Monday 24 March 2008

John Dewey: The Individual and the World

Recently I heard Chomsky quote an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer called John Dewey (1859-1952). I had never heard of Dewey before and have since learned that he was a significant influence upon Chomsky's thinking. This is the quote:

"Government is the shadow cast by business over society."

Chomsky elaborated by saying that changing the shadow does not change the substance. In other words, it doesn't particularly matter who is elected or from which party, the umbilical cord linking corporations and international banks to government will remain in tact. We can change and affect government, but cutting the umbilical cord is not a democratic matter.
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I have just come across the following passage in which Dewey puts forward a description of knowledge and thinking, and explores the way new ideas emerge in cultures governed by custom and accepted beliefs.

The Individual and the World

There is a valid distinction between knowledge which is objective and impersonal, and thinking which is subjective and personal. In one sense, knowledge is that which we take for granted. It is that which is settled, disposed of, established, under control. What we fully know, we do not need to think about. In common phrase, it is certain, assured. And this does not mean a mere feeling of certainty. It denotes not a sentiment, but a practical attitude, a readiness to act without reserve or quibble. Of course we may be mistaken. What is taken for knowledge — for fact and truth — at a given time may not be such. But everything which is assumed without question, which is taken for granted in our intercourse with one another and nature is what, at the given time, is called knowledge. Thinking on the contrary, starts, as we have seen, from doubt or uncertainty. It marks an inquiring, hunting, searching attitude, instead of one of mastery and possession. Through its critical process true knowledge is revised and extended, and our convictions as to the state of things reorganized.

Clearly the last few centuries have been typically a period of revision and reorganization of beliefs. Men did not really throw away all transmitted beliefs concerning the realities of existence, and start afresh upon the basis of their private, exclusive sensations and ideas. They could not have done so if they had wished to, and if it had been possible general imbecility would have been the only outcome. Men set out from what had passed as knowledge, and critically investigated the grounds upon which it rested; they noted exceptions; they used new mechanical appliances to bring to light data inconsistent with what had been believed; they used their imaginations to conceive a world different from that in which their forefathers had put their trust. The work was a piecemeal, a retail, business. One problem was tackled at a time. The net results of all the revisions amounted, however, to a revolution of prior conceptions of the world. What occurred was a reorganization of prior intellectual habitudes, infinitely more efficient than a cutting loose from all connections would have been.

This state of affairs suggests a definition of the role of the individual, or the self, in knowledge; namely, the redirection, or reconstruction of accepted beliefs. Every new idea, every conception of things differing from that authorized by current belief, must have its origin in an individual. New ideas are doubtless always sprouting, but a society governed by custom does not encourage their development. On the contrary, it tends to suppress them, just because they are deviations from what is current. The man who looks at things differently from others is in such a community a suspect character; for him to persist is generally fatal.
Even when social censorship of beliefs is not so strict, social conditions may fail to provide the appliances which are requisite if new ideas are to be adequately elaborated; or they may fail to provide any material support and reward to those who entertain them. Hence they remain mere fancies, romantic castles in the air, or aimless speculations. The freedom of observation and imagination involved in the modern scientific revolution were not easily secured; they had to be fought for, many suffered for their intellectual independence. But, upon the whole, modern European society first permitted, and then, in some fields at least, deliberately encouraged the individual reactions which deviate from what custom prescribes. Discovery, research, inquiry in new lines, inventions, finally came to be either the social fashion, or in some degree tolerable.

Sunday 16 March 2008

The Azores Summit: Still Lying After All These Years

At the Azores summit five years ago today President Bush declared that the US “has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security.” This sentiment was echoed by Prime Minister Blair: Iraq was a threat to us and its neighbours. Notably Iraq was said to be a threat with or without Saddam. That is, even if Saddam left Iraq - something which was rumoured to be a possibility at the time - the Anglo-American led 'coalition' would invade anyway.
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The rhetoric has continued to morph whenever the lies have become too untennable to sustain. The Weapons of Mass Destruction lie was soon outed: there weren't any. Iraq's military capabilities were crippled during the previous Iraq invasion and hadn't been rebuilt. Once this became clear and undeniable then the reason for the Anglo-American invasion changed. We were then told that the invasion was about removing Saddam from power. History was rewritten.
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But at the Azores summit prior to the invasion - as Chomsky says in his August 2003 article Preventative War 'The Supreme Crime' - the Anglo-American position was clear: even if Saddam left Iraq the invasion would go ahead regardless. The invasion had - and has - nothing to do with removing Saddem from power. This was simply another lie to cover up the previous one.
Follow The Money
Who has gained most from the Iraq invasion? Not the 1,000,000 dead Iraqi's, or the 4,000,000 Iraqi's who've been displaced. And not the dead, injured and unnecessarily put at risk British and US soldiers. The people who gained most are the same people who always gain most from war and conflict: international banks, defence contractors, oil corporations, and those wishing to expand American empire.
The US and British governments wanted war and chaos in Iraq and the middle east and they got it. They lied 5 years ago as they lie today because the truth makes them look like cold calous murderers with no regard for the suffereing of others.

Thursday 13 March 2008

Big Media Interlocks With Corporate America by Peter Philips

Mainstream media is the term often used to describe the collective group of big TV, radio and newspapers in the United States. Mainstream implies that the news being produced is for the benefit and enlightenment of the mainstream population—the majority of people living in the US. Mainstream media include a number of communication mediums that carry almost all the news and information on world affairs that most Americans receive. The word media is plural, implying a diversity of news sources.

However, mainstream media no longer produce news for the mainstream population—nor should we consider the media as plural. Instead it is more accurate to speak of big media in the US today as the corporate media and to use the term in the singular tense—as it refers to the singular monolithic top-down power structure of self-interested news giants.

Read more.

Saturday 1 March 2008

The United States of America: On The Road To Martial Law

"Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees."

The above is an excerpt from a February 4th
article co-written by Dan Hamburg (a former Congressman and Executive Director of Voice of the Environment) and Lewis Seiler (President of Voice of the Environment) published in the San Fransisco Chronicle. The article, Rule by fear or rule by law?, is an all too rare instance of the corporate media acknowledging the threat the US government and its corporate masters are now more than ever posing to the US populous. The threat is clear: it's of the implimentation of martial law in the United States of America.
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For the sake of clarity, martial law is defined as (according to my Collins dictionary): "Rule of law maintained by the military in the absence of civil law."

The camps refered to above (with the capacity to hold many hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions) are being built below the radar of the corporate press. So, too, is the legislation being brought in that gives the federal government the authoirty to detain pretty much anyone it likes, without trial, and to hold them indefinately:

"The Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike."

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The threat of martial law being implimented in the US isn't a matter of opinion based on a biased interpretation of cherry picked facts. It's real and it's detailed in a plethora of laws and executive orders that, under the right conditions (such as after an attack on US soil), will grant the president all the authority and control of a military dictator; even the ability to launch nuclear strikes at will. Comparisons with Hitler and the Nazi's are simply accurate and factual. For instance consider the following, which were detailed in Aaron Russo's film America: Freedom to Fascism:-

1) Executive Order #11000, which gives the government the authority to force civilians to work in labour brigades under government supervision. Indeed the government has the authority to displace entire populations from towns or cities if it so wishes.
2) Executive Order #11921, giving the president the authority to declare a state of emergency that is neither named nor defined and that Congress cannot review for six months.
3) Senate Bill #1873, giving the government the authority to vaccinate people with untested vaccines against their will.
4) Congressman Sensenbrenner's Bill (HR 1528), a law which requires people to spy on their neighbours and/or wear a wire to this end. Refusal to obey carries a mandatory prison sentence of at least two years.

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And before you start thinking, 'Well, at least this doesn't affect me'. Think again. In December 2007, as reported in The Times, the US said it has the legal authority to "kidnap" British citizens if they are wanted for crimes within the United States. Then there are FBI calls to have access to British identity data (as reported in The Guardian in January 2008) in keeping with plans to create an interational database of everyone.

What I'm suggesting is that the troubling prospect of martial law in the US seems to be part of a wider transnational momentom: a momentom geared towards extinguishing any hope we could have of living in a world where 'privacy' and 'liberty' mean anything. Both are under threat, in Britain as much as in the US. And unless this momentom is halted and indeed reversed, then prospects for the future look very bleak. Our government is literally taking liberties to such an extent that it would be quicker to detail the ones we still have rather than the ones that are now denied to us. I'll nevertheless remind you of one liberty that you've lost: the right to make private phone calls. Every conversation you have on your phone, every text message you send or receive, the government has lawful unrestricted access to the lot. This has to stop. We need to start demanding more of ourselves and of our government. There are historical precedents of governments and regimes that curbed liberties to this extent. We called them fascist and totalitarian and in the not too distant past we fought them. Today our government seems to be using them as a blueprint.