Bulletin N° 638
Subject: ON SYSTEMIC ANALYSES, THE LOGIC OF ZENO’S
PARADOX, AND CUTTING THROUGH THE GORDIAN KNOT.
20 December 2014
Grenoble, France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The
British literary critic Terry Eagleton
once made an observation on the nature of consciousness; departing from
abstract literary theory, he made the mundane physiological observation that
one can’t eat a banana and play the trombone at the same time, his point being
that theory and practice come from different parts of the human anatomy. Pierre Bourdieu
said much the same thing in a more academic way in his book, Questions de Sociologie
(1984), when he wrote :
Sur le terrain de l’anthropologie où la question
proprement politique ne se pose pas, la principale division est l’opposition
entrée le subjectivisme et l’objectivisme. La tradition objectiviste conçoit le
monde social comme un univers de régularités objectives indépendantes des
agents et construites à partir d’un point de vue d’observateur impartial qui
est hors de l’action, qui survole le monde observé. L’ethnologue est quelqu’un
qui reconstitue une espèce de partition non écrite selon laquelle s’organisent
les actions des agents qui croient improviser chacun leur mélodie, alors qu’en
réalité, en matière d’échanges matrimoniaux comme en matière d’échanges linguistiques,
ils agissent conformément à un système de règles transcendantes, etc. En face,
Sartre s’en prend explicitement, dans la Critique de la raison dialectique,
à Lévi-Strauss et à l’effet de réification que produit l’objectivisme. (p.89)
A few pages latter, Bourdieu provided
his own manifesto
to justify his work: « Si le sociologie a un
rôle, ce serait plutôt de donner des armes que de donner des leçons. » (p.95) In an
earlier book, Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977), he
pointed out that what ‘goes without saying comes without saying’; it is often
said, that which most governs our behavior is silence. To expose this silence with
descriptive language is to challenge such behavior. Both Eagleton and Bourdieu count themselves among the public intellectuals who
advocate democratic mobilization to change The System.
The
role of human consciousness in producing both opposition and contradiction
was the theme of the 1967 Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation that was
held over a period of two weeks, from July 15 to 30 in 1967, at the Roundhouse
in Chalk Farm, London. With an interesting diversity of participants --which
included the anti-psychiatrists David
Cooper and R.D. Laing,
biologist/anthropologist Gregory Bateson,
sociologist Jules Henry, economist Paul Sweezy,
psychologist Paul Goodman, political
scientists John Gerassi, philosopher
Herbert Marcuse, activist Stokely Carmichael, and other luminaries of
the traditional and non-traditional left –this extended public meeting was an
open-ended enquiry into the human ecosystem at various levels and the effect
this system has on human consciousness. The participants examined various
aspects of “The System,” which Gregory Bateson described as the interaction of
at least three sub-systems which produce human behavior: the human individual system of inner space
with its billons of microbes and chemical and electrical interactions; the social system which incorporates the
individual and links him/her to wider spheres of human interaction; and the biological surroundings of the
ecological system extending across the planet.
Necessarily such a diversity of thinkers brought to the forefront of
consciousness the qualitative difference between particular ‘opposition’ and
systemic ‘contradiction’.
The
dialectical approaches at this conference on human emancipation reflected an
apparent paradox: Only individuals can become ‘free’ and social revolution must
come from ‘below’ where reside the decidedly ‘un-free’ social classes. These
radical scientists and activists who were out to discover new prospects for meaningful change from below
found themselves caught in a conundrum: they were working toward systemic
change in social relationships while at the same time they acknowledged that
the system they were studying determined human behavior, ‘as above, so below’.
The second essay of Dr. David Cooper’s anthology, (To Free A Generation, The Dialectics of Liberation,
1968) --which is the only existing record of the proceedings at this famous
international conference-- was Gregory Bateson’s presentation on “Conscious
Purpose Versus Nature”. Professor Bateson began his talk by attempting to locate shared
values held by the participants at this heterogeneous meeting of thinkers and
political activists, all of whom appeared to agree with the axiom: ‘If you are
not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.’
Our
civilization, which is on the block here for investigation and evaluation, has
its roots in three main ancient civilizations: the Roman, the Hebrew and the
Greek; and it would be seen that many of our problems are related to the fact
that we have an imperialist civilization leavened or yeasted by a downtrodden,
exploited colony in Palestine. In this conference, we are again going to be
fighting out the conflict between the Romans and the Palestinians.
You
will remember that St Paul boasted, ‘I was born free’. What he meant was that
he was born Roman, and that this had certain legal advantages.
We
can engage in that old battle either by backing the downtrodden or by backing
the imperialists. If you are going to fight that battle, you have to take sides
in it. It’s that simple.
On
the other hand, of course, St Paul’s ambition, and the ambition of the
downtrodden, is always to get on the side of the imperialists –to become
middle-class imperialists themselves—and it is doubtful whether we are creating
more members of the civilization which we are here criticizing is a solution to
the problem.
There
is, therefore, another more abstract problem. We need to understand the
pathologies and peculiarities of the whole Romano-Palestinian system. It is
this that I am interested in talking about. I do not care, here, about
defending the Romans or defending the Palestinians—the upper dogs or the
underdogs. I want to consider the dynamics of the whole traditional pathology
in which we are caught, and in which we shall remain as long as we continue to
struggle within that old conflict. We just go round and round in terms of the
old premises.
Fortunately
our civilization has a third root –in Greece. Of course Greece got caught up in
a rather similar mess, but still there was a lot of clean, cool thinking of a
quite surprising kind which was different. . . .
From
St Thomas Aquinas to the eighteenth century in Catholic countries . . . the
structure of our religion was Greek. In mid-eighteenth century the biological
world looked like this: There was a supreme mind at the top of the ladder,
which was the basic explanation of everything downwards from that –the supreme
mind being, in Christianity, God; and having various attributes as various
philosophic stages. The ladder of explanation went downwards deductively from
the Supreme to man to the apes, and so on, down to the infusoria.
This
hierarchy was a set of deductive steps from the most perfect to the most crude or
simple. And it was rigid. It was assumed that every species was unchanging.
‘As above, so below’ . . .
[Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829)], probably the greatest
biologist in history, turned the ladder of explanation upside down. He was the
man who said it starts with the infusoria and that
there were changes leading up to man. His turning the taxonomy upside down is
one of the most astonishing feats that has ever
occurred. It was the equivalent in biology of the Copernican revolution in
astronomy. [see: Philosophie
Zoologique (1809).]
The
logical outcome of turning the taxonomy upside down was that the study of
evolution might provide an explanation of mind.
Up
to Lamarck, mind was the explanation of the biological world. But, hey presto,
the question now arose: is the biological world the explanation of mind? That
which was the explanation now became that which was to be explained. . . . He
achieved and formulated a number of very modern ideas: that you cannot
attribute to any creature psychological capacities for which it has no organs;
that mental process must always have physical representation; and that the
complexity of the nervous system is related to the complexity of mind.
There
the matter rested for 150 years, mainly because evolutionary theory was taken
over, not by a Catholic heresy but by a Protestant heresy, in the
mid-nineteenth century. Darwin’s opponents . . . were . . . fundamentalist
Christians whose sophistication stopped with the first chapter of Genesis. The
question of the nature of mind was something which the nineteenth-century
evolutionists tried to exclude from their theories, and the matter did not come
up again for serious consideration until after World War II.
In
World War II it was discovered what sort of complexity entails mind. And, since
that discovery, we know that wherever in the Universe we encounter that sort of
complexity, we are dealing with mental phenomena. It’s as materialistic at
that.
Let
me try to describe for you that order of complexity, which is in some degree a
technical matter. (pp.34-36)
R.D.
Laing had presented a paper earlier which was entitled “The Obvious” and in
which he pointed out that what seems obvious to one person is often obscure or
non-existent in the consciousness of another. Bateson replied to this report
saying that the individual human system seems to be naturally endowed to
protect itself against disturbances. What is not easily assimilated without
disturbance is usually side-tracked or hidden, even to the point of shutting
one’s eyes. Disturbing information, he continued, can be sealed off, according
to one’s understanding of the system and what would be a nuisance. Bateson went
on to assert that disturbances can be created when a human individual system
becomes obsessed with “conscious purpose” to the point where he/she looses
consciousness of his/her own systemic nature and the systemic nature of the
environment, as well. The free enterprise system is a case in point, where “purposive
action” is oriented toward private acquisition, eventually creating social
divisions and gross imbalances within the ecosystem. As a result, the human
individual system becomes weakened and the survival of entire
species are endangered.
Developing
communication theory of the Second World War period, Bateson introduced the
self-corrective system of cybernetics and specifically the metaphor of
the fly-ball governor.
The
steam engine with a governor is simply a circular train of causal events, with
somewhere a link in that chain such that the more of something, the less of the
next thing in the circuit. The wider the balls of the governor diverge
the less the fuel supply. If causal chains with that general
characteristic are provided with energy, the result will be (if you are lucky
and things balance out) a self-corrective system. . . .
Nowadays
cybernetics deal with much more complex systems of this general kind; and we
know that when we talk about the processes of civilization, or evaluating human
behavior, human organization, or any biological system, we are concerned with
self-corrective systems. Basically these systems are always conservative of
something.(p.37)
On
the ecology of the human mind, Bateson writes about human consciousness:
.
. . in a balanced ecological system whose underpinnings are of this nature, it
is very clear that any monkeying with the system is
likely to disrupt the equilibrium. Then the exponential curves will start to
appear. Then the exponential curves will start to appear. Some plant will
become a we3ed, some creatures will be exterminated, and the system as a balanced
system is likely to fall to pieces.
What
is true of the species that live together in a wood is also true of the groupings
and sorts of people in a society, who are similarly in an uneasy balance of
dependency and competition. And the same truth holds right inside you, where
there is an uneasy physiological competition and mutual dependency among the
organs, tissues, cells and so on. Without this competition and dependency you
would not be, because you cannot do without any of the competing organs and
parts.
I
think you have to assume that all important physiological or social change is
in some degree a slipping of the system at some point along an exponential
curve. The slippage may not go far, or it may go to disaster.(pp.39-40)
Bateson
sees ecological controls that are operating in the outside environment as being
also present in the human mind, the ‘total mind, which is perhaps only a
reflection of the total body’:
There
is a certain amount of compartmentalization, which is no doubt a necessary
economy. There is one compartmentalization which is in many ways mysterious but
certainly of crucial importance in man’s life. I refer t the ‘semi-permeable’
linkage between consciousness and the remainder of the total mind. A certain
limited amount of information about what’s happening in this larger part of the
mind seems to be relayed to what we may call the screen of consciousness. But
what gets to consciousness is selected; it is a systematic (not random)
sampling of the rest.
Of
course, the whole of the mind could not be reported in a part of
the mind. This follows logically from the relationship between part and whole.
The television screen does not give you total coverage or report of the events
which occur in the television process; and this not merely because the viewers
would not be interested in such a report, but because to report on any extra
part of the total process would require extra circuitry. But to report on the
events in this extra circuitry would require a still further addition of more
circuitry, and so no. Each additional step toward increased consciousness will
take the system farther from total consciousness. To add a report on events in
a given part of the machine will actually decrease the percentage of
total events reported.
We
therefore have to settle for very limited consciousness, and the question
arises: How is the selecting done? On what principles does your mind select
that which ‘you’ will be aware of? And, while not much is known of these
principles, something is known, though the principles at work are often not
themselves accessible to consciousness. First of all, much of the input is
consciously scanned, but only after it has been processed by the totally
unconscious process of perception. The sensory events are packaged into images
and these images are then ‘conscious’.
I,
the conscious I, see an unconsciously edited version of a small percentage of
what affects my retina. I am guided in my perception by purposes. I see
who is attending, who is not, who is understanding, who is not, or at least I
get a myth about this subject, which may be quite correct. I am interested in
getting that myth as I talk. It is relevant to my purposes that you hear me.
What
happens to a picture of a cybernetic system . . . when that picture is
selectively drawn to answer only questions of purpose? . . .
If
you allow purpose to organize that which comes under your conscious
inspection, what you will get is a bag of tricks –some of them very valuable
tricks. It is an extraordinary achievement that these tricks have been
discovered; all that I don’t argue. But still we do not know two-penn’orth, really, about the total network system. . . .
Wisdom I take to be the knowledge of the larger interactive system –that
system which, if disturbed, is likely to generate exponential curves of change.
[Consciousness]
is organized in terms of purpose. It is a short-cut device to enable you to get
quickly at what you want; not to act with maximum wisdom in order to live, but
to follow the shortest logical and or causal path to get what you next want,
which may be dinner; it may be a Beethoven sonata; it may be sex. Above all, it
may be money and power. . . .
Consciousness
and purpose have been characteristic of man for at least a million years, and
may have been with us a great deal longer than that. I am not prepared to say
that dogs and cats are not conscious….
So
you may say: ‘Why worry about that?’
But
what worries me is the addition of modern technology to the old system. Today
the purposes of consciousness are implemented by more and more effective
machinery, transportation systems, airplanes, weaponry, medicine, pesticides
and so forth. Conscious purpose is not empowered to upset the balances of the
body of society and of the biological world around us. A
pathology –a loss of balance-- is threatened. . . .
Purposive
consciousness pulls out, from the total mind, sequences which do not have the
loop-structure which is characteristic of the whole systemic structure. If you
follow the ‘commonsense’ dictates of consciousness, you become, effectively,
greedy and unwise –again I use ‘wisdom’ as a word for recognition of guidance
by a knowledge of the total systemic creature.(pp.40-43)
'If you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of
the problem . . .
He
then creates a parable to illustrate life devoid of wisdom.
Adam
and Eve then became almost drunk with excitement. This was the way to do
things. Make a plan, ABC and you get D.
They
then began to specialize in doing things the planned way. In effect, they cast
out from the Garden the concept of their own total systemic nature and of its
total systemic nature.
After
they had cast God out of the Garden, they really went to work on this purposive
business, and pretty soon the topsoil disappeared. After that, several species
of plants became ‘weeds’ and some of the animals became ‘pests’; and Adam found
that gardening was much harder work. He had to get his bread by the sweat of
his brow and he said, “It’s a vengeful God. I should never have eaten that
apple.’ . . .
A
parable, of course, is not data about human behavior. It is only an explanatory
device. But I have built into it a phenomenon which seems to be almost
universal when man commits the error of purposive thinking and disregards the
systemic nature of the world with which he must deal This
phenomenon is called by the psychologists ‘projection’. The man, after all, has
acted according to what he thought was common sense and now he finds himself in
a mess. He does not quite know what caused the mess and he feels that what has
happened is somehow unfair. He still does not see himself as part of the system in which the mess exists, and he either blames the
rest of the system or he blames himself. In my parable Adam combines two sorts
of nonsense: the notion “I have sinned’ and the notion ‘God is vengeful’.(pp.44-45)
The illusion of change by replacing Tweedledum for Tweedledee . . .
Finally,
Bateson concluded his observations at this international conference in 1967
with a plan of non-purposive action:
But,
we are met here not only for diagnosis of some of the world’s ills but also to
think about remedies. I have already suggested that no simple remedy to what I
called the Romano-Palestinian problem can be achieved by backing the Romans
against the Palestinians or vice versa. The problem is systemic and the
solution must surely depend upon realizing this fact.
First,
there is humility, . . . as an item of a scientific
philosophy. In the period of the Industrial Revolution, perhaps the most
important disaster was the enormous increase of scientific arrogance. . . .
But
that arrogant scientific philosophy is no\w obsolete and in its place there is
the discovery that man is only a part of larger systems and that the part can
never control the whole. . . .
Therefore
he cannot have a simple lineal control. We do not live in the sort of universe
in which simple lineal control is possible. Life is not like that. (p.47)
According
to Bateson, the quest for wisdom involves releasing the reigns which drive
narrowly focused desires and acknowledging that all conscious change
necessitates an important prerequisite, namely the understanding of the system
of which one is a part and how it works. Often this has been confused with the
desire to adapt to the present system, regardless of its failures and the pathological destruction
it guarantees, rather than to replace it with a more beneficial system.
The
12 items below offer CEIMSA readers a look at the pragmatics of social
change within the architecture of late capitalism. The oppositions and the
contradictions within this system are today more apparent than usual, offering
us the opportunity for meaningful action (or inaction) which will address our
collective need for structural changes if we are to survive as a species.
Item
A.,
from UCSD Professor Fred Lonidier, is an announcement that the American
Federation of Teachers will join the campaign against slave labor south of the
US border.
Item
B.,
from The
National Security Archive
is a report on declassified US Documents covering the brutal Brazilian
military dictatorship, to be handed over to
Brazilian government and released by the Comissao
Nacional da Verdade [National Truth Commission].
Item
C.,
from William Blum, is the Anti-Empire Report for 19 December
2014.
Item
D.,
from David Peterson, co-author of The Politics of Genocide, is an article
from the Gestapo archives of Nazi Germany on ‘enhanced interrogation’.
Item
E., from Jim O’Brien of Historians
Against War, is a series of recommended recent
articles.
Item
F.,
from Tom Haden, is a copy of the
December 18 issue of Democracy Journal,
featuring breaking news on Cuba-US relations.
Item
G.,
from Information
Clearing House, is an article by Eric Zuesse on US preparations for war with the Russian
Federation.
Item
H.,
from Democracy Now!,
is a discussion on how to hold the Bush Administration accountable for its Crimes Against
Humanity.
Item
I.,
from The Real News Network, is a three-part
interview with Lia Tarachansky
on the politics of identity and self-destruction in Israel.
Item
J.,
from Information
Clearing House, is an article by Martin Hellman on The Göring Doctrine and it’s application
in the 21st Century.
Item
K.,
from Richard Greeman,
is an article on the capitalist thirst for a new enemy; will it be the Roman
Catholics?
Item
L.,
from NYU Professor Mark Crispin Miller,
founder of News from
the Underground, is an article by Kurt Nimmo on the US accusation against
North Korea for hacking Sony Inc., plus other selected articles from this
week’s world events.
And
finally, we invite CEIMSA readers to watch this new BBC five-part documentary
series on the first migrations of prehistoric humans, with Dr Alice Roberts :
1
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/incredible-human-journey/
2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzhnrwWneK0
3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn6_OG0m1-g
4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwN0ZjhWTvo
5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhPg6bu-UYk
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
Professor
of American Studies
University
of Grenoble-3
Director
of Research
University
of Paris-Nanterre
Center
for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The
University of California-San Diego
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
_______________
A.
From Fred Lonidier :
Date: 11 December 2014
Subject : Special report: 'They
treated us like slaves'
US labor union
activist Fred Lonidier organizing transnational
actions against slave labor in Mexico
Mickey,
Do you think the UFCW
might get on board to pressure food outlets to not buy from Mexican sources
which engage in slave-like labor conditions for their farm workers? It
could have a big impact especially if we leaflet selected stores around the
country. Below is a comments link to the L.A. Times.
The group I work with
which does the maquiladora
tours, went to an Quitin some years ago and found the
same kind of conditions there. Attached is an artwork I did about it.
Solidarity and Happy
Holidays,
Fred
UC/AFT Local 2034
Dear
Readers:
Imagine a workplace where bosses would strip people of their shoes to prevent
them from running away. Or one where workers would be put on
a no-pay list if they got sick. And a job site where bosses tied a
worker to a tree and then beat him.
Earlier
this week, we told you about unbearable
conditions for workers at Mexican mega-farms, which now supply a huge
portion of the tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and other produce consumed by
Americans.
Today, we invite you to read our second installment in the
"Product of Mexico" series. Our story offers an inside look at Bioparques, one of Mexico's biggest tomato exporters and a
supplier to Wal-Mart.
Financed by the World Bank, Bioparques was honored as
a "socially responsible company." But for fieldworkers, whom Bioparques described as the "backbone of all
company operations and partners in every success," the
company's labor camp was a virtual prison.
Our reporter, Rich Marosi, reports that Bioparques' continued operation speaks to the impunity of
Mexican agribusiness.
Read: Desperate workers on a Mexican mega-farm: 'They treated us like
slaves', Davan Maharaj,
Editor
P.S.
Many readers are sharing their opinions of the story. See what they're saying
and weigh in with your own thoughts.
_______________
B.
From The
National Security Archive :
Date: 11 December 2014
Subject : Brazil Truth
Commission Releases Report.
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
Brazil
Truth Commission Releases Report
National
Security Archive hails efforts by investigators, victim's families to uncover
truth
Obama
Administration to Declassify Hundreds of Secret U.S. Records For
Report Follow-up
Report
released on International Human Rights Day; names hundreds of perpetrators
For
more information, contact:
peter.kornbluh@gmail.com
or 202 / 374-7281
Washington,
DC, December 11, 2014 -- Almost thirty years after the end of Brazil's military
dictatorship, the Comissao Nacional
da Verdade [National Truth
Commission] today released its long awaited report on human rights violations
by the security forces between 1964 and 1985. The report, which took
two-and-a-half years to complete and totals over 1000 pages, represents the
first formal attempt by Brazil as a nation to record its repressive past and
provide a detailed accounting of the system of repression, of the victims of
human rights violations, as well as the identities of those who committed those
crimes.
In
contrast to the U.S. Senate report on torture released yesterday in Washington
which redacted even the pseudonyms of CIA personnel who engaged in torture, the
Brazilian report actually identifies over 375 perpetrators of human rights
crimes by name.
The
report contains detailed chapters on the structure and methods of the
repression during the military era, including targeted violence against women
and children. The commission identified over 400 individuals killed by the
military, many of them "disappeared" as the military sought to hide
its abuses. During its investigation, the Commission located and identified the
remains of 33 of the disappeared; some 200 other victims remain missing.
The
report also sheds significant light on Brazil's role in the cross-border
regional repression known as Operation Condor. In a chapter titled
"International Connections: From Repressive Alliances in the Southern Cone
to Operation Condor," the Commission report details Brazil's military ties
to the coup in Chile, and support for the Pinochet regime, as well as
identifies Argentine citizens captured and killed in Brazil as part of a Condor
collaboration between the Southern Cone military regimes.
This
report opens a Pandora's box of historical and legal
accountability for Brazilians. For now it provides a verdict of history, but
eventually the evidence compiled by the commission's investigation could lead
to a judicial accounting. "The Truth Commission's final report is a major
step for human rights in Brazil," according to Brown University scholar,
James Green, "and the pursuit of justice for the victims of the state's
terror."
Check
out today's posting at the National Security Archive - http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/brazil-truth-commission-releases-report/
Find
us on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/NSArchive
Unredacted, the Archive
blog - http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
________________________________________________________
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.
_______________
C.
From William Blum :
Date: 20 December 2014
Subject: Anti-Empire Report, December 19, 2014.
Anti-Empire Report, December 19, 2014
http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer135.html
_______________
D.
From David Peterson
:
Date: 17 December 2014
Subject: "Verschärfte Vernehmung".
( * Friends: The Nazis' true heirs. -- And they can't even
recognize it.)
from ‘The Atlantic’
May 29, 2007
"Verschärfte Vernehmung"
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/05/-versch-auml-rfte-vernehmung/228158/
The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is
German for "enhanced interrogation". Other translations include
"intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation".
It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form
of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war
Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in
court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those
described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president. As
you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their
"enhanced interrogation techniques" would be carefully restricted and
controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended
by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of
prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.
Also: the use of
hypothermia, authorized by Bush and Rumsfeld, was initially forbidden. 'Waterboarding" was forbidden too, unlike that
authorized by Bush. As time went on, historians have found that all the
bureaucratic restrictions were eventually broken or abridged. Once you start
torturing, it has a life of its own. The "cold bath" technique - the
same as that used by Bush against al-Qahtani in
Guantanamo - was, according to professor Darius Rejali of Reed College, pioneered by a member of the French
Gestapo by the pseudonym Masuy about 1943. The
Belgian resistance referred to it as the Paris method, and the Gestapo
authorized its extension from France to at least two places late in the war,
Norway and Czechoslovakia. That is where people report experiencing it.
In Norway, we actually
have a 1948 court case that weighs whether "enhanced interrogation"
using the methods approved by president Bush amounted to torture. The
proceedings are fascinating, with specific reference to the hypothermia used in
Gitmo, and throughout interrogation centers across
the field of conflict. The Nazi defense of the techniques is almost verbatim
that of the Bush administration...
Here's a document from
Norway's 1948 war-crimes trials detailing the prosecution of Nazis convicted of
"enhanced interrogation techniques" in the Second World War. Money
quote from the cases of three Germans convicted of war crimes for
"enhanced interrogation":
Between 1942 and 1945, Bruns used the method of "verschärfte
Vernehmung" on 11 Norwegian citizens. This
method involved the use of various implements of torture, cold baths and blows
and kicks in the face and all over the body. Most of the prisoners suffered for
a considerable time from the injuries received during those interrogations.
Between 1942 and 1945,
Schubert gave 14 Norwegian prisoners "verschärfte
Vernehmung," using various instruments of
torture and hitting them in the face and over the body. Many of the prisoners
suffered for a considerable time from the effects of injuries they received.
On 1st February, 1945,
Clemens shot a second Norwegian prisoner from a distance of 1.5 metres while he was trying to escape. Between 1943 and
1945, Clemens employed the method of " verschäfte Vernehmung
" on 23 Norwegian prisoners. He used various instruments of torture and
cold baths. Some of the prisoners continued for a considerable time to suffer
from injuries received at his hands.
Freezing prisoners to
near-death, repeated beatings, long forced-standing, waterboarding,
cold showers in air-conditioned rooms, stress positions [Arrest mit Verschaerfung],
withholding of medicine and leaving wounded or sick prisoners alone in cells
for days on end - all these have occurred at US detention camps under the command
of president George W. Bush. Over a hundred documented deaths have occurred in
these interrogation sessions. The Pentagon itself has conceded homocide by torture in multiple cases. Notice the classic,
universal and simple criterion used to define torture in 1948 (my italics):
In deciding the degree
of punishment, the Court found it decisive that the defendants had inflicted serious
physical and mental suffering on their victims, and did not find sufficient
reason for a mitigation of the punishment in accordance with the provisions
laid down in Art. 5 of the Provisional Decree of 4th May, 1945. The Court came
to the conclusion that such acts, even though they were committed with the
connivance of superiors in rank or even on their orders, must be regarded and
punished as serious war crimes.
The victims, by the way,
were not in uniform. And the Nazis tried to argue, just as John Yoo did, that this made torturing them legit. The victims
were paramilitary Norwegians, operating as an insurgency, against an occupying
force. And the torturers had also interrogated some prisoners humanely. But the
argument, deployed by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Nazis before them,
didn't wash with the court. Money quote:
As extenuating
circumstances, Bruns had pleaded various incidents in
which he had helped Norwegians, Schubert had pleaded difficulties at home, and
Clemens had pointed to several hundred interrogations during which he had
treated prisoners humanely.
The Court did not regard
any of the above-mentioned circumstances as a sufficient reason for mitigating
the punishment and found it necessary to act with the utmost severity. Each of
the defendants was responsible for a series of incidents of torture, every one
of which could, according to Art. 3 (a), (c) and (d) of the Provisional Decree
of 4th May, 1945, be punished by the death sentence.
So using "enhanced
interrogation techniques" against insurgent prisoners out of uniform was
punishable by death. Here's the Nazi defense argument:
(c) That the acts of torture
in no case resulted in death. Most of the injuries inflicted were slight and
did not result in permanent disablement.
This is the Yoo position. It's what Glenn Reynolds calls the
"sensible" position on torture. It was the camp slogan at Camp Nama in Iraq: "No Blood, No Foul." Now take the
issue of "stress positions", photographed at Abu Ghraib
and used at Bagram to murder an innocent detainee.
Here's a good description of how stress positions operate:
The hands were tied together closely with a cord
on the back of the prisoner, raised then the body and hung the cord to a hook,
which was attached into two meters height in a tree, so that the feet in air
hung. The whole body weight rested thus at the joints bent to the rear. The
minimum period of hanging up was a half hour. To remain there three hours hung up, was pretty often. This punishment was carried out at
least twice weekly.
This is how one detainee at Abu Ghraib died (combined with beating) as in the photograph
above. The experience of enduring these stress positions has been described by
Rush Limbaugh as no worse than frat-house hazings.
Those who have gone through them disagree. They describe:Dreadful pain in the shoulders and wrists were the
results of this treatment. Only laboriously the lung could be supplied with the
necessary oxygen. The heart worked in a racing speed. From all pores the sweat
penetrated.
Yes, this is an account
of someone who went through the "enhanced interrogation techniques" at Dachau. (Google translation here.)
Critics will no doubt
say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no
comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in
2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods
approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the
past. The very phrase used by the president to describe
torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation
techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are
indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes.
The punishment for them
was death.
_______________
E.
From Historians
against War :
Date: 10 December 2014
Subject : HAW Notes 12/10/14, including
links to recent articles of interest.
http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/
To members and friends
of Historians Against the War,
Here are a couple of notes, followed by our occasional listing of recent
articles of interest.
1. The Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee is continuing to accumulate signatures
on its open letter to the head of the Pentagon's official Vietnam War
commission. The letter, along with a form for signing and an alphabetized list
of the 1,000-plus signers so far, is available here.
2. The Peace Studies Journal is soliciting papers for an issue on
"Confronting the Environmental Impacts of War"; information is
available from Joel Helfrich at helf0010@umn.edu.
Links to Recent Articles of Interest
"Why
No One Remembers the Peacemakers: Celebrating War Over and Over and Peace
Once"
By Adam Hochschild, TomDispatch.com, posted December 9
"Lessons
of the Foreign Policy Disasters of the Last Twenty Years"
By William R. Polk, History
News Network, posted December 7
The author is a former
State Department official who has written widely on the recent history of the
Middle East.
By Daniel L. Davis, The
American Conservative, posted December 1.
The author is a
lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By Stanley Kutler, History News Network, posted November 26
The author is a
professor of history emeritus at the University of Wisconsin; the article
concerns the Pentagon's depiction of the history of the Vietnam War.
"A Brief History of Jerusalem: 'Eternal, Undivided Jewish
Capital'?"
By Gary Leupp, CounterPunch.org, posted November 26
The author teaches
history at Tufts University.
"The CIA's Student Activism Phase"
By Tom Hayden, The
Nation, posted November 26
On the CIA and the
National Student Association
"Russians
Invade Afghanistan (Again!), Chinese Fight Iraq War (Again!): What If It
Weren't Us?"
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com, posted November 25
"Malarkey
on the Potomac: Five Bedrock Washington Assumptions That Are Hot Air"
By Andrew J. Bacevich, Tom Dispatch.com, posted November 23
The author, retired from
teaching history at Boston University, is a fellow at Columbia University's School
of Public and International Affairs.
By William R. Polk, History
News Network, posted November 23
Makes comparison between
the Vietnam and Iraq wars
"Why Iraqis May See ISIL as Lesser Evil Compared to U.S.-Backed
Death Squads"
By Nicolas J. S.
Davies, AlterNet.org, posted November 20
18 December 2014
HAW Notes 12/18/14:
Links to recent articles of interest :
By John Prados, History News Network, posted December 14
The author is a senior
fellow of the National Security Archives and director of its CIA Documentation
Project.
By Andrew Cockburn, The
Independent, posted December 14
"American Torture -- Past, Present, and ... Future?"
By Rebecca Gordon, TomDispatch.com,
posted December 14
The author's book Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the
Post-9/11 United States was published this year by Oxford University Press.
By Andrew Sullivan, ReaderSupportedNews.org,
posted December 13
By James Carroll, TomDispatch.com,
posted December 11
"Torture Report Highlights Consequences of Permanent War"
By Andrew J. Bacevich, Boston Globe, posted Demember 10
The author, retired from
teaching history at Boston University, is a fellow of Columbia University's
School of Public and International Affairs.
"Timeline:
The Tortured History of the Senate's Torture Report"
By Kara Breandeisky and Sisi Wei, ProPublica, posted December 9
The above list was edited by Steve Gosch and Jim O'Brien with thanks to Rosalyn Baxandall and Mim Jackson for suggesing articles that are included. Suggestions can be
sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com.
__________________
F.
From Tom Hayden :
Date : 18 December 2014
Subject: Why the
US-Cuba Deal Is a Victory.
Democracy Journal
December 17, 2014
__________________
G.
From Information
Clearing House :
Date : 17 December 2014
Subject: The Next
World War….
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
For
America’s elite, the Cold War never ended, because it was never really about
communism versus capitalism.
U.S. Gov’t. Seeks Excuse to Attack Russia
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40502.htm
by Eric Zuesse
__________________
H.
From Democracy Now ! :
Date : 19 December 2014
Subject: War Crimes
in the White House.
Should Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld & CIA Officials Be Tried for
Torture? War Crimes Case Filed in Germany
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/19/should_bush_and_cheney_be_tried
__________________
I.
From The Real News Network :
Date : 18 December 2014
Subject: The Self-Destruction
of the Israeli Nation.
Identity and
Collective Denial
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12846
Lia Tarachansky
__________________
J.
From Information
Clearing House :
Date : 17 December 2014
Subject: Lessons on
War from The Göring
Doctrine.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
The
Göring Doctrine has proved as tempting to democratic
leaders as to fascist dictators. Witness these examples drawn from recent
American history.
Manufacturing War: A Primer
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40505.htm
by Martin Hellman
__________________
K.
From Richard Greeman :
Date : 19 December 2014
Subject: Catholicism:
the New Communism?
Dear
Friends,
Last
week, as yet another mega-typhoon laid waste to the Philippines, the leaders of
183 capitalist governments met in Lima, Peru to face the imminent threat of
climate catastrophe at a U.N. Climate Conference called COP20. (Yawn.) In case
you missed the headlines (they were small), the world leaders agreed to
nothing.[1]
Since
the fiasco of the Helsinki Summit, it has become obvious that the U.S. and the
other governments, all of them dominated by
mega-banking and energy corporations, are quite simply unwilling to make actual
commitments to reduce carbon emissions. This year at Lima, with the human race
spinning at an ever more accelerated rate towards extinction, the U.N. chose to
invite Shell and other big energy corporations to participate inside the
conference, while keeping protesters (indigenous, climate refugees, peasants,
climate justice activists) miles away under military guard in U.S.-style ‘free
speech zones.’
Bishops:
End Fossil Fuels Now!
The
only voice within the Conference that dared to call for an end to the use of
fossil fuels was that of Catholic Bishops from every continent. The Bishops
also urged nations to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5°C (rather
than the proposed 2°C). Moreover, they explicitly pointed to capitalism as the
basic cause of impending global catastrophe and called for a new economic
order:
The
main responsibility for this situation lies with the dominant global economic
system, which is a human creation. In viewing objectively the destructive
effects of a financial and economic order based on the primacy of the market
and profit, which has failed to put the human being and the common good at the
heart of the economy, one must recognize the systemic failures of this order
and the need for a new financial and economic order. [2]
In
other words: “System Change, Not Climate Change!” What more could one ask for?
This slogan happens to be the name of the minuscule, far-left, ecosocialist coalition I am active in. The only difference
is that the Catholic Church has 1.2 billion members.
Unfortunately,
the Bishops’ remarkable declaration was not reported in any major media that I
could find. And even Amy Goodman, who broadcasted her progressive ‘War and
Peace Report’ www.democracynow.org live
from Lima all boring week, failed to note it. However, it is not really a
surprise in the context of the rapid changes in Catholic attitudes in the less
than two years since the ascension to the Throne of Saint Peter on Feb. 28,
2013, of Pope Francis, of whom more in a moment.
“While
this is a first by some markers,” writes Jeff Spross
of Climate Progress, “the Bishops’ statement also continues a long
tradition of engagement with environmental issues and climate change by the
Catholic Church.” Pope Francis himself has made the religious case for
combating climate change, warning that “if we destroy Creation, Creation will
destroy us!” Francis has also singled out the destruction of the rainforest as
a “sin,” and is working on an official papal encyclical tackling the
environment and humanity’s relationship to it.[3]”
Catholicism
and Communism
These
radically anti-capitalist Catholic positions have got me wondering: “Is
Catholicism the new Communism?” “Rome the new Moscow?”
“The Church the new Comintern???”
What a paradox! Growing up as a ‘red diaper baby’ during the Cold War,
Catholicism seemed to me synonymous with militant anti-Communism (not to
mention militant virginity). New York’s powerful Cardinal Spellman was a
virulent McCarthyite, and the martyrdom of Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary (persecuted first by both fascist and
then communist regimes) made folks forget the complicity of Pope Pius XII with
the Nazis – based on their common hatred of Communism.
Then,
in 1958, things changed radically with the election of Pope John XXIII. The
Vatican Council proclaimed the Christian doctrine of ‘a preferential option for
the poor.’ Liberation Theology, which affirmed the right to resist oppression,
spread all over Latin America. I was privileged to witness it in action in
Nicaragua in 1984 during the U.S.-sponsored Contra war. Indeed, my years of
activism in the Latin America solidarity movement had convinced me that
Liberation Theology Catholics were consistently more revolutionary than Leftist
of all stripes.[4]
But sadly by the 80s my comrades among activist priests and nuns were being
side-tracked and persecuted by the new dispensation in the Vatican after the
election of fervently anti-Communist Polish Pope in 1978.
Reaction
and Disgrace
John-Paul
II put the Church firmly back on the side of the privileged. Then the 2005
election of former Hitler Youth Josef Ratzinger as
Pope Benedict XVI set the Church on an even more reactionary course, turning
back the clock on women and reproductive rights, offending Moslems, trying to
cover up major scandals over pedophile priests and Vatican finances, and
launching an inquisition of progressive U.S. nuns, accused of feminism and
meddling in social issues.
So
severe was the disgrace to the Church’s reputation, that
Benedict took the unprecedented step of resigning more or less in disgrace in
Feb. 2013, but by then even the most loyal Catholics had given up on the rigid,
self-protective, seemingly immovable Church hierarchy. ‘New
Pope? I’ve Given Up Hope’ headlined Gary Wills
in the N.Y. Times. In my own analysis (‘Pope Quits: So What?’[5])
I contrasted the history of popular movements inspired by Christianity’s
radical social content and the Church’s vast potential for good with the
apparent death-grip of the geriatric, reactionary hierarchy on the institution.
But my conclusion was nearly as despairing.
A Miracle?
I
didn’t dare dream that a mere twenty months later Benedict’s successor, Pope
Francis, would have called a World Meeting of Popular Movements and
invited to the Vatican organizations of the marginalized and excluded of all
ethnic and religious origins -- landless campesinos,
urban workers from the informal sector, recyclers, struggling native peoples,
women demanding their rights, etc. (Oct. 2014) There, in the presence of
Bolivia’s radical President Evo Morales, Francis
declared that “ solidarity with the poor is the very grounding of the
Gospels" and that "Agrarian reform is not only a political need, but
also a moral one!" These sound like the words of a popular leader,
reaching out to his base.
“It
was the direct involvement of Pope Francis that drove the event,” according to
Canadian delegate Judith Marshall reporting in Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal . Her
amazing report is definitely worth reading in full.[6]
“As the newly installed head of a major institution of the global
establishment, Pope Francis has arguably made the Papacy the most radical and
consistent voice in pointing to the profanity of global inequality and
exclusion. He has also repeatedly named the inordinate power of multinational
corporations and finance capital as key factors in reproducing global poverty
and destruction of the planet [...] The meeting was
built on the strength of the Pope’s long-standing connections with these key
popular movement leaders in Argentina.”
Who
is Pope Francis?
Jorge
Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
in 1936. After working briefly as chemical technician and a night club bouncer,
he joined the progressive Jesuit order, became a priest during the heyday of
Liberation Theology and got involved in social movements.
As
a bishop, Bergoglio had already developed an
incessant but discreet support for workers and their organizations. The anecdotes
are without number: solidarity with persecuted militants, support for campesino organizations, protection for peddlers, promotion of “shanty town priests”, accompanying factor
workers who had reopened closed factories and a forthright attitude of struggle
against exploitation and exclusion, traffic in persons, drug-trafficking and
the consumer culture. All of this, added to his legendary austerity and simple
life style, his constant interpolation against the self-satisfied life style of
the petty bourgeoisie, postmodern consumerist hedonism and “elite
progressivism”, had made him an uncomfortable figure, not only for the
reactionary right but also for the liberals of the centre.”[7]
Francis
is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the
Southern Hemisphere and the first non-European pope in over 1,000 years. These
‘firsts’ signify a major shift in the power equilibrium within that vast Internationale of the global poor. The Catholic
(‘Universal’) Church is the only actually existing organized world-party. Its
vast wealth and influence are now in Francis’ hands. Imagine, for example, that
this Jesuit remains true to his Order’s mission and devotes some of the
billions salted away in the Vatican to promoting Catholic education on a global
scale, teaching billions of poor children how to read, write, think for
themselves in a world organization that affirms the right to resist oppression.
If the Church truly stands for ‘System Change Not Climate Change,’ this it itself would be a revolutionary development, and we have
only just seen the beginning.
How
Did this ‘Miracle’ Happen?
How
did such an openly radical priest manage to get elected? Francis’ absolute
authority at the apex of the hierarchy is a major defeat for the old power
brokers who would rather see the living Church wither on the vine than
compromise, as witness their circling the wagons during the pedophile priest
scandals, their adamant refusal to allow priests to marry or to give women a
sacerdotal role of some sort in order to keep the parishes alive, and their
unwillingness to fund Catholic education -- once the Church’s proud monopoly
and major source of its ideological influence. The Catholic hierarchy (like the
military, the world of finance, and the Communist nomenklatura)
has long functioned as a closed corporation, a state within a state,
impenetrable, opaque, a law unto itself, protected by its intimate ties with
other corrupt hierarchies in politics, the military, banking, law enforcement
and the Mafia.
The
Vatican bureaucracy sits on a pot of gold equal to the wealth of many nations,
and one can only imaging the silent struggles going on right now behind the
closed walls of the Curia over control of that wealth as Francis and his allies
conduct their purge of the apparatus. These developments may take time.
Excluding
Divine Intervention, what made this revolution within the Church possible? The
most obvious answer is that the Church had reached a dead end. The faithful
were leaving in droves, the priesthood was dying out with few new recruits,
especially among ‘Europeans,’ and the laity were in
despair. Another reason is the demographic shift among practicing Catholics.
There is also the solid organization and discipline of the international Jesuit
Order whose attempts to take over the Church and influence in Latin America go
back centuries. (Not for nothing did members of the Communist International
think of themselves as ‘red Jesuits.’)
Breaking
Through Parish Walls
To
these material explanations I would like to add another, less obvious: the
Internet and social media. Whereas over the centuries, the hierarchy has had a
monopoly of communication, all of it top down. Today, Catholic lay people are
no longer isolated, voiceless and passive before immense wealth and influence
of the hierarchy. Just as Guttenberg’s movable type helped catalyze the
Protestant Reformation in the 16th century by making the Bible
accessible to the laity, so the Internet in the 21st century may
have catalyzed the unprecedented resignation of arch-conservative Pope Benedict
XVI and the Church’s apparent new course under Francis.
As
Internet guru Clay Shirky points out, “social tools
don’t create collective action, they merely remove the
obstacles to it.”[8]
Shirky cites the example of the campaign among lay
Catholics to end sex-abuse of children by priests. It began in the 90s when
victims started coming forward and the scandals were exposed in newspapers like
The Boston Globe, but the Church hierarchy, led by Cardinal Law (himself
guilty of protecting pedophile priests by rotating them through new,
unsuspecting parishes), was able to squash the victims’ movement.
The
instigators were denounced via press and pulpit and banned from Church
facilities, while lay groups were forbidden to organize outside of their local
parish. However ten years later, Cardinal Law was forced to resign in disgrace
after Internet tools had enabled victims to aggregate their testimony, post it
on line, spread information and organize nationally and internationally.
Meanwhile, the revolt against the coddling of pedophile priests has caused the
laity to openly question reactionary dogmas like refusing Communion to divorced and LGBT Catholics and maintaining the celibacy of
priests.
The
Internet did not cause this potentially momentous change, but social
media and its world-wide reach enabled the smoldering revolt of the Catholic
laity to overcome the institutional barriers that enabled the hierarchy to
isolate and dominate the rank-and-file movements for reform and renewal. What
is striking in today’s revolution within Roman Catholicism is the intersection
of ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ forms o organization. For if horizontal internet
networking has given the Catholic laity a chance to come together and express
itself, the capture of a powerful vertically-structured Catholic ‘world-party’
by progressive forces opens huge possibilities for human liberation and perhaps
a chance for the planet to avoid climate catastrophe.
Nuns
Vindicated
Let
us end this hopeful story with the news, released today, of another victory for
the progressive Catholic rank-and-file: a Vatican report reversing Benedict
XVI’s crude attempt to stifle the socially-engaged, self-governing orders of
U.S. nuns, accused of preaching ‘feminism’ and advocating ‘social justice.’
Catholics across the country had been stunned and outraged by the Vatican’s
attempt to threaten the women who have been the backbone of this church for
centuries. Thousands of faithful Catholics held more than 50 vigils across the
country and more than 57,000 people signed a petition organized by the Nun
Justice Project in support of the nuns. With these actions,
Catholics made it clear that they stand in solidarity with the sisters and
their good works among the poor and marginalized.[9]
As of today, they are vindicated.
The
report concluded by citing Pope Francis’ call “to create still broader
opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the church.”[10]
Meanwhile, it also transpired today that Pope Francis brokered the agreement
between Obama and Raul Castro to resume diplomatic relations after more than a
half-century of U.S. sanctions against Cuba, long condemned by the rest of
Latin America. Also, it was the Holy Father’s birthday. Mazeltov,
Francis!
Best
wishes to all, Richard
Dec.
18, 2014
[1] I
exaggerate. The world leaders formally agreed that each country will prepare
its own voluntary goals in preparation for next years
Paris Climate Summit. The Lima conference was thus not a ‘failure’, but a
success (for the corporate agenda).
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30408022
“Global group of Catholic bishops call for end to
fossil fuels,” by Matt McGrath Environment correspondent, BBC News, Lima.
[3] http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/11/3602596/bishops-end-fossil-fuels/
[4] For example
they supported the distribution of lands abandoned by émigré landowners, while
the Sandinistas refused to give legal titles to poor peasant occupiers, thus
undermining their own popularity during the Contra war.
[5]
https://richardgreeman.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=228&action=edit&message=6&postpost=v2
[6] http://links.org.au/node/4172 “Challenging the globalization
of indifference: Pope Francis meets with popular movements” by Judith Marshall,
November 21, 2014.
[7] According to
Juan GRABOIS, activist in the Movement of Excluded Workers and as one of the
national coordinators of the Confederation of Popular Economy Workers in Argentina, quoted by Marshall, above.
[8] Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing
without Organizations (2008)
[9] http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/06/12/will-the-vaticans-crackdown-on-nuns-work/the-vaticans-fear-tactics-will-not-work
[10] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/us/vatican-report-us-nuns.html?ref=todayspaper
_______________
L.
From Mark Crispin Miller
:
Dates: 19 December 2014
Subject : North Korea behind the Sony hack? Not
likely...
Francis,
Here
are six Important News Items from this week:
Plus…
Sony Hack
Blamed on North Korea Bears Hallmarks of U.S. Intelligence Operation
Obama
administration mulling “proportional” response
by Kurt
Nimmo
The
Obama administration considers Sony’s inability to secure its computer network
and allowing unknown hackers access to confidential information to be a serious
breach of national security.
White
House spokesman Josh Earnest did
not say North Korea was responsible for the hack. Instead, the accusation was
made Wednesday by an anonymous government official “who is not authorized to
comment publicly.”
Earnest
said U.S. national security leaders “would be mindful of the fact that we need
a proportional response.” He was vague on what this meant.
As Paul Joseph Watson noted
for Infowars.com
on Thursday, there is little evidence implicating North Korea, but this has not
prevented the government and the corporate media from attributing the hack to
the authoritarian regime of Kim Jong-un.
For
more on this, see Kim Zetter’s The Evidence That North
Korea Hacked Sony Is Flimsy.
U.S.
Intelligence More Likely Responsible
As Marc W. Rogers noted
on his security news blog on Thursday, it is unlikely North Korea is involved.
“The
fact that the code was written on a PC with Korean locale & language
actually makes it less likely to be North Korea,” Rogers explains. “Not least
because they don’t speak traditional ‘Korean’ in North Korea, they speak their
own dialect and traditional Korean is forbidden. This is one of the key things
that has made communication with North Korean refugees
difficult.”
Additionally,
the broken English used “looks deliberately bad and doesn’t exhibit any of the
classic comprehension mistakes you actually expect to see in ‘Konglish’. i.e
it reads to me like an English speaker pretending to be bad at writing
English.”
This
would implicate U.S. or British intelligence. U.S. intelligence has, since
9/11, displayed careless and sloppy application when conducting false flag
operations. The textbook example of this is the transparently bogus “intelligence”
used in the effort to frame Iraq prior to the invasion of that country in 2003.
Another
indicator pointing to U.S. intelligence is the familiarity with Sony’s computer
network. “It’s clear from the hard-coded paths and passwords in the malware that
whoever wrote it had extensive knowledge of Sony’s internal architecture and
access to key passwords,” Rogers notes. “While it’s plausible that an attacker
could have built up this knowledge over time and then used it to make the
malware, Occam’s razor suggests the simpler explanation of an insider.”
The
attacker, however, does not necessarily have to be a Sony insider. As Edward
Snowden and others have demonstrated, the NSA specializes in gaining
access to computer networks and routinely penetrates the
firewalls of corporate and foreign government networks.
Rogers
writes the attack “suits a number of political agendas to have something that
justifies sabre-rattling at North Korea, which
is why I’m not that surprised to see politicians starting to point their
fingers at the DPRK also.”
It
is true the U.S. foreign policy establishment has exploited the largely
exaggerated and absurd national security threat supposedly presented by North
Korea. However, they do not seriously consider it a threat and instead use it
as an excuse to issue warnings to legitimize the national security state. Iran
and terrorist entities, many designed by the intelligence apparatus, serve a
similar purpose.
More
practically, the Sony affair will be used to make the argument that cyber
warfare poses an immediate threat to the national security of the United States
and this threat demands a continuation and amplification of the surveillance
state.
The
surveillance state, however, is not turned outward, it
is instead turned inward on the American people who are considered by the elite
to be the true threat to their rule.
The
Sony hack is not the work of an ex-Sony employee, as Rogers assumes. It is the
work of the national security state and the NSA. Titillating details about
movie stars and celebrities released as a result of the hack — falling on the
heels of the celebrity nude photo hack earlier this year — serve the purpose of
riveting the attention of the public on the affair while the government builds
its case for further encroachments on their liberty.