A Stack of Negatives

Resident White House fantasy-dweller Scott McClueless had the following assessment of the most recent polls on his boss' approval rating: "you can get caught up in polls; we don't. Polls are snapshots in time."

Well Scotty, the snapshots are piling up to cover a wider swath of time, and they continue to be a pack of negatives. Meanwhile, things aren't getting any rosier for the man who has really held the scepter these past five years, and even the Brits are noticing.

These days, no matter where they go or what they do, the stink of failure follows them. The more they deny it, the more relentless is the tread of failure behind them, closing in on them like a hurricane on New Orleans. Last week, the Crawford Coward decided that a quick jaunt to South America might take some of the pressure off and distract the media from speculations about Dick, Karl, and Scooter. But once again, trouble seemed to follow him, right up to the front door of the hotel. Perhaps he was shocked, and wondered, "how could so many people possibly be against free trade?"

We here at Daily Rev are always on the lookout for ways in which we can assist our President, so I'm pleased to report that Terry McKenna will now rejoin us to offer a few rays of insight on Duhbya's incomprehension.

The Summit of the Americas has just ended. The meeting hall was surrounded by protesters and the summiteers failed to reach an agreement. It turns out that while many South and Central American leaders want their economies to take advantage of the large US market, they are less sure of free trade. For educated city dwellers, expanded trade with the US will bring the benefit of increased employment in Latin American money centers. But for those who live in rural villages, free trade destroys the old ways. As cheap commercial maize takes over from local grain, small farmers lose out to commercial farmers. For example, Mexico now imports maize from, among all places, China. Displaced farm workers end up leaving for Mexico City, or more often, the US (usually illegally).

The history of industrialization is the history of the destruction of old ways in order to build a new economic order. The US escaped this problem, not because our industrialization was more humane, but only because we had no entrenched peasantry to throw off the lands. Britain’s industrialization was more typical. Starting in the late middle ages, the communal lands began to be enclosed and those who depended upon the lands lost their livelihood. Many ended up as laborers for Britain’s factories. Labor was so cheap in the early 1800’s that it was often cheaper to purchase good made by hand in British factories, than made by machine in an American factory.

Although all of Europe was devastated by industrialization, after WW2 Europeans instituted farm subsidies that allowed their inefficient (but ecologically sound) small farmsteads to remain in existence. The result saved what was left of rural European culture. From Ireland to France to Switzerland, farm villages remain viable. Not necessarily rich, but viable. US farm subsidies unfortunately do not work to sustain small farms, so our rural life has collapsed – with Wal-Mart hammering the last nail in the coffin.

Free market fetishists hate farms subsidies, yet look at the result. In the most extreme example, Switzerland’s Alpine farmers use obsolete techniques to manage tiny herds of cows and small land holdings. Up to 2/3 of the cost of the running a Swiss farm typically comes from the government. The farmers themselves work very hard – and the result is that rural Switzerland remains as it was: ecologically balanced, with neither too much development, nor abandoned. Sure, Switzerland is an expensive place, but they produce high quality goods across the entire spectrum of their economy. Think of that when you have a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich.

With the exception of Japan and the Koreas, Asia has only started to industrialize. China and India are rushing ahead, and without creating social supports for those who are left behind. An example came to light in a recent radio story on NPR. Calcutta now has a high tech sector, and authorities want to ban the rickshaw as an embarrassing example of an impoverished past. But what happens if they are banned? To be sure, travelers will still be able to hail a cab – but what about the poor rickshaw driver (really a rickshaw puller). He has no other means of employment. So his fate will be very much the same as that of the Mexican peasant who is no longer able to match the market price for corn. Recently the press has highlighted increasing rural unrest in China. So far India seems more peaceful.

—T. McKenna

Paris on Lockdown, Media in Meltdown

Last week we had occasion to observe a certain disconnect between reality and the mass media's take on it. As I mentioned last week, I've been following journalist Eric Francis' posts from Paris to see how they compare with what's being bruited about over the hype channels here in the USA. Let's have another look—after all, it's good for a little amusement. First, this from CNN:

Emergency security measures went into effect Saturday in Paris, with 3,000 police patrolling train stations, the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Elysees to prevent France's worst unrest in decades from spreading to the capital.

National Police Chief Michel Gaudin said police were taking "every precaution," including banning certain public gatherings, a day after calls for "violent actions" Saturday evening in Paris were posted on Internet blogs and sent in text messages to cell phones.

Now, Eric's observations as he walks around the center of the city:

From my copwatching activies I can report that there were indeed more than usual for a Saturday night. But it was not the typical French scene of a police-to-ordinary citizen ratio that rivals Smith College’s faculty-student ratio (where everyone has their own private riot officer to read the Shakespeare sonnets into his or her ear), though I realize that quite a few guys have been sent out to the front lines north of the city. Maybe along the length of the entire boulevard, about two miles, I saw 100 of them. Probably far fewer. There was definitely some kind of strategic planning involved in the arrangement, but in truth it would not have been enough to stop even a modest riot... if there’s a lockdown here, it’s pretty mellow, but then, on the other hand, I am very concerned about Nicolas Sarkozy...

I suppose if I were living in France I'd be worried about Sarkozy the same way I'm worried about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, Rove (take your pick) here.

********

For those of you who follow my I Ching site, you may want to have a look there. I've just given it a redesign this weekend, inspired, as you will see, by circles. I've written in the past about what I see as a divergence from nature in our culture's obsession with boxes, lines, and grids. Being rather slow on the uptake, it's only recently occurred to me how linear our world wide web medium is, given that its roots lie in the tabular programs of what will soon be seen as an antediluvian mathematics.

By the way, if there are any literary agents out there who would care to prod my "Tao of Hogwarts" book out onto the commercial stage, by all means give me a shout.

A Clenched Frist

It would appear that the good Dr. Frist is more concerned about leaks to news organizations than he is about torture that may be going on within U.S.-run prison camps in Eastern Europe: "My concern is with leaks of information that jeopardize your safety and security - period," Frist said. "That is a legitimate concern."

As opposed to, say, illegal confinement without due process, not to mention torture or the violation of international treaties such as the Geneva Convention, or even other nations' prohibitions on illegal detention centers within their boundaries. Those, according to Dr. Frist, are illegitimate, or at least less legitimate, concerns.

Keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen: this is a medical professional speaking; a man who has taken a professional oath to "above all, do no harm."

Maybe the Hippocratic Oath should be more specific, as in, "do no harm—to others." Because it seems as if the good doctor is saying the only harm done by the establishment of a global network of internment camps is when the press does its job and reports the existence of such secret stalags. To the neocon mind, knowledge is not always, as the old saw goes, power. It is only powerful in the right hands or within the right minds; otherwise, it is merely a dangerous distraction—scissors in the hands of a two year old.

One thing I think we have to understand about the mindset of a fellow like Dr. Frist, in the context of his medical background, is that he believes in what I refer to as "geopolitical chemotherapy." Chemotherapy, as most readers will recognize, is that double-edged cancer treatment in the Western medical armamentarium that attacks body cells with a sweeping destructive force, often causing the person to feel sicker than he might have felt from his malignancy. The hope of the medical practitioner delivering chemo is that the treatment will kill all or most of the cancer cells before it destroys the host—the living body of the patient. During treatment, the sufferer will typically go through a living hell of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramping, fever, bodyache, infection, skin rash, hair loss, respiratory distress, and immune dysfunction that will leave him susceptible to any passing virus from the common cold to the most deadly flu.

This is how the neocon global physician wages war against the cancer of terror. He turns the entire organism of law, international order, local autonomy, and principles of human rights inside out, in the hope that he will kill a terrorist or two by insidiously attacking the world's immune system, which we call civilization.

The problem with this approach is that it is impractical. I don't want to get onto moral ground here, because to accuse the clenched Frists of this world of immorality is to bang your head against their brick wall. They like being attacked on moral grounds, because they can then build a higher and more entrenched mound of moral rhetoric to stand upon (usually it involves invoking God, Jesus, and the Heavenly Host as sponsors).

So I'd like to focus on the pragmatic aspects of this strategy of geopolitical chemotherapy, and perhaps the freethinking reader will be able to draw her and his moral conclusion from there. The fact is that this form of treatment for the cancer of terrorism is indeed as bad as the disease in its consequences—indeed, it even tends to cause the malignancy to metastasize, that is, migrate from its original position in the organism to other places and in greater numbers. You kill supposed terrorists in Fallujah—often wiping them and their children out with phosphorous bombs that turn living skin into smoking goo ("caramelization" is the technical term, by the way)—and they turn up in greater numbers in Egypt, Bali, London, and Amman. You concentrate all the deadly force of your arsenal on what you believe is the primary tumor, but you miss even that (in our metaphor, the actual primary tumor is somewhat to the north and east of where the medicine of violence is currently being directed). Under the force of this attack, living, innocent cells (women, children, and non-insurgent men) are being destroyed, as the cancerous cells are for the most part able to escape, only to metastasize in distant regions that were previously healthy. In our world, this means that they become more numerous, more widely spread, more difficult to control, and far, far more deadly to innocent people everywhere.

That's where we have gone under the leadership of Doctors Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Frist, and company. That's where we are headed: into a world more ridden with the cancer of terror than it ever was under Saddam (who, in a geopolitical sense, was more of a regional cyst than a global malignancy, after all). Give it another three years, and there will be no place on this Earth that is safe—we are close enough to that already, especially given the war on Nature that has been waged in concert with the war on terror.

So can we afford to wait any longer? Can we afford to hope that Mr. Fitzgerald will eventually overcome legal inertia and executive privilege and deliver the appropriate indictments fit to support articles of impeachment? Can we afford to hold on till the 2006 mid-term elections, hoping for a restoration of sanity to the geopolitical medical establishment in Washington? Can we afford to wait until some new, unforeseen disaster, or a total bottoming out for the Bushies in the polls, estranges the political and legislative base that they have relied upon for five years?

I don't think so.

Neocons: All Yelp and No Help

Today, I found the following comment at Eric Alterman's blog on MSNBC.com, and I had to respond. The comment is first, then my answer.
Name: Charles Westmoreland
Hometown: Houston
When is liberal groundhog day is going to end?  It's all a repeat of the same things.  You're not really changing policy here or influencing many people.  The diehard leftys are still with you and everyone else thinks you're obsessive and not much help.  So you really haven't changed anything.  But I know you want to change things, because every editor/journalist has a bit of Woodward/Bernstein in them.  I find it strange that you don't have the solution to France's dilemma.  I mean, the creative juices don't even seen to be flowing (as if they ever did with liberalism).  Same with Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Carter, etc.  All you Save the Worlders have suddenly gone quiet when a Bush hating, liberal, socialist country is in a jam.  If you can't find a way to blame it on Bush, then you apparently can't come up with an answer.

Professor A, I have a reply for Mr. Westmoreland of Houston TX (11/10 correspondence corner). If France were a socialist state--a real socialist state, that is--their cities would not be burning today. This leads to the next point, which addresses the complaint about liberals being all yelp and no help (Dr. A--how many times have you heard or read this very lament, this year alone?--it's been about half a dozen times at least in my corner).

Well, maybe one reason why neither libs nor neocons, for that matter are offering France solutions is that—as in Iraq—there is no easy or comfortably violent neocon-style solution. France planted the seeds of these riots about a generation or two ago. What is happening now is merely the bursting of a decades-old festering sore. I have a correspondent to my blog who's stationed in Paris, and he recently wrote me with a quick summary of this history of racism, runaway unemployment, and general disenfranchisement of peoples, here.

In fact, what the French did in Paris is not entirely unlike what we've done in New Orleans—isolating an outcast minority in poverty and disenfranchisement for years, while an elite class of the wealthy take tax breaks and war profits, until the inevitable revolt or breakdown occurs.

So what does fix things like Iraq and Paris and the Gulf Coast? Will cutting social programs for the poor and middle class while throwing a few billion into no-bid reconstruction contracts for Bechtel, Halliburton and the boys do it?

No.

How about a nice war, undeclared by Congress and unauthorized by the U.N., based on skewed and invented intel?

Um...nope.

Maybe a revolution...whether it's the guillotine or burning cars, it sure great material for a novel or a documentary.

No, not that either. The fact is, Mr. Westmoreland, it's not about how much we spend or who (or how many) we kill or even who's in office at the time. It's about changing who we are as a people—our values, our way of life, our perspective, one individual at a time (including politicians). I haven't discovered a better way, and that's what we talk about at Daily Revolution. If you have a plan that's faster and doesn't involve a $300B war or further estranging minority groups in a society, I'm listening.

Life Lessons in a Time of War, 3

Cling to something and you have already lost it. An embrace is all the grasp you need. A touch is the mark of love; clutching is the way of oppression.

Turn on the television, and then shut it down. See how much of life remains unbroadcast, and let that be the guide of your life's movement.

When you can talk to god and be heard—when you pour the wine of eternity into the chalice of Mind, realizing that it's your mind—then the evening news becomes a poem read by a machine.

Never walk down the stairs with a hand in your pocket. Look all ways before crossing—there are more than two. Infinitely more.

Before you read or watch the news each day, listen for the voice of change within yourself. What child has been born? What devil dispatched? What remains undisclosed, obscured by the dust of culture? Whose voice is repressed, and what garish light prevents you from seeing clearly?

Do not punish your demons. Just discard them. Death is not the end of life; it is the beginning of transformation. When you kill a demon, you give birth to an angel. Do this every day, in the moonlit solitude of god.

When you have discovered a treasure, such as a truth, show the universe what you have. Tell god, but speak to no one.

Share what is yours as if you are returning something. Spell god without a capital g.

When you take a shower, place your light-body under the stream. In winter, let your hair grow as long as it will; for no one is completely bald by nature. Meanwhile, strip off the beard that the tricksters planted on the face of god.

Rebel noiselessly to conformity—but not against it. If you strive to obtain anything, you are consuming your self. A consumptive body cannot breathe; a consumptive soul cannot expand.

Kill an imp a day. This is very important, though you needn't be impulsive about it. For that would impair your presence and impugn your nature. You may never be Ideal, but you are never imperfect.

Make every day a rite of spring—a carnal festival of merging flesh—and the stinking breath of perversion will dissipate, around and within you. A penis is not stiff except when forced by death; otherwise it is supple and alive—the stem of the nightflower that has been horribly misnamed Vagina (the sheath to the sword).

Give things names that resound with your truth, that further animate your lived moment of being. For while it is not blasphemy to call nature an enemy or a slave, it is the height of emotional incompetence. Firmly refuse to use language against nature, or intelligence against god.

Talk to poets regularly, even if someone tells you they are dead. A poet is never dead, and poetry never mysterious or supernatural. Poetry is merely god with a woman's shape, a child's look, a lover's breath.