May you live in interesting times

Like most people I suppose, I can’t remember the first time I heard of this “Chinese” curse. But only just the other day, I learned that it’s part of a triplet:

May you live in interesting times

May your name be known to the Emperor

May you find what you are looking for.

Quite by chance, I came across something I was looking for when I stumbled upon an extended interview with Scott Ritter on C-Span’s book TV and subsequently bought his new book Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement. As a one-time active, and once again becoming active, member of the peace movement I could not help experiencing a sharp pain at his devastating analysis of our current shortcomings. For a brief moment, I was tempted to retreat into defensiveness and consider the criticism unfair. But in the next moment, I remembered that “all is fair in love and war” and clearly this is both; his love for this country in general and for those who cherish her deepest virtues in particular, is abundantly clear. I want to thank him from the bottom of my heart for everything he has done, and particularly this latest courageous work on behalf of the truth.

Subsequent to reading the book, which points out among other things our near total absence of strategic thinking, I immediately began thinking about this need for a strategy and what it might be. Then Saturday afternoon, at a rally in Berkeley with Daniel Ellsberg and Barbara Lee, Michael Lerner spoke of his recent work. I had not heard him before, though like everyone else I had certainly heard of him.

His message was that addressing our need for security though dominating the world has to change. We must move to a strategy of establishing and maintaining our security through generosity.

Specifically, he advocated a “Global Marshall Plan” in which the US begins by dedicating 1% of GDP to address global needs such as poverty, hunger and climate change for each of the next 20 years; in time extending this to 5% of global GDP.

Googling “Global Marshall Plan” I found it’s an idea that first cropped up in Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance”. [First the “Information Superhighway” and now this, does that man think of everything! LOL]. Then, in March of 2006 a group of what appears in their photo to be 18 middle-aged middle-class Germans in Frankfort, launched an effort that is beginning to get some traction in Germany and the neighboring countries. The other prominent link on the Google search page was to the group headed by Michael Lerner, who is listed as an endorser of the German effort. However, it was on the German group’s website, that I came across an astonishing little quote that really got me thinking:

If everyone who was convinced of the need for change managed to persuade just one other person a year, the snowball effect would mean that in 33 years the entire population of the world would share a common ideal (for 233 = 8.5 billion).

Of course, we may not have enough time for such a leisurely pace. However, it’s beyond controversy that the potential power of an infectious idea is overwhelming.

In Waging Peace, Scott Ritter had the audacity to compare the search for peace to the Art of War. In this sprit, and not to be outdone, I’ll up the ante and compare the healing of the world to the spread of a disease. And as odious as it may appear at first glance, the metaphor of a virus a remarkably apt.

To succeed, the message must be airborne, in a word: short. It must slip past the natural defenses, it must seem familiar. It must bind to the receptor site, in other words it must be memorable. And it must turn in a way that breaches the boundary between the old and the new and liberating us from our private cells in which we are imprisoned.

Now more than ever, I am convinced that our real problem lies not our leader. Committing ourselves to acting, we may not change the world, but we will most certainly change what most deeply needs to be changed, ourselves. The Iraq Moratorium offers an opening in that regard. By taking off work without pay the third Friday of every month we are in effect sacrificing 5% of our own personal GDP to the cause and that’s a start. But to catch fire, we need an idea with as close to a 100% infection rate as possible.

We will know immediately when we have found what we are looking for. It doesn’t matter if we don’t get it right the first time or the ten-thousandth, for when we do it will be impossible to stop. In this search we are all, in our millions, the only laboratories the Earth has. We conduct this search when we talk to one another, and when we listen to one another. Please keep trying to find this message, and I will too.

The Shock Doctrine

Illumination

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; …

When Yeats wrote this, during the period between the two world wars, it was a dark time. One war had ended and in ending had sown the seeds for a new and more terrible sequel. Yet at that time, at the dawn of the roaring twenties in the US, a giddy, stunned populace saw the misty twilight as an invitation to revel. By mid-decade the party had spread to Europe. The decade long hangover that ensued, followed by nearly a decade of war, set in motion the consequences that haunt us still, and the shock that came upon us six years ago today was not the first, nor the last, in a series that have in retrospect clearly served the purposes, if not crafted for the purpose of, a cynical assault on democracy that has been going on our entire lives.

We have been wandering in a dim landscape and what we now so desperately need is the full light of day upon this twilight of half-perceived truths. In The Guardian, in an article entitled The shock doctrine Naomi Klein illuminates a central aspect of those truths:

In one of his most influential essays, [Milton] Friedman articulated contemporary capitalism's core tactical nostrum, what I have come to understand as "the shock doctrine". He observed that "only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change". When that crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. Some people stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters; Friedmanites stockpile free-market ideas. And once a crisis has struck, the University of Chicago professor was convinced that it was crucial to act swiftly, to impose rapid and irreversible change before the crisis-racked society slipped back into the "tyranny of the status quo". A variation on Machiavelli's advice that "injuries" should be inflicted "all at once", this is one of Friedman's most lasting legacies.

Friedman first learned how to exploit a shock or crisis in the mid-70s, when he advised the dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Not only were Chileans in a state of shock after Pinochet's violent coup, but the country was also traumatized by hyperinflation. Friedman advised Pinochet to impose a rapid-fire transformation of the economy - tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, cuts to social spending and deregulation.

It was the most extreme capitalist makeover ever attempted anywhere, and it became known as a "Chicago School" revolution, as so many of Pinochet's economists had studied under Friedman there. Friedman coined a phrase for this painful tactic: economic "shock treatment". In the decades since, whenever governments have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the all-at-once shock treatment, or "shock therapy", has been the method of choice.

[…]

The bottom line is that, for economic shock therapy to be applied without restraint, some sort of additional collective trauma has always been required. Friedman's economic model is capable of being partially imposed under democracy - the US under Reagan being the best example - but for the vision to be implemented in its complete form, authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian conditions are required.

[…]

Declassified CIA manuals explain how to break "resistant sources": create violent ruptures between prisoners and their ability to make sense of the world around them. First, the senses are starved (with hoods, earplugs, shackles), then the body is bombarded with overwhelming stimulation (strobe lights, blaring music, beatings). The goal of this "softening-up" stage is to provoke a kind of hurricane in the mind, and it is in that state of shock that most prisoners give their interrogators whatever they want.

The shock doctrine mimics this process precisely. The original disaster - the coup, the terrorist attack, the market meltdown - puts the entire population into a state of collective shock. The falling bombs, the bursts of terror, the pounding winds serve to soften up whole societies. Like the terrorized prisoner who gives up the names of comrades and renounces his faith, shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise fiercely protect.

This is how in the aftermath of chaos, death and destruction, the seeds of greed, selfishness and their inevitable evolutionary goal, tyranny, have been deliberately sown. Predictably bountiful harvests have followed, and the lesson has not been lost on those who idolize such crops; nor could the peril be more obvious for those who for whatever reason do not worship at their altar.

Be that as it may, this is not the time for fear. It must be pointed out that this tactic is not always successful, and even when successful is not always successful for long. The Berlin wall fell, apartheid came to an end in South Africa, puppet dictatorships are falling like dominoes all across all of South America.

There is something in the human spirit that abhors slavery in whatever form it takes, and its exponents thrive only in chaos and twilight. So, this is my prayer for this sixth anniversary of 9/11: may we see clearly; and seeing clearly, may we learn how not to be afraid.

Paul Van Riper

You couldn’t make this stuff up, or rather you could, but if you did folks would think you were being ridiculous. But this is a true story.

I first came across it in the comments to an article on CommonDreams.org about George Bush’s latest fly-by-night foray into Iraq to mug before the cameras and announce how we are winning and all, which is why, no doubt, he dare not fly into Baghdad, or in the light of day. It’s a good article, and I urge you to read it if you haven’t. But it’s easy to skip over the comments at the bottom, which is why I’d thought I’d point it out.

In one of the comments, an author named Giovanna describes a complex and fantastically expensive war game conducted by the US in July and August 2002 called Millennium Challenge 02 (MC02). In MC02, General Van Riper, former head of the Marine Corps University, was given the task of heading up “red team”, a supposedly rogue commander leading a group of rag-tag and poorly armed insurgents. At the cost of $250 million, its purpose was to validate the ultra-modern “network centric” model that was touted by its creators as the means by which the US would achieve global dominance with minimal casualties, at least US casualties. What happened next?

General Van Riper won, sinking 16 US naval vessels in the opening days of the war. Only after the naval ships were “re-floated” and the rules changed so that both sides were required to follow scripted actions were the “blue” (i.e. the United States) forces able to claim victory. For more, see the wikipedia entry or if you prefer try this tasty morsel at the Army Times.

Here’s what General Van Riper told Nova:

“I had a great deal of concern about the ideas that they were experimenting with in this particular exercise. I say that because I didn't think the ideas were intellectually worthy of being tested for that sort of money. Unfortunately, from where I sat, and I think I had a pretty good view, these ideas were never truly tested. Yet the conclusion drawn at the end of the exercise was that they had been and that they were worthy of adoption by our operating forces. I think they're very shallow. They are fundamentally flawed. They have no true intellectual content. And yet they're being, in my view, foisted on our operational commanders.”

So much for listening to the generals. I still hope it doesn’t happen, but for what its worth and for one more time: if being a criminal rogue regime, committing war crimes, including the ultimate war crime of planning and waging a war of aggression, killing millions of people, shutting down the world’s petroleum supplies and igniting a global firestorm unlikely to abate for decades isn’t enough of a reason not to attack Iran, try this one:

The verdict of the US Military’s most extensive and expensive research exercise on the subject to date is: we could very well lose.

Action

15 days to go. On Friday, the 21^st of September, two weeks from tomorrow, the Iraq Moratorium begins. Of course, it’s about more than just Iraq, but it has to have a name and naming it for those who are suffering so enormously seems only fair, so Iraq Moratorium it is. Or if you prefer, in homage to our roots, The Moratorium.

Personally, however, it was Iran that pushed me over the edge, and I’m ashamed to say it but it’s the truth. Not that I didn’t strongly object to the invasion of Iraq, mind you, but like millions of others, I didn’t do all that much; largely because I didn’t see anything I could do would help. But the upcoming threatened war on Iran, a largely peaceful nation only trying to survive and now and again reaching out to help those suffering injustice; an unprovoked and possibly nuclear attack that will result in the deaths of millions and in all likelihood ignite war on a regional scale. That has forced me to reconsider.

And what I found is that we can make a difference. If we take action.

Let’s get one thing straight right now, action is not protest and it is not petitioning for the redress of grievance. Nor is it directed against anyone; even George Bush. Of course we want him to notice and certainly we want him to change his course, but the primary target, the one who gets changed, and the one who so desperately needs to be, is ourselves; changed from a nation of passive sheep into force which cannot be denied, not by him, and most especially not by us. That is why we must take action.

You see, the point is not “doing something that makes a difference.” Rarely do we have that luxury. But each and every time we take a deliberate action we are forced to confront ourselves and our fears. Who am I? What do I stand for? And: Will my friends disapprove? Will I make a fool of myself? Will I lose my job? Will I face government retaliation? Heady stuff that.

The question confronting us is not: Can what we do make a difference. It is: Who are we? Each of us must find the answer to this question for ourselves. And our dilemma is not that we cannot find the answer. It is can we can summon the courage to ask the question.

The consequences will not be pleasant if when we are stripped of our rights, our constitution a meaningless historical relic and our place in the world as the preeminent criminal rogue nation secured, the day comes when we are at last forced to admit that we did not live up to our vision of ourselves as a nation valuing truth and peace and freedom and democracy. On that day, whether we are victims or slaves or accomplices will be the least of our problems.

Contemplating action we confront who we are.

Taking action, we become what we do.

Why magicalnet?

What is in a name anyway? Magicalnet is a name I’ve been using for awhile in various contexts. It has some Buddhist overtones, which I’m not going to go into. But in this context, there is a specific relevance I have in mind.

From A Force More Powerful by Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall (pg 494):

Vaclav Havel … wrote a seminal essay, widely disseminated underground, called “The Power of the Powerless.” Havel argued that the confrontation between an authoritarian regime and its opposition took place first not on a material but on an existential level – and on that level, the power of the opposition was “the strength of a potential, which is hidden throughout the whole of society.” This potential did not rely on “soldiers of its own” but on “everyone who is living within the lie and who may be struck at any moment… by the force of truth.” … Once the truth about the oppression is circulating in the public mind, it cannot be evaded.

Within America itself this oppression takes a number of forms. For those without money, legal residence, or education it can take obviously recognizable forms. For example America is number one in the world in the number of its citizens it jails. Public health is an oxymoron here, more like “You’re on your own”. But as egregious as this is, still the vast majority of Americans still have things pretty good as long as they don’t get sick, or get laid off, or something unexpected happens. Overt, actual oppression is still quite rare in most (or at least most “white”) neighborhoods.

Even so, although we speak and think as though we live in a democracy, we act as though we live in a dictatorship, and the cognitive dissonance takes its toll, arguably functioning as though it were a form of oppression. The people simply internalize their prison and attend to their own feeding and maintenance. Pretty slick, eh? Pinochet, eat your heart out! [For non-Americans, ignore that last sentence, it really doesn’t mean anything]

This magical net of mutual hallucination which we conjure around ourselves is never entirely true under the best of circumstances, but in this day and age and in this country, the illusion has drifted so far from any grounding in what is actually the case as to leave those caught with its web entirely in midair. People are starting to get airsick. We are all “living within the lie” and it has grown so fantastically terrible that vast numbers are apt to be “struck at any moment ... by the force of truth.”

For example, just this Saturday (and Saturday was such a busy day it seems), in Are We ‘Good Germans' Ed Ciaccio puts together a pretty good list of outrages that completely demolish any notion that America is a country that respects the rule of law, believes in freedom and justice, or has an even feeble grasp of the notion of basic human decency. But maybe folks missed that one. Be that as it may, nobody could have missed the propaganda promoting a strike on Iran which is at fever pitch and is entirely dependent upon transparent fabrications, gross exaggerations and outright lies. It seems this administration can’t even get their stories to line up with each other any more. There we are listening to a speech about how we are on the side of the angels, promoting peace, democracy and cheap tasty burgers, and in the next sentence our president is justifying torture or even threatening unprovoked nuclear war. You’d think people would notice something like that!

People pretend they don’t notice. They don’t WANT to notice. But they do notice. They can’t help it. And it tears holes in the prevailing web of conjured agreements about how things are.

This is what makes speaking the truth so powerful. Because, as Havel so astutely put it, “Once the truth about the oppression is circulating in the public mind, it cannot be evaded.” And seeing the net is the most powerful magic of all.

Once you see the illusion for what it is, you can never be the same, even if you try. I know. I tried. It didn’t work. I know other people who tried and it didn’t work for them either. Once you see what is going on, sooner or later you have to act. And that is also the truth.

But when will we act? That is the question that's keeping me up late tonight.

I can only pray we are not too late already.

Satyagraha

I must confess, I have been away too long.

Years ago, I gave up everything. Not that I had all that much to give up, mind you, but nonetheless, such as I had I surrendered. Essentially homeless and penniless, I was one of a small band of brothers and sisters who maintained a 24 hour a day vigil and blockade on the railroad tracks of the Concord Naval Weapons station in California, near San Francisco. But that was then and that was long ago. Since then I have gathered the fruits of a modest life and found them, like everyone always does, closing around me like comfortable chains. And now I have to say how sorry I am. The bravest man I have ever met has given me the courage to face this demon of mine and I must make my peace with it before I continue.

To you in Iraq especially, with tears in my eyes and a throat that cannot speak, I want to say how very, very sorry I am that we Americans were not able to stop the horror that our government has inflicted upon you, and still inflicts. I don’t know if any of you will ever read this, but if there is a spirit of justice in this world, I pray to her that perhaps you might. And I accept whatever justice you would mete out to me for my, so far, feeble and inconsequential efforts on your behalf.

That is going to change now by the way. The feeble and inconsequential part. But I’m not done with my confession yet.

To all the people against whom we have waged war during my entire lifespan, I am so sorry. As it happens, I was born the year my government overthrew the government of Guatemala, I was conceived the year our government overthrew the elected government of Iran. While I was learning to talk my government was waging war in Korea. I came of age just as Vietnam was winding down. I was here trying to be a good person during all of that. But I was only a child and though I know now what a child can do, I did not know that then. So please consider this as a factor when you adjudge me for these crimes.

By the late eighties however, I did know what was going on and I had had enough. It was off to the tracks for me. And I think we did do some good. After that, for awhile I believed – because I wanted to believe – that we Americans had somewhat reformed. So I didn’t pay nearly close enough attention during the sanctions of the 90’s; yes I’m sorry for that too. The truth is I turned away for awhile, seeking I suppose a separate peace. For that I am guilty, but the time was not entirely wasted. I will try to turn what I have learned during that time to good account. We shall see.

So. Now here we are. Nine million dead and counting. World class global butchery on a Hitlerian scale. Yes, I have a lot to be sorry for.

Even the countries we did not attack, I find I must apologize to you too. For by creating such a powerful and criminal regime we have endangered the very principle of good government. With luck, we will at least serve some benefit by providing a bad example of what is to be avoided at all costs. Please, please I beg you everyone. Do not imitate our example! Clever liars are hard at work, so beware!

My goal with this blog is what Gandhi called Satyagraha, “Holding to the Truth”. I will speak the truth of what is happening here for as long as I am able. It’s not much but it’s all I can do. Perhaps it is the hardest, and the easiest, and the only thing that any of us can ever do.

And this is a start. The United States of America is a criminal regime, possibly the most evil but far and away the most powerful the world has ever seen, and so the most dangerous. If the world is to survive, and if America is to survive and recover her soul, she must be humbled. This is not the way I want it to be. But sadly, it is the way it is.

September 2, 2007

Yesterday was an interesting day. Friends and friends of friends, we spent the afternoon remembering a fateful September 1^st 20 years ago, when at the Concord Naval Weapons Station a US Navy munitions train brutally assaulted a decorated war veteran and long-time peace activist. Brian lost his legs and lived to become a pillar of the renewed anti-war movement, the largest since the end of the Vietnam War; and weapons trains don’t run at Concord anymore. If you’re interested, there are stories here and here.

Against all odds the actions of that day and the actions that flowed from it stopped the war in its tracks, so to speak. Our actions gave hope to thousands who had damn little on their side, and that was arguably even more important. Our actions definitely worked magic on each of our lives. There is much to grieve in the horror of those days so many years ago, but so much more to celebrate. And if that was all there was to our little gathering, it would have been forever a memory of hearts full to overflowing, but nothing perhaps of interest outside our little group. But that was not all there was.

For the stark presence of our current plight intruded, with its echoes of another September 1^st, one 68 years ago. It has been clear for some time now how desperately George Bush longs to complete his trilogy of horror with a massive bombing campaign against Iran. Just today the Times of London carries a story of how the pending attack is designed to completely destroy the Iranian military, although from what we learned yesterday even this understates the size of the planned attack. Collectively we the people were unable to stop him launching his assaults on Afghanistan and Iraq and feelings of despair and grief inevitably arise.

Yet there is also reason to hope. George Bush is weaker now than ever before. With his previous adventures having soured into a full blown fiasco, key aides driven out in disgrace, a battered military on the brink of collapse, an economy on life support; only a madman would begin a war under these conditions against a country actually strong enough to fight back and against the councils of the departments of defense and state, the intelligence community, most of the barons of business and all of the nations of the world save one. Yet exactly that is his intention. And so we must ask ourselves, what do we do?

Ken mentioned the Iraq Moratorium. Immediately on hearing the word “Moratorium” Daniel lit up and told us a story. It went like this:

It was early October 1969, and Richard Nixon had not yet given up on winning the war in Vietnam. The situation was desperate and Nixon was desperate and he had seized on the idea of using nuclear weapons to bomb North Vietnam into submission. Directly and through intermediaries such as the Soviet ambassador he announced that “the train had left the station and was heading down the tracks,” a phrase too cute by half meant to convey an unshakable resolution. His intention was to prevail by bluff or if necessary through a limited demonstration of his awful might and so win the war that boots on the ground were so obviously losing.

Then, on October 15^th, that all changed. Two million people walked out of offices and classrooms across the country, vowing to repeat the action one month later, and every month for as long as it took. Nixon realized that such a massive display of civil disobedience would weaken his bluff and he might be forced to conduct an escalating series of bombings, with no clear certainty at which point the enemy would submit. And he realized that if two million were willing to walk out even before the campaign began, such an escalating series would trigger unprecedented reaction with unpredictable consequences.

Things did not get better right away; with Nixon denied his dramatic turnaround, the war dragged on. The invasions of Cambodia and Laos followed, later the Christmas bombings. And so for years, ordinary people had no idea how close the world had come to nuclear war in 1969. They could not know, and many still do not know, that moment was the turning of the tide. I learned this only yesterday. Maybe you just learned it too.

That moment has come round again, if we have the courage to seize it. It is inchoate and unformed; it is for us collectively to determine its nature. It is a simple thing really, and its genius is that it allows anyone and everyone to participate at whatever level they choose to become involved. Some may feel only able to war a black ribbon around their arm. Others, bolder, will be taking the day off work to rally and protest. Still others may wade into traffic banging pots and pans, snarling traffic and forcing people to confront the fact that all around us, as we go about our daily lives, millions of other lives no less precious than our own are being snuffed out, strangled, starved, poisoned and blown up so that we can relish our comforts.

Across this continuum as love overcomes fear a sense of responsibility is forged. And then the fire of courage is ignited: millions of people evaluating for themselves at which point they will say “this far and no further!” This is how a people give pause to a tyrant, this is why “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”. John did not go willingly to Runnymede, nor did Nixon or Botha or any other of the kings, presidents and dictators in between or since. They had no choice. This is our power.

And when you think about it, we don’t have any choice either. To live in silent acquiescence is to commit moral suicide, slowly, day by day, small doses of slow poison. To all my fellow citizens I say the time has come to take a stand. Act. Wear a black ribbon on Friday, September 21^st, and the third Friday every month, for as long as it takes. Do it for your conscience, do it for your country, do it for your God, do it for your children, do it for the people of the world. Do it for Frodo, if you must. But do it.

Tell your friends and family. Spread the word. And if and when you can… no, that’s not right, that’s not what I mean to say. What I mean to say is: If and when you must, do more.

- Diane Poole

diane@magicalnet.net