Things Related and Not

An open letter / essay from Memorial Day, 2006.



Things Related and Not

(I)

Although I view myself as neither particularly well read nor highly educated, it nonetheless stands to reason that spending the better part of one's adult life interacting within the "floating world" - misfits, artisans, troublemakers, etc. - allows for some simple insight into a planet mired in bullshit.

The one recurring thought that seems to keep coming back in recent months (or has it been years?), after the "topical" categories of amassing monstrous debt, modernizing fascism, screwing anyone vulnerable for their resources and carrying on like we own those rapidly depleting resources anyway - the one thought that keeps coming back is the rate of change in all organic systems, and the attention, or lack thereof, given by those organisms in the midst of it all. Granted, I'm speaking as a gringo first (since my tax revenue ends up supporting this country), and then as a cohabitant of the planet.

Started wading through the 700 pages of Steve Coll's Ghost Wars this week, and I'm at the point where, thanks to Zbigniew Brzezinski's overt bending of Carter's ear, then Bill Casey's swashbuckling attitude towards covert anything, we are holding hands with Saudis and Pakistanis and backing freedom fighters in Afghanistan who, initially anyway, aligned themselves with the Khomeni mindset of independence taking place next door - because the communists had the nerve to expect women to read and write in Kabul. You just know this isn't going to have a happy ending...

Of course there was more to it than books and burkas...but...as someone who spends a fair amount of his free time researching the causes and effects - and the human, economic and environmental tolls - of this "benevolent hegemony" (as neo-con turned human-being Francis Fukuyama has put it), I'd posit the following: If it wasn't perpetrated to stave off the evils of communism, well then, that leaves a rather dark alternate explanation, does it not?

Actually, my supposition is that it was always a rather dark alternate explanation. Manipulating ideology can be very profitable.

(II)

Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard offers a candid menu of American policy options. Perhaps he, like Kissinger, derives his need to suggest tectonic shifts in the human condition based on fleeing the Nazis as a youth. Or, perhaps, he is merely doing the bidding of his sinister overlords by luring entire countries into the back of his van so he can build a new suit piece by piece…

Seriously - and these quotes have been floating around certain Web sites for some time - reading from The Grand Chessboard is enough to weaken the knees of anyone with a soul (I first came across these excerpts at the excellent fromthewilderness.com Web site before purchasing the book itself):

"...The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world's paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendancy of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power..."

"The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor."

"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained."

"In that context, how America 'manages' Eurasia is critical. Eurasia is the globe's largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75 percent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world's GNP and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources."

"It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization."

But how do you really feel, Z-bigster?

"...To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together."

It gets better:

"Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene. And the possibility of such a fragmentation is inherent in the geopolitical tensions not only of today's Eurasia but of the world more generally."

"It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it."

"The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role."

"In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last."

Finally, it appears Mr. Brzezinski was also doubling as a fortune teller:

"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat."

It’s worth noting that The Grand Chessboard came out in 1997.

(III)

It strikes me as quite pathetic that we're supposed to be schlepped along for this "War on Terror." Pathetic because it can be taken apart so easily: 500 billion dollars a year for defense and I'm still expected to be fearfully xenophobic, or dismissive in my apathy, or cheering on the latest bout of Leibensraum/Manifest Destiny? It's all a bit daft until one calculates the length and breadth of the Cold War; of course, the Soviet leaders weren’t saints, and yet that hardly makes us cool for the countless civilians slaughtered in Guatemala, East Timor, Angola, etc., etc., because indigenous populations were the necessary fodder as pawns of foreign policy.

I believe this current moniker makes as much sense as the "War on Drugs" campaign, though the current incantation is far more vague, with its endless nooks and crannies, and without question more destructive to the planet. Some might opine, “Well, why is that? Why are some so bent on annihilation?” I’m only suggesting why that is – its factual precedents and current irrefutable evidence. The policies formatted exactly as the Cold War was winding down gestated for ten years and now have been running with near total abandon. Appalling, really, and not because we in the US will tend to act like spoiled children for a while longer, but because the lever of upheaval on the horizon seems more than a bit ominous.

And it is exactly what has, and will always have, defense contractors and other corporations frothing at the mouth.

But that’s a rather obvious fact, no? Here’s another one, though not usually framed this way: In November of 1989, as the wall came down in Berlin, some parts of the world showed very optimistic trends. Soviet communism and South African apartheid were winding down. Corazon Aquino was in; Augusto Pinochet was on the way out. For all of the pernicious human conduct before, during and since, here, at least, was a slice of unfolding history with some very heartening news for the people in several countries. How did the US celebrate this costly victory of four Cold War decades? How did we mark what should have been the bellwether of our time? By taking a few weeks off before invading Panama!

(IV)

In his The End Of History, Francis Fukuyama, while still part of the Dark Side, wrote of Hegel's human need for recognition with some good examples, but suggests a rather unrealistic endgame if a) universal recognition, whether to the left or to the right means history, as previously defined, doesn't "matter" in the same way because of attainment, or b) that, in contrast to liberal democracies' "last man", who, having the nerve to be at peace by being part of a social whole, are, according to Nietzsche, hardly macho and an object of contempt. And then he posits some hypotheticals, but, honestly, it struck me as fantasy. He draws on Plato, Kant, de Tocqueville, etc., but he skips the part about some people, both the visible ones and those behind the scenes, are just flat out reptilian in their interaction with others. It's an immutable fact; Humans fuck other humans, period.

Perhaps he is operating in an Ivy League mindset that is beyond my grasp, though it's seems pretty straightforward that the "last man" scenario is just that. Unrealistic. We are not wired to live harmoniously in very large numbers. At least not without microchipping.

Mr. Fukuyama's updated intro may be found here, if interested.

I mention Fukuyama because he recently broke ranks with the minions that have (...let's see, what's an appropriate analogy? Ah, boats are always good...) claimed to have charted the right course, turning into the wind when necessary, chest out, gallant, determined and so forth. It would appear, though, that they are really determined to keep turning with the wind, then ducking as the boom comes whipping around. And then say that we need to greatly enhance our boom development programs.

By now many people, though perhaps not enough, have heard of the Project for a New American Century. Home of the minions. Calling it a non-profit, neo-conservative think tank is sort of like calling Eichmann a tireless accountant. An agenda is being served, and this is the wait staff. PNAC's now infamous "Rebuilding America 's Defenses" paper from 2000 is so chock full (cock full?) of such bellicose, jingoistic mantra that it would appear an entire fleet of H G Wells proportions has already left the home planet and will be here shortly...

This is where the "Congress will never fund this / absent some cataclysmic event / like a New Pearl Harbor" quotes come from that are so popular amongst the "Bush knew" crowd. As far as I can discern, Bush likes to go on vacation. One could even say he spends the better part of each day on vacation. One might also say that, so far, this has generally worked out for those actually in the loop.

It is at the end of the PNAC document, where the project participants are listed, that a couple things do leap off the page (aside from the obvious fact that those who haven’t fought in wars just adore perpetuating them). Obviously, there is the expected collusion between agencies, colleges, centers, defense contractors, etc., that directly influence or are part of the US government. But, at first glance, it does seem that about half of these evildoers are members of The Tribe. Does this matter? I mean, apparently they run Hollywood as well. It's just that these aren't your Stephen Spielberg kind of Jews, these are your Richard Perle kind of Jews. The Bad News Jews, if you will.

(Here's a quick sidebar - a short fill in the blanks: “All this talk about first we do ______ [Poland/Afghanistan], then we do _____ [France/Iraq]…this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage total war…our children will sing great songs about us years from now _____ [Adolph Hitler/Richard Perle].”)

(Sadly, the quote is from 2003.)

My point is that this instrument, partially commandeered by the BNJ or otherwise, is a sizeable part of the current state of affairs.

Watching Bill Kristol's nervous little laugh during TV appearances as if he just saw boobies for the first time, or seeing Rumsfeld stammer when confronted with his own lies, or any of the other examples so prevalent these days, makes it seem as though this is a pretty lame "high cabal." But they are proceeding nonetheless. I don't know about any invisible power structure behind the Bilderbergers, Trilateralists, etc., but if one exists, it is rather crafty of the "power elite" to make us think that their ruthless agenda is being pushed forward by those with their picture in the paper, lame cabal and all. (I suppose an argument could be made that it seems highly unlikely that this bunch of buffoons and marionettes are really the end of the line; that they must be controlled by some rich, silent minority somewhere. But that’s not my argument.)

The dark alternate explanation mentioned above hardly seems secretive: greed and exploitation. What Ike had the nerve to warn everybody about with that televised farewell speech about the Military Industrial complex. What Smedley "War is a Racket" Butler was talking about after refusing to stage a coup and overthrow Roosevelt with a corporate-backed militia. I would say it's more subtle now, and based on the garden variety ignorance of the general public one might draw that conclusion, but, if anything, the opposite is true.

So, a constant can be established. Where does this lead?

(V)

Now, as much as any other time in history, what is said is often the opposite of what is meant: "Saddam must leave within 48 hours" actually meant "Don't you dare leave;" "We are addicted to oil" meant "Buy a bigger SUV," and so on.

One of the more current ones is the mantra against the Iranian honcho getting any nuclear material. I would suggest just the opposite is being allowed to happen, as that would provide an opening for the US to continue its desperate march towards resource management and depletion. And, yes, I realize Ahmadinejad would like to wipe Israel off the map (so would a few guys in Idaho) - but that certainly doesn't make Bush any less an asshole, nor does it ignore the fact that his grandfather supported Hitler or that his dad continues to fellate wealthy Saudis at the world's expense. This is simply in lockstep with very established, if unadvertised, business plans.

The Iranian's letter to President Bush was pretty lengthy and, if you can get past the paragraph questioning Israel's right to exist, is fairly well written and has a bullshit factor far inferior to anything Bush's speechwriters have got their clown to say. (And yes, I know...even Mein Kamph draws upon perfectly valid laws of natural selection before the eugenics suppositions come rolling in and you remember it's Mein Kamph for crissakes...no hate mail, please!)

Bombing the shit out of them isn't nearly as difficult as engaging in dialogue for some. But whose interests are really being served? Being blind to possible outcomes certainly seems to be what we are supposed to believe is the guiding force in US foreign policy, as it provides a tidy explanation for one horrendous blunder after another. But more and more this tired refrain is showing itself to be that which it really is - just a smokescreen. Looking beyond the haze, it becomes a little clearer that this is the endgame of an empire.

Perhaps all we have left is to stay vigilant in our desire to be informed, e.g. Keep your friends close; keep FOXNews closer, etc. Paying attention is never overrated.

(VI)

Israel, with over four decades of nuke experience tucked away neatly under the desert in Dimona, and with scruples that are A-OK simultaneously selling to weapons to both Iran and Iraq - as long as they shoot each other, right? - has never struck me as particularly stupid. Arrogant and ruthless, yes, but not dumb, and certainly questionable is the Charles Krauthammer type of propaganda that, regarding the Iranian president, "there are all of about 50 of [these types of] nuts in Israel, and none of them is president". Conversely, I would submit, that there are as many as 70 million nuts in Iran, yet not one of them has nuclear weapons, while the aforementioned "Israeli Fifty" would appear to have few misgivings about utilizing their nukes in the defense of there five and a half million "fellow nuts." Perhaps the very best quote I have laying around here is from a chapter on Dimona from Gordon Thomas' excellent book Gideon's Spies. It's from David Ben Gurion, after Kennedy insisted to the old man's face that there be an inspection of Israeli dirt. Ben-Gurion turned to native New Yorker Abraham Feinberg, responsible for millions in fundraising if that meant political support of Israel and, referencing JFK, said, "Sort out the boy. Make the putz understand the reality of life." Priceless, and even better because Israel eventually relented and allowed an inspection…of a complete mock up sitting right on top of the real thing. Crazy Zionistas...

One could argue that radical Islam this or Muslim Brotherhood that - sure it's a real danger, but look into it for more than five minutes and you start to see more than just bearded cheerleaders. In fact, you not only get ties to the Third Reich but, tragically, a "hands off" policy by the current administration.

For an informative article on the Muslim Brotherhood and it's slimy tentacles, right this way.

One could also argue that there is little point in thinking anything but sinister thoughts when a government sheepishly says they didn't connect the dots on September 11th, though that morning they did orchestrate multiple war games, sending defensive aircraft far away as well as using radar injects closer to home, and stage a what-to-do-if-a-plane-hit-the-building drill at the NRO, emptying out their satellite reconnaissance offices on the one day planes were actually hitting buildings. And one could argue that, if the CIA can track stock market transactions in real time using PROMIS software, why can't we know who purchased thousands of "put" options on United and American Airlines just before the attacks? The arguments are infinite about what transpired before and after September 11th, but there is one Boolean-type constant in my mind: IF those in control dropped the ball repeatedly before 9/11, THEN proceeded to run amok with U.S. foreign policy since 9/11, making us less safe, WHY should the citizenry continue to support such self-destructive conduct?

In Italian only two words are necessary: Cui Bono?

(VII)

ANYWAY...where I started going with all this is that it does seem to lead to what one finds in the opening chapter of Calculus for Dummies: that the derivative signifies the rate of change at any given time and, more important, what is this worth to any of us taking notice? The examples are numerous and everywhere, of course, and can be seen, in environmental as well as human terms, at various levels along the spectrum of nefarious behavior at one end and little flickers of light at the other concerning our delicate planet.

The Earth has a finite amount of oil but its tenants possess an exponentially growing rate of consumption for that oil which, in all likelihood, will pit the US against China someday. At least that's how it will be presented. However, Brazilians need only grow sugar to keep their scooters going.

Or, say, until the 20th century, pulling edible stuff out of the ground required sunlight and the ability to farm - both fairly sustainable - though this changed markedly with the need for manufactured fertilizer, pesticides, hydrocarbon-fueled irrigation and so on down the line to the cutesy petroleum-wrapped package on the market shelf. Clearly, clearly unsustainable when you factor in stats like (U.S.) topsoil eroding 30 times faster than it's natural reproduction rate, and more water needed for more fertilizers that are required to keep plots of land that are no longer being rotated producing food. This is great when we First-Worlders go grocery shopping, but a bit intimidating when I think of the blip of time between, say, 1950 and 2050, and the results that amazing amount of consumption will most certainly produce. The environmental footprint we leave, in this regard alone, is so much larger than the 300 million that live here - and then there's the effect of the other nations whose policy towards the Earth (also) seems to be pillage with total disregard for future generations.

However, Norway is currently boring out a giant cave inside the ice in order to store (at least) two of every kind of seed (The Nordic Noah Project?). On one hand you got your Beijing-ians having taken in something like 400,000 new cars in 2003 alone - just that one city - and with American auto makers only too happy to sell them vehicles with emission requirements 10 years behind that of Europe. On the other hand you have your French with roughly 80 per cent of their power being nuclear and your Germans with the foresight to subsidize the locals if they'll put a solar panel on their roofs.

(VIII)

It may very well be fantasy, yes, but given that the average U.S. citizen spends about $4.50 out of each $100 defending this great country against perils both real and imagined, and about fourteen cents out of each $100 supporting the Third World in eradicating hunger, building roads, farming supplies, etc., why not split the difference for awhile? (These are not my figures; they are from the UN Millennium Project's indomitable Jeffrey Sachs.) I mean, how bad could it be? Compared to fourteen cents, $2.25 buys a lot of infrastructure, literal and figurative, at home and abroad. It would be one honest, conciliatory step towards doing the right thing. I'll concede that not many here in the US wake up in the morning thinking about our decades-long involvement with Angola wondering why, say, Luanda is right there with Tokyo as far as cost of living goes and yet two-thirds of the populace has no access to clean drinking water. Or pondering just what the fuck happened in Argentina under the repeated usage of the words "financial austerity." But America, Inc. is being run into the ground. Expensively.

I would also argue that it's been my experience most people generally have more difficulty maintaining an angry posture when their family is fed and they are treated with equity, and are allowed at least a semblance of dignity. The inverse is also true: intimidating and humiliating people breeds confrontation. Emphasizing the use of weapons to those with empty stomachs can only exacerbate the situation.

Regrettably, financial austerity has little ledger room for human decency. Greed trumps humanity with roughly the same historical record that queen takes pawn. As a country, how close are we to the massive flight of capital, the doors of banks being closed, the middle class reacting to the disruption of their livelihood by taking to the streets and banging on pots and pans, like the recent history in Buenos Aires? (Even worse: unlike Latin America, street protests in this country utilizing kitchen wares as noisemakers will be pathetically disheveled, given the general lack of rhythm inherent in the U.S. populace…)

We certainly have a lot to lose, but we also have a lot to gain.

(IX)

Caught an article that stated something so obvious it bears repeating. It had to do with what is called "gentling," and stems from the simple fact that test animals respond to kindness. And isolation produces negative results. This is hardly revelatory, yes, but, it's nonetheless true, just like "violence begets violence." I suppose any decent parent already knows this, but it does start to explain Afghanistan for those who don't.

For "gentling."

A few days ago, while taking a lap around Greenlake here in the city, I came across a section between the shoreline and the road that had been marked with white cardboard tombstones, one for each American death so far, with names, ages, hometowns. It was done by a veterans for peace group, and it was quite striking, and all the more so when I tried to picture if everyone killed over there got a tombstone near this peaceful lake...would there be enough lake?


Seattle, Washington
May, 2006


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