we need americans who can engage our national myths head-on. we need to resuscitate and recognize our long suppressed struggle with the human fear of nature and "the other" in order to effectively confront the colonial/imperial origins of our exploitative economic system. we need to do this now, because later is catastrophe. and we need to be realistic: some form of collapse is necessary because continuing to exist at our current rate of consumption is not possible.

BUT there are still too many moments of privileged peace within the american collapse to shake things up from coast to coast. we need to unquiet ourselves. we need to find constructive methods of confronting our neighbors and ourselves about the enabling roles we play. we need to grow the fuck up

i'm going to watch football today. i'm going to drive a car today. and i'm going to write in a vain attempt to alleviate the guilt:

LARVAL AMERICAN

larval american, you crass observer
the prez won’t preempt LOST
or oppose the boss of desire
or forget their fiery cross

the prez his tongue is a bomb
formed by the snakes of finance
loaded by national muscle
and blessed by holy piss ants

so the feats of capital can astound
lightning strikes from rhetorical clouds
as the storm and horizon conspire
delivered by the boss of desire

the future doesn’t look like a butterfly
that bird in the sky is a drone
the earth is an angry organism
our madness is killing our home

Language/word craftsman, you are...




somebuall might want to check out:

but what i know is still significantly limited.

at some level i believe in america's (historically recent) exceptional role in the world because i understand from direct experience how an almost adolescent sense of national grandeur is part of the package growing up in mostly white midwest suburban america at the end of the 20th century.

the arc of my reaction to my upbringing has been an extreme pendulum swing in the other direction (though without the loss of those creature comforts american privilege affords me), so of course i want to identify with the insurrections i quietly browse, happening everywhere now, but inside the epicenter of global instability--america--i feel like we're battling a multi-pronged paralysis of apathy, greed, and self-obsession, and we're losing. badly.

if any nation's unrest during this global economic crisis is to gain traction in the global arena it needs linkage; resonance...

which is why i have centered much of my suspicions regarding iran's green movement on the US domestic corporate coverage, and the imperial slobbering over undermining the current regime. unfortunately my suspicions have been intentionally misrepresented and exaggerated in a manner that has further distorted my limited understanding.

*

parviz: i hope you understand that i am capable of putting aside my suspicions (which stems from my limited knowledge and habitual paranoia) to see clearly that when a state violently cracks down on its citizens it's a sign of weakness.

this entanglement we're engaged in is a waste of time and energy. if we want to see and be a part of meaningful reforms imposed on our respective regimes then let's use our language to further meaningful dialogue here about how that can happen.

?

Lizard, I'm ready to clean the slate and start afresh. I agree with everything you write about the U.S.'s decline, and in fact I have been predicting this ever since Reagan introduced 'trickle-down economics' and handed even more power to Wall Street and its Zionist lobbies. I recently finished Charles Kupchan's brilliant "The End of the American Era" and still recommend the equally brilliant "The Looming Tower" to everyone, Lawrence Wright's historical account of the U.S.A.'s direct role in the growth of Islamic Terrorism over which it is now shedding crocodile tears.

Regarding Iran, I like your observation about violent crackdowns and their meaning. You might also wish to consider:

Stifling media censorship
Serial killings of intellectuals
Unprecedented corruption
Unprecedented nepotism (Some Ministers have only high school diplomas)
Destruction of the economy (30 years ago we had a higher GDP than South Korea!)
Censorship so broad and arbitrary that it doesn't make sense (the word 'shower' is banned if you try to google it down here!)
etc.,. etc.,.

So please try to appreciate, as Freud used to say, that "Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar", meaning that there is nothing behind the uprising other than deep and broad hatred of the regime. If the U.S. is cheerleading the uprising, so be it, but that's a reaction to, rather than the cause of, these epochal events. The people are "mad as Hell and won't take it anymore".

instead of watching how george w. bush is being inserted into the haitian relief effort (it's playing in the background) i spent this foggy sunday morning watching michael ruppert lay it all out there.

michael ruppert provides a context that can no longer be denied. that's why i find it more critical to work locally (to prepare my family and my community to move through the collective stages of grief regarding collapse) than debating whether or not collapse is happening, or will continue to happen. we have a choice: we can either make the cognitive shift in how we approach thinking about what's happening to us, or we will devolve into the true natural state of brute survival civil society has paved over for centuries. and it will not be pretty.

fuck all nations. their cumbersome state apparatuses are impediments to reaching a sustainable equilibrium. reforming the state is a waste of time. we need to prepare for hyperinflation, a breakdown in food supply, and the general deterioration of infrastructure, because that is the future.

ruppert's example of russia's collapse, and the two very different responses from two states dependent on russian-based energy--north korea and cuba--is very enlightening. the top down hierarchal response means national paralysis, starvation, and death, while unleashing the bottom up potential of community means a fighting chance. that is a very important lesson to internalize as the situation domestically and globally continues to deteriorate.

Parviz,

Thank you for your response.

I can't help but think of the difference between the u.s. mode of censorship and authoritarian censorship: Americans are over-loaded with information and yet don't have the ability to sort thru any of it for the kernels of truth, found amongst so many piles of feces.

What I'm trying to say is that most americans aren't taught the proper cognitive skills to help them sort thru and make sense of this wealth of information. A friend of mine spent most of his education in jesuit schools and I was impressed because when he reads a book, he usually will have three or four other books open he is cross referencing and using for deeper understanding of the main book. Now that is the kind of thing that I don't remember being taught by any of my teachers. Writing a report on a subject, yeah, of course we were required to use more than one reference. But we didn't read Grapes of Wrath with a history book open or FSA photographs hung on the wall or much else to give the story the depth a bunch of high school kids needed to truly understand the Depression Era.

In an authoritarian state, everyone knows the news is mostly BS and look elsewhere for truth.

Lizard-

Today in the paper was a photo of thirsty Haitians rushing to get water from a helicopter. What strikes me as sad is that they're running amongst lots and lots of green plants transpiring gallons of H2O, yet none of them knows how to harvest that valuable crop.

This is what happens in societies as they break-down and important information is lost. I can imagine a day when city folks will be hungry, not from a lack of food sources, but because they won't know how to eat unpackaged food. They won't even recognize wild food as as such.

Eat the rich... they take good care of themselves and will be much better to dine on then stringing guys like me full of chemicals and other rot

DaveS

The Deindustrialization of Tampa Bay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jURLr7vZa3A



confirmation bias or Pareidolia?

In a ‘democracy’, and even in one-party systems (at one extreme, China, at the other possibly Britain at some points, in the sense of one party being the strongest and keeping control for a long time) the method of change is through the political process itself, which operates in different ways, sometimes merely with ‘influence’ - ‘power plays’ - ‘new ideas’ - ‘political necessity’ - ‘minority opinion’ as well as less respectable moves.

In the US, the political process is completely corrupted, non-operative, inefficient, cumbersome, rapacious (military costs, corporate advantage, domination by local Gvmt.) as well as authoritarian, repressive, and punitive to the poor and unconnected (IRS, drugs, prisons, banks, etc.) It is not alone..

Where the ultimate decisionary powers lie and what forces shape events is opaque, open to interpretation. E.g. Bush vs. Gore, 9/11, Iraq invasion, etc. If only for this last reason, change - one half of BO’s slogan, irony lofted to cruel heights - cannot be achieved through the political process.

For ex., there can be no ‘third party’, because the present system is ‘one party’ with-two-facets. China and X can’t set up a ‘third party’, the terminology itself is meaningless, as it is de facto for the US. Moreover, what could a ‘third party’ accomplish? It might, at the very best, drive a wedge into the one party at the voting booth ...once some power gathered, in Washington, the same old, same old would apply.

The conventional alternative is grass roots movements, community activism, etc.

One-party systems always dither around social issues - veils, women driving, the sex of doctors, minority (religion, race, etc.) ‘seats’, ‘voices’, censorship, family law, morality, education.. Citizens grumble about daily life: traffic, taxes, police, permits, prices, housing, dirt, noise, etc.

In the US, that translates to irrelevant or phantasmagorical opinion strands concerned with varia such as abortion, gay marriage, small/big Gvmt, parking fines, property taxes, unions, immigration, drugs, racist issues, pollution, gun control, animal protection, rail construction, and on and on.

In the US, however, foreign policy *is* discussed.

These strands of opinion have been ‘bundled’ into two poles, partly based on ‘historic roots’, and they make little sense. (e.g. gun control is ‘left’ in the US and ‘right’ in other places.) The monumental omissions - energy policy, ultimate aims of foreign policy, education, territorial management, corporate taxation, crime and fraud, agriculture and food - are stunning.

Americans have been de-politisized (sp) and there is nothing, no single issue, no pov, no political stance, no great idea, that can serve as a lightning rod or soldering iron, excuse the mechanical metaphors. (The Obie-man scraped the bottom of the barrel, and his ploy can’t be used again. I’m sure that was not deliberate.)

Community orgs., politically oriented, have never been strong in the US, and hardly exist today, as far as I can make out. (?) The remaining ones such as Labor Unions seem determined to compete, defend themselves, rather than reach out or change anything at all.

(When the ethos of competition engulfs all that is what you get served. Crumbs if low on the pole, and to be 'stolen' from a neighbor to boot.)

The New Movement would have to be a frank, direct, opposition movement. Purely oppositional, in a political void. Not an appealing alternative.. Rioting in the streets or on Capitol Hill is expected by the authorities - they are prepared for it.

A military coup? That would not be in Defense’s own interests - in some sense they own the Gvmt. already - as they too, compete for the country’s resources, rather than caring about the country and where those resources are coming from and what they are accomplishing with them. However, it might happen in conditions of extreme disorder, to protect their own investment/power.

Stumbling or speedy decay, and a Banana republic. Resource-rich, powerful, large countries are just as much at risk, just as vulnerable, as poor insignificant struggling ones. The US is at a disadvantage as it spends extravagantly on the Imperium and on keeping its ‘face’ - defending itself from competition, enslaving others, controlling the world, relying on the arms industry, and stifling opposition at home. Well that last is cheap, taken care of by the MSM.

That was the very black part. Apologies for length and negativity.

There are many positive aspects, though it is hard to see how they can be exploited. Some solutions do exist.

Nice post blackie... you've hit on several problems facing the "public" who is scurrying while trying to find social balance, somewhere between the government they thought they voted for, and the government they now have.

There are several local people I like to talk politics with, they represent everyone from hippies to ex military rednecks and almost all of them, liberal or conservative, are suckers and buy into the bullfeces spread by their political parties. These folks still feel there is some sort of difference between the two parties, and many follow in ignorance and blindness. Fools.

There is one party – the corporate party – and all government policies are crafted to benefit this class at the expense of everyone else. Corporations don't give a damn about national borders. They care instead about finding markets for their products, access to cheap raw materials and underpaid, un-organized, labor to exploit. If corporations pretend to care about a particular group, to lend their support to some public cause, this is only to create an useful illusion that then can be manipulated to cause a rival company grief, or to get the public support behind realizing a corporate goal.

Nationalism, racism, sexism, and any other 'ism' you can name is the very simple method a few people use to pull-the-wool over the eyes of many.

Our world view is reduced to two choices – them vs us, or us vs them – either way, it becomes hard to find middle ground when we're polarized. I think of other herd/group mammals and how common it is for sub-dominate males to use a ruse to pull part of the herd/group off to form his own heard. In humans this is most obvious in religion, as one prophet pulls followers away from the core to form a slightly different sect, but it can be found in offices, clubs, bars or anyplace groups of people regularly gather.

The species isn't going to move far beyond the trees we were swinging in until we learn to control how we think and recognize how easy we are to manipulate. Otherwise it's just a case of history repeating...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTUIHK7gHRE&feature=fvw

DaveS

My apologies to the civilized world... I should have said "the American" world view.

DaveS[/b]

Well, if we really want to be accurate maybe we should write "the U.S. world view", because I have Latin American friends who hate the term 'American', and Canadian friends who hate to be associated with the U.S. when referred to as "North Americans".

I'm not playing the Devil's Advocate purposely, but this "reader's comment" in today's NYT caught my eye, a bitter indictment of Massachusetts voters:

Also, resounding thanks for electing a man who thinks waterboarding is ethically sound, opposes the reduction of carbon emissions, and wants to limit immigration to our great nation, which owes it's entire population to immigrants. That's just great.

We'll be back to the Cheney years before we know it, 'cuz this Obama guy just hasn't cut it in his first year, has he. He hasn't given us all our jobs back in just one year. He hasn't repaired the entire US economy in just one year. He hasn't stopped the terrorists in just one year. He's just a big failure, after just one year.

We gave Cheney and Bush 8 years, and we're not willing to give Obama one? What is wrong with people? The USA is turning into NBC. Great.

Well worth reading, right down to the Census Bureau data on civil/military goods shipments:

http://theburningplatform.com/economy/feeds-the-rich-buries-the-poor

Sample:

General Smedley Butler, at the time of his death was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. He was awarded 16 medals, 5 for heroism. His 33 year military career was marked by bravery and brilliance in command. His 1935 book, War is a Racket, detailed how profiteering by corporate fascists encouraged military imperialism by America’s leaders. He condemned the profit motive behind war and described it in no uncertain terms.

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

Parviz–

Excellent read! I'm about to publish a similar issue of my rag. I'll be posting it when I do and everyone can give me their two-cents. I hope to have it up today.

DaveS

the propaganda of peace
peddled by face-dusted vultures
enshrines the tip of prosperity
while suppressing a growing disparity

and this is how it’s done, my son
and this is why i’m weary
of any image they want me to carry
in thoughts in my brain in my cranium

and this is how the country atrophies
as we buy their terms of theft
with images of those far off places
where the killing’s done bereft

of blood and bone and tiny hands
divorced from a body’s unity
as we, a gutless, weak-willed people
give the motherfuckers immunity

Blackie, well thought through post. Many blogs have a tendency to criticise, and rightly so, there are seemingly never ending facets to the monster we call ‘the system’, but only on the odd occasion is the critique of constructive nature. Recognising and pointing out the system’s flaws and the fuckwits personifying it, is like shooting fish in a barrel, all too easy. Venturing into the realm of alternatives, using ‘thinkin time’ to explore, discuss and drive on the badly overdue changes we are all hanging out for, is a much more challenging task. Therefore I especially appreciated your ideas on what is needed for us as a society to evolve. Its time we kicked off a thread on just that topic, how to realistically achieve meaningful change.

hi all!
just found this thrilling thread!!

first, define America:
once I was in a bar with a canadian and an usamerican friend, and me and Gary (the canadian) picked up on Ken, "you know, we are from countries that actually have proper and sound names, ya know, Brasil, Canada, these are real names, United is a condition, States there are lots in the whole world, and America starts in alaska and ends in patagonia, don't you miss having a real name? what should we call you, Unitedstater?"

leaving this handicap aside, and linking with Uncle's documentary suggestion, i'd like to propose an audiovisual narrative for the united states of the world (we globalized everything, right? ... well, shit has been too)

Chris Martenson says something like this, in his guerrilla economy crash course:
the next 20 years won't look nothing like the past 20 years

and to support this point of view:

- White Power USA (2009), short doc aired by al-jazeera
join white supremacists, hysterical media, unemployment and generalized bankruptcy, a right wing proto party in his birth pangs, a failed political and economical sistem (distant wars, rescuing banksters, exponential debt), and a president who happens to be a... Nigga!

- American Drug War: The Last White Hope (2007)
first, smash the black movement, then flood poor/black communities with dope, and, voilà, now there's more black folks in jail than in college... 30 plus years after Nixon declared this Wonder War results are... more drugs on the market!!

can you imagine Tiger Woods converting to islam, changing his name to Abdul Mustafa and saying he's against the war?? Gitmo for sure, isn't it?

so: Facing Ali (2009)
in this doc, all the great ones who fought Muhamad Ali give wonderful testimonies, full of affection from gladiators that shared the arena with the king. not exactly a political one, but what a heck of a doc

follows a punch in the liver: Collapse (2009)
(Uncle$' links are offline now)
Michael Ruppert talks about: energetic, economic, ecological, geopolitical collapse.. it's kinda an intellectual horror movie, the bad part being it's not fiction but facts
(he's also have a major role in American Drug War, as he exposed cia's participation in trafficking drugs inside LA)

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)
bravo Michael!
"enough of the symptoms, let's talk about the real causes", i haven't seen the doc yet, but Moore's interview in Democracy Now is quite worthy...
Olé to the fat with the cap!

and another olé, to another fatty, drunk albeit athletic, who had done the Danube, the Yungtze, the Mississipi and the Amazonas rivers: swimming, every kilometer of them... biiiig slovenian, Martin Strel
Big River Men (2009) , the doc is about his epical amazonian journey, his last big river, the guy was 60 when he done it, for pistachio sake!
: this one adds some spiritual level to the POV

...
summing up, it looks like capitalism and democracy are not compatible
(we want a divorce!)
and maybe that old beardy german guy who talked about internal contradictions of the system may have a say on this historical moment that we are part of

as the Crash Course, this is not exactly a documentary, but i find the insights of this other slovenian neo-marxist freak quite inspiring:
Slavoj Zizek, Capitalism, Healthcare, Latin American “Populism” and the “Farcical” Financial Crisis

***all the docs are in the torrents and rapidshares of the web (except moore's, which haven't surfaced yet in digital undergrounds)...a good downloading tool to websharing sites: jDownloader

salut, compañers
rudolf

ps.: i miss those times when the aztecs sacrificed 80 thousand people to debut a temple... oh, those were good times... and there was cannibalism in the ceremony too, ain't that great?
lol, this was George Carlin, and this other one: The Planet is Fine, We Are Fucked

Just came across this, thought this is the right place to link it - comparison of political situation and mood in USA and Iran with some good questions asked, from a very human POV:

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/my-visit-to-iran/

i read through the dissident voice piece and, well, what can i say? it echoes many things i've said in this textual, high-decibel shouting match that's occurred since the uprising.

i've tried to explain that, ultimately, i'm ignorant of the on-the-ground reality facing iranians in their struggle. i also try to remind myself that my contemptuous position toward my country's imperial ambitions does affect how i think about the nations our dictatorial elites seek to demonize.

because of this contemptuous position, i've reconditioned my knee-jerk reaction to taking the opposite of domestic corporate speak regarding anything being reported. and i think that response is more valid than nodding compliantly with what the corporate megaphones decree.

unfortunately that meant my initial skepticism about iranian election fraud and the scope of the uprising was interpreted as being supportive of state-sanctioned murder, torture, and forced sodomy.

*

i think it is really unfortunate that parviz conducted his campaign against MoA and le speakeasy in the manner he has chosen. as i've said previously, i think his behavior has done a disservice to what i know is a complicated situation not even the people on the ground in iran are capable of fully grasping.

really, there is already more than enough work to do in the locales where we rest our heads and pound the streets with our day to day activity. i am lucky to be employed doing good work with the messy stuff where too often the glimmers of hope are few and far between.

p.s. i love the darwish footer, parvati

Thanks, Parvati_roma, great article. Iranians are light years ahead of U.S. citizens in terms of both political awareness and political courage. I'm comparing the 2 populations as a whole without meaning any offence to members of LeSpeakeasy.

The U.S.A.'s problem is national brainwashing, plain and simple, the concept of Exceptionalism that is ground into the brains of U.S. citizens from birth, the ubiquitous flag waving, the "God Bless America" and "God's Own Country" crap that separates the nation from the rest of the world, the firm belief that the U.S.A. is better than any other nation despite the highest crime rates, poverty rates, drug usage, wealth gap, national debt and unemployment rate in the industrialized world, ....

Europeans wouldn't stand for such a situation: Whenever they sense dictatorship and injustice they take to the streets, while U.S. citizens remain docile, concluding they have only themselves to blame for their failure to cope with Capitalism in its most extreme U.S. form. I find U.S. Fatalism in the face of government manipulation absolutely shocking. If you don't have inherited brains or inherited wealth in the U.S. you might as well commit suicide on the spot, because you have no right to life and no right to "the American Dream". If U.S. citizens had half the balls of Iranian men and half the courage of Iranian women ........

Lizard, please give it a rest. What you call my 'campaign' against MoA and LeSpeakeasy was simply my exercising my right of free speech in a personally highly disturbing situation. You seem to forget how I was mocked by the vast majority on MoA for 'claiming' that the election was rigged, a 'claim' that in hindsight was totally valid: If the regime is so certain of its popularity why doesn't it allow one single day of unfettered demonstrations by BOTH sides, then GoogleEarth can juxtapose the demonstrations for all to see.

And as for my "support of sodomization" comment:

If anybody supports the legitimacy claims of a regime that prohibits free speech and tortures/sodomizes its people, then that person is directly OR indirectly supporting torture and sodomization of those people imprisoned by the regime. You can't have it both ways, claiming to uphold human rights while defending the 'pronouncements' of a regime that behaves worse than the old Soviet Union.

parviz, it can be a lonely situation to be awake in amerika. i don't deny your description, or blackie's, or anyone who describes the piss-poor awareness and penchant for action in my country. the piece parvati linked to at least attempted to find common ground between the dispossessed people of america and the people of iran. you, on the other hand, appear all to eager to create division.

as for election fraud hindsight being TOTALLY VALID, i leave that to people with more time than i have to verify such things. my hunch is that, like our election in 2000, it will never be conclusively proven, one way, or the other.