The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

A Transcript of Abu Bakr’s Speech

Can be found here.

It’s an interesting document, and worth reading yourself.  Contrary to media intimations of evil, and raving, it’s a pretty sane document.

I’ll highlight this bit:

Terrorism is to refuse humiliation, subjugation, and subordination [to the kuffār – infidels]. Terrorism is for the Muslim to live as a Muslim, honorably with might and freedom. Terrorism is to insist upon your rights and not give them up.

But terrorism does not include the killing of Muslims in Burma and the burning of their homes. Terrorism does not include the dismembering and disemboweling of the Muslims in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Kashmir. Terrorism does not include the killing of Muslims in the Caucasus and expelling them from their lands. Terrorism does not include making mass graves for the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the slaughtering of their children. Terrorism does not include the destruction of Muslims’ homes in Palestine, the seizing of their lands, and the violation and desecration of their sanctuaries and families.

Terrorism does not include the burning of masājid in Egypt, the destruction of the Muslims’ homes there, the rape of their chaste women, and the oppression of the mujahidin in the Sinai Peninsula and elsewhere. Terrorism does not include the extreme torture and degradation of Muslims in East Turkistan and Iran [by the rāfidah], as well as preventing them from receiving their most basic rights. Terrorism does not include the filling of prisons everywhere with Muslim captives. Terrorism does not include the waging of war against chastity and hijab (Muslim women’s clothing) in France and Tunis. It does not include the propagation of betrayal, prostitution, and adultery.

It sort of speaks for itself, in the “you call me a monster?  Look in the fucking mirror” vein that is rather hard to argue against when your leaders have just invaded multiple countries on flimsy pretext leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, minimum and the creation of millions of refugees, the vast majority of whom just happen to be Muslim. And when the leader of the “free” world brags about how great he is at killing, while he force feeds men who, in many cases, haven’t been convicted of a damn thing.

I despise everything ISIS stands for.  But it’s simply impossible to defend what the West has been doing to Muslims for the past 20 years, or to note that ISIS doesn’t exist as a force worth worrying about with George Bush’s illegal invasion of the Middle East.

You look back to the 50s and 60s, to Iraq and Iran, and you see states trying to be democratic, whose version of Islam is mild and moderating; whose women are becoming more and more free and educated (the same is generally true of Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Pakistan goes really off the rails when it starts being used as a throughfare for arms and money to Afghan Mujahadin.)

Prosperity, and democracy, and hope of a better future.  A belief in truly universal human rights, and that Muslims get to have elections and keep the results of them too.  Or that if they have democratic elections and do manage to keep the results (Iran), that they won’t be enbargoed so their children die due to lack of medicine.

If you won’t offer people freedom and prosperity and autonomy; if you won’t respect their democratic decision-making, why would you be surprised if, after bombing them into the ground, they become unpleasant people?  They are only learning the lessons you have taught them, that might makes right, that there are no “human rights” that apply to Muslims which aren’t bought at the end of a gun (perhaps there aren’t any for anyone, but there certainly aren’t for Muslims.)

Abu Bakr is Bush and Blair’s love child. He is the the great grandchild of the CIA spooks who overthrew democratic elections in the middle East.  He is the step-child of the Egyptian police state, which has proved over and over again that Islamists can”t take power peacefully, because the people with guns won’t allow it.  He is the grandchild of Madeline Albright, who throught that half a million Iraqi children were “worth it.”

An evil man, to be sure, Abu Bakr. But a man who does not exist absent the great and extended efforts of men who were, judged by the number of dead and wounded and dispossessed, even more evil than he.


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147 Comments

  1. Spot on, Ian. But looking into a mirror is an activity too many Americans — and others in the West — aren’t interested in doing.

    As I keep saying, someday, there will be a reckoning. And when it happens, millions of Americans will turn to each other with that familiar wail born of denial and willful ignorance, “Oh, why do they hate us?!”

  2. jcapan

    “As I keep saying, someday, there will be a reckoning. And when it happens, millions of Americans will turn to each other with that familiar wail born of denial and willful ignorance, ‘Oh, why do they hate us?!’”

    For their comeuppance to be just, they should turn on one another, practicing the violence they have waged on the world’s most vulnerable for generations.

  3. And this active wishing for a comeuppance on the clueless for their obliviousness is why y’all never win.

  4. jcapan

    Win what? The right to kill poor brown or yellow people, instead of the other evil warmongering mo-fos, so markets will stay friendly, goods will stay cheap, and big oil et al can stay in command. At all levels of American society, there is a complete lack of empathy for the 100s of 1000s of innocents we have murdered or left with butchering cunts for dictators over so many decades. Why I should have one iota of concern for their well-being when they clearly don’t give a shit about legions killed in their names…

  5. Ian Welsh

    A profoundly stupid, contemptuous and presumptuous statement Mandos. Pointing out the perfectly predictable consequences of policies (in advance as well as afterwards) doesn’t mean I want ISIS to do anything in particular.

    The win stuff is particular incoherent. Winning has nothing to do with anybody being nice in any particular way, or ISIS, the Taliban, the Tea Party, Assad, Putin and many others wouldn’t regularly win.

    I’m not in the active politics game any more. I just tell the truth, and people whine about it.

    Even if I was, your particular theory about losses would still be laughable. The only people sort of on the left who are winning anything on any sort of regular basis are the gays. No one else is.

  6. Celsius 233

    jcapan
    July 6, 2014
    Win what? The right to kill poor brown or yellow people, instead of the other evil warmongering mo-fos, so markets will stay friendly, goods will stay cheap, and big oil et al can stay in command. At all levels of American society, there is a complete lack of empathy for the 100s of 1000s of innocents we have murdered or left with butchering cunts for dictators over so many decades. Why I should have one iota of concern for their well-being when they clearly don’t give a shit about legions killed in their names…
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Damn well said! My sentiments exactly!

  7. jcapan

    C-233, ironically, I’ve made the counterargument on this very site numerous times, that there are those truly responsible and those who are largely innocent or ignorant. I don’t retract that argument, but the brainwashed partisan hypocrites in recent years, down with whatever their own vaunted leader wants to do, simply for the sake of tribal identity, has begun to bring me around.

  8. Celsius 233

    @ jcapan
    July 6, 2014

    I don’t post much anymore because I see it as pointless. There are no innocent’s. Last I checked, America is still a democracy, albeit a broken one, nothing happens without the consent of the people. Either by commission or omission…

  9. Celsius 233

    @ Ian
    Your second to last paragraph is the chicken come home to roost. Nice…

  10. Spinoza

    His statement is interesting. For a number of reasons. His putting Islam forward as the one ideology that will bring unity to people all over, which will solve the problems of poverty and suffering. The power of his doctrine lies in its moral force. ISIS commits brutal atrocities but its no worse then what the west does. What does the West offer now? Capitalism and violence. Wars without end. Extraction of all wealth. Corruption in everything, civil society, politics, daily life. The very death of the natural world….

    For nearly 70 years the great powers of the west did everything they could to destroy socialism in the world. They massacred the Left, the real revolutionary Left, and look what happened. The forces of reaction are powerful everywhere, from the Mid West to the Middle East. Latin America is holding out, flying the red flag proudly.

    Perhaps I’m just young and inexperienced but we can only fight. You’re doing well…telling the truth. Some preach the Gospel with words, others with action. All necessary in this eternal struggle.

  11. Ian,

    A profoundly stupid, contemptuous and presumptuous statement Mandos. Pointing out the perfectly predictable consequences of policies (in advance as well as afterwards) doesn’t mean I want ISIS to do anything in particular.

    I was not referring to you. Obviously, with half a brain, anyone can see that you’re not literally supporting ISIS.

    I was referring instead to jcapan,

    For their comeuppance to be just, they should turn on one another, practicing the violence they have waged on the world’s most vulnerable for generations.

    And jcapan’s hardly the only one to express this sentiment around here. There’s a nontrivial “comeuppance caucus” among “guns-and-butter” leftists, Not All Of Them, of course.

    Look: there are in fact a lot of clueless and oblivious people among Americans (and Westerners in general). There are a lot of people who just live their lives and believe what approved forms of authority tell them. This is true everywhere that isn’t an outright war zone! I have long doubted that, even figuratively, approaching and considering these people with a kind of generalized contempt is the answer (and I’m probably sometimes guilty of it).

    I think a lot went off the rails when that guy came up with that whole “authoritarian follower” meme. It’s satisfying, and probably even true. But I’m increasingly convinced that it’s not a sound basis for a political practice.

    If the gays are the only group that’s currently “winning”, it has at least in part to do with an effort to get the ordinary people on board. Which they do. The basic plea of the gay rights movement is that they’re just, well, Queer as Folk.

    The right is right about one thing: they too have contempt for the masses but they’re better at putting themselves in the shoes of the people just trying to get by. Even if it’s just to rob them. I’m sure it’s a useful talent for con artists.

  12. It seems relatively common when applied to the American far right.

  13. JustPlainDave

    I would caution that it’s important not to go overboard on idealized versions of the past. Reality is a lot less clear cut than the (for lack of a better word) “traditional” progressive narrative on Near Eastern political development.

    All of those governments (including Iran and Iraq) had very pronounced authoritarian tendencies. Yeah, there’s some truth to the notion they were trying to be more democratic, but this is not a clear cut case of a strong trend cruelly cut short by external forces – external drivers didn’t help, to be sure, but the notion that a lot of these were going to overcome internal contestation is pretty speculative. The issues they were dealing with were huge – those positive developments were happening only in the largest cities and they were sowing even then the societal cleavages that *internal* authoritarian actors were able to exploit so effectively later on.

    Similarly, the notion that the CIA wandered around downing governments at will is one that the early folks in CIA would love everyone to believe, but really their influence and success was a lot less in reality than the traditional narrative asserts. The most recent work on TP/AJAX sees profound disconnects between what Roosevelt (and a young agency that needed a success in the covert action field to justify its position) sold as history and what actually happened [it strikes me as being rather akin to hard core Petraeus-ites trying to take credit for creating the political developments that enabled the “surge” – they didn’t create it, they surfed off it and influenced it rather than directed it]. That AJAX “worked” was in very large part luck and due to indigenous actors.

  14. As I keep saying, someday, there will be a reckoning. And when it happens, millions of Americans will turn to each other with that familiar wail born of denial and willful ignorance, “Oh, why do they hate us?!”

    No there won’t be any reckoning so if you’re waiting for it with bated breath don’t hold that same breath, and no thanks, I won’t be reading what this fruitcake has written. He cannot tell me anything I don’t already know, but I can surely tell him something he doesn’t know and will never know. If there really is a him, and I’m not convinced there is.

    In fact, one could argue that the transcript was strategically prepared with the audience that frequents this space in mind, but certainly not for magnanimous reasons.

  15. At all levels of American society, there is a complete lack of empathy for the 100s of 1000s of innocents we have murdered or left with butchering cunts for dictators over so many decades. Why I should have one iota of concern for their well-being when they clearly don’t give a shit about legions killed in their names…

    Which is it? I, we or their? Are you the “we?” If so, are you saying you have no concern for yourself and will gladly walk to the gallows for the we (if you truly believe you are of the we) and sacrifice yourself to the ISIS leadership (or any other rebel group that at its heart wants the genocide of all Americans and even Westerners) for your (once again, if you consider yourself the we) lack of empathy?

    If so, have at it, but please don’t mind if I don’t care to join you. I have every much right to fight for my right to survive as the scumbag leader of ISIS regardless of his idealist strategized rhetoric. ISIS leaves you two options. One — surrender and be annihilated or two — annihilate before it annihilates you. Or, you can see it for what it really is. I leave what it really us up to your imagination.

  16. Brian M

    While I agree totally with Cold re: Islamic totalism, I might also note that the religion of the West, Mammonism, demands totalistic capitulation as well. That is the point Cold is missing.

    Cold has never been personally bombed or his family slaughtered by drones. Bully for him.

    But we cannot expect those who HAVE experienced this to not turn to horrific ideologies who seem successfully able to oppose Mammonism.

  17. Dan H

    Brian,

    Cold does not miss that as much as he believes the west deserves authority through superiority.

  18. amspirnational

    Holefield clarifies time and again that his problems with American imperialism are not so great that he wants the Empire dismantled. Or out of the Mideast. Or Europe. Or anywhere in particular.
    He would rather lie about the least little thing, hoping none catch his lies, or, rather, that he has a clever response ready to contextualize his lies with those he believes are telling other lies.
    He even tell unnecessary lies about ISIS…”surrender and be annihilated.”
    Actually it would be surrender, pay the dhimmi tax, don’t rock the boat, and live.

    It is not so fuzzy a picture if you are talking perfect justice, which is not practical to apply here but certainly not merely theoretical. If revenge attacks occur in the United States, clearly an individual who had opposed intervention in the Mideast would not deserve to be the victim, and an individual who was apathetic, or in favor of such would be less undeserving.
    Not that an ultimate imperialist-defender like Holefield really cares.

  19. different clue

    So the “caliph” of ISIS invokes American terror and aggression to justify his own terror and aggression? So what. Hitler invoked America’s dispossession of the Indians to justify the Drang Nach Osten and the quest for Lebensraum. S0 what.

    Let the “caliph” of ISIS tell it to ISIS’s targets and see if they feel better about it.

  20. Brian M

    One difference is the “caliph” finds recruits because of direct impacts on the populations he operates within.

    Hitler was not recruiting among American Indians.

    This is not even fully a “moral” issue. The psychopaths who run polities, be they states, tribes, drug gangs, or religious cults don’t typically care about morality per se. Or their morality allows them to simply other the “enemy” in pursuit of power and other aims.

    No, rather than a moral issue, this should be a “practical” issue: stop trying to run the world. Stop dropping bombs on civillian populations. Stop funding pet authoritarians.

  21. suckonthatcold

    People like Cold are complete imbeciles who believe in the impossible. No empire lasts forever, that is just a law of nature, and America, by consent of their population, has been ratfucking the world since WW2, and now many developing countries are coming into their own, and are going to take their piece of the pie, whether Americans like it or not. Our giant pie share is going to shrink, jobs are going to be replaced by artificial intelligence, including white collar jobs, and there is no plan in place to make sure this transition is smooth, and there’s not a damn thing psuedo intellectuals like Cold can do about it. Oh, and they know it too. They know their power is waning. In America, brown people like me ARE going to take your white privilege, and smash into a million pieces. Cold, whatcha going to do about that? Not a DAMN thing.

  22. Even our neoliberal overlords do not object to the downfall of the incumbent well-off working classes.

  23. In America, brown people like me ARE going to take your white privilege, and smash into a million pieces.

    Are you a TSA agent? If so, it’s already happening. White people are being accosted at airports all across America by authoritarian brown people in uniforms. The movie The Reader (recommended) comes to mind.

  24. No war lasts forever, but there are many cases where you will not live to see the end of it. For example England versus France with for 800 years. Now you may think you live so long, but almost all of the readers will not.

  25. Toni M

    I was born in Sarajevo five years before the civil war. My parents and I got out before the closed the airports. The Mujehedin who came to fight claimed to be protecting Muslims like my family, but had absolutely no respect for the local culture of tolerance and moderate Islam. They have been attempting, for the last twenty years, to radicalize and harden religious differences in a region that does not welcome twisted Arabic tradition masquerading as Islamic teaching. I have no sympathy for animals like Abu Bakr, because despite their claims they do not fight on behalf of the disenfranchised or the victims of violence.

    They certainly didn’t fight on behalf of Bosniaks when they were torching peaceful villages and performing atrocities to ‘avenge’ a people that they didn’t understand and a culture that they hated. These people will use any excuse to sate their lust for violence and their need for control.

    I understand that you are mainly focused on the atrocities committed by Western countries, and that is a laudable aim, but I wanted to give you a perspective from the side of the ‘victims’ they are claiming to represent.

  26. No war lasts forever

    But war does, or so it seems, it just keeps changing name plates.

    Now you may think you live so long, but almost all of the readers will not.

    It’s just around the corner, Stirling. Yes, you and I may be a little late to take advantage of it, but it may be available to the next generation, and of course, if and when that time comes, “to live” will have to be redefined.

    Will Kurzweil be right? Is immortality within the grasp of humanity? If it is, what a nightmare. Can you imagine the essence of Abu Bakr being uploaded onto a hard drive where he and his ilk can perpetually seek to establish a virtual caliphate of bits and bytes? See how that works? Technology is so far apace of social evolution, the implications are mind-boggling and frightening. Where once death was, amongst other things, a final and sure refuge if you could jettison the yoke of religion, it could be, in due time, just a transition from biological to electronic with the attendant social proclivities and the implications of those proclivities following Mankind into the silicon circuitry.

  27. madisolation

    @Celcius233

    “nothing happens without the consent of the people. Either by commission or omission…”

    Sort of damned if we do and damned if we don’t, huh? What does anything I’ve committed or omitted have to do with with the fact that Obama (for whom I did not vote, which would be a sin of omission, I guess) chooses to take the advice of Russophobes like ZBig or neocons like Kagan?
    Wake me when we start to beat up on the actual criminals.

  28. John

    Another view of this discussion may be had by reading Jay Hanson’s (of dieoff.org fame) essay, Overshoot Loop, Evolution Under the Maximum Power Principle, that was linked today via Naked Capitalism and The Automatic Earth.
    His basic view seems to explain what is going on regarding radical Islamists and almost any political actor, radical Capitalist and crazy Christians included. The actions seem predictable under his view of the mechanics of evolutionary biology and overshoot in biological systems. And no one gets to opt out of the craziness.
    The big question still remains, as someone posed, “Are humans smarter than yeast?”
    Or will humans turn the planet into a big, acidic, ruined bottle of wine, all piss and vinegar and dead? For humans, at least.

  29. different clue

    Western and Modern Industrial Civilization people tend to confuse WesterModern Industrial Civilization with human culture. Many non-Western peoples have shown themselves to be much smarter than yeast. Prior to Columbian Contact for example, many Indian Nations of the Amazon Basin were terraforming the Amazon to make it sustainably better for humans and nonhumans alike. We are beginning to discover and understand evidence of that fact.

    Maybe isolated groups of HandiCraft Smart Man will survive Industrial Yeast Man’s slide to the bottom of Hubbert’s Pit. If the Ituri Pigmies or the Alpaca herders along the shore of Lake Titicaca are the last human survivors on Earth, then the future of Humanity will be in their strong hands.

  30. Brian M

    One cannot dismiss what people with direct experience like Toni makes clear.

    It is the tragedy of our age that the only current alternatives to modern Mammonism seem to be particularly vicious religious nuts.

  31. anonone

    Or will humans turn the planet into a big, acidic, ruined bottle of wine, all piss and vinegar and dead? For humans, at least.

    Unfortunately, in the event of human extinction, the many poison pills we’ve created in the form of nuclear reactors will melt-down and poison the planet irrevocably for millions of years. Unless there are life forms that can quickly evolve to survive in a highly-radiated environment, it won’t be just us that will be doomed. It will be all of life on the planet.

    Fukushima alone might have already started the process….

  32. It seems that cold is just omniscient he’s also omnipotent. For example he brushed over one of my object lessons, obviously it doesn’t amuse him.

  33. Celsius 233

    madisolation
    July 8, 2014

    Wake me when we start to beat up on the actual criminals.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    There you go. And it is in the power of the people to do so; so, where the hell are they?
    Look around the planet, there’s a lot of rebellion going on. But not stateside…

  34. There you go. And it is in the power of the people to do so; so, where the hell are they?

    Some have run away to Thailand where anything goes, especially if you’re an expat. Go figure. America’s like the Hotel California, though — you can check out any time you like, and you and your ilk obviously have, but you can never leave.

    It’s why you have to keep checking back in. The allure and pull is too great — like a massive Black Hole. There’s no way to ignore it. It also explains why people keep Coming To America rather than leaving it. In fact, that’s the title of my next blog post — Coming To America. People loves them some Mammon and will risk life and limb to get it because Mammon is much more than White Privilege. Much, much more — but it will gladly have you believe it’s just that — and many do, and in doing so unwittingly serve Mammon further.

    Mammon’s got it all covered. Collapse won’t save you — it won’t save any of us, but Mammon will have you believe it will. Dmitry types his nocturnal emissions in zealous vain. The collapse will not be televised. It’s already happened and is happening — it’s like flowers growing — you can’t see it in real time, but by God, there’s a flower when just moments before there wasn’t one and you never saw it happen.

  35. It seems that cold is just omniscient he’s also omnipotent. For example he brushed over one of my object lessons, obviously it doesn’t amuse him.

    Stirling, my comment wasn’t a refutation of your bemusements, but rather an addendum. I look at all this as a group project where we collaborate like Howard Cosell and Al Michaels in calling the Monday Night Shadow Play on the cave wall.

    And you’re wrong, it does amuse me — all of it. Life is tragic comedy — increasingly so — and maybe that’s just me getting older but everything these days is ironic satire, or so it seems.

  36. markfromireland

    @ madisolation July 8, 2014

    Certainly damned if you don’t. Whether you like it or not a basic premise of democracy is that the citizenry are responsible for their government. They may or may not be culpable but they are responsible. Failure to act on this simple principle is to travel on the road to serfdom at ever increasing speed and with increasingly defective brakes. This failure of the overwhelming majority of Americans including apparently you is good evidence for the case made by oligarchs and technocrats in your ruling class who argue that serfdom is all that the overwhelming majority of American citizens again apparently including you are capable of.

    mfi

  37. markfromireland

    Mandos

    I think a lot went off the rails when that guy came up with that whole “authoritarian follower” meme. It’s satisfying, and probably even true. But I’m increasingly convinced that it’s not a sound basis for a political practice.

    It’s certainly true, scratch most Americans particularly “liberal” “progressive” or “socialist” Americans and you’ find a raving authoritarian underneath. This authoritarianism becomes pronounced when it comes to how America and American armed forces — including mercenaries, are allowed to behave towards non-Americans.

    mfi

  38. markfromireland

    Toni M’s point is an important one, there are barbarians on all sides.

    mfi

  39. markfromireland

    Finally and despite what the usual establishment apologists will try to tell you the fact is that the overwhelming majority of people in Irak, and Syria were far better off under the Ba’ath – monstrous though those governments were than they have been since.

    Under Saddam Irak had a superb health system which functioned right throughout the country, it had the best educational system in the Arab world, and members of the minorities and women had opportunities to educate and better themselves. They could also live their lives free from fear of being targeted for rape and despoliation simply for being members of the minority communities or women. The same applies to Syria.

    What they have now is so close to the Hobbesian state of nature as to be indistinguishable from it.

    In Iran since the revolution the living standard of the poorest in society has rocketed as has their access to education and healthcare. A fact usually ignored by Westerners is that the majority of Iranian university students are women. Nor although the female presence in such disciplines as bio-informatics is pronounced is this confined to the “hard sciences”.

    The fact is that Western intervention has consistently made life drastically worse for the inhabitants of the region and no amount apologetics or strawmen will alter that fact. The rise of fanatical Islamic military activism is a direct result of the actions of Western governments and of governments allied to them.

    mfi

  40. It’s certainly true, scratch most Americans particularly “liberal” “progressive” or “socialist” Americans and you’ find a raving authoritarian underneath. This authoritarianism becomes pronounced when it comes to how America and American armed forces — including mercenaries, are allowed to behave towards non-Americans.

    It might be true, but acting on directly on this knowledge is not useful. Holding up a mirror to people’s foibles just as often pushes them back into their comfortable shells, if you hold the mirror up in the wrong way. It’s not morally satisfying, but it is the way it is.

  41. cripes

    I think for anyone railing against the american people (the ubiquitous “we” or “they”) being complicit/responsible for imperial aggression, they should consider a few uncomfortable facts:

    Foreign entities including states (such as Israel) corporations and individuals have more influence on US policy than all the citizens of the US. Think supranational imperialist class in operation.

    The US is not a democracy and the preferences of its citizens have zero effect on policy, especially imperial wars, but also social security, health care, employment rights, etc. Even republican voters are consistently to the left of democratic party politicians on every issue. Except gay/abortion/creationism stuff.

    If anything is the “peoples” fault, it is, like the Jews in Germany, a failure to seize state power.

    By this measure, it makes no difference if you voted or not, if you wrote angry letters or stood on picket lines. It only matters you didnt stop the machine. You are as culpable as anyone else.

  42. cripes

    Having said that, i also agree diversity-addled liberals are the worst closet case toture worshipping, authoritarian sadists. They loveed the teevee show “24.” They suck.

  43. Spinoza

    Here’s a wonderful method to feel morally superior to everyone. Take the “brave” and daring and controversial position of damning regular working class or lower middle class Americans for the crimes of their government. Needless to say there’s no need to remind anyone of the so-called “Deep State”-that army of career bureaucrats and courtiers that do the business of actually running the government and setting state policy. I’ll take the influence of some asshole who was groomed for the civil service over some clown on tv that represents Nowhere, VA like where I live.

    Do the American people deserve blame for the state of affairs. Yes, surely. But do they also deserve to suffer? I would not wish pain on anyone but the powerful. Before anyone starts complaining about “Well Americans ARE the powerful when compared to such-and-such”, remember well that the Elite in the Republic of Such-and-such still live much grander lives than most Americans and most people around this website.

    Why must folks continue to try and outdo each other in violent denunciations of the common people? Again, I don’t think my fellow “citizens” are blameless, they are responsible for much evil by their ignorance and apathy.

    Also, why must liberals be thrown under the bus? If the liberals are really as authoritarian as assumed then doesn’t that mean they are not liberal-but hypocrites?

  44. cripes

    @Spinoza

    Agree that blaming the plebians for the crimes of the Caesars, or the slaves for the crimes of the plantation masters is well, crap.

    But you have a higher opinion of liberals than I. Liberals have long provided ideological cover for the crimes of empire. I dunno, Wilson? Kennedy? Johnson? Disraeli?

  45. Brian M

    Cripes; Jeez. I thought I was a doom and gloomer. (Hence the regular visits here) You make most of seem like Little Mary Sunshines.

    Since we are ALL GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY….mass suicide seems the only answer!

    You go first.

  46. Celsius 233

    @ cripes
    July 9, 2014
    @Spinoza
    Agree that blaming the plebians for the crimes of the Caesars, or the slaves for the crimes of the plantation masters is well, crap.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Who’s blaming the plebeians for *for the crimes*? Now that’s crap!
    I’m blaming them for continuing to allow the crimes.
    MFI is one of the few who *gets* it, fuck all…

  47. Brian M

    MFI for the win!

  48. cripes

    c’mon, everyone, is this a deliberate effort to seem dense, and not “get” a rather simple point? You may agree or not, but have the civility to read and understand what I am saying. And respond like adults.

    In response to comments above (Celsuis and others) I make the indisputable point(s) that:

    The american people have zero influence on policy, especially imperial wars
    Foreign countries, corporations and individuals have more direct influence on US government policy than US citizens.
    Corporations, which function like foreign, hostile, countries–ditto.

    “a basic premise of democracy is that the citizenry are responsible for their government. ”

    Really? You have to fall for the fiction that this is a “democracy” for that to have any bearing on our current situation. Seriously, the US government was always designed to be a “democracy” of Oligarchs, now more than ever. Do try to keep up.

    If Celsius blames Plebians “for continuing to allow the crimes.” I’d like to know what class he puts himself in, and how he’s exempt from responsibility here. Let me know when you “stop allowing” so I can come to watch you work your magic.

    Seems like the people saying that the “people” are “responsible” for crimes of the capitalist state (not your fictional democracy) never seem to think they’re responsible, too.

    Why is that?

  49. Ian Welsh

    Those aren’t indisputable points. I don’t intend to argue it out (I’ve written the articles in the past), simply to note that saying it’s indisputable does not make it so.

    Nor do those who make that accusation usually think they don’t bear some responsibility. Noam Chomsky, to use a prominent example, certainly does so.

    Nor does it seem that everyone is against you, many agree, as they always do, that American citizens have no responsibility that it’s all the elites fault and nothing the citizenry could ever have done would ever have made a difference.

    Ever.

    Rest assured, you stand with the majority of American on the left on this issue.

  50. cripes

    Seriously, this spurious idea that the people are to “blame” by “allowing” imperial crimes serves no purpose other than to deflect responsibility from the actors behind the crimes. The tiny, powerful, manipulative criminal class that runs this and many other countries (see what happens when Venezuela or Cuba try to buck this system) are directly responsible. The issue is whether the “people” can build institutions capable of challenging the power of the oligarchs, period.

    Goering said it years ago, and Machievelli and others before him: “Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America nor, for that matter, in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship”

    You’re buying into their deceit and fictions.

  51. Celsius 233

    @ cripes
    July 10, 2014

    Okay, stop talking and think about it. I’m one of the plebeians and my *action* is simple; I have withdrawn all, all, material support from the U.S..
    You figure it out as I have and I’m not giving any details for my own protection.
    But, I’ll say this (I agree Ian), most Americans wouldn’t take the steps I have to withdraw all support from policies I cannot support. I’m a grumpy fuck because I’m sick of all the bullshit and blah, blah, blah; do something goddamn it!
    And posting is not action…

  52. Celsius 233

    Addendum: What Ian is doing is action, information (accurate information) garnered from hard research and study. Putting out truth to power about governments and their lying, cheating, torture, spying, and stealing the common.

  53. cripes

    Ian:

    I don’t think everyone is against me, I am replying to those that replied to me above.

    If Celsius or others are ready to blame common people for “allowing” crimes of state, he should state where his responsibility lies here.

    I’m not talking with Noam Chomsky.

    I think the facts I stated are indisputable. A recent Princeton U study seems to establish the accuracy of this.

    “Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. ”

    see: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

    Eric Zuess, writing in Counterpunch, isn’t surprised by the survey’s results.

    “American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it’s pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation’s “news” media),” he writes. “The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious ‘electoral’ ‘democratic’ countries. We weren’t formerly, but we clearly are now.”

    Celsius and markofireland, both of whom I like in many things, are operating on the ridiculous idea we are living in some sort of “democracy” or representative electoral system. We. Are. Not. You never had a choice.

    As Goering said, “the common people don’t want war (insert austerity, mass incarceration, etc)…that is understood.” As I said, the only issue is whether people can build institutions capable of challenging the dictatorship of the capitalist oligarchs, full stop.

  54. Celsius 233

    But, I’ll say this (I agree Ian), most Americans wouldn’t take the steps I have to withdraw all support from policies I cannot support.
    Make that: But, I’ll say this (I agree Ian), most Americans wouldn’t take the steps I have to withdraw all support from my government and its policies that I cannot support.

  55. Ian Welsh

    I’ve read the studies. What they state is true, but doesn’t answer:

    1) how we got here from not-here

    2) why Americans don’t take actions to hold their elites to account which would be effective.

    “We cant’ be assed to control the primary system, to do effective strikes, to refuse to serve in the military (in fact the military has the highest approval rating of all US insitutions, which tells you what ordinary Americans think.) “we buy your goods from evil people even when we have other options”. Etc… Yes, if you don’t take effective action to control politics, those who do will have measurably more impact than you.

    Imagine that.

    Now, you can make an argument that the control mechanisms are so clamped down that effective resistance is impossible EVEN if Americans wanted to, but that requires an actual argument.

    The evidence is that if right wing Americans want to influence one of the two main American political parties, they can do so very effectively. So why can’t left-wingers?

    It could be, as some have argued, that Americans simply don’t agree with left wingers (they agree on many policies, but don’t consider themselves left wing). It could be that the Tea Party has enough institutional backing to make the difference (institutional dems have vastly MORE money, though). It could be other things.

    But it’s not beyond argument that ordinary Americans couldn’t affect things if they actually were willing to do those things that would have an effect.

    What does even less good than writing articles is having an opinion in an opinion poll.

    I don’t think I’ll write more on this, you can argue it out in comments if you wish. I’ve written multiple articles on this issue, some google searches should get you them if you care.

    People who admit no responsibility, admit no power to change anything. You’re consistent in that.

  56. cripes

    Ok, Celsius, I’ll bite. Tell me how someone withdraws all support from the system, stays out of jail, and still manages to live and eat. I’m all ears. Skip the personal details for your own protection. Remember, most people can’t. They have children, wives, ailing parents, chronic diseases, no way to start life over. A few can grow bud in Humboldt county and come down for supplies, live in squats, panhandle and ride the trains. Still there’s that pesky jail thing, and a shrinking commons, so that won’t do for most and won’t last long.

    But I should head to bed soon, so I can go to my plebian job and avoid homelessness.

    I appreciate the conversation and offer all my comments in good spirits. We can oppose the idea and respect the person.

  57. Dan H

    Stockholm Syndrome is an ugly thing to behold.

  58. cripes

    Ian, I’m sorry, but you misrepresent me. I didn’t even suggest that I or other commoners have no responsibility, or no (potential) power. I have done many things in my life to further that cause, and have scars to remind me.

    What I said is the only issue is whether common people can build institutions capable of challenging the power of an entrenched, international, armed-to-the-teeth oligarchy.

    Living off the grid, or buying green, may give those able a sense of moral purity, but doesn’t challenge much.

  59. cripes

    Oh, and Dan, blaming your cellmate because he “allowed” your captors to mistreat you isn’t too attractive, either. And that, to me, is exactly what this argument sounds like–a shifty way of placing yourself out of the range of responsibility for failing to change the world.

  60. Celsius 233

    @ Dan H
    July 10, 2014
    Stockholm Syndrome is an ugly thing to behold.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Ain’t it though…

  61. I think these are two awful flavours that taste awful together — it is, as so many things are, a false dichotomy. The American voter *is* responsible, in a narrow but important sense, for what has proceeded. But it is partly because “the worst are full of passionate intensity”, the “left” or “progressives” or whatever have never managed to sell their agenda to a large portion of the population, who even, as Chomsky never tires of pointing out, might actually mostly already agree. That too is not actually a contradiction.

    But the right has very much managed to convince a bunch of white retirees and “local notables” that their local positions are threatened: “Get the government out of my medicare.” These people have a reason to care: they worship the State as theirs, in its incarnation of the military and police. But the Government belongs to Those People.

  62. Celsius 233

    @ Mandos

    http://www.theautomaticearth.com/debt-rattle-jul-7-2014-overshoot-loop/

    This covers it quite well, IMO:

    Jay Hanson: I have been forced to review the key lessons that I have learned concerning human nature and collapse over the last 20 years. Our collective behavior is the problem that must be overcome before anything can be done to mitigate the coming global social collapse. The single most-important lesson for me was that we cannot re-wire (literally, because thought is physical) our basic political agendas through reading or discussion alone. Moreover, since our thoughts are subject to physical law, we do not have the free-will to either think or behave autonomously.
    We swim in “politics” like fish swim in water; it’s everywhere, but we can’t see it!

    More at the link and for the most part I agree with Hanson plus or minus a few caveats.

  63. I reserve judgement on the rest of Hanson’s “take”, but the part about swimming in politics rings very true. A great many lefties, particularly of the variety that I’ve taken to calling “guns-and-butter” progressives, are enthusiastic policy wants. Policy is what they want to do. Policy is what they want to change. Policy is what they think is important.

    Politics, on the other hand, is a dirty thing for many. This is a mistake. The reality is that politics is what primarily is done, and primarily matters. Policy is at best a kind of by-product or effluent of politics. Actually worse: politics can exist happily without producing policy for a long time. The problem is that politics is not optional: you can’t not “play” it, and you can’t accomplish policy by withdrawing from it, but you can’t play it under the explicit expectation that there will be some point at which good policy will emerge. It may, it may not, but it won’t ever without politics.

    A lot of guns-and-butterists, the more apocalyptic ones at least, like to talk about thermodynamics as eventually trumping these piddling political games, because the former is “real” and the latter an artifice. They’re wrong. Thermodynamics may (will) kill us all (somehow), but politics is also a force of nature in some sense.

  64. “enthusiastic policy wonks”, I should have said. (sigh)

  65. Dan H

    “A lot of guns-and-butterists, the more apocalyptic ones at least, like to talk about thermodynamics as eventually trumping these piddling political games, because the former is “real” and the latter an artifice. They’re wrong. Thermodynamics may (will) kill us all (somehow), but politics is also a force of nature in some sense.”

    And you like to peddle a sort of relativism that flies in the face of biology. You did this a while back in the identity politics discussion with a comment along the lines of guns n butter progs refusing to acknowledge blacks having a significant difference in common with other blacks. Here it is again. Youre half admitting to physical limitations while still pimping your pet issues. The “guns n butter” point is that any difference existing between races is trumped by the massive similarities between them, and thus harping on the typical identity politics talking points is actually divisive. We all need to eat, sleep, and shit. Every day, rain or shine. There is a hierarchy inherent to the human experience.

  66. And you like to peddle a sort of relativism that flies in the face of biology. You did this a while back in the identity politics discussion with a comment along the lines of guns n butter progs refusing to acknowledge blacks having a significant difference in common with other blacks. Here it is again. Youre half admitting to physical limitations while still pimping your pet issues.

    I’m not “half-admitting” anything. I am admitting to “physical” limitations quite happily, while suggesting that other limitations-deemed-nonphysical get short shrift.

    The “guns n butter” point is that any difference existing between races is trumped by the massive similarities between them, and thus harping on the typical identity politics talking points is actually divisive. We all need to eat, sleep, and shit. Every day, rain or shine. There is a hierarchy inherent to the human experience.

    If that were the only point—that we’re all human—raised by the guns’n’butterists there would be no disagreement. But we’re not all *just* human, and people have a way of making the “unnecessary” and “artificial” things matter. What you’re pleading for is unilateral disarmament with no guarantee of cession of hostilities.

  67. cripes

    @Mandos

    Precisely. Much of what passes for the “left” spends their time debating which humanitarian intervention to support or how to rejigger criminal laws to target men instead of women for transactional sex and so forth.

    There is a groundswell of dissatisfaction and rage seeking an outlet that right-wing faux populism is moving to co-op. So Rand Paul becomes their voice.

    Failing to sell our agenda to a population that already mostly agrees, we end up saying things like “I withdraw my support” to the government instead.

  68. Dan H

    Well, then,I I dint know who the “guns n butter” progs are.

  69. And people wonder how genocides are possible. They start many years in advance as dispersed seeds like we’re seeing at this space. This talk of “we” is a set-up for the Small People to, once again, take the fall when and if that time comes, and the apparent wish of many here appears to be that time can’t come fast enough.

    To be called an “American” is quickly becoming every much the pejorative “Jew” was for centuries. And if you’re a Jew and an American, well, God help you if these people have their way — the gas chambers and crematoriums will seem like a vacation in Aruba in comparison to what they have in store.

  70. Brian M

    As the American machine tramples the earth, Cold worries that Americans are in fact the REAL victims.

    In the real world, Cold, who will be operating the “gas chambers”? Who still has the biggest guns?

  71. Cold worries

    Not a chance. I don’t worry at all. Just observe and postulate. I’ve graduated from the worrying phase. Never again.

  72. Who still has the biggest guns?

    Russia since it has more nukes than America. I think nukes suffice for biggest guns, don’t you?

  73. truthbetold

    Cold Holefieldmorrocobamaetc

    believes it’s all a group game, commenting, so why point out his periodic transparent lies?
    they are all designed to bolster the “American imperialism is flawed but must be maintained
    to avoid a multipolar world which would be much much worse” line.

    here the lie is

    America’s like the Hotel California, though — you can check out any time you like, and you and your ilk obviously have, but you can never leave.

    It’s why you have to keep checking back in. The allure and pull is too great — like a massive Black Hole. There’s no way to ignore it. It also explains why people keep Coming To America rather than leaving it.

    Firstly, not a few come to America, discover either that it’s much less easy than it used to be to acheive the Dream, and leave.
    Then there are the considerable who come, find the Dream wasn’t worth the culture-draining
    rat race required to get it, and leave.
    Then there are the expatriates who de-Americanize themselves quite well, thank you.
    There are even the Inner Expatriates who are part of a quietist and-or not so ultimately quietist
    revolutionary core.

  74. I was particularly curious about these statements by Ian:

    What they [studies about actual rule in the US] state is true, but doesn’t answer:

    1) how we got here from not-here

    2) why Americans don’t take actions to hold their elites to account which would be effective.

    First, has there ever been a period when an oligarchy has not ruled the United States? Is it even possible to conceive of non-oligarchic popular rule under the Constitution as written and interpreted over the generations, especially as it is being interpreted by the current SCOTUS majority?

    In other words, has there ever been a “not-here?”

    The Populist movement came closest to overcoming the oligarchic rule of the latter 19th century, and it was crushed — in some instances, quite violently — but the populace was mollified somewhat by the oligarchy’s own Progressive movement which many liberals still look back on with longing, awe and wonder. But the Progressives served the oligarchy no less than the current setup does.

    Second, what actions could Americans legitimately take within the governmental system as it is to “hold their elites to account?” There are various pressure points, to be sure, and it is possible now and then for popular clamor to penetrate the hermetic seals around our rulers, but as an ordinary thing, the People go unheard and unheeded. That’s by system design and very long practice.

    The only times that has changed have been when a significant and influential element within the elites and oligarchy allows and requires accountability from their peers. The People don’t usually have a say in it, any more than the British common people had a say in their elite’s behavior during the hey-day of the Empire.

    As for Chomsky, his argument was that the elites and those who are privileged within the system as it is (such as intellectuals like him) are the ones with the responsibility for what happens to a far, far greater extent than the common people — who don’t have that privilege or status.

  75. Dan H

    Well, since you seem to have declined the opportunity to offer, Mandos, I will explicitly ask. Can you provide some substantive precision re the “guns n butter progressives” trope you keep pushing?

  76. I didn’t decline anything! It’s hardly been a day! I have a life off the internet, you know. But of course I’m not obliged to bow before your demands for definitions. I’m tempted to say, “you know who you are.” But anyway, I will foolishly rush in where angels fear to tread for your entertainment.

    I mean: the sort of people who frequent Ian’s comment section and other web sites who are all about the harsh moral judgement and Cold Hard Survival Logix. The sort of people who, when presented with a world in which most of the human race doesn’t behave rationally in the sense of some grand order of species survival, are tempted to try to impose a hierarchy of human needs as a kind of political rubric or a criterion over and above the observed, actually existing determiners of political performance.

    The folks who think of themselves as unheard Cassandras, who find themselves nodding when, I don’t know, the Black Agenda Report writes another article about how Obama has betrayed the ordinary black American, and shake their heads over the fact that both blacks and white liberals feel proud they voted for the first black President. The people who are probably “right” but are only willing to go so far as to put the voter under the microscope rather than try to imagine themselves in their shoes.

    That sort of people. There seem to be not a few of them? It’s hard to keep track.

    There’s a thing I keep coming back to, that dates from when Obamacare was being hotly debated. Obamacare, as I recall, was partly driven by a lot of focus-groupy things, which used measures that sounded like silly Hallmark greeting cards. And I vaguely remember a certain amount of derision from the crowd who thought/think that the USA would just steamroller over its gargantuan private health insurance industry and establish single payer in one swell foop. I guess some people just aren’t willing to face the reality: that the feelings of their fellow-citizens might be adequately described by things that sound like Oprah segment titles or Hallmark greeting cards, and that this just a neutral fact about the world.

    Cassandra was cursed by Apollo never to be believed for refusing Apollo’s advances. Which being did the guns’n’butterists repudiate?

  77. Dan H

    I cant find any consistency to what you say, other than the earlier noted relativist bent that keeps you the constant contrarian. More fool I for engaging.

  78. cripes

    @Che Pasa
    “I was particularly curious about these statements by Ian:”

    Yes, I noticed there was a large dollop of unproven assumptions in that. When has this empire ever been other than a dictatorship of oligarchs and what actions does he propose the “people” take that they have not tried? If I recall, every genuinely populist, pro-labor, anti-imperialist movement in this country–and there have been a few–have been co-opted, mercilessly smashed, or both.

    Really, we’re talking the difference between politics and Clauswitz’s other means. I sure wish Joe six-pack and Wanda the waitress would get it together.

  79. Ian Welsh

    Again, I’ve written many pieces about this. Google is your friend. I notice also the common assumption that a blog post or a comment should cover every single argument, with footnotes, which is not possible.

    More interesting to me continues to be how many on the left will go to virtually any lengths to deny any responsibility for virtually anything.

    If you have no responsibility, you have no power and you can make no change. Curl up, and die.

  80. Trixie

    “…but that requires an actual argument.

    If you want to nit-pick, you’ll find fault with anything. That’s your problem: picking nits. By the way, did I ever tell you about the time…oh, never mind.

    Also, hi!

    (waves flag)

  81. Celsius 233

    More interesting to me continues to be how many on the left will go to virtually any lengths to deny any responsibility for virtually anything.
    If you have no responsibility, you have no power and you can make no change. Curl up, and die. Ian
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Ain’t it so, ain’t it so. Cripes just oozes helplessness…

  82. I cant find any consistency to what you say, other than the earlier noted relativist bent that keeps you the constant contrarian. More fool I for engaging.

    Well I guess there’s just no pleasing you. You asked that I describe the ideology, so I did. And all I got for it was the “relativist” boogey-word.

  83. If you have no responsibility, you have no power and you can make no change. Curl up, and die. Ian

    You can’t make yourself responsible for something for which you are not responsible. That’s the essence of being an aplogist and it’s tantamount to a false confession which is more common than many perceive.

    Informational awareness, with the advent of the internet, is at an all-time high and yet the plot of carnage thickens, or so it seems. Meaning, all this information is not only useless, but it may be a hindrance to effective change because its immense power can be and is co-opted by the very forces that deplore any form of change. The status quo of power must remain unchecked in perpetuity so any notion of dissent is usurped in the womb before it develops, or better yet, it’s artificially inseminated and implanted in the womb so said dissent is the containable brainchild of the focus of that dissent.

    Most people who think they are activating and resisting, whether it be in word, deed or spirit, are chumps who will never know it because the mechanism described above plays on the ego.


    An Indecent Proposal

    Try to be independent. You’ll get my fate. Tell me that’s not the mechanism I’ve described above. Even if my attackers don’t work for The Man, The Man uses them to destroy their own heretofore healthy tissue and organs — like an auto-immune disease.

  84. I sure wish Joe six-pack and Wanda the waitress would get it together.

    What about all the Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Africans who are legal U.S. citizens? They’re often left out of this big L Left versus little l left argument, but they’re every bit “American” as all the rest. The hypocrisy of this purposeful oversight is stark. At its core, it’s racist as is Liberal Apologia (voting for Obama because he’s Black). Ethnic minorities are like pets to the Left and left; they’re nice to have around but they’re never really equal except in word only. Gender minorities, on the other hand, are a goal and right of passage to the Left and left. If it’s not there yet, it soon will be; where it’s to your power advantage to be considered LGBT. So it is with any special interest designation. You want to change the world, become LGBT. It’s the responsible thing to do because then your voice will have access to power and you can finally make a difference and in doing so make yourself responsible.

  85. Again, I’ve written many pieces about this. Google is your friend. I notice also the common assumption that a blog post or a comment should cover every single argument, with footnotes, which is not possible.

    More interesting to me continues to be how many on the left will go to virtually any lengths to deny any responsibility for virtually anything.

    If you have no responsibility, you have no power and you can make no change. Curl up, and die

    Again, your arguments would be stronger if they were true.

  86. Brian M

    I have kind of an spoiled, oily taste in my mouth right now. I mistakenly read the comments in Cold’s link. I won’t do that again.

    As for his LGBT comment. Whatever. It’s a pretty narrow fragment of the world where it makes any sense at all. What is his solution to this problem? Black shirted violence until the “queers” all crawl back in the closet and the real work, purifying the Master Race, can begin in earnest?

  87. Brian M is a case in point about the destructive ineffectiveness of the Left and left. He’s a militant who seeks not a greater understanding and truth, but instead lives to fight and argue because that is what defines his existence. Without it he would be dead for all practical purposes. In pursuit of his addiction, he carts around a wagon full of Strawman he keeps replenished as he plants them everywhere and anywhere like a virtual Johnny Appleseed.

  88. Brian M

    Read the comments at your link, Cold. No straw manning needed. Sometimes nonsense is nonsense. Gay people are taking over the world. Leftists rule everywhere. The dusky hordes are coming for us, the pure white race.

    Reassure yourself that you are the voice of truth and reason. We will point and laugh.

    What’s next…Stormfront?

  89. Formerly T-Bear

    Brian M on July11, 2014

    I am amazed, in shock and in awe that you’ve entered that universe of cheeto-dust. Admiration for the courage. It’s easier just to elide, elide, or elide, abridgment is your friend. No need to feed the dark dwellers from under bridges or rocky caves. Notice how some subjects are repellent to such creatures such as the later posting about bookstores, like garlic and vampires it would appear.

  90. Notice how some subjects are repellent to such creatures such as the later posting about bookstores, like garlic and vampires it would appear.

    I find the discussion as it’s proceeded related to bookstores to be shallow and misguided. It seems obvious to me why bookstores are going the way of the dodo bird, and it has nothing to do with what Ian mentioned. It has to do with attention spans. Most people don’t buy books these days to read them but rather to say they’ve read them. There’s too little time for in-depth reading these days. It’s all Evelyn Wood skimming of huge swaths of repetitive nonsense.

    But I will say, if you’re representative of well-read, and I think you are, you’re the poster child of impotency. Because you’re there, immersed in your world of books, you can’t be here wherever here is. Books take you away and if you read beyond moderation you don’t return — to here. Not to mention, well-read peeps like yourself, or autodidacts as you like to refer to yourselves as, wear that reading like a red badge of courage as opposed to the refuge that it is.

    As well, if you’re reading beyond moderation, you’re not thinking for yourself, but rather you’re assimilating already predigested thoughts. Meaning, someone else has done the thinking for you — kind of like buying jarred or canned applesauce rather than cultivating an apple tree in your back yard and picking the fruit from it when it’s ripe and eating it yourself.

    But don’t let me stop your obsession — I’m sure if you keep reading incessantly you’ll eventually figure it all out, if you already haven’t, before you pass from this mortal coil, and maybe even you’ll provide the solution if only you can reach across the divide you’ve created to implement it effectively.


    They wrote this for you.

  91. cripes

    Jesus, i go away a couple of days and find more straw man misrepresentations and personal slurs. Ian, included. “Take no responsibility” “curl up and die”

    Whats wrong with you?

    Heaping blame on the commoners for failing to follow the feeble left intelligensia is hardly courageous or responsible. Maybe its your intelligentsia that fails to lead? Lenin, I think wrote about this phenomenon with scorn.

    If ya’ll feel better lobbing insults and knocking down strawmen in your little echo-chamber, blame yo’selves. As far as reposibility (a mealy, blame shifting word) and power, i was, repeatedly clear: The main question is can working people build institutions capable of challenging oligarchic dictatorship?

  92. Leaving aside the thorny issue of the Official Laying of Blame for everything that has gone wrong, I can only agree with the implication of this rhetorical questions:

    Maybe its your intelligentsia that fails to lead? Lenin, I think wrote about this phenomenon with scorn.

    The question always then turns to “which intelligentsia?” Which is actually the rock on which the whole discussion founders, generally turning to the failures of the Obama-supporting soft-liberals, rather than the inability of the, hmm, “hard left” or “guns’n’butterists” or “serious progressives” or whatever one wishes to call them to make any headway. (People will go so far as to blame a combination of thermodynamics and evolution, apparently, when the question is asked.)

  93. cripes

    Thanks Mandos, for reasoned discussion and engaging the topic. Looking back on the comments, I still can’t believe the vituperation directed against common people and anyone who dares to question the wisdom of it. In addition to wishing for their comeuppance there is the laughable premise that lies at the heart of their, well, argument:

    “Last I checked, America is still a democracy, albeit a broken one, nothing happens without the consent of the people.”

    I have to wonder what the serious pwogwessives think will happen to them when the commoners get their richly deserved comeuppance? It strikes me they are operating under the stale assumption that US capitalism is operating as a national enterprise, extracting colonial wealth to the benefit of a privileged labor class. That’s so 19th century it’s kind of nostalgic. You know, coal miners in Cornwall should pay with their blood for the crimes of British Empire in India kind of thing.

    There is still a residual advantage of citizenship in the old industrial economies, but Capital now is internationalist if it’s anything, deploying resources across borders without restriction and parasitically using American armaments and bodies as mercenaries, while depleting the economy of the host. If only the Left was more internationalist.

    Of course, having decimated the Left in North America and Europe, there is a resurgence of the right globally, Europe included. I guess we’ll have to add Europe’s struggling workers to the list of those who must pay for the crimes of Empire. Oh yeah, they already are.

    That’s the shame in periods of economic crisis, the fake populism of the right steps in to assume leadership of the unemployed masses. Failure of leadership?

  94. Ian Welsh

    When someone states outright that their argument is beyond question, people tend to react to that.

    And that is before we come to the fact that this responsibility is for the deaths of at least hundreds of thousand of people and you are saying that a large number of people have NO responsibility for that whom other people think do.

    Go to Iraq and try out that argument. I doubt you’d make it back to the US alive.

  95. ks

    Not this “debate” again. Okay, let’s stipulate a couple of things. One, we Americans are responsible for the government we have and two, your average coal miner in West Virgina has little, if any, direct control or responsibility over or for the actions of the empire.

    But really, so the F… what!? This entire debate misses a gigantic point and is a good example of the internet meme of “First World Problems”. We have the luxury of this debate which is really just a way for us to score empty rhetorical points against each other. The point that is missed is that why should the victims of our policies care about this debate and how we parse blame amongst ourselves?

    If I’m an Afghani burying my relatives because somebody sitting at a console in VA. or NV. made an “oopsie”, I should care that somebody is taking in the shorts in Appalachia or the ‘hood from the empire because…what? We’re all in it together? Well maybe from our perspective but damn sure not likely from theirs.

  96. Celsius 233

    @ ks
    July 13, 2014

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    As with so many, you manage to completely miss the point.

  97. ks

    Celsius 233,

    No, I’m not missing the point at all. What I’m saying is that whether one withdraws their support from the empire or whether one hold average joes/janes relatively blameless for the actions of the empire is really besides the point. Sure, intellectual posturing and naval gazing is always fun but the pov that should matter is that of the Iraqi or Afghani examples I an and I mentioned above.

    Yeah, yeah, you withdrew your support and cripes average joe is just trying to make it day to day. Nice. You both get a point. So what.

  98. Celsius 233

    @ ks

    This comes to mind, an iteration of Matthew 7:6;
    “Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.”

  99. ks

    Celsius 233,

    Seriously? I get your stance and honestly don’t disagree that much but, goodness gracious are you proving cripes and Mandos’s key points.

  100. I for one am perfectly happy with the Laying of Blame. It can be a fun exercise, for particular values of fun. Might even be a useful exercise. But I am just interested in seeing the blame fairly distributed.

  101. By which I mean (I suppose I should clarify in light of the context) that unlike cripes I’m happy to assign blame to the ordinary American voter. For me the questions have been, which voter? and what is the blame-assignment function? and so on, and what I disagree with are the answers implied by the contributions of some of Ian’s regular commentariat membership. I think the answers to the Blame Questions lie much more (uncomfortably?) within the worldview of the weakling run-of-the-mill American liberal than many here would be willing to admit: the standard boogeymen of Tea Party voters, cranky old men, etc.

    Then there is the blame to be assigned for those who apparently know better, but do not appear able to change the situation…

  102. Celsius 233

    @ Mandos

    I think the answers to the Blame Questions lie much more (uncomfortably?) within the worldview of the weakling run-of-the-mill American liberal than many here would be willing to admit: the standard boogeymen of Tea Party voters, cranky old men, etc.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    I would suggest the failure does not reside in identity politics (an obvious trap to dis-unite), but rather across the board. I’m a cranky old man (70) and lay the blame on every voting age citizen who has not gone-to-the-street when they have seen their vote go to the galoots running this government, who then wantonly vote against their wishes/mandates (though mandates are far and few).
    And therein lies the failure of the governed to hold the governer’s accountable.
    It’s not really that complicated; but all energy is spent to obfuscate, outright lie, manipulate, and use jingoistic patriotism to keep the war machine/propaganda machine steaming along full speed ahead.
    If y’all (I’m long gone) can’t figure that one out, well, kiss your ass a serf in neo-serfdom, aka paid slave.

  103. markfromireland

    I’ve enjoyed watching the usual suspects make the usual excuses. Ducking, twisting, weaving, doing anything rather than accept either reality or responsibility. A few gentle reminders:

    Government or rule to be somewhat accurate is only possible with, at the very least, the acquiescence of the ruled. Ruling a population becomes easier as you go up the scale:

    acquiescence → reluctant or forced consent → willing consent → collaboration → cooperation → willing participation → partnership

    Telling lies to yourself as you pretend that an increasingly supine citizenry do not bear responsibility for their actions and inactions will get you nowhere . The reason why your ruling class is a ruling class is because your citizenry choose to let them get away with it.

    American self-styled ‘progressives’ need to get to grips with why despite the fact that their opponents — the American radical right, have repeatedly proved themselves to be incompetent, incoherent, corrupt, and deeply and profoundly unlikable, the American electorate and the citizenry at large prefer them to the American so-called left. Endless excuses are advanced but the simple fact is that when Americans see the ‘left’ as it is now constituted and compare it to the incompetent, incoherent, corrupt, and deeply and profoundly unlikable extreme right that now dominates your political discourse and system they choose the incompetent, incoherent, corrupt, and deeply and profoundly unlikable extreme right as being the lesser of two evils. It never seems to occur to American ‘progressives’ and ‘leftists’ that they are to use an internet catch phrase “doin’ it wrong”. As so many commenters here proved repeatedly with eloquence and conviction they will do anything, anything rather than accept responsibility and work effectively to effect change. It’s your enemies’ greatest weapon and you hand it to them freely.

    mfi

  104. markfromireland

    Ian you might want to think about getting a new WordPress template. This one seems to have some sort of nervous breakdown once the number of comments exceeds 100. There are lots of very good templates available free gratis and for nothing from WordPress.org.

    mfi

  105. ks

    mfi,

    “American self-styled ‘progressives’ need to get to grips with why despite the fact that their opponents — the American radical right, have repeatedly proved themselves to be incompetent, incoherent, corrupt, and deeply and profoundly unlikable, the American electorate and the citizenry at large prefer them to the American so-called left.”

    I agree with your main point but, the above is not really true in terms of electoral preference. On the federal level, Romney and McCain lost, Bush won twice through pretty blatant chicanery and a very dubious Supreme Court decision and Clinton won twice. Overall, whether Democratic or Republican, they all are/were a bad lot but the last really rightwing POTUS elected was Reagan. The Senate has been a stalemate though it currently leans Democratic, the House has swung back and forth and is now Republican controlled.
    The radical right has done very well at the state level but, even then, it’s a mixed bag. Where they have really done the best is in the all important media/propaganda war.

  106. MFI: you know, I entirely agree with you: the American electorate prefers the nutty right, and progressive movements have themselves to blame for it. “ur doin it wrong”, yep. I happen to think it’s partly because the progressive tendencies with the real answers do not know how to communicate their ideas, and they do not know how to communicate their ideas because they…are not able to relate to many of their citizens, or more correctly, create the kind of sympathetic mental frame or resonance it takes to communicate ideas well. That is why I look with a jaded eye upon progressive judgementalism—it itself is one of the obstacles to progress under present circumstances.

    We don’t live in a time when the majority of the people can be rallied to fight via jeremiads and prophetic condemnations. Those who can be, are more easily attracted by *real* fire-and-brimstone religion…

  107. You know, there is an ongoing enormous government-and-business funded effort to understand the nature of feelings and opinions and how they originate and how they spread and how they affect people’s choices and actions, and “hardcore” progressives are just so behind the curve on these things its not funny. And what makes it even sadder is that the basic versions of these things are out there either free or cheap to read and use. (Some costs substantial money but first things first.) The Obama team knows about it and partly used it to crush Romney, because they had the “creative class” on their side who knows how to deploy it effectively. But too many people think that scary appeals to Florida sinking under the waves or whatever ought to be enough to counter this…no matter how lucky you get and how well-funded your global warming campaign is, there’s no point unless it takes into account how to sell products.

  108. markfromireland

    @ ks

    the last really rightwing POTUS elected was Reagan

    You have that exactly wrong. He was the first one, or to be more precise he was the first elected as a figurehead for the American right to extreme right.

    The Senate has been a stalemate though it currently leans Democratic, the House has swung back and forth and is now Republican controlled.

    Utterly irrelevant. They’re just almost indistinguishable factions within the one American party that matters – The Authoritarian Party.

    The radical right has done very well at the state level

    Really you need to stop telling comforting lies to yourself. They control your judiciary, your legislature, and your executive, before long they’ll control your officer corps and your non-coms.

    mfi

  109. markfromireland

    @ mandos

    I happen to think it’s partly because the progressive tendencies with the real answers do not know how to communicate their ideas, and they do not know how to communicate their ideas because they…are not able to relate to many of their citizens,

    In a lifetime’s worth of experience in dealing with them I’ve learnt that it’s because as a rule (there are a few exceptions but they’re statistical outliers and no more than that) American progressives are defined by what they lack. They certainly lack empathy as you correctly state above far more importantly however they lack principles and anything that even remotely resembles integrity.

    there’s no point unless it takes into account how to sell products.

    Yup. But you need to take this further. A slick salesman can sell anything – create one bubble after another. A really good salesman believes in the product he sells and makes his customers believe in it too. A really good salesman creates repeat business.

    mfi

  110. The problem is the pretense that electoral politics in the English speaking world is a means to a populist-progressive end. It is not. It is not designed or meant to be. Those who try to make it into such a means are bound to fail.

    The apparent electoral success of the populist radical right among so much of the English speaking world is the actual success of the oligarchy which owns and controls the populist radical right — and of the elites who serve the oligarchy. Were there equivalent support from the oligarchy for populist-progressives, they would show far more electoral success than they do, not that it would necessarily affect policy substantively.

    But the elites denounce and criticize and the oligarchy despises populist-progressives.

    The responsibility lies largely with the elites themselves – – elites whose interests are served just fine by this state of affairs. What interests me is the fact that so many of the privileged and the elites enjoy casting blame and responsibility downwards rather than accept it themselves. The contempt with which elites are held should come as no surprise.

    Beyond contempt, the general public has little or no say. They certainly will not make any substantive change in their favor through the electoral system.

    Should they rise up in any manner not sanctioned by the elites and the oligarchy they serve, the People will be shot down, as we’re seeing in many lands right now and we will keep right on seeing until and unless the elites and oligarchs weaken one another in their perpetual competition to the point where the People have sufficient collective power to overcome them.

    That day will no doubt come, but blaming the People for not being there yet is a losing game.

  111. I don’t know — America can’t be all that bad, can it? I mean, despite the bad press it gets here and at other venues, people are still lined up to get in. Don’t they realize that they’re clamoring for a reckoning? All these immigrants, legal and illegal alike, who have arrived from 1965 are every bit as much Americans as the “White” Europeans who arrived at the turn of last century.


    Coming To America — The Melting Pot

  112. Yup. But you need to take this further. A slick salesman can sell anything – create one bubble after another. A really good salesman believes in the product he sells and makes his customers believe in it too. A really good salesman creates repeat business.

    I remember back from the days of both the first and second Obama campaigns. People commenting in the “hardcore” progressive blogs, myself included, were arguing hot-headedly about exactly how much less evil Obama was than his opponent. I said back then, the question is irrelevant: Obama is what’s on offer, if he’s 0.000001% less evil, then that’s your real choice, there and then. I said, y’all should instead consider what led you to this juncture, where you’re pushing a no-hope third party candidate like whoever it was (Jill Stein? Was that the first time or the second time? Whatevs…) as the last, best hope to prevent Neoliberal Philosopher King B from getting the Amerithrone.

    Honestly.

    And what they *should* have learned from the Obama campaign was not learned. Sure Obama raised lots of money, but Romney raised more and even though he was rightier in message for sure, he was crushed. Because, you know, message. All of the message matters. In both campaigns, but particularly the first, the aesthetics of the message were seamlessly and beautifully tuned. Down to the perfect, consistent website icons, the choice of font and colour, the placement…

    All of which provoked sneering from the progressiver-than-thous. Sign of hollowness (maybe), triumph for corporate marketing (you bet!), no serious progressive would think in these terms, no no. And yet: here we are.

  113. ks

    mfi,

    Oh c’mon. I was working backwards from the present to the past based on your contention that the “American electorate and the citizenry at large prefer them (American radical right) to the American so-called left” which is why I mentioned Reagan being the last real rightwing POTUS being elected by the electorate that, according to you, supposedly prefers them.

    I went to the next level down and pointed out how the two chambers of Congress have vacilated control between the two majors parties over the recent years. Then you derided the vacilation, or the actual changed voting results, as irrelevant and lumped them all into The Authoritarian Party which is fine by me but undermines your point though it’s a neat trick. Sure, if you lump all the politicians of both major parties into one party and I suppose put “the left” outside of that of course you can then declare that “American electorate and the citizenry at large prefer….” because in that formulation Bernie Sanders might as well be Louie Gohmert.

    Also, how is saying that the radical right has done well at the state level telling myself a “comforting lie”? Wha…? There’s nothing comforting about that at all as control at the state level is incredibly important and probably has a bigger day to day impact on peoples lives than any other level of goverment.

    Anyway, by the generally used meaning of the term, the radical right’s overall electoral success has been so-so and whether the citizenry at large prefers them is even murkier. The big caveat is that they have been astoundingly good at marketing/media/propoganda which matters a lot.

    Your original contention was overblown. If you want to amend it by throwing all pols into an Authoritarian Party pot that’s fine by me because, as I said in my other post about the POTUSs, they are mostly a bad lot working off the same generally evil script but, the folks who are putting people of one party or the other into the various positions in and control of government may have a different understanding of the meaning of their votes and who they are voting for than you do.

  114. markfromireland

    @ Mandos July 14, 2014

    no serious progressive would think in these terms

    Except they’re neither serious nor progressive. They’re dilettantes. Useful fools, in that they’re a useful safety valve for your ruling class. I regret this as any political system where the political struggle — such as it is, consists of struggle between two wings of the same authoritarian orthodoxy is bad for the population. But the choices both of action and inaction that have allowed this was theirs. It was a taunt launched at others by Americans that a people gets the government they deserve. Yes indeed.

    mfi

  115. markfromireland

    @ ks July 14, 2014

    Reagan’s was the first Presidency to carry out neocon policies. Every single administration since then without exception has implemented out neocon policies. If you want to dispute that go ahead, none so blind as those who wantonly choose be blind.

    Your implication was that the radical right was only successful at the State level. I pointed out the truth of the matter.

    EOD

    mfi

  116. Dan H

    Oh now Mark, how can you BE so harsh!? You’re just not putting yourself in their shoes!

    Relativism is fun when you’re 12.

  117. Ian Welsh

    The difference is simple enough: MFI has spent most of the last decade and a half trying to help the victims of America’s wars. See enough orphans, torture victims, amputees, rape victims, etc,etc… and relativism of that variety starts to lose its appeal. If America isn’t a functional democracy, then the blood of its victims cries out for its citizens to make it one. If they can’t do so, in part because they can’t be assed to do so, perhaps because the US military has the highest approval ratings of any institution in America, then maybe that’s because, at heart, they don’t really mind what the US has done, or is doing.

    If America still is a functional democracy despite the undenied influence of wealth and position, then Americans are already responsible for America’s crimes.

  118. Celsius 233

    “If America still is a functional democracy despite the undenied influence of wealth and position, then Americans are already culpable for America’s crimes.” Ian

    That’s been my unwavering position since March 19, 2003. And on September 11, 2001, once I understood what had happened, the first word I uttered was; blowback. I was seriously warned not to say the too loudly or often outside of trusted company.
    This is truly one of the best blogs, period. Thanks.

  119. jcapan

    I’ve met survivors and descendants of victims of US incendiary bombing of Tokyo. Likewise, I know several Japanese Americans who were interned in out west, as well as their descendants. And for these crimes, I’ve felt both shame and guilt for what my country did (before I was born, mind you). Turning to our own lifetimes: Let’s say you travelled to present-day Chile and were confronted by former victims of torture under Pinochet or families of the “disappeared,” or if you were to encounter an Iraqi or Pakistani father who has lost a child to American bombs (authorized by warcriminals from both parties), how would you feel? I for one would be nearly paralyzed by shame and guilt at failing to prevent the horrors they’ve suffered through. That’s part of being a citizen. Such natural human reactions mean we too share in the responsibility.

  120. I’ve met survivors and descendants of victims of US incendiary bombing of Tokyo. Likewise, I know several Japanese Americans who were interned in out west… jcapan

    I, too.

    I lived for years next to the ruins of a transit camp in California that had housed Japanese Americans on their way to and from the concentration camps on the interior. My high school chemistry teacher was a Japanese American survivor of the Tokyo firebombings (he was going to school in Japan when the War broke out and was trapped there for the duration.) I went for a time to a rural California elementary school where the majority of students were the children of internees.

    When they were interned, my mother took charge of the home and orchard of a Japanese-American family that had befriended her when she was really down and out, and she was outraged and outspoken about the injustice done to them, a gross injustice done in her name and that of United States of America. Many Californians felt likewise even during the worst of the Anti-“Jap” hysteria preceding and during the War.

    That hysteria was very consciously encouraged and sustained by men like Earl Warren, Jr., who was at the time the California Attorney General (he would go on to be governor, later still the well-known Supreme Court Chief Justice). He was by no means the only Californian in a position of power and influence to encourage the revival of virulent anti-Asian/anti-Japanese racism at the outbreak of the War. Practically the entirety of California’s elite and all of the media backed the return to racist anti-Japanese hysteria despite the fact that many Californians knew better, and would show they knew better after the War.

    Racism, among many other forms of division, serves the class interests of the elites — and California’s elites and media knew exactly what they were doing.

    But what’s the point in blaming the Californians who went along with them?

    Japanese Americans were not interned in Hawaii, don’t forget. Was that because ordinary Hawaiians stood in the way, or because the elites, the rulers of the islands and the military, saw no need or profit to them in doing so?

    My mother is someone who didn’t go along with California’s elites, she was outspoken against the internment of Japanese Americans, but there was almost nothing she could do about it, was there?

    Orders were orders, the law was the law, and there was a War on. She and others did what they could under the circumstances.

    Should they have done more? Perhaps, but if so, what?

    Or should the Japanese Americans who meekly lined up to go to the camps have fought back? (Some did fight back, by the way; they did not all go meekly, nor did they all accept their internment without resistance.)

    If you’re going to cast responsibility downwards rather than focus it where it belongs, then shouldn’t those who went to the camps blamed as well?

    Well, I reject that. It wasn’t their fault. Nor was it the fault of the many Californians who rejected the anti-Japanese hysterics of the time, nor was it the fault of the many Californians who fell for the hysterics and propaganda. It was the fault and the responsibility of those who created and sustained the hysteria and propaganda, including Earl Warren — who seemed to understand eventually that he had done a terrible thing as California Attorney General and subsequently tried to make amends.

  121. I’ve met survivors and descendants of victims of US incendiary bombing of Tokyo.

    How about survivors and descendants of victims of the Japanese Rape of Nanking? So let me get this straight — you feel shame and guilt the Americans didn’t allow further Rapes of Nankings by firebombing Tokyo and other Japanese cities. Where was the responsibility of all these Japanese you felt sorry for when their boys were raping and murdering with reckless abandon in China? Or is it only White people who should feel shame and guilt, and all other colors are granted immunity because, well, because they’re inferior and “we” have to accommodate that gap with shame and guilt if “we” take advantage of “our” superiority?


    Why Japan Is Still Not Sorry Enough

    Keen observers know that Japan’s ugly territorial disputes with its neighbors aren’t really about fishing grounds or oil and gas reserves or ancient historical claims. What they’re about is that the Japanese still – still – won’t admit they did anything wrong during the Second World War or during their long colonial rule in Asia.

    It’s quite clear Japan is still a screwed up society and it’s not properly reconciled its horrendous actions during World War II. I find it difficult to feel sorry for those who can’t feel sorry. The soldiers who took part in the Rape of Nanking, and some are still alive, are completely unapologetic for their direct actions in that horrible war crime (one of so many). In fact, they’re heroes, not butchers.

  122. markfromireland

    @ Dan H July 15, 2014

    You have a pleasing sense of wit. Always nice to interact with somebody who is aware that of the fact that ‘irony’ does not mean “tasting of iron” and writes accordingly. You’re right about their mental age ‘though. Twelve years old and tribalist to their core a combination that’s entirely understandable in a child but in an adult manages to be pathetic and disgusting simultaneously. They should take Paul of Tarsus’ advice:

    When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.

    mfi

  123. markfromireland

    @ Celsius 233 July 16, 2014 At present America isn’t a well-functioning democracy and it’s arguable whether it ever was such. I think it more accurate to say that it started out as a republic with functional elements of representative democracy that were in turn parts of a system of checks and balances. What it has degenerated into is an oligarchy with increasingly dysfunctional checks and balances including an increasingly dysfunctional electoral system. But it got that way because its citizenry chose to allow their ruling class to seize ever more resources and power. If you want to be a citizen of a reasonably functional liberal democratic state then you MUST fulfill the duties and responsibilities of a citizen of such a state. Americans including ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ Americans aren’t willing to do that and therefore share in the culpability of their rulers.

    mfi

  124. markfromireland

    @ Celsius 233 July 16, 2014 Agreed that this is a good site in fact come the day of the glorious counter-revolution I’ll be nominating Ian for the newly created position of Spokespope. 🙂

    mfi

  125. markfromireland

    @ jcapan July 16, 2014

    I for one would be nearly paralyzed by shame and guilt at failing to prevent the horrors they’ve suffered through. That’s part of being a citizen. Such natural human reactions mean we too share in the responsibility.

    Understandable as it shows you’re a decent human being. However guilt only arises to the extent someone is culpable. If somebody tried but failed to prevent these atrocities then while they may have feelings of guilt they do not have culpability.

    It’s a problem that first responders often have. “If only I’d got there quicker I could have …” I’ve seen some very fine people have nervous breakdowns for just this reason. The cumulative despair that you couldn’t do more can break you if you let it.

    mfi

  126. markfromireland

    @ Ché Pasa July 16, 2014

    Your mother sounds like a very brave woman. Courage – especially the sort of moral courage that can put you in danger is rather rare. As you say – there was almost nothing she could. But almost nothing is not the same as nothing and that which she could do she did. If the majority of people would do just a little, the little they can do, their society and lives would be far better and fairer places.

    That is all takes a lot of people doing not very much individually but rather a lot collectively.

    mfi

  127. markfromireland

    Back on topic. A few days ago Elias Farhat wrote an article for As-Safir in which he discussed who exactly were ISIL’s allies (see: As-Safir July 11th 2014″Who are ISIL’s allies?” http://assafir.com/Article/20/360602 )
    His purpose is to highlight the Turkish role in what he says is a de facto alliance with Da’ash (hereafter ISIL):

    1. That prior to invading Iraq, ISIL reached an agreement with the Turkish government allowing the Turks to guard the tomb of Suleiman Shah (Suleiman Shah was the founder of the Ottoman state’s grandfather) and that this access includes unfettered access through ISIL checkpoints to replacement units.
    2. That ISIL freed forty Turkish lorry drivers who they detailed in Mosul but killed twelve Arab Sunni imams in Mosul for refusing to pledge allegiance.
    3. That even prior to their invasion of Irak that ISIL in Syria had shown they had a very sophisticated comms set-up and (he implies) that this was supplied by Turkey.
    4. That the new military equipment especially transport that ISIL needed to mount its seizure of Iraki territory all came either through Turkish ports and then transported through Turkish checkpoints or were supplied directly by Turkey.
    5. That about 14,000 ISIL figthers are currently being treated in medical facilities in Turkey set up by the Turkish military for that purpose. In other words that isn’t for humanitarian reasons it’s a political decision. (He says it very bluntly وهذه ليست مهمة إنسانية تركية، بل قرار سياسي بإخلاء الجرحى الى المستشفيات التركية. ) .
    6. That ISIL has seized Syrian oil fields and is selling the oil to Turkish oil distilleries all of which are either owned directly by the Turkish government or fall under its authority.

    Interesting article from a normally very shrewd and well-informed commentator and one that highlights an all too often neglected feature of this fight particularly amongst the it’s ‘all America’s doing’ school of analysis. Local actors are entirely capable of acting on their own initiative and in pursuit of their own goals and interests. The Turks could have choked ISIL to death a long time ago by simply interdicting their supply lines. Instead they’ve been actively helping ISIL from the start and they continue to do so. The real driver behind ISIL is the Turks rather than the Saudis, GCC donors, and the Americans. The problem they will soon face however is that the ISIL successes in Irak mean that the Turks will no longer be able to kill them off by chopping off their ‘tail’.

    mfi

  128. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.

    Translation: Put the toy plastic squirt gun in the closet and get yourself a Kalashnikov.

  129. Formerly T-Bear

    mfi

    Would you know some reputable NGO that is getting assistance to ME refugees? I wish to avoid the usual suspects such as the UN WFP, Red Cross, etc., or those either serving political agendas or themselves. Reports such as:
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-conflict-how-millions-of-pounds-of-western-aid-destined-for-the-needy-is-falling-into-hands-of-isis-9610491.html
    place themselves out of consideration for receiving support, no assurances can be made the aid is delivered as proposed. The UN WFP is more interested in filling my inbox with the latest emergency need, no telling how much is left over after UN salaries are deducted for helping the alleged needy. I would have asked on most recent post but a colderasshole contaminated the comments already. Thanks.

  130. markfromireland

    @ Formerly T-Bear July 16, 2014

    I hate to say this but there really isn’t one – not in Syria not at present, in that respect it’s worse than Irak at it’s worst during the war of the death squads. We’ve now stopped, too many colleagues killed or abducted never to be heard of again in particular over the last few months.

    The best of a bad lot is probably CAFOD ( http://www.cafod.org.uk/About-Us/Where-we-work/Middle-East/Syria ) but they’re an explicitly Catholic charity which for obvious reasons doesn’t both me but may disturb you.

    My fear and it keeps me awake at night and keeps my stomach clenched in dread is that what we’re seeing in Syria is the future for Irak too. The final and complete subversion of humanitarian relief into a war-effort isn’t far behind. It makes me want to puke but I think it’s where we’re headed. Some good news is that we managed successfully to evacuate all our orphans in Mosul without even one death amongst them which I’m very proud of but it also means that the street kids we were feeding are now going to be dependent on Da’ash for food and that food will come at a price.

    Wish I could be more optimistic and more helpful but I can’t.

    mfi

  131. markfromireland

    @ Formerly T-Bear July 16, 2014

    PS: Agreed about the latest troll. I didn’t think it’d be possible to miss marocobama but bless his scaley hide at least his regular meltdowns were amusing in a pitiable kind of way. The current one is deathly dull, it just wanks itself in public grunting monotonously as it does so. I’m considering organising a sponsored troll drive – surely there has to be one good one left.

    mfi

    PPS: for “but they’re an explicitly Catholic charity which for obvious reasons doesn’t both me but may disturb you. ” please read “but they’re an explicitly Catholic charity which for obvious reasons doesn’t bother me but may disturb you”.

    Really I should proofread better.

    m

  132. Formerly T-Bear

    mfi

    Thanks for trying, I sort of feared that was the case. I will look into your suggestion though since there are Catholic populations there, they may be able to reach out as well should they have the resources to the neediest of their neighbours as well. Though of Protestant heritage, I’ve never been harmed by anyone Catholic, that’s a division having little weight. I will look into that possibility anon. My form of dyslexia put your dropped letters to right, not to worry over proofreading.

  133. markfromireland

    @ Formerly T-Bear July 16, 2014

    I’ve done a lot of work with CAFOD in the past and they’re very principled about not making sectarian distinctions in who they help, in my experience they’ve not been subverted into being an arm of the State or de facto government in a particular piece of territory. Would that the same could be said of some of the better known charities/humanitarian agencies. (And thank you for caring enough to try to take some action to relieve the misery).

    mfi

  134. And thank you for caring enough to try to take some action to relieve the misery

    Yes, thank you, but as we’ve learned, and mfi has emphatically underscored, caring is not enough. Your’re culpable and responsible and you will be part of the reckoning I’m afraid, regardless of how much you’ve donated and will donate. Calling people trolls on the internet doesn’t cut it. You’ll have to do better than that if you want amnesty from the coming reckoning.

    By the way, can Formerly T-Bear and mfi provide links to their updated blogs? I’d like to read their blog posts and see who they are and what they really have to say in depth, not just this gangster-style drive-by sniping they like to engage in at other blog venues. If you don’t have blogs of your own, you dare to call any other a troll? Trolls don’t have blogs of their own where they can back up what they say elsewhere. Feel free to visit my blog and have the temerity to say what you say here there. I don’t censor, but I’d be more than happy to rake you over the coals without having my comments censored. I take great pride in sticking it hard and deep to impostors, and I’d appreciate both of you allowing me that opportunity on a neutral playing field.

  135. Ian Welsh

    As noted elsewhere, I deleted one comment purportedly from Cold but littered with Morrocco Bama’s obsessions, and over-wrote another, with a note. I’ll leave the above one standing for now, but will be deleting as I please going forward.

  136. Celsius 233

    Ian Welsh PERMALINK*
    July 16, 2014
    As noted elsewhere, I deleted one comment purportedly from Cold but littered with Morrocco Bama’s obsessions, and over-wrote another, with a note. I’ll leave the above one standing for now, but will be deleting as I please going forward.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Yes please, enough already.

    @mfi
    Thanks for your informed comments, always well worth their effort.

  137. jcapan

    Appreciate the long, thoughtful comment, and I think what MFI said in response can stand in for my own views of what your mother did.

    And generally I agree that responsibility, the lion’s share of the blame should be apportioned to those in power, then or now. And I’m aware that 130 comments later that this may be distracting from that admirable, ever-challenging pursuit, but I can’t really buy the degree of moral absolution you seem to be pushing. Your mother, those few like her and indeed the historical record says they were few, sure.

    “But what’s the point in blaming the Californians who went along with them?”

    If their lesser fascism is to just be wiped clean that’s where you lose me. Should their blame equal Warren’s. Perhaps not, but they are certainly guilty of heinous crimes in their own right, against their god or human conscience. Because racists held power in most southern state houses during the civil rights era, does that absolve rank and file members of the clan who lynched blacks. What of our Nobel-winning drone assassin, who may have received votes from some of us here, do we not share in blame for validating his crimes?

    “Orders were orders, the law was the law, and there was a War on.”

    Sure, and if I led Nazi butchers to Jews hiding in my barn, there’d be no need for atonement. My hands would be spotless. I guess I can’t quite get around to that way of looking at it, however much the architects of such obscene policies deserve the bulk of the blame.

    Absolving those who are complicit is an insult to your own mother’s fine example. What of the Freedom Marchers, abolitionists or war protesters of generations past–if their relatively inactive peers are not to be condemned, why bother to praise their sacrifice. If collectively we’re not at least marginally to blame, why then should are some of us so obviously worthy of praise.

  138. Formerly T-Bear

    markfromireland 16 July 2014

    FYI: Unfortunately was unable to donate at your link, will look into alternative means. At least some independent NGO assistance is available not linked to political agendas. The problem appears to stem from anti-moneylaundrying conditions politically inspired.

  139. ks

    mfi,

    “Reagan’s was the first Presidency to carry out neocon policies. Every single administration since then without exception has implemented out neocon policies. If you want to dispute that go ahead, none so blind as those who wantonly choose be blind.

    Your implication was that the radical right was only successful at the State level. I pointed out the truth of the matter.

    EOD

    mfi”

    What are you talking about? You’ve done sone good work and have some good thoughts but goodness you can be a pompous ninny at times. I didn’t and don’t dispute ANYTHING about Reagan and I’m well aware of what he represented and “launched”. I simply mentioned him as an example of rightwing electoral success at the POTUS level. Now if you want to wave your magic wand and lump everybody who came after him into the same bucket, have at it.

    Also, I made no such “state only” implication. Your willfull misreading of my original and subsequent comments is rather odd. You seem to be arguing based on your own fixed ideas which I tend to agree with, rather than what I’ve said.

    Oh well…EOD indeed.

  140. @jcapan

    Placing responsibility where it belongs, rather than pushing it ever downwards — as we’re seeing, for example, in the case of the Israeli assault on Gaza, all the way down to the littlest victims themselves — is not “absolving” or wiping clean the moral responsibility of everyone else. It’s merely pointing out that there’s little or no comparison between the responsibility of the masses for their passivity or acceptance, and the responsibility of the rulers and elites for their own crimes and those they enable.

    It’s too easy to broad brush all members of a group — or nation — for the crimes of some, but it is a practice certain members of the elites engage in all the time, with the effect, if not the intention, of absolving themselves from any culpability, especially in the case of “democracies.” “It’s not my fault, it’s the fault of those fools who elected so-and-so.”

    Earl Warren wasn’t elected to put the “Japs” in the camps any more than Obama was elected to continue to neo-con/neo-lib wars of aggression. So I believe there’s no point to blaming the California or national electorate for actions of the elites and rulers they were not intending when they cast their vote, nor is it particularly useful to make believe that electoral politics has more than marginal effects on policies.

    My mother took a stand against the internment of Japanese-Americans, but she was by no means alone. However, she and they didn’t have the power to thwart it. Those orders stood and would stand through the War no matter what she or they did. Nor did those who went along with them have the power to thwart them if they had wanted to.

    Those who did have the power in Hawaii chose not to be fools and pander to racist animosity. So, there was no general Japanese American internment in Hawaii, despite the clamor from some Anglo racists in the Islands and on the Mainland. There were a handful of camps, but they never held more than 2% of the Japanese-ancestry population of Hawaii.

    Those who passively accept atrocity and criminality by their rulers and their elites are responsible for their passivity and acceptance, but they are not in general responsible for the atrocities and crimes their rulers commit. Nor do they necessarily have a voice — at least not through the standard democratic processes — in setting policies that result in those crimes and atrocities. Blaming them for the crimes of their rulers gets nowhere; in my view, it’s completely counterproductive.

    But then, for some of the elites, the whole point is to off-load responsibility so as to absolve themselves from their own responsibility.

    Those who hold and wield the power are the ones responsible for the atrocities and crimes of the states, the oligarchies, and the elites who serve them. Those below them who commit crimes and atrocities are responsible for what they actually do.

    Those who are passive are responsible for their passivity, not the crimes of those who commit them.

    Praising those activists who fight injustice, atrocity and high status criminality doesn’t require denouncing those who are not so active, nor does it mean that the culpability for injustice primarily rests with ordinary people. Saying that it does comes close to justifying the kind of collective punishment that’s routinely imposed on the inmates of Gaza or the West Bank.

    I reject that utterly.

  141. jcapan

    Again, I appreciate the response. For my own part, I reject this all or nothing approach. But I’ll let you have the last word.

  142. Dan H

    I can’t think of any “atrocities” actually performed by any elites. Getting down in the mud for such evil kinda negates the elite status part… there’s an undeniable partnership that allows “atrocities” to happen.

  143. Dan H

    Which is to echo Ian’s point on military approval, and I’d extend it to consideration of the number of people willing to be cops in this country.

  144. Dan H

    And as my friend pointed out to me recently, firemen and paramedics do a hell of a job for the medical services industry by forcing ambulance rides and hospitalizations. The rot is deep.

  145. @jcapan

    I reject this all or nothing approach

    I wish I knew what “all or nothing approach” you were referring to. It’s not mine.

    I’ve tried to make clear that I don’t absolve those who commit injustice or atrocity. They are responsible for their injustices and atrocities. And I don’t absolve who passively allow others to commit atrocity and injustice. They are responsible for their passivity. Where I draw the line, however, is in blaming or putting moral responsibility on ordinary people for the crimes committed by their rulers and the elites who serve them.

    That’s not” all or nothing,” it’s appropriate proportionality.

    Nothing positive for ordinary people is gained by placing responsibility or blame on the least among us for the crimes and injustices of those who actually wield power. That’s how you get situations like the constant murder/summary executions of the homeless and mentally ill by police in this country, that’s how you get such an appalling level of imprisonment, that’s how you get the horrors taking place in Gaza today, and that’s how you find the victims of the global financial meltdown blamed for their own plight.

    It’s wrong. Fundamentally wrong.

  146. Dan H

    Arthur Silber highlighted this from Hannah Arendt in his piece here, http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/12/honor-of-being-human-why-do-you-support.html

    “In our context, all that matters is the insight that no man, however strong, can ever accomplish anything, good or bad, without the help of others. What you have here is the notion of an equality which accounts for a “leader” who is never more than primus inter pares, the first among his peers. Those who seem to obey him actually support him and his enterprise; without such “obedience” he would be helpless, whereas in the nursery or under conditions of slavery — the two spheres in which the notion of obedience made sense and from which it was then transposed into political matters — it is the child or the slave who becomes helpless if he refuses to “cooperate.” Even in a strictly bureaucratic organization, with its fixed hierarchical order, it would make much more sense to look upon the functioning of the “cogs” and wheels in terms of overall support for a common enterprise than in our usual terms of obedience to superiors. If I obey the laws of the land, I actually support its constitution, as becomes glaringly obvious in the case of revolutionaries and rebels who disobey because they have withdrawn this tacit consent.

    In these terms, the nonparticipators in public life under a dictatorship are those who have refused their support by shunning those places of “responsibility” where such support, under the name of obedience, is required. And we have only for a moment to imagine what would happen to any of these forms of government if enough people would act “irresponsibly” and refuse support, even without active resistance and rebellion, to see how effective a weapon this could be. It is in fact one of the many variations of nonviolent action and resistance — for instance the power that is potential in civil disobedience — which are being discovered in our century. The reason, however, that we can hold these new criminals, who never committed a crime out of their own initiative, nevertheless responsible for what they did is that there is no such thing as obedience in political and moral matters. The only domain where the word could possibly apply to adults who are not slaves is the domain of religion, in which people say that they obey the word or the command of God because the relationship between God and man can rightly be seen in terms similar to the relation between adult and child.

    Hence the question addressed to those who participated and obeyed orders should never be, “Why did you obey?” but “Why did you support?” This change of words is no semantic irrelevancy for those who know the strange and powerful influence mere “words” have over the minds of men who, first of all, are speaking animals. Much would be gained if we could eliminate this pernicious word “obedience” from our vocabulary of moral and political thought. If we think these matters through, we might regain some measure of self-confidence and even pride, that is, regain what former times called the dignity or the honor of man: not perhaps of mankind but of the status of being human.”

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