Dagens Citat: Adorno.

"Menneskene har i den grad manipuleret med begrebet frihed, at det ender med at betyde den stærkeres og rigeres ret til at fratage den svagere og fattigere den smule han endnu har." - Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia.

The United States of ALEC

New documentary by Bill Moyers on ALEC and US corporate "democracy".

George Carlin: The American Dream.

The Crisis of Representative Democracy

“..we keep shuffling around the same deck of cards, hoping that this meaningless exercise will somehow make a difference. Hope abounds when the US elects its most progressive President in decades — but even he ends up bailing out Wall Street at the expense of millions of families who lose their homes. Heck, he even keeps a personal kill list and forsakes his #1 election promise to close Guantanamo! In the UK, a Liberal leader pledges never to raise tuition fees — only to abandon this promise the moment he smells power.

Similarly, a sigh of relief resounds across Europe when France elects its first Socialist President in two decades. Surely his victory will hail the end of Merkel’s austerity pact for the eurozone? ‘Lo and behold: only a few months later Hollande is suddenly Merkel’s closest ally, happily “turning the screws on Greece” and quietly forgetting about his election promise to rip up the eurozone austerity pact. In the end, everybody bows before the power of the market.

Clearly the divorce between politics and power has instilled great fear and confusion in the electorate. Like a flock of panicking sheep, voters head towards the political fringes, desperately clinging on to the idea that it’s the parties and their leaders who are at fault, not the system as such. Unwilling to face the reality of national governments that no longer possess true fiscal or monetary policy autonomy, voters continue to hate the player; not the game.

In the process, national elections are reduced to some meaningless provincial popularity contest. Like “survivors” in some stupid reality TV show, politicians try their very best to avoid being voted off the island. Election campaigns degrade into marketing campaigns as the electorate is bombarded with flashy Google and TV ads, party posters and random party paraphernalia in the streets. An election victory is celebrated like a World Cup win. Somehow everyone seems to believe that this is a completely natural way of organizing society.

Both ordinary citizens (those “too unsophisticated” for the spectacle) and critical thinkers (those “too sophisticated” for the new culture of one-liners) are filtered out of public view in a sort of quasi-natural selection process that systematically favors the technocratic mediocrity of bland career politicians over the great diversity and complexity of opinions that society has to offer. Given enough time, electoral politics automatically descends into some childish blame game that no one really takes seriously anymore.

Cookie-cutter election programs, cheap sloganeering, negative publicity and inauthentic, overly-manufactured interviews riddled with lies, insults and and clichés take all the creativity, joy and weight out of the art of public debate. Instead of talking about issues, we now talk about personalities. Representative democracy has long since ceased to be about competing visions for the future of society. With the owners out of reach, we are relegated to electing managers...”

From Roarmag.

Two Paradigms of History.

By Richard Tarnas

A paradox concerning the character and fate of the West confronts every sensitive observer: On the one hand, we recognize a certain dynamism, a luminous, heroic impulse, even a nobility at work in Western civilization and Western thought. We see this in the great achievements of Greek philosophy and culture, and in the profound moral and spiritual strivings of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. We see it embodied in the Sistine Chapel and other Renaissance masterpieces, in the plays of Shakespeare, in the music of Beethoven. We recognize it in the brilliance of the Copernican revolution and the long sequence of dazzling scientific advances in many disciplines that have unfolded in its wake. We see it in the titanic space flights of a generation ago that landed men on the Moon, or, more recently, in the spetacular images of the vast cosmos coming from the Hubble Space Telescope that have opened up uprecendented perspectives reaching back in time and outward into space billions of years and lightyears to the primal origins of the universe itself. No less vividly, we find it in the great democratic revolutions of modernity and the powerful emancipatory movements of our own era, all with deep sources in the Western intellectual and spiritual tradition.

Yet at the same time, if we attempt to perceive the larger reality beyond the conventional heroic narrative, we cannot fail to recognize the shadow of this great luminosity. The same cultural tradition and historical trajectory that brought forth such noble achievements has also caused immense suffering and loss, for many other cultures and peoples, for many people within Western culture itself, and for many other forms of life on the Earth. Moreover, the West has played the central role in bringing about a subtly growing and seemingly inexorable crisis – one of multidimensional complexity, affecting all aspects of life from the ecological and economic to the psychological and spiritual. To say that our global civilization is becoming dysfunctional scarcely conveys the gravity of the situation. For many forms of life on the Earth, catastrophe has already begun, as our planet undergoes the most massive extinction of species since the demise of the dinosaurs. How can we make sense of this tremendous paradox in the character and meaning of the West?

If we examine many of the major debates in the post-traditional intellectual culture of our time, it is possible to see looming behind them two fundamental paradigms, two great myths, diametrically opposite in character, concerning human history and the evolution of human consciousness. As genuine myths, these underlying paradigms represent not mere illusory beliefs or arbitrary collective fantasies, naive delusions contrary to fact, but rather those enduring archetypal structures of meaning that so profoundly inform our cultural psyche and shape our beliefs that they constitute the very means through which we construe something as fact. They invisibly constellate our vision. They filter and reveal our data, structure our imagination, permeate our ways of knowing and acting.

The first paradigm familiar to all of us from our education, describes human history and the evolution of human consciousness as an epic narrative of human progress, a long heroic journey from a primitive world of dark ignorance, suffering and limitation to a brighter modern world of ever-increasing knowledge, freedom and well-being. This great trajectory of progress is seen as having been made possible by the sustained development of human reason and, above all, by the emergence of the modern mind. This view informs much, perhaps most, of what we see and hear on the subject and and is easily recognized whenever we encounter a book or program with a title such as The Ascent of Man, The Discoverers, Man's Conquest of Space or the like. The direction of history is seen as onward and upward. Humanity is typically personified as “man” (anthropos, homo, l'uomo, l'homme, el hombre, chelovek, der Mensch) and imaged, at least implicitly, as a masculine hero, rising above the constraints of nature and tradition, exploring the great cosmos, mastering his environment, determining his own destiny: restless, bold, brilliantly innovative, ceaselessly pressing forward with his intelligence and will, breaking out of the structures and limits of the past, ascending to ever-higher levels development, forever seeking greater freedom and new horizons, discovering ever-wider arenas for self-realization. In this perspective the apex of human achievement commenced with the rise of modern science and democratic individualism in the centuries following the Renaissance. The view of history is one of progressive emancipation and empowerment. It is a vision that emerged fully in the course of the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though its roots are as old as Western civilization itself.

As with all powerful myths, we have been, and many perhaps remain, largely unconscious of this historical paradigm's hold on our collective imagination. It animates the vast majority of contemporary books and essays, editorial columns, book reviews, science articles, research papers, and television documentaries, as well as political, social, and economic policies. It is so familiar to us, so close to our perception, that in many respects it has become our common sense, the form and foundation of our self-image as modern humans. We have been so long identified with this progressive understanding of the human project, and particularly of the modern Western project, that it is only in recent decades that we have begun to be able to see it as a paradigm – that is to be able to see, at least partly, from outside of its sphere of influence.

The other great historical vision tells a very different story. In this understanding, human history and the evolution of human consciousness are seen as a predominantly problematic, even tragic narrative of humanity's gradual but radical fall and separation from an original state of oneness with nature and an encompassing spiritual dimension of being. In its primordial condition, humankind had possessed an instictive knowledge of the profound sacred unity and interconnectedness of the world, but under the influence of the Western mind, especially its modern expression, the course of history brought about a deep schism between humankind and nature, and a desacralization of the world. This development coincided with an increasingly destructive exploitation of nature, the devastation of traditional indigenous cultures, a loss of faith in spiritual realities, and an increasingly unhappy state of the human soul, which experienced itself as ever more isolated, shallow and unfulfilled. In this perspective, both humanity and nature are seen as having suffered grievously under a long exploitative, dualistic vision of the world, with the worst consequences being produced by the oppressive hegemony of modern industrial societies empowered by Western science and technology. The nadir of this fall is the present planetary turmoil, ecological crisis and spiritual distress, which are seen as the direct consequence of human hubris, embodied above all in the spirit and structure of the mordern Western mind and ego. This second historical perspective reveals a progressive impoverishment of human life and the human spirit, a fragmentation of original unities, a ruinous destruction of the sacred community of being.

Something like these two interpretations of history, here described in starkly contrasting terms for the sake of easy recognition, can be seen to inform many of the specific issues of our age. They represent two basic antithetical myths of historical self-understanding: the myth of Progress and what in its earlier incarnations was called the myth of the Fall. These two historical paradigms appear today in many variations, combinations, and compromise formations. They underlie and influence discussions of the environmental crisis, globalization, multiculturalism, fundamentalism, feminism and patriarchy, evolution and history. One might say that these opposing myths constitute the underlying argument of our time: Whither humanity? Upward or downward? How are we to view Western civilization, the Western intellectual tradition, its canon of great works? How are we to view modern science, modern rationality, modernity itself? How are we to view “man”? Is history ultimately a narrative of progress or of tragedy?

John Stuart Mill made a shrewd, and wise, observation about the nature of most philosophical debates. In his splendid essay on Coleridge, he pointed out that both sides in intellectual controversies tended to be “in the right in what they affirmed, though in the wrong in what they denied.” Mill's insight into the nature of intellectual discourse shines light on many disagreements: Whether it is conservatives debating liberals, parents arguing with their children, or a lovers' quarrel, almost invariably something is being repressed in the service of making one's point. But his insight seems to apply with particular aptness to the conflict of historical paradigms just described. I believe that both parties to this dispute has grasped an essential aspect of our history, that both views are in a sense correct, each with compelling arguments within its own frame of reference, but also that they are both intensely partial views, as a result of which they both misread a larger story.

It is not only that each perspective possesses a significant grain of truth. Rather, both historical paradigms are at once fully valid and yet also partial aspects of a larger frame of reference, a metanarrative, in which two opposite interpretations are precisely intertwined to form a complex, integrated whole. The two historical dramas actually constitute each other. Not only are they simultaneously true; they are embedded in each other's truth. They underlie and inform each other, implicate each other, make each other possible. One might compare the way the two opposites coalesce while appearing to exclude each other to those gestalt-experiment illustrations that can be perceived in two different equally cogent ways, such as the precisely ambigous figure that can be seen either as a white vase or as two black profiles in silhouette. By means of a gestalt shift in perception, the observer can move back and forth between two images, though the figure itself, the original body of data, remains unchanged.

One is reminded here of Niels Bohr's axiom in quantum physics, “the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth,” or Oscar Wilde's “A truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true.” What is difficult, of course, is to see both images, both truths, simultaneously: to suppress nothing, to remain open to paradox, to maintain the tension of opposites. Wisdom, like compassion, often seems to require of us that we hold multiplies realities in our consciousness at once. This may be the task we must begin to engage if we wish to gain a deeper understanding of the evolution of human consciousness, and the history of the Western mind in particular: to see that long intellectual and spiritual journey, moving through stages of increasing differentiation and complexity, as having brought about both a progressive ascent to autonomy and a tragic fall from unity – and, perhaps, as having prepared the way for a synthesis on a new level. From this perspective, the two paradigms reflect opposite but equally essential aspects of an immense dialectical process, an evolutionary drama that has been unfolding for thousands of years and that now appears to be reaching a critical, perhaps climactic moment of transformation.

Yet there is another important party to this debate, another view of human history, one that instead of integrating the two opposite historical perspectives into a larger, more complex one appears to refute them both altogether. This third view, articulated with increasing frequency and sophistication in our own time, holds that no coherent pattern actually exists in human history or evolution, at least none that is independent of human interpretation. If an overarching pattern is history is visible, that pattern has been projected onto history by the human mind under the influence of various non-empirical factors: cultural, political, economic, social, sociobiological, psychological. In this view, the pattern, the myth or story – ultimately resides in the human subject, not the historical object. The object can never be perceived without being selectively shaped by an interpretive framework, which itself is shaped and constructed by forces beyond itself and beyond the awareness of the interpreting subject. Knowledge of history, as of anything else, is ever-shifting, free-floating, ungrounded in objective reality. Patterns are not so much recogized as read into them. History is, finally, only a construct.

On the one hand, this robust skepticism that pervades much of our post-modern thought is not far from that necessary critical perspective that allows us to discuss paradigms at all, to make comparisons and judgments about underlying conceptual structures such as those made above. Its recognition of the radically interpretive factor in all human experience and knowledge – its understanding that we are always seeing by means of myths and theories, that our experience and knowledge are always patterned and even constituted by various changing a priori and usually unconscious structures of meaning – is essential to the entire exercise we have been pursuing.

On the other hand, this seemingly paradigm-free relativism, whereby no pattern or meaning exists in history except as constructed and projected onto history by the human mind, is itself clearly another paradigm. It recognizes that we always see by means of myths and interpretive categories, but fails to apply that recognition consistently to itself. It excels at “seeing through,” but perhaps has not seen through enough. In one sense, this form of the postmodern vision may be best understood as a direct outgrowth, possibly an inevitable one, of the progressive modern mind in its ever-deepening critical reflexivity – questioning, suspecting, striving for emancipation through critical awareness – reaching here in its most extreme development what is essentially a stage of advanced self-deconstruction. Yet this perspective may also be understood as the natural consequence of the Enlightenment vision beginning to encounter its own shadow – the darkly problematic narrative articulated by its opposing historical paradigm – and being challenged and reshaped by that encounter. For just this reason, the deconstructive postmodern perspective may present a crucial element in the unfolding of a new and more comprehensive understanding. There is a deep truth in this view, though it too may also be a deeply partial truth, an essential aspect of a much larger, more embracing, and still more complex vision. The postmodern mind may eventually be seen as having constituted a necessary transitional stage between epochs, a period of dissolving and opening between larger sustained cultural paradigms.

Ego vs. Eco

Red Nuke Alert!

Antonio Negri: a revolt that never ends

Antonio Negri: a revolt that never ends from Libcom Dot Org on Vimeo.

Noam Chomsky: "The Emerging World Order: its roots, our legacy"

Farmageddon - The truth about the food and dairy industry.

Michael Parenti: Democracy and the Pathology of Wealth.

Sept. 11, 1973: A CIA-backed Military Coup Overthrows Salvador Allende, the Democratically Elected President of Chile.

The Corporate Right Wing Earthquake.

9-11 - Skammens dag.

På denne dag for niogtredive år siden militærkuppede Augusto Pinochet Chile med USAs hjælp. Landets præsident, Salvador Allende, blev fundet død i sit præsidentpalads og mange tusinder civile forsvandt og/eller blev tortureret under Pinochets fascistiske militærdiktatur. Gennem Pinochets 27 voldsbetonede år ved magten gennemførte man en neoliberal økonomisk politik der forvoldte omfattende armodiggørelse af civilbefolkningen og en markant stigning i landets økonomiske ulighed.

For elleve år siden kollapsede tvillingetårnene. En begivenhed der burde have bragt eftertanke og opmærksomhed i dens kølvand, men som allerede få måneder senere udmøntede sig i en krig i Afghanistan. En krig der som bekendt fortsat er i gang uden nævneværdige positive resultater: Et yderst korrupt regime styrer landet med nød og næppe, opiumsproduktionen er eksploderet og der er intet der tyder på, at de rabiate religiøse kræfter i regionen på nogen måde er svækket, ligesom der heller ikke er meget der peger i retning af, at elleve års krig har bragt civilbefolkningen tættere på fred.

Man brugte desuden på løgnagtig vis 9-11 som undskyldning for, at angribe det af Saddam undertrykte Irak og man drev med krigen millioner på flugt, skabte grundlaget for stadig igangværende sekteriske konflikter og lagde flere hundredetusinder i graven. Altsammen i en krig der inkluderede kemisk krigsførelse og umenneskeliggørelse af soldater såvel som civile irakere. Denne påståede krig for menneskerettigheder vurderes (konservativt) af økonomerne Linda Bilmes og Joseph Stiglitz, at have kostet over tre billioner dollars.Til sammenligning vurderer FNs landbrugsorganisation (FAO), at effektiv bekæmpelse af sult i verden, på årsbasis vil koste omkring 30 milliarder dollars.

Frygtens politik viste for alvor sit grimme ansigt i kølvandet på tvillingetårnenes kollaps, idet begivenheden ikke alene gav nationalkonservatives frygtbaserede had en langt større megafon, den resulterede også i at man indførte diverse politistatslige initiativer i det meste af den såkaldte frie verden. Vores retssikkerhed har således været i frit fald lige siden, ligesom vores frihedsrettigheder og privatliv i dag er under så voldsomme angreb, at man har god grund til at frygte, at de måske snart blot er tomme floskler.

I den tredje verden terroriseres civilbefolkninger af vestlige eliters krigeriske udenrigspolitik, mens vestlige civilbefolkninger terroriseres af den frygtbaserede indvandrings-, sikkerheds- og retspolitik. Terrorismen kommer i mange versioner og de er alle forstyrrende, men den værste er nok alligevel den vi intet gør for at bekæmpe og derfor tillader at lade foregå i vores navn.

Research - The LIBOR Scandal.

Wikipedia: Libor Scandal

Immanuel Wallerstein: The LIBOR Scandal: Why is it Scandalous?

The Guardian: This global financial fraud and its gatekeepers.

The Guardian: Banking scandal: 'the rot was widespread, the corruption endemic'

The Guardian: Banking scandal: how document trail reveals global scam.

The Telegraph: Libor scandal: at the root of all financial crises is a lack of transparency.

Rolling Stone: A Challenge To American Regulators Over LIBOR Scandal.

Rolling Stone: Why is Nobody Freaking Out About the LIBOR Banking Scandal?

Rolling Stone: The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia.

Democracy Now: Matt Taibbi on the Libor Scandal.

Washington's Blog: The Many Ways Banks Commit Criminal Fraud.

Washington's Blog: Big Banks Have Become Mafia-Style Criminal Enterprises

Washington's Blog: Have Banks Been Manipulating Libor for DECADES?

Washington's Blog: The Biggest Financial Scam In World History.

The Economist: The rotten heart of finance.

Danmarks Radio: Ugebrev: Banker snyder kunder for milliarder.

Truth-out.org: The Wall Street Scandal of All Scandals

Al Jazeera: Inside Story - Rigged bank rates: Is there more to come?

Al Jazeera: How Barclays manipulated the libor rates.

Reuters: Exclusive: Germany pushes Libor probe of Deutsche Bank

NYTimes: Trade Group for Bankers Regulates a Key Rate.

NBC: The LIBOR Scandal Is Bigger Than You Think.

Washington Post: Why the LIBOR scandal is a bigger deal than JPMorgan.

Quote of the Day: Kropotkin

"Every machine has had the same history -- a long record of sleepless nights and of poverty, of disillusions and of joys, of partial improvements discovered by several generations of nameless workers, who have added to the original invention these little nothings, without which the most fertile idea would remain fruitless. More than that: every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry.

Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle-all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present. By what right then can any one whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say -- This is mine, not yours?"

- Pjotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread.

Research - US Chemical Warfare.

VIETNAM.

Truth-Out: The Toxic Effects of Agent Orange Persist 51 Years After the Vietnam War.

Wikipedia: Wikipedia: Agent Orange

United States Department of Veterans Affairs: Veteran's Diseases Associated With Agent Orange

BBC: Agent Orange blights Vietnam.

The Guardian: Australia cancer deaths linked to Agent Orange.


FALLUJAH.

Al Jazeera: Fallujah babies: Under a new kind of siege

Al Jazeera: Inside Story Americas: Did the US cause Fallujah's birth defects?

The Guardian: Research links rise in Falluja birth defects and cancers to US assault

New Scientist: What is causing deformities in Fallujah's children?

The Independent: Robert Fisk: The Children of Fallujah - the hospital of horrors

Uruknet: Deformed babies in Fallujah - Letter to the United Nations.

The Arab American: New study from Ann Arbor toxicologist links Fallujah birth defects to U.S. weapons

World Health Organization: Depleted Uranium Factsheet.

Wikipedia: Depleted Uranium.

Information: Forarmet Uran, Forarmet Verden.

Wikipedia: White phosphorus use in Iraq.

Independent: The fog of war: white phosphorus, Fallujah and some burning questions

Washington Post: Pentagon Used White Phosphorous in Iraq.

BBC: US used white phosphorus in Iraq.

IPS: Those Laboratory Mice Were Children

International Journal of Environmental Studies and Health: Genetic damage and health in Fallujah Iraq worse than Hiroshima

Update [08-29-2013]: Foreign Policy: Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran

Karrieremagerne.

Af Chris Hedges. 

De største forbrydelser i menneskehedens historie muliggøres af de mest farveløse individer. De er karrieremagerne. Bureaukraterne. Kynikerne. De udfylder de små pligter som gør omfattende, komplicerede systemer af udbytning og død en realitet. De samler og læser personlige informationer, indsamlet om et tocifret antal millioner af os, af sikkerheds- og overvågningsstaten. De bogfører for ExxonMobil, BP og Goldman Sachs. De bygger eller flyver luftbårne droner. De arbejder indenfor den kapitalistiske reklamebranche og den statslige propaganda. De udsteder formularer. De bearbejder papirerne. De håndhæver lovene og reguleringerne. Og de stiller ingen spørgsmål.

 Godt. Ondt. Disse ord betyder ingenting for dem. De er hinsides moral. De er der for at sørge for at privatkapitalistiske systemer fungerer. Hvis forsikringsselskaber lader et tocifret antal millioner af syge lide og dø, så må det være sådan. Hvis banker og sheriffer smider folk ud af deres hjem, så må det være sådan. Hvis finansielle firmaer frarøver borgerne deres opsparinger, så må det være sådan. Hvis regeringen lukker skoler og biblioteker, så må det være sådan. Hvis militæret dræber børn i Afghanistan og Pakistan, så må det være sådan. Hvis spekulanter forhøjer prisen på ris og majs og hvede så de bliver ubetalelige for millioner af planetens fattige, så må det være sådan. Hvis Kongressen og domstolene fratager borgerne deres basale frihedsrettigheder, så må det være sådan. Hvis de fossile brændstoffers industri steger jorden med drivhusgasser som fordømmer os alle til undergang, så må det være sådan. De er tjenere af systemet. Udbytningens og profittens gud. Den farligste kraft i den industrialiserede verden kommer ikke fra dem som bærer radikale trosbekendelser, hvad end vi taler om islamisk radikalisme eller kristen fundamentalisme, men fra legioner af ansigtsløse bureaukrater som med kløerne baner sig vej op gennem private og statslige maskinerier. De tjener et hvilket som helst system som møder deres ynkelige behovskvoter.

Disse systemforvaltere tror ikke på noget. De har ingen loyalitet. De tænker ikke hinsides deres små, ubetydelige roller. De er blinde og døve. De er, i det mindste hvad angår den menneskelige civilisation og histories store ideer og mønstre, fuldstændige analfabeter. Og vi fremstiller dem på stribe på de store universiteter. Advokater. Teknokrater. MBAs. Finansielle managere. IT specialister. Konsulenter. Petroleumsingeniører. “Positive psykologer”. Kommunikationskandidater. Kadetter. Salgsrepræsentanter. Computer-programmører. Mænd og kvinder som intet kender til historien, intet til ideer. De lever og tænker i et intellektuelt tomrum, en verden bestående af meningsløse detaljer. De er T.S. Eliots “de hule mennesker”, “de udstoppede mennesker.” “formløse forme, skygger uden farve” skrev poeten. “paralyseret kraft, gestikulation uden bevægelse.”

Det var karrieremagerne som muliggjorde folkemordene, fra udryddelsen af de indfødte amerikanere til den tyrkiske nedslagtning af armenerne til det nazistiske holocaust til Stalins udryddelser. Det var dem som sørgede for at togene kørte til tiden. De udfyldte formularerne og stod bag beslaglæggelserne af ejendom. De rationerede maden mens børnene sultede. De fremstillede våbnene. De styrede fængslerne. De håndhævede rejseforbuddene, konfiskerede passene, beslaglagde bankkonti og udførte raceadskillelsen. De håndhævede loven. De passede deres arbejde.

Med støtte fra krigsspekulanter, har de politiske og militære karrieremagere ledt os ind i nytteløse krige, inklusiv første verdenskrig, Vietnam, Irak og Afghanistan. Og millioner fulgte dem. Pligt. Ære. Fædreland. Dødens folkefester. De ofrer os alle. I første verdens-krigs ørkesløse slag ved Verdonne og Somme, blev 1.8 millioner på begge sider myrdet, såret eller aldrig fundet. Til trods for have af døde, fordømte den britiske feltmarskal Douglas Haig i juli 1917 endnu flere til deres undergang i Passchendaeles mudder. Da man nåede frem til november og det var blevet klart at det lovede gennembrud ved Passchendaele havde slået fejl, kastede han det oprindelig mål over bord – ligesom vi gjorde i Irak da det viste sig, at der ikke var masseødelæggelsesvåben og i Afghanistan da Al-Qaeda forlod landet – og valgte i stedet at føre en simpel udmattelseskrig. Haig “vandt” hvis flere tyske end allierede tropper døde. Døden som et regnskabskort. Passchendaele tog mere end 600.000 liv på begge sider inden det endte. Det er ikke nogen ny historie. Generaler er næsten altid bajadser. Soldater fulgte Johannes den Blinde, som havde mistet sit syn et årti tidligere, hen til et eklatant nederlag ved slaget i Crécy i 1337 under hundredeårskrigen. Vi opdager først når det er for sent, at vore ledere er middelmådigheder.

David Lloyd George, som var premierminister under kampagnen i Passchendaele, skrev i sine erindringer: “[Før slaget ved Passchendaele] udarbejdede en kampvognenhed landkort, som viste hvordan et bombardement som havde tilintetgjort rørlægningen, uundgåeligt ville lede til en serie af pøle og de lokaliserede de præcise steder hvor vandene ville samle sig. Det eneste svar var en kategorisk befaling om, at de ikke skulle “sende flere af disse latterlige landkort.” Kort må tilpasses planerne og ikke omvendt. Kendsgerninger som kolliderede med planerne var sagen uvedkommende.”

Her har du forklaringen på hvorfor vores herskende eliter ikke gør noget ved klimaforandringer, nægter at respondere rationelt på økonomisk nedsmeltning og er ude af stand til at håndtere globaliseringens og imperiets kollaps. Disse omstændigheder støder sammen med systemets levedygtighed og bæredygtighed. Og bureaukrater kender kun til at tjene systemet. De kender kun til de forvaltningsfærdigheder de indtog på officersskolen eller handelshøjskolen. De kan ikke tænke selv. De kan ikke udfordre forudsætninger eller strukturer. De kan hverken følelsesmæssigt eller intellektuelt anerkende, at systemet måske braser sammen. Og således gør de det som Napoleon advarede var den største fejltagelse en general kunne lave – maler et fantasibillede af en situation og accepterer det som virkeligt. Men vi fornægter sorgløst virkeligheden sammen med dem. Manien efter den lykkelige slutning forblinder os. Vi ønsker ikke at tro det vi ser. Det er for deprimerende. Så vi flygter alle ind i det kollektive selvbedrag.

I Claude Lanzmanns monumentale dokumentarfilm om Holocaust, “Shoah,” interviewer han Filip Müeller, en tjekkisk jøde som overlevede udryddelserne i Auschwitz som medlem af “den særlige afdeling.” Müeller fortæller denne historie:

“En dag i 1943, da jeg allerede befandt mig i Krematorium 5, ankom et tog fra Bialystok. En fange i “den særlige afdeling” så en kvinde i ‛afklædningsrummet’ som var en af hans venners kone. Han fortalte hende ligeud: “Du bliver tilintetgjort. Om tre timer er du aske.” Kvinden troede ham fordi hun kendte ham. Hun løb rundt over det hele og advarede de andre kvinder. “vi bliver slået ihjel. Vi bliver gasset.” Mødre som bar deres børn på skuldrene ønskede ikke at høre dette. De jagede hende bort. Så hun gik hen til mændene. Til ingen nytte. Ikke at de ikke troede hende. De havde hørt rygter i Bialystoks ghetto, eller i Grodno, og andre steder. Men hvem ville høre den slags? Da hun så at de ikke ville lytte kradsede hun sig i ansigtet. Af fortvivlelse. I chok. Og hun begyndte at skrige.”

Hannah Arendt bemærkede i sin bog “Eichmann i Jerusalem” at Adolf Eichmann primært var motiveret af “en usædvanlig flid for at passe på sin personlige forfremmelse.” Han sluttede sig til nazipartiet fordi det var et godt karrierevalg. “problemet med Eichmann,” skrev hun, “var nøjagtig, at så mange var ligesom ham, og at disse mange hverken var perverterede eller sadistiske, at de var, og stadig er, frygteligt og frygtindgydende normale.” “Jo længere man lyttede til ham, jo mere åbenlyst blev det, at hans manglende evne til at tale var nært sammenhængende med en manglende evne til at tænke, navnlig, til at sætte sig i andres sted,” skrev Arendt. “Det var ikke muligt at kommunikere med ham, ikke fordi han løj men fordi han var omringet af det mest pålidelige værn imod ord og andres tilstedeværelse, og derfor imod virkeligheden som sådan.”

Gitta Sereny kommer med den samme pointe i hendes bog “Into That Darkness,” omhandlende Franz Stangl, Treblinkas øverstbefalende. Udpegelsen til SS var en forfremmelse for den østrigske politimand. Stangl var ingen sadist. Han talte mildt og var høflig. Han elskede sin kone og sine børn højt. Ulig mange andre officerer i de nazistiske lejre, tog han ikke jødiske kvinder som konkubiner. Har var duelig og særdeles velorganiseret. Han fandt stolthed i at have modtaget officiel ros som “den bedste lejrkommandør i Polen.” Fanger var blotte genstande. Gods. “Det var min profession,” sagde han. “Jeg nød det. Det tilfredsstillede mig. Og ja, jeg var ambitiøs omkring det, det vil jeg ikke nægte.” Da Sereny spurgte Stangl hvordan han som far kunne slå børn ihjel, svarede han, at han “sjældent så dem som individer. Det var altid en stor masse.... de var nøgne, tæt pakket sammen, løbende, drevet frem af pisk...” Han fortalte senere Sereny, at det mindede ham om Treblinka, da han første gang læste om lemminger.

Christopher Brownings essaysamling, “Vejen til Folkemord”, bemærker at det var “de moderate”, “normale” bureaukrater, ikke fanatikerne, som muliggjorde Holocaust. Germaine Tillion påpegede “den tragiske lethed [under Holocaust] hvormed “anstændige” mennesker blev de mest hjerteløse bødler uden tilsyneladende at bemærke hvad der skete dem.” Den russiske forfatter Vasily Grossman observerede i sin bog “Evigt Flydende” at “den nye stat behøvede ikke hellige apostle, fanatiske, inspirerede bygmestre, trofaste, fromme disciple. Den nye stat behøvede ikke engang tjenere – bare kontorister.”

“Den mest kvalmende type S.S. officer, var for mig personligt, kynikerne som ikke længere troede oprigtigt på sagen, men vedblev med at samle blodskyld for dets egen skyld.” skrev Dr. Ella Lingens-Reiner i “Frygtens Fanger” hendes brændende erindringer om Auschwitz. “Disse kynikere var ikke altid brutale overfor fangerne, deres adfærd ændrede sig med deres humør. De tog intet seriøst – hverken dem selv eller deres sag, hverken os eller situationen. En af de værste iblandt dem var Dr. Mengele, lejrens læge, som jeg tidligere har omtalt. Når et hold nyligt ankomne jøder blev klassificeret i dem som egnede sig til arbejde og dem som egnede sig til døden, fløjtede han en melodi og bevægede rytmisk sin tommelfinger over hans højre eller venstre skulder – hvilket betød henholdsvis ‘gas’ eller ‘arbejde.’ Han mente, at tilstandene i lejren var rådne, og gjorde endda et par ting for at forbedre dem, men samtidig begik han hjerteløst mord, uden nogen betænkeligheder.”

Disse hære af bureaukrater tjener et privatkapitalistisk system som i bogstaveligste forstand kommer til at slå os ihjel. De er ligeså kolde og usammenhængende som Mengele. De udfører minutiøse opgaver. De er føjelige. Eftergivende. De adlyder. De finder deres selvværd i virksomhedens prestige og magt, i deres stillingers status og deres karrieres forfremmelser. De forsikrer sig selv om deres egen godhed gennem private handlinger som ægtemænd, koner, mødre og fædre. De sidder i skolebestyrelser. De er medlemmer af en velgørenhedsorganisation. De går i kirke. Det er moralsk skizofreni. De opstiller mure og skaber en isoleret bevidsthed. De muliggør ExxonMobils eller Goldman Sachs eller Raytheons eller forsikringsselskabers dødbringende målsætninger. De destruerer økosystemet, økonomien og statslegemet og gør arbejdende mænd og kvinder til armodige tjenere. De føler intet. Metafysisk naivitet ender næsten altid i mord. Det fragmenterer verden. Små søde handlinger og velgørenhed maskerer den monstrøse ondskab de tilskynder. Og systemet ruller fremad. Polarisen smelter. Tørkerne raser over de dyrkede jorder. Dronerne leverer død fra himmelen. Staten bevæger sig ubønhørligt fremad og sætter os alle i lænker. De syge dør. De fattige sulter. Fængslerne fyldes. Og karrieremageren trasker fremad og udfører sit arbejde.

[Research]: Dronekrig.

Mediaroots.org: Obama's Emerging Global Apparatus for Drone Killing.

The Atlantic: The Drone Wars.

Huffington Post: Drone Wars, Without any Rules.

Global Post: Drone Wars [kategori].

Foreign Affairs: Washingtons Phantom War.

Council on Foreign Relations: Targeted Killings.

FPIF: Droning On.

Wiki: Drone Attacks in Pakistan.

Glenn Greenwald: NPR's Domestic Drone Commercial.

Salon.com/Nick Turse: How America Operates its Drone Empire.

Dronewarsuk.wordpress.com: The 2012 Drone Wars Briefing [PDF].

CNN.com: How Robot Drone Revolutionized the Face of Warfare.

EFF: Are Drones Watching You?

FOXNews: Judge Napolitano & Lew Rockwell: Armed Drones Coming To a City Near You?

Stratfor: Armed UAV Operations 10 Years On.

Cartoon Satire.