should be considered a Benetton ad for the Apocalypse. [I wish I took better notes and could provide a link. But NASA and mainstream publications admit that if “we” accumulate even a little more “space junk” not even the old school Space Shuttle type operations could continue.] And with the space war intentions of “our” governments and corporations, more “space junk” is inevitable.

Meet your “savior”