Our Tractable Media

The eunuch media is astounding in its passivity. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney was allowed by our lamestream media to molest our moral ideals and condemn succeeding generations of Americans to the same kinds of torture he didn’t even try to hide behind the bullshit scheme of ‘plausible deniability’ which sustains every other lie and crime the government chooses as policy.

His answer to the damning Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report was, “I’d do it again”. This is a rather stunning lack of contrition considering one of the main conclusions of the 528 page report is that our Exceptional American torture proved to be as ineffective at revealing truth or credible information as that practiced by other barbarians. Torturers and their victims usually come to a meeting of the minds, that being, an agreement to the script of the torturer. Apparently job securitization screws are turning causing so-called journalists to be “fair and balanced” about cruel and unusual punishment, which under the Geneva Convention to which the U.S. is a signatory says, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture”. Is that clause so irrelevant to our national self-image and world opinion that, “I’d do it again”, was enough validation of Mr. Cheney’s insane and ineffective indiscretion to accord him such gentle journalistic treatment very disproportionate to the magnitude of his legal and moral infraction, and the risks we are all now inescapably heir to?

It is, I suppose, just another of the litany of the bizarre anomalies that have materialized in our physical, moral, and legal universe since the morning of 9/11. Things that were torture and illegal before, and are torture and illegal now, still enjoy the special dispensation from logic and precedent so peculiar to the Bush/Cheney administration.

Why aren’t Americans frightened by our political leaders’ embrace and legalization of torture when these are the same authors of The Patriot Act which only requires a pointed finger to cause one to be disappeared into this Cheney-esque legal limbo from whose bourn you may never return?

They’re not frightened because our Fourth Estate is a watchdog that doesn’t bark.

Again 9/11

Donte Stallworth, recently hired by the Huffington Post as a political fellow on national security, because the former NFL player, “has a quick mind, an insatiable curiosity and a passion for politics”, has posted a refutation of his misspent youth as a 9/11 Truther.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/02/donte-stallworth-911-conspiracy_n_6178556.html

Mr. Stallworth, as part of the generation that was victimized and duped by the Vietnam/Gulf of Tonkin LIE, and having experienced with your generation the Iraq LIE, I retain my ability to question the veracity of power. I understand, after years of the “Big Lie” taking root, it has acquired some legitimacy simply because of longevity. But I must remind you we still haven’t been given a truthful reason for our incursions into Vietnam or Iraq. After a while we just assume we know or have been told “why”. But if you search your mind you’ll only find a catalog of transparent lies that have just been shrugged off as the beat goes on. Still, we needn’t be helpless pawns and dupes.

As far as understanding 9/11 goes, if it is assumed that the U.S. is an imperialist nation (seemingly indicated by 1100 military bases worldwide) acting in accord with uber- capitalist motivation (considering the mineral and fossil fuel resources of theretofore geo-politically outlier nations), then unfortunately, the official narrative and resulting militaristic ramifications of 9/11 make sense. On the other hand, if we are a non-imperial , peaceful nation, whose primary goal is the promotion of freedom and democracy, then, I believe, the official narrative would almost certainly be undermined by a legitimate and objective scientific investigation of the actualities and anomalies occurring on that day.

To consider there may be defensible alternative hypotheses to a narrative which, lest we forget, was formulated and universally disseminated before any usual, typical, or thorough process to discern facts or proof was, or could have been, carried out - is not irrational. Some might say it’s an intellectual requirement. The years later dubious contribution to the historical record called The 9/11 Commission Report merely memorialized, almost verbatim, a seemingly pre-prepared narrative which sprang to public life fully formed as early as 9/12. The Oracle of Delphi couldn’t have generated a more accurate point by point prognostication.

It is doubly remarkable that this originally postulated narrative emerged as such an immaculate conception, without any knowledge of the numerous anomalies that would later surface, anomalies which are indisputably present and germane to any reasonable theory of the events, and any one of which might be expected to upset the original postulations, but didn’t, even in the final version rendered to the historical record years later by the Honorable 9/11 Commission, whom in the vast public discussion had been fully exposed to the anomalies by way of expert and intelligent inquiries, physical evidence, eyewitness testimonies, and elementary scientific calculations.

For the magically prescient original narrative to remain unaltered and unscathed after the huge excavation of subsequent knowledge and revelations, lends proof to the Orwellian truism that a sheepish, thoughtless citizenry will be more inclined to disbelieve ‘logic’ than to disbelieve Big Brother - the government.

The Bell Curve of Racial Thought

    Yesterday I posted an opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis where I suggested that there is a racial component that may a more important part of the equation in the formation of our American official position than is generally considered.  I viewed a morning newsette program a few minutes ago where the all-white panel reiterated the legitimate “self-defense” actions of the party which is by another once legitimate standard the invader and occupier of the land on which their presence has caused to be engulfed in bloodshed. Protests around the world where the hypocritical reversal of the David and Goliath scenario, in favor of Goliath, were characterized as “despicable anti-Semitism”. Considering that both parties engaged in the hostilities are ‘Semitic’, we are intellectually directed to differentiate between the good Semite and the bad. And I contend again that the hierarchy of needs of the white Semites, regardless of history, international law, or common decency, were given such overwhelming priority that I believe it is reasonable to question the organic racial origins of the thought processes of the panel rendering the opinion.
  
 The Holocaust, often cited as the justification  for the confiscation of Palestine from the Palestinians, was a European phenomena perpetrated by one set of Europeans on another set of Europeans. And it would seem a reasonable and legitimate query from the Palestinians seeking to discover why they must pay the bill for a debt generated in Europe. This is an especially appropriate question when the map of region they live in, and the entire African continent, is a testament to arbitrary lines drawn on maps by Europeans in total insensitivity to the cultures, history, ethnicity, or languages of the various peoples inhabiting the regions and summarily forced into artificial constructs that Europeans invented as nations. Why, a Palestinian might ask, wasn’t a portion of Germany, which was responsible for the Holocaust and the destruction of Europe, set aside for its victims. And why couldn’t the dominant U.S. recognize, within minutes, the establishment of a Jewish state there, and support and protect it similarly as it has done in appropriated Palestine? European guilt may have been a better assurance of the safety of a Jewish state than could or should be expected from Middle Eastern resentment.
  
 Considering actual history, just about half of the history of the Jewish people occurred in the Middle East before any sort of Jewish political state came into being and/or accounting for brief and intermittent times when  the Jewish people were sovereign in any part of the region, and the second half was primarily in Europe, it might be, from the Palestinian perspective appropriate for a Jewish state to be most correctly accommodated by Europe. But no, against reason, international law, or common decency, it was suddenly considered appropriate to politically legitimize a thousands of years old religious myth, much of which was de-legitimized by the Christian mythology of Europeans, and solve a white people’s problem by calculated disregard of the basic humanity of brown people. Apparently brown people have no rights white people are required to respect.
   
Am I obsessed with race? I would say no. But I am cognizant that the mentality of Europe and America, to the subconscious level, has been so deformed and mutated by racism, that even it the face of documented history they can’t accept or acknowledge the perversions of thought it has engendered - and continues to engender.
 
  As a thought experiment, consider what might be the policy and position of the American government if the Palestinians were white and Mr. Netanyahu was brown. Who would be the terrorist then?

Race? Of Course Not

The events in the Middle East are generating much discussion at present. As a matter of history, academic history, there can be no question that the Jews have no superior or un-debatable eternal exclusive claim of right to possess that geography. There can be no debate that the European holocaust, as horrific as it was, does not change the fact that the State of Israel began and continues as an act of pure conquest and usurpation. And in fact, as uncomfortable as it is, represents the continued historic trend of the last millennia, of white people taking stuff from brown people justified by their own self-serving, self-invented mythology.

Many will want to deny or discount the racial aspect embedded in the calculus of justifications, because to exclude this allows the other so-called “complexities” to render the debate “insoluble” via reason, or law, or common decency, and as always will resolve to the benefit of the party with the greatest military strength. Kareem Abdul Jabaar has recently and correctly observed that, “More white believe in the existence of ghosts than in the existence of racism”.

Still, why is it relevant to insert the “fabled” bogeyman of racism into a conflict that many would prefer to characterize as solely a political tussle, the conflicting prerogatives of political entities? It is relevant because the DNA of consciousness of European and Western powers have so mutated in the past several hundred years that there is an intractable subconscious belief that “white is right”. And that begs the question, have you ever seen an Israeli Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, General or Ambassador who wasn’t bright white? It is a subtle convenience for the racist agenda to classify Europeans situated in Israel as Jews rather than white when the wrestle for wealth, power, or land is extramural rather than intramural. If the opponent or victims are brown, it is preferable not to have it thought of as a “white thing”.

But if a claim is being presented based on heritage and nativity to the region, why aren’t any other people native to the region “white”? How did the brown people ejected during the diaspora, fairly insular, prone to marry and reproduce within the tribe, turn white? For the purposes of this discussion the explanation of that phenomena is less important than the recognition of the phenomena, because I contend, that Europeans and Americans, religious beliefs notwithstanding and more appropriate for affairs in Heaven than on earth, and being largely ignorant of the actual history of the region, tend to reflexively grant superior moral and civil authority to other white people.

Is this an extreme argument? Well then, what rational process allows Americans particularly, supposedly reflected by acts and policies of their elected representatives, to so overwhelmingly concur that the Palestinians can’t and shouldn’t have a State and a homeland in the land where they have continuously resided since history, pre-Biblical, Biblical, and academic, was first writ?

Again, I contend, that if both the Israelis and the Palestinians were brown, the demands of rational fairness and intellectual honesty would mitigate American policy, and even the moral tenor of what is perceived as our strategic interest would reflect more political and philosophic balance than is presently exhibited in our bizarre, immoral and grossly lopsided preference for an entitled Israel.

If the effect of mirrored racism , to the degree it impacts the thoughts and decisions of our leaders, is ignored or ridiculed as fantasy, the ultimate prospects for justice and peace will fall victim to obvious injustice, and the dove of peace will not have a branch to rest upon.

Mr. Mills and 9/11

    Now that the empty calories of the Super Bowl game itself have passed through my system, there is one thing that remains stuck in my gut. It is the ostensibly sane independent journalist, Matthew Mills appropriating the microphone at a post game interview to announce that “9/11 was perpetrated by people within our own government”.

    

     It is reflexively easy to derisively dismiss him as a “conspiracy theorist”, and reject his agitation as the running magical unicorn of a demented internet imagineer. But after more than a decade of continuous war, it mystifies that chorus calls for “9/11 Truth” still fall on so many deaf ears, especially considering the cancerous violence, together with the proliferation of the characteristics of empire abroad and fascism at home so directly connected to events of that date. And if there are doubts about the latter claims, just imagine what the expected domestic response would have been to the establishment of a second standing army, Homeland Security, the unconstitutional Orwellian shenanigans of the NSA, and the massive, seemingly paranoiac, ammunition purchases of the Social Security Administration, Department of Education, IRS, NOAA, the Postal Service, the EPA, and of course ammunition-starved Homeland Security, without the façade of imminent, permanent, and pervasive  threat of “barbarians at the gate” that the “official” account has imposed upon the national consciousness. Such a radical and culture-bending transition to this “new normal”, fostered by the “official” explanation of an event so rife with anomalies and carried out by perpetrators apparently possessing supernatural powers of destruction and forensic elusiveness, must be thoroughly justified and understood – not just accepted.

    

    The flippant low regard the main stream media holds for the 9/11 Truth Movement may stem from its perceived foundation as the attenuated intellectual product of the silly blogosphere. But if the constructive, educative value of the democratic, non-profit, open internet is wholly discounted solely because of portions of foolishness displayed at particular places in its vastness, what portions of foolishness may be presented by the for-profit main stream media with its built-in economic disincentive to disturb the tranquility of government and its contractors?  There is a black granite wall of etched names in Washington, DC that is a testament to the error of the gullible patriotism of the establishment Fourth Estate, which encourages many to think it has conveyed or sold to ‘power’ its constitutional birthright as “watch dog” and now serves as the timid jingoist media facilitators for the increasingly perverse and bloody ambitions of the Imperial state. It can be eminently debatable whether the “Truthers” or the main stream media are actually attempting to be epistemologically responsible

    

    In our national and international cultures, not just Mr. Mills, but literally millions of scientists, engineers, architects, highly regarded academics, military, diplomatic, police and fire personnel, and normally conscious people of good standing and repute don’t merely disagree, but believe themselves to have made, constructively and logically, a prima facie case, in such forums as the Toronto Conference of 2011, among others, that the “U.S. official story”, particularly engaging the physical events presaging the political conclusions, is too often nonsensical and unsupported by, or is contradicted by, or is alienated from typical or atypical tangible forensic evidence, with many aspects of the occurrences of that day being estranged from accustomed worldly experience before or after 9/11/2001. Invariably, curious inquiries into the package of inferences presented by the U.S. government usually discover that the vast majority of serious, non-partisan independent investigations echo Judge Judy’s frequent, universally applicable pontification, “If it doesn’t make sense, it’s not true!”

   

     What Mr. Mills said may make many wish he could be consigned to the lunatic fringe, and of course the possibility exists he could be wrong – but I don’t think, at this point, I can be made to believe that he is conclusively a lunatic.

   

   

Traditional Education?

    I know public and charter school educators and constantly hear their perspectives. The dismantling of the public school system that educated me, to the degree I can claim such distinction, continues. And I am still shaken that my alma mater, Germantown High School, admittedly not even at the all-time apex of its academic fame when I attended forty-three years ago, but still capable of graduating reasonably literate students, has for “budgetary” reasons, been put up for salvage, while several Charter schools have been purpose built to service the same neighborhood.

  

  After sifting through competing political ideologies, which are about ‘something else’ – not education, weighing various partisan anecdotes for and against traditional public education, and surveying a small portion of serious academic researches, some employing such methodologies and formulae as “Stochastic Frontier Analysis” and “Fisher’s inverse Chi-squared test”, and locally, years of data from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) and its Annual Yearly Progress rankings (AYP), I found that Charter Schools, as a category, are statistically no better at arriving at desired proficiencies than traditional public schools. Surprised? I was! And after years (in some places decades) of being “no better”, public money is still building new Charter Schools, while still serviceable traditional public schools are closing. Moreover, there is a distinct lack of controversy over the extended mediocrity of the “Charter Schools”, with their advantages of preferred student selection, disciplinary flexibility, targeted-interest curriculums, freedom to employ innovative educational ideas, decentralized academic authority, no mandated (Social) support services, and other options and tools conceded by the same Federal, State and city authorities which are, in a mystification of laws and rules, somehow constrained from granting similar utilities to traditional public schools.

    

  Discovering incongruence between hype and reality I was left to marvel at the reciprocating manipulation. On one side of the political spectrum, those induced to identify with “traditional values” have become the most vociferous force against “traditional” public education. And on the other side, those supposedly enamored of the mutual obligations of the social contract are increasingly charmed by emulations of elitism. This strange, convoluted merger has inconceivably alloyed to denounce the public education system which was once the boast and crown jewel of the American Republic.

   So, since Charters aren’t delivering over-all better educational results, and government can “at will” integrate and utilize the same advantages and corrections of structure permissible to Charters in traditional public schools, why is there this growing and expensive trend to build and operate two distinct “public” school systems? There are two principle reasons. The first allows Charter schools to attend to the primary function of schools – education. Government had mistakenly comingled schools and social services provision instead of erecting separate infrastructures to address distinctive competencies and missions. And secondly, and most insidiously, to kill off one branch where there is strong unionization. The “inverted totalitarianism” of the Corporatocracy, which has openly displaced government as the arbiter of the social interests, has the goal of an union-less society; and among the few remaining obstacles to capital’s complete subjugation and silencing of labor, are the public service unions.

  

  I again point out that “Charters” as a category, almost as “non-union” as Walmart, by objective statistical measurements, haven’t overcome the metrics of non-success usually attributed to the evil impositions inherent in collective bargaining. But, the numbers are in, and they simply can’t blame the “union”. Nonetheless, plank-holders of middle class wages and benefits, street-educated and organized to appreciate the value of the property of their labor, find their grand-children have submitted to the unrelenting subliminal message that neo-feudalism is the default, inevitable destiny of economic Darwinism, stipulated to by disinterested Nature, and supposedly independent of the selfish interests of the self-interested with fulsome purchased access to deciding government power.   

  

  I don’t want to tell anyone what to think, but it is important for our society to question “big” changes, whether it’s the transition from isolationism to empire, or a public educational system that is supposed to be about “choice” that can only be profitably accessed if “it” chooses you.  The implications for conceptions of equity are clear, and expenditures of public dollars should primarily be about calculable equity.

     

Is it Just Me?

    One of the essential requirements to translate from youth to functional American adulthood is the ability to intelligently accept hypocrisy. If this skill is not acquired you are doomed to spiritual and material failure.

    

    Firstly, you must not be deceived by that first instinct and assume that in “human” society humanity is prioritized. No, all the laws, social stratification and good opinion of mankind are based on the primacy of ‘property’. Your entitlement to the so-called “necessities of life” is directly proportional to the amount of property you possess. And the forms of property are “real”, “personal”, fiat money, and the labor of others. So, one of the first hypocrisies that must be thoroughly accepted in American society as suggested by the flowery language of our founding documents, is that “human rights” are superior to “property rights”. In actuality, “human rights” are only the dividend paid after property rights are secured by the agency of “democratic” government, and again, are by degree as “unalienable” as the appraisal of possession and amount of property endows them. This is why one can be employed by one of the largest and most prosperous corporations on earth and ‘labor’ (fundamentally a reversion to peasantry) will not return the most basic human right – a livelihood. And why others can commit self-aggrandizing un-punishable financial crimes!

   

    Secondly, it is the unquestioned obligation of our citizenship to internalize the fantasy of “American Exceptionalism” and cling to the belief that this culture engaged in “manifest destiny”, imperialism, and perpetual warfare since the first permanent immigrant settlements on this continent – is “peaceful”. This requires an intellectual gymnastic beyond mere hypocrisy. That being the case, it shouldn’t be necessary to review our American history replete with the various and sundry mendacities that have accompanied the imperialist agenda to illustrate willful dissimulation bordering on psychopathology. Instead we can turn to current events to reveal our cultural sanctimony.  

   

    Yesterday a national budget was proposed in which one-half of discretionary spending will be directed to the military. One-half! This at a time when tremendous personal wealth is being created and centralized, food for the hungry programs are being cut, and public schools are literally disappearing for lack of funding. Why, it may be asked, does the richest, most powerful, sole superpower even need to expend half of its discretionary spending, an amount slightly less than the combined military expenditures of all the nations on earth, for “defense”? If no nation or group of nations is spending even a fraction of what we’re spending to defend themselves from ‘us’, it would seem to follow they’re not spending huge amounts in order to attack us; which begs the question, what is our huge defense expenditure defending against? It cannot rightfully be called “defense” spending. It can only be “offense”, empire building spending. Yet in our bizarre cultural narrative, our empire is the historically unique outgrowth of “peace” – despite the in-progress torrent of flowing blood directly attributable to American military foreign adventures on-going in 139 countries that goes unexamined and unexplained by “peaceful”, secure  Americans.

   

    Is it any wonder then that today, Jan. 17, our President, a lawyer and constitutional scholar, can twist his mouth to tell us that “our friends and neighbors” in the NSA may be forgiven the abrogation of the Fourth Amendment, because “friends and neighbors” are not constitutionally constrained when confronting the consequences of our national decision to wage war against the world. After all, war is peace. And Americans are “free” notwithstanding any recision of supposedly protected, unalienable rights, and appearances to the contrary. To say otherwise would make the President a hypocrite.