...actual distinct voices speaking in my mind? Or is it just the weblog of James Lindenschmidt? Here you can see me wrestle with this and other questions, while spewing forth my writings, opinions, and hallucinations.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

 

9-11 conspiracy theory redux

In general, I'm not a believer in conspiracy theories. Though I must confess I regard them with interest. I perhaps most admire Robert Anton Wilson's attitude about conspiracy theories: they are impossible because power is just not so finely concentrated. At best, there are multiple conspiracies competing for power.

However, this site caught my eye. It's called "Debunking conspiracy theorists' paranoid fantasies about Sept. 11," and it's a fun read. I'm not saying I buy everything in there, but how can you not like an article that begins like this:

Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event there will usually be at least one ,often several wild conspiracy theories which spring up around it. "The CIA killed Hendrix" " The Pope had John Lennon murdered ", "Hitler was half Werewolf", "Space aliens replaced Nixon with a clone" etc,etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and more numerous are the fanciful rantings which circulate in relation to it.

So its hardly surprising that the events of Sept 11 2001 have spawned their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is - sadly - a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up these tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis.

One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11, and one that has attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs is that it was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that they "hate our freedoms."

Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the internet and the media to the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have actually fallen under its spell.

A nice rhetorical device. I actually laughed out loud when I read it. Gonna go read more...

^ posted at 12:20 AM

 

A Very Interesting Quote

"We have no interest in oppressing other people. We are not moved by hatred against any other nation. We bear no grudge. I know how grave a thing war is. I wanted to spare our people such an evil. It is not so much the country of Czechoslovakia; it is rather its leader, Edward Benes. He has led a reign of terror. He has hurled countless people into the profoundest misery. Through his continuous terrorism, he has succeeded in reducing millions of his people to silence. The Czech maintenance of a tremendous military arsenal can only be regarded as a focus of danger. We have displayed a truly unexampled patience, but I am no longer willing to remain inactive while this madman ill-treats millions of human beings."

--Adolph Hitler, April 14th, 1939

^ posted at 5:32 PM

 

Putting the Progress Back in Progressive

Hooray, hooray. The war is over. The terrorists in Iraq have been vanquished, and their vast supply of chemical weapons is no longer a threat to America. A statue fell in Baghdad, and the world is once again safe for neoliberalism. We can all take a collective deep breath, and resume our regularly scheduled programming.

Or so we are told. Those of us in the progressive community know better. There has never been clear evidence of terrorism from Iraq, and as of yet, not a single weapon of mass destruction has been found. The fact that Saddam's forces could scarcely defend their own capital indicates that the “Iraqi threat” was not nearly what it was made out to be by the Bush administration. There is strong evidence that the footage of Saddam's statue falling in Baghdad was a farce, having been scripted and staged by the US military. And perhaps most importantly, careful students of neoliberalism know that the invasion of Iraq is neither the beginning nor the end of the story; it is merely the latest chapter in a very long and very unfinished story.

So where do we go from here? The peace activism by the progressive community before and during the invasion of Iraq was unprecedented in both scope and rapidity of mobilization. As the fighting in Iraq wanes, and the apparent crisis situation motivating millions of people to join the progressives in peace demonstrations has eased, it is clear that we progressives have work ahead of us. For thought he immediate crisis in Iraq has been pronounced over, the neoliberal policies of the Bush administration remain a threat to people worldwide. Sadly, the struggle is far from over.

The next target of the “war on terrorism” is far from clear; Syria, Iran, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and even France are potential targets of the US military machine. Anti-American sentiment is steadily increasing. Suspicion and distrust of America and the Bush administration has never been higher. Every American bomb that falls, every bullet fired, every destructive campaign of “shock and awe” will only destabilize the world and further the cycle of hatred of America that is the central motivation of so many people worldwide.

On the domestic front, the picture is no more optimistic. American civil liberties are under attack by our government; poverty is on the increase; healthcare is inaccessible to a huge and growing number of people; the Internet, the very mechanism by which the extraordinary mobilization of the peace movement was enabled, is being re-cast in a new mold of increasing centralized control, favoring the “intellectual property” interests over the rights to fair use and freedom of expression of the people.

The mass media is of course little or no help; the primary function of corporate media outlets seems to be to perpetuate the culture of fear in America, and to make a spectacle of the bright lights and shiny metal of the American bombing campaign du jour. The Internet, while it lasts as a free network, is a fertile source of information and infrastructure of organization. As more and more people turn off their television sets and begin discussion in their immediate communities and in cyberspace, the potential for progress grows.

Writing in 1935, the American philosopher John Dewey noted of liberalism that

its work is first of all education, in the broadest sense of that term. Schooling is a part of the work of education, but education in its full meaning includes all the influences that go to form the attitudes and dispositions (of desire as well as of belief), which constitute dominant habits of mind and character.

If Dewey is right, and I believe he is, then the first task of progressives must be the furtherance of public discourse around social and political issues. Of course, Dewey didn't have the mass corporate media to deal with, at least not to the extent that television “programming” would impact and subdue American culture in the latter half of the 20th century.

With some training and practice, anyone can learn to spot the abundant contradictions and the narrow scope of corporate media outlets. The best way I know to encourage this is to ask questions. In general, those who get information from additional sources than corporate media will have a much wider array of information to work with, so finding an appropriate question to ask shouldn't be difficult. When speaking with a media drone, asking a question they cannot answer, that exposes a lie or a contradiction in the stories being repeated so often that they are taken as truth, the shell of the shellshocked begins to crack. They, too, begin to think more broadly, their mind having been opened to the wider, richer array of human experience outside the television set.

In my own life, similar experiences to these were the dawn of progress for me, and they are the reason I became a progressive. Intelligence, relentlessly applied to social and political issues, should be the measure of progress for the progressive community. Dewey noted that liberalism “is committed to freed intelligence as the method of directing [inevitable] change.” Once again I agree with Dewey, and in particular his observation that intelligence must be freed. For in present America, for millions of people, intelligence is held captive. But as the population steers itself away from the “content delivery” model of mass media, the scope of this captivity is lessening.

Indeed, it could be argued that corporate media is a sedative for a sleeping giant. James Moore, of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, recently wrote that

There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation. Instead, it is a new form of international player, constituted by the “will of the people” in a global social movement. The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this second superpower is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement is made up of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes social development, environmentalism, health, and human rights.

Moore is describing the global progressive community, and he is correct to refer to it as a second superpower. With the broad application of freed intelligence, the progressive community will continue its progress. Moore's closing advice to the reader is salient:

We must work on ourselves and our community. We will dialogue with our neighbors, knowing that the collective wisdom of the second superpower is grounded in the individual wisdom within each of us. We must remind ourselves that daily we make personal choices about the world we create for ourselves and our descendants. We do not have to create a world where differences are resolved by war. It is not our destiny to live in a world of destruction, tedium, and tragedy. We will create a world of peace.

The future of the progressive community—and the measure of its progress—depends on its ability to collectively employ the use of freed intelligence by as many people as possible. We must speak our truths to whoever will listen, and we must hone and revise our truths with an attitude of fallibility. Persuasion will always trump force. And with the use of freed intelligence, the ideals of progressives will become more and more persuasive.

^ posted at 12:40 AM

 

Virtual Enclosed

I finished the first draft of The Virtual Enclosures today. I can email a pdf of it if anyone wants to read it. email me (double-check the address) for a copy. I'm glad to be finished with it.

^ posted at 1:19 AM

 

Time Traveller inside trading

Hmmm. I wonder if this guy is lying? Who knows...

^ posted at 3:55 PM

 

Two more good articles

Both of the following articles are quite good.

The first, Report card Afghanistan: Heroin production soars, women remain in danger, violence abounds by Bill Berkowitz questions what will happen in Iraq now that the war is "over," based on comparisons with what happened last year in Afghanistan. The bottom line is that Afghanistan has been more or less abandoned in terms of aid.

The second, What have we really won in Iraq? by Geoffrey Neale, national chair of the Washington, DC-based Libertarian Party, provides a Libertarian's view of the Iraqi invasion. He points out several effects of the invasion, arguing that we have no real cause to celebrate. The Bush doctrine of preemptive war is a dangerous precedent. I am in full agreement with the Libertarians on this one...

^ posted at 11:45 AM

 

Tim Robbins: 'A Chill Wind is Blowing in This Nation...'

There is now a transcript of Tim Robbins' speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 15, 2003. It's a good speech, though he seems to be more optimistic about the state of US mass media than I am. He makes several good points:

For all of the ugliness and tragedy of 9-11, there was a brief period afterward where I held a great hope, in the midst of the tears and shocked faces of New Yorkers, in the midst of the lethal air we breathed as we worked at Ground Zero, in the midst of my children's terror at being so close to this crime against humanity, in the midst of all this, I held on to a glimmer of hope in the naive assumption that something good could come out of it.

I imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk about Democrat versus Republican, white versus black, or any of the other ridiculous divisions that dominate our public discourse. I imagined our leaders going on television telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero, we can't, but there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers to tutor children, to teach them to read. Our work is needed at old-age homes to visit the lonely and infirmed; in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots to baseball fields. I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11, a new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us, we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, and more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a Phoenix out of the fire, we will be reborn.

And then came the speech: You are either with us or against us. And the bombing began. And the old paradigm was restored as our leader encouraged us to show our patriotism by shopping and by volunteering to join groups that would turn in their neighbor for any suspicious behavior.

In the 19 months since 9-11, we have seen our democracy compromised by fear and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home have been quickly compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public has grown bitterly divided, and a world population that had profound sympathy and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as we once viewed the Soviet Union, as a rogue state.

Today, prominent politicians who have decried violence in movies -- the "Blame Hollywooders," if you will -- recently voted to give our current president the power to unleash real violence in our current war. They want us to stop the fictional violence but are okay with the real kind.

And these same people that tolerate the real violence of war don't want to see the result of it on the nightly news. Unlike the rest of the world, our news coverage of this war remains sanitized, without a glimpse of the blood and gore inflicted upon our soldiers or the women and children in Iraq. Violence as a concept, an abstraction -- it's very strange.

As we applaud the hard-edged realism of the opening battle scene of "Saving Private Ryan," we cringe at the thought of seeing the same on the nightly news. We are told it would be pornographic. We want no part of reality in real life. We demand that war be painstakingly realized on the screen, but that war remain imagined and conceptualized in real life.

^ posted at 11:24 AM

 

Zinn: 'A Kinder, Gentler Patriotism'

A new Howard Zinn article is up. Some excerpts:

The distinction between dying for our country and dying for your government is crucial in understanding what I believe to be the definition of patriotism in a democracy. According to the Declaration of Independence - the fundamental document of democracy - governments are artificial creations, established by the people, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed", and charged by the people to ensure the equal right of all to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Furthermore, as the Declaration says, "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it."

When a government recklessly expends the lives of its young for crass motives of profit and power (always claiming that its motives are pure and moral ("Operation Just Cause" was the invasion of Panama and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in the present instance) it is violating its promise to the country. It is the country that is primary - the people, the ideals of the sanctity of human life and the promotion of liberty. War is almost always (one might find rare instances of true self defense) a breaking of those promises. It does not enable the pursuit of happiness but brings despair and grief.

The American record does not justify confidence in its boast that it will bring democracy to Iraq. It will be painful to acknowledge that our GIs in Iraq were fighting not for democracy but for the expansion of the American empire, for the greed of the oil cartels, for the political ambitions of the president. And when they come home, they will find that their veterans' benefits have been cut to pay for the machines of war. They will find the military budget growing at the expense of health, education and the needs of children. The Bush budget even proposes cutting the number of free school lunches.

I suggest that patriotic Americans who care for their country might act on behalf of a different vision. Do we want to be feared for our military might or respected for our dedication to human rights? With the war in Iraq over, if indeed it is really over, we need to ask what kind of a country will we be. Is it important that we be a military superpower? Is it not exactly that that makes us a target for terrorism? Perhaps we could become instead a humanitarian superpower.

Nice insight, as always.

^ posted at 11:02 AM

 

Found, one (1) Smoking Gun

This has to be seen to be believed.

^ posted at 2:25 PM

 

crazy weather

I didn't write yesterday because I spent most of the day outside. It was gorgeous here, we went over 80 degrees for the first time in months. The wind was warm; it was strange for this climate. Usually the ocean breezes are quite cool.

This morning around 10am it was 75 degrees. But the temperature has dropped to 55 in the past hour or so. Now the 20 mph wind is quite cool. Apparently, the temperature is going to continue to drop dramatically, going down into the 20s tonight. Sigh. How cruel. Just when we got a taste of summer, it plunges instantly back down.

But spring is here, the warm weather (though presently a bit schizophrenic) is on the way. I'll take it as I can get it.

^ posted at 1:03 PM

 

Dreaming of The Enemy

I had a dream last night. I was with my family on a large boat just off the coast of Portland. Well, I knew it was Portland, although it didn't look like any part of Portland I'd seen before. It was a stunning day, much like it's been here the past couple of days, except 20 degrees warmer. The sky was clear and that wonderful, deep shade of blue that I love about Maine skies. I was standing on the deck of the ship, admiring the view of the city, looking at large, human-made objects: buildings, stadiums, other boats.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a plane flying abnormally low. It was a small, streamlined private plane painted red-white-and-blue. I watched as it flew closer to a building, and I then saw something drop from the plane, moving toward the building. I soon realized the object was a bomb, and to everyone's horror the building soon exploded in a fiery mushroom cloud that completely engulfed it. Seconds alter, we heard and felt the blast. We were confused en masse, much as I imagine stunned New Yorkers must have felt on 9/11. What happened? Whodunnit?

Through the sadness and chaos, I watched the red-white-and-blue plane circle around heading back toward the city, and, persumably, toward another target. Again, we gasped in collective horror, helpless, as a second building exploded, and then a third, as the plane kamikazed into its smoky, crimson doom.

Eventually in the dream, the boat we were on was hit by an unknown assailant, and it started to sink. The dream ended as someone shouted "It's Cuba! That was a Cuban plane!" I was frantically searching for my daughter as I woke up.

Throughout the dream, I never felt terrified. It was as if I was watching a movie; somehow what I was witnessing wasn't real.

Much like America's perception of its "enemies."

Who are America's enemies? Or if America is too broad a term, who are the enemies of the Bush administration? Afghanistan? Iraq? North Korea? Pakistan? Iran? France? Germany? Russia? Colombia? Panama? Sudan? Al Qaeda?

It occured to me in thinking about this dream that America's enemies are, in terms of nation-states, ghosts. None of the above are imminent threats to attack America, despite the paranoia sown by the Bush administration.

The enemies of America are, put simply, the people of the world, united. I've been reading The Second Superpower more closely, and it rings true. The basic argument in that piece is that the people of the world, combined with the communication infrastructures of the Information Age, are the second superpower, and the only one that will eventually challenge the political and economic hegemony of the US.

And many of these people are in America itself. The way things are going, when the crisis of neoliberalism becomes more imminent in the lives of Americans, it will not be simply North vs. South; the country will not be evenly divided by some imaginary line on a map. Neighbors will oppose one another; families will disagree; and these disagreements will become more and more intense as time passes and the crisis of neoliberalism worsens.

The Enemy of America is transparent in terms of nation-states. I am tempted to conclude that nation-states in general are outmoded; perhaps we truly are on the cusp of cosmopolitanism. I'll have to think about this some more.

^ posted at 6:12 PM

 

Turning Inward

Haven't had much time to write the past couple of days. It's been busy, and my attention has largely been commanded by family. This is a very good thing. It's been a beautiful weekend here. We went to the beach for the first time in a while yesterday. It actually hit 60 degrees, thought the ocean winds made it much cooler than that. It was quite nice. Today, I actually think I'm going to go fly a kite with my daughter. I feel like the father in Mary Poppins or something. :-)

^ posted at 11:32 AM

 

Did anyone else notice...REDUX

There is apparently more to the story about the overblown "jubilant Iraqis" bringing down the statues of Saddam. See the picture on the link for more details. According to that page,

The up close action video of the statue being destroyed is broadcast around the world as proof of a massive uprising. Still photos grabbed off of Reuters show a long-shot view of Fardus Square... it's empty save for the U.S. Marines, the International Press, and a small handful of Iraqis. There are no more than 200 people in the square at best. The Marines have the square sealed off and guarded by tanks. A U.S. mechanized vehicle is used to pull the statue of Saddam from it's base. The entire event is being hailed as an equivalent of the Berlin Wall falling... but even a quick glance of the long-shot photo shows something more akin to a carefully constructed media event tailored for the television cameras.

^ posted at 3:51 PM

 

First priority: turn Iraqi TVs back on

After my last post, I thought this story was interesting:

At Thursday's U.S. Central Command briefing, Air Force Maj. Gen. Gene Renuart said U.S. forces have been working hard to get broadcast capability into Baghdad, and are "working aggressively to find the context within the city and the country who would like to begin an Iraqi broadcast network."

In other words, being able to get American-ized information to the Iraqi people takes precedence over getting them food, water, medicine, painkillers, anaesthetics.

Truly, Iraq has been liberated. We now return to your regularly-scheduled programming...

^ posted at 1:22 PM

 

Did anyone else notice...

In the footage of people "dancing in the streets" in Baghdad that there were only a few thousand of them? I mean, that's cool and all, but Baghdad is a city of 5 million people. Even if there were 50,000 people, that's only 1 percent of the population.

Methinks the story of the "jubilant Iraqis" is being oversold just a bit. Let's see if people are still hugging American soldiers in a few weeks, after American soldiers have managed to turn the electricity back on, get clean water flowing again, properly equip the "overwhelmed" hospitals with medicines and supplies, etc.

Because the American soldiers are going to do all these things, right? RIGHT? I mean, what's the use of being "liberated" if you don't have the basic needs of life...

^ posted at 12:50 PM

 

Keep paying MS for licenses, AFTER you've sold your computer...

According to this article, Microsoft's new licensing 6.0 scheme says that if you sell your computer before the end of the licensing term, you STILL have to pay Microsoft for the software that you no longer are using.

God, I love proprietary software. Thank goodness we have companies like Microsoft around to keep the economy alive. Except, of course, for those terrorist commies who run Free software like Linux.

^ posted at 11:58 AM

 

P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act to become permanent?

According to this NYTimes story (reg. required), "Congressional Republicans are maneuvering to make permanent the sweeping antiterrorism powers granted to federal law enforcement agents after the attacks of Sept. 11." If you don't know why the PATRIOT act is a bad thing (not to mention the fact that it's unconsitutional), I highly suggest reading this analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Quick, pass this law while the American people are watching statues of Saddam Hussein fall in Baghdad...

^ posted at 9:38 PM

 

"Australian for .. Peace Activism"

This is a great story: "An Australian warship set sail for the Gulf with a "No War" banner attached to its bow after two daring peace activists clambered up the hull in a spectacular anti-war protest here." Photos of the event are on the story. It's surprising just how freakin' large ships like that are.

^ posted at 3:16 PM

 

IraqBodyCount.net

It's a dirty job, but someone has to keep track of it. Given the poor information being released into the US media, it is impossible to know how many people are being killed in Iraq. And as the US media keeps repeating over and over, it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell the Iraqi civilians from the soldiers. I wonder how more many Iraqis, soldier or civilian, will end up dead as a result of US foreign policy?

^ posted at 2:01 AM

 

An Iraqi War Quiz

Everyone, get your pencils out, especially if you support the current invasion of Iraq, and take this quiz. If you want, you can even send me the answers (see my email address to the left).

^ posted at 1:14 AM

 

Apparently, it's Peace Activist Season in Oakland

The police opened fire on peace activists today in Oakland, using "non-lethal bullets, sandbags and concussion grenades". As you will see by the pictures, it's not as if these do no damage.

I wonder when the next Kent State will happen?

^ posted at 11:38 PM

 

spring is in the air? Smells like oil to me...

Spring is in the air. This morning, I went outside my apartment door, and the cold blast of sub-30 degree air hit me in the face. I took a few cautious steps through the 4 inches of freshly-fallen snow, only to have my olfactory senses overwhelmed by the scent of oil.

Apparently, a truck on the Casco Bay Bridge, which is just a block from my home, tipped over today and spilled 10,000 gallons of jet fuel into the storm sewers on the bridge. Yuck. I hope the environmental impact is minimal. Yeah, right.

^ posted at 9:32 PM

 

The Virtual Enclosures: Introduction

I write this 36 hours into the invasion of Iraq by the US military machine under the command of George W. Bush. It has been declared “A-day,” and it will be characterized by the “shock and awe” bombing campaign of “strategic targets” in Iraq. It is the latest chapter in the story of neoliberalism's struggle to maintain control of the world economic climate. The corporate media outlets are, predictably, in the throes of their wargasms, showing the bright lights of explosions and tracer fire over Baghdad and the shiny metal of American warplanes, ships, and missiles. All of these media outlets are interchangeable; there is a very small set of stories being aired as Iraq is decimated. When one channel picks up an approved story by one of the “embedded” reporters with the military, many other channels pick it up too. Corporate media has full control over traditional media outlets; the corporate radio and television stations look all-too-similar to one another.

On the other hand, as I write this, I am using my computer. My computer runs Free software1, with a high-speed Internet connection provided by Time Warner. I am listening to Amy Goodman's radio show, Democracy Now!, via streaming mp3 over the Internet. I am monitoring several alternative news websites to get what I view as better information about the ongoing invasion. I am monitoring hundreds of incoming emails from several listservs that provide first-hand accounts of the situation in Iraq and all over the world. I visit several weblogs of those who want to get their stories out to the world. In short, all of my information independent of corporate control, both incoming and outgoing, is mediated through my computer and the Internet.

The Internet represents perhaps the single most revolutionary element of the Information Age. At present, it allows anyone to communicate with anyone else, without being mediated by a corporate media outlet. Stories can be told, and heard, without interference by centralized control. It allows organization of countless different struggles around the world; as an example, the peace movement is mobilizing against this invasion of Iraq faster than any other peace movement in history. This unprecedented mobilization of peace activists is possible because of computers and the Internet.

Yet the free exchange of ideas as mediated by computers and the Internet is in danger. Every revolution has a counter-revolution, and the counter-revolution upon the Internet and computers is well underway. The Information Counter-Revolution is an attempt by corporate interests to re-assert control over the Internet, with the end goal of re-architecting it in terms of pre-Information Revolution media outlets, which treat information infrastructure as “content delivery systems” controlling what passive viewers may see. The counter-revolution seeks to accomplish these ends through two primary means: expansion of “intellectual property” laws and a re-architecting of the Internet to unilaterally enforce these laws through an infrastructure of centralized control. The goal of this essay is to trace both the ongoing revolution in information technology that have produced unprecedented gains in the struggles against neoliberalism and the counter-revolution that threatens the gains made. The Information Revolution has proven to be a boon for the struggles against neoliberalism. The medium of the Internet has allowed people to communicate, organize, and mobilize more quickly and efficiently than ever before; this phenomenon is demonstrated by struggles in Chiapas, Seattle, Genoa, and the unprecedented mobilization of the worldwide peace movement against the current invasion of Iraq. The open, end-to-end architecture of the Internet—the virtual commons—allows it to be used for virtually any purpose, an enormous benefit to those who resist neoliberalism.

But the virtual commons of the Internet is being enclosed. The virtual enclosures consist of increasingly centralized control of information through intellectual property laws and the infrastructures of control being engineered to enforce them. The virtual enclosures threaten the very existence of the Internet as we know it, along with a person's ability to access his or her data on his or her computer. This re-architecting of the Internet and of personal computers will have dire consequences for activists struggling against neoliberalism. I aim to provide a detailed analysis of the threat posed by the Information Counter-Revolution, and to show what can be done to minimize the damage of the counter-revolution.

^ posted at 10:42 PM

 

The Virtual Enclosures

The Virtual Enclosures is the title of the piece I'm working on for an upcoming anthology. It's basically about intellectual property, but also about the nature of a commons vs. an enclosure situation. I've been working on it for quite a while. I've decided to post bits and pieces of it. It's getting pretty long (about 7500 words at present--equivalent to about 30 pages typed, double-spaced). I'll start with the Introduction. Next post.

^ posted at 10:40 PM

 

Thin Ice

This is a fun piece, if you can put up with allegory. Don't worry, it's for a good cause.

^ posted at 9:42 PM

 

Enlightenment™

This is how stupid the intellectual property crisis has become. According to Salon.com, the founder of Bikram Yoga, a style involving various poses done in very hot, sweaty rooms, has copyrighted the poses and is threatening to sue anyone teaching them without permission (salon.com registration required). Here are some excerpts:

If Choudhury has his way, every Bikram Yoga studio in the world will soon be franchised and under his control. To start this process, he recently obtained a copyright for his particular sequence of yoga poses -- a 90-minute series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises done in a room heated to 105 degrees. Choudhury says that yoga studios that want to continue teaching Bikram Yoga must pay franchise and royalty fees, change their name to Bikram's Yoga College of India, stop teaching other styles of yoga, use only Bikram-approved dialogue when instructing students, refrain from playing music during classes, and a host of other stipulations.

Choudhury, 56, is a yoga guru so brash that he has been known to compare himself to Superman and Buddha, teach from a throne wearing nothing but a tiny Speedo and a headset mike, and proclaim his style as "the only yoga." When asked how he could make such drastic statements, he told Business 2.0 magazine: "Because I have balls like atom bombs, two of them, 100 megatons each. Nobody fucks with me." Perhaps because of his erratic, grandiose behavior, the hundreds of cease-and-desist letters he sent to studios across the country were remarkably effective. Most studios either met his demands, stopped teaching Bikram classes and using the Bikram name, or shuffled around the standard 26-pose sequence.

The Indian-born Choudhury has embraced the American way since 1971, when he arrived in the United States and sold Americans a sweaty workout and a spiritual practice all wrapped into one neat package. Since then he's developed a cult following and settled in Beverly Hills, where he collects Bentleys and Rolls Royces. Choudhury claims that his yoga, practiced in a mirrored room in extreme heat, cures everything from heart disease to hepatitis C. He has trained more than 2,000 teachers in his method ($5,000 per training) and says he is opening two new studios each day. Worldwide, he has 720 schools in 50 states and 220 countries. With the help of his audio, video and clothing lines, his fortune is estimated at $7 million.

To protect his assets, Choudhury says he must franchise. "I'm not happy about it," he insists. By copyrighting the poses, he says, he will protect his intellectual property and discourage copycats from teaching what he considers his invention. "When I first came here, I never charged a dime," he says. "But my students said, This is not Calcutta; this is America. You have to charge money or else nobody will believe you know something." But many feel Choudhury's actions breach the most basic of yogic teachings -- generosity, contentment, gentleness and, ultimately, self-liberation -- and that his pathological need for control and power renders him spiritually bankrupt and focused solely on the bottom line.

Even though the law seems to be in their favor, many teachers are worried that Choudhury, with his vast financial resources and outsized personality, will somehow manage to steer the law in his favor. "If he succeeds, he paves the way for another person to step forth and claim ownership of iyengar, ashtanga, power yoga, meditation and other forms of yoga-related healing arts," says studio owner Mark Morrison. The larger question is where to draw the line, both legally and ethically, in preserving an ancient tradition that is meant to be shared.

"I don't care," Choudhury says of those who oppose him. "They are pissing in the wind. There is always some idiot. So what can you do? You treat an idiot like an idiot." As divisiveness grows over who, if anybody, owns yoga in America, one thing seems clear: The essence of yoga, or "union" in Sanskrit, seems to have gotten lost in the translation.

^ posted at 2:00 PM

 

The war that may end the age of superpower

This is another fabulous piece by Henry C K Liu in Asia Times. It's amazing how quickly some very nuanced analyses of this war are coming out. The reasons for it are transparent. The Bush cabal is not fooling anyone. The most salient line in the entire piece is this: "The real enemy is neo-liberalism. The war on Iraq is part of a push to make the world safe for neo-liberalism. This war is a self-destructive cancer growing inside US neo-imperialism."

Here are some excerpts of this fairly lengthy piece:

There is no doubt the US will prevail over Iraq in the long run. It is merely a question of at what cost in lives, money and time. Thus far, a lot of pre-war estimates have had to be readjusted and a lot of pre-war myths about popular support for US "liberation" within Iraq have had to be re-evaluated. Time is not on America's side, and the cost is not merely financial. America's superpower status is at stake.

At the current rate of war expenditure at $2.5 billion a day, the war budget of $75 billion will be exhausted after 30 days, or until April 20, ten days before the projected arrival of all reinforcements to the front. Nobody has asked how a doubling of forces will win a guerilla war in Iraq. The US is having difficulty supplying 120,000 troops now, how will doubling the supply load over a 300 miles supply line help against an enemy that refuses to engage face to face? Domestic political opposition in the United Kingdom has started to demand that Prime Minister Tony Blair should pull British troops out now, based on the grounds that the US war plan has changed.

If the Iraqis manage to hold out past the summer, the war is going to be a new ball game. The other Arab governments in the region can manage to stand by if the US scores a quick victory, but Arab governments would have to come to yield to popular demand to come the aid of Iraq if the war drags on for months, even if the US makes steady military progress, but fails to bring the war to a convincing close. Syria and Iran are at risk of becoming part of the war. The prospect of Russian intervention is not totally out of the question. Bush already has had to warn Russian President Vladimir Putin about alleged Russian military aid to Iraq, which Moscow summarily dismissed.

For the US, it is not a matter of winning the war eventually, it must win a quick and decisive victory, or its image of superpower invincibility will suffer. An offensive war must conclude within a short time, while a defensive war only needs to continue. This is particularly true with a superpower. Every day that passes without a decisive victory for the invader is an incremental victory for the defender. Stalingrad did not need to destroy the German Wehrmacht. It only needed to hang on without surrendering. Despite orchestrated denial, the US has failed to deliver on its original war scenario of a quick and easy win with both military and moral superiority. Claiming that it had always anticipated a long war now only adds to the credibility gap on new assurances of the reliability of any new war plan.

The link between war expenditure and the Federal budget and the Bush tax cut is complex. The size of the invasion force was arrived at more by the constraints of logistics and the new "trasnsformational" doctrine, championed by Rumsfeld, behind the war plan. The myth upon which the war plan was based was that there would be instant domestic rebellion against Hussein, at least in the Shi'ite south - not concerted Iraqi guerilla resistance. The plan for a two-front, north-south attack on Baghdad was foiled by Turkey, the support from whom the US had been overconfident and did not secure with sufficient bribing. Washington was also unwilling to pay the political price of accommodating Turkish interests in a post-war Iraq at the expense of the Kurds. The Rumsfeld war plan was a fast moving, light forward force to enter Baghdad triumphantly with little resistance after a massive "shock and awe" air attack and wholesale surrender by the Republican Guards.

The plan was flawed from the start, a victim of Washington's own propaganda of the war being one of liberation for the Iraqi people. Instead, the invasion acted as a unifying agent for Iraqi and pan-Arabic nationalism and elevated Saddam to the role of hero and possibly martyr for the Arab cause in a defensive battle by a weak nation against the world's sole superpower.

Now the war is threatening to spill over to Syria and Iran and is creating political instability in all Arab regimes in the region. NATO is weakened and the traditional transatlantic alliance is frayed. This war has succeeded in pushing Russia, France, Germany and China closer, in contrast if not in opposition to US interests worldwide, a significant development with long term implications that are difficult to assess at present. Globalization is dealt a final blow by this war. The airlines are dead and without air travel, globalization is merely a slogan. The freezing of Iraq foreign assets is destroying the image of the US as a financial safe haven. The revival of Arab nationalism will change the dynamics in Middle East politics. The myth of US power has been punctured. The geopolitical costs of this war to the US are enormous and the benefits are hard to see.

This war will end from its own inevitable evolution, even without anti-war demonstrations. It will not be a happy end. There is yet no discernible exit strategy for the US. After this war, the world will have no superpower, albeit the US will remain strong both economically and militarily. But the US will be forced to learn to be much more cautious, and more realistic, about its ability to impose its will on other nations through the application of force. The UK will be the big loser geopolitically. The British military has already served notice to Blair that Britain cannot sustain a high level of combat for indefinite periods.

Americans, even liberals and radical leftists, cannot possibly sympathize with the natural need for violence in the political struggle of nationalists in their struggle against imperialism. They harbor a genuine sense of repugnance for political oppression unfamiliar to their own historical conditions. Be that as it may, only Iraqis are justified in trying to rid Iraq of any leader not to their liking, not a foreign power, no matter how repugnant the regime may seem to foreigners. Moral imperialism is imperialism nonetheless.

Further, this invasion is transforming Saddam into a heroic fighter in defense of Iraqi and Arab nationalism and as a brave resistance fighter against the world's sole superpower. The only people in the entire world buying the liberation propaganda are Americans, and even many Americans who supported the idea of regime change in Iraq are rethinking its need and feasability. The populations in most Arabic nations are increasingly wishing they had Saddam as their leader.

In a world order of nation-states, it is natural for all citizens to support their troops, but only on their own soil. Support for all expeditionary or invading forces is not patriotism. It is imperialism. All nations are entitled to keep defensive forces, but offensive forces of all countries must be condemned by all, socialists and right-wing libertarians alike. Some of the most rational anti-war statements and arguments in the US at this moment are coming from the libertarian right, not the left.

The real enemy is neo-liberalism. The war on Iraq is part of a push to make the world safe for neo-liberalism. This war is a self-destructive cancer growing inside US neo-imperialism. Just as the Civil War rescued Abraham Lincoln from the fate of an immoral segregationist politician and projected him in history as a liberator of slaves, this war will rescue Saddam from the fate of a petty dictator and project him in history to the ranks of a true freedom fighter. That has been Bush's gift to Saddam, paid in full by the blood of the best and bravest of Iraqi, American and British citizens.

^ posted at 9:57 PM

 

The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head

This may be the most important piece I've read in a while, except perhaps for Lawrence Lessig's work. In it, James Moore argues that the collective will of the people, worldwide, are the second superpower that could challenge the hegemony of the United States. Very progressive ideals in here. Some excerpts:

There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation. Instead, it is a new form of international player, constituted by the “will of the people” in a global social movement. The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this second superpower is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement is made up of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes social development, environmentalism, health, and human rights. This movement has a surprisingly agile and muscular body of citizen activists who identify their interests with world society as a whole—and who recognize that at a fundamental level we are all one. These are people who are attempting to take into account the needs and dreams of all 6.3 billion people in the world—and not just the members of one or another nation.

The Internet and other interactive media continue to penetrate more and more deeply all world society, and provide a means for instantaneous personal dialogue and communication across the globe. The collective power of texting, blogging, instant messaging, and email across millions of actors cannot be overestimated. Like a mind constituted of millions of inter-networked neurons, the social movement is capable of astonishingly rapid and sometimes subtle community consciousness and action.

How does the second superpower take action? Not from the top, but from the bottom. That is, it is the strength of the US government that it can centrally collect taxes, and then spend, for example, $1.2 billion on 1,200 cruise missiles in the first day of the war against Iraq. By contrast, it is the strength of the second superpower that it could mobilize hundreds of small groups of activists to shut down city centers across the United States on that same first day of the war. And that millions of citizens worldwide would take to their streets to rally. The symbol of the first superpower is the eagle—an awesome predator that rules from the skies, preying on mice and small animals. Perhaps the best symbol for the second superpower would be a community of ants. Ants rule from below. And while I may be awed seeing eagles in flight, when ants invade my kitchen they command my attention.

The process is not without its flaws and weaknesses. For example, the central role of the mass media—with its alleged biases and distortions—is a real issue. Much news of the war comes to members of the second superpower from CNN, Fox, and the New York Times, despite the availability of alternative sources. The study of the nature and limits of this big mind is just beginning, and we don’t know its strengths and weaknesses as well as we do those of more traditional democracy. Perhaps governance is the wrong way to frame this study. Rather, what we are embarked on is a kind of experimental neurology, as our communication tools continue to evolve and to rewire the processes by which the community does its shared thinking and feeling. One of the more interesting questions posed to political scientists studying the second superpower is to what extent the community’s long-term orientation and freedom from special interests is reinforced by the peer-to-peer nature of web-centered ways of communicating—and whether these tendencies can be intentionally fostered through the design of the technology.

Which brings us to the most important point: the vital role of the individual. The shared, collective mind of the second superpower is made up of many individual human minds—your mind and my mind—together we create the movement. In traditional democracy our minds don’t matter much—what matters are the minds of those with power of position, and the minds of those that staff and lobby them. In the emergent democracy of the second superpower, each of our minds matters a lot. For example, any one of us can launch an idea. Any one of us can write a blog, send out an email, create a list. Not every idea will take hold in the big mind of the second superpower—but the one that eventually catches fire is started by an individual. And in the peer-oriented world of the second superpower, many more of us have the opportunity to craft submissions, and take a shot.

And finally, while George Bush was indeed able to go to war with Iraq, the only way he could do so was to ignore international law and split with the United Nations. Had he stayed within the system of international institutions, his aims likely would have been frustrated. The French and the Germans who led the attempt to stop him could not, I believe, have done what they did without the strength of public opinion prodding them—the second superpower in action.

This is a very thought-provoking piece. I highly recommend printing out a copy and reading it.

^ posted at 4:01 PM

 

Metaphor and War, Again

This is a great piece about the metaphors in use surrounding the invasion of Iraq. The most prominent is that a nation is a person:

One of the most central metaphors in our foreign policy is that A Nation Is A Person. It is used hundreds of times a day, every time the nation of Iraq is conceptualized in terms of a single person, Saddam Hussein. The war, we are told, is not being waged against the Iraqi people, but only against this one person. Ordinary American citizens are using this metaphor when they say things like, "Saddam is a tyrant. He must be stopped." What the metaphor hides, of course, is that the 3000 bombs to be dropped in the first two days will not be dropped on that one person. They will kill many thousands of the people hidden by the metaphor, people that according to the metaphor we are not going to war against.

And later in the piece (actually the end of the piece):

First, the anti-war movement, properly understood, is not just, or even primarily, a movement against the war. It is a movement against the overall direction that the Bush administration is moving in. Second, such a movement, to be effective, needs to say clearly what it is for, not just what it is against.

Third, it must have a clearly articulated moral vision, with values rather than mere interests determining its political direction.

As the war begins, we should look ahead to transforming the anti-war movement into a movement that powerfully articulates progressive values and changes the course of our nation to where those values take us. The war has begun a discussion about values. Let's continue it.

This is good stuff.

^ posted at 1:24 PM

 

Biking, Writing, and snow

I got my bike back today. So of course, there are now about 4 inches of very wet snow on the ground outside. It's the kind where it will melt quickly, but very annoying. April snow. I look forward to Beltane, when all this nonsense will be behind us.

Ironically, just as I was given a nice install of OpenOffice and began to use it, I finally got LyX 1.3.1 to work. It has a sweet Qt interface, but for now I'm going to stick with OpenOffice. LyX and LaTeX taught me to think of documents in terms of structure; using styles I can approximate that in OpenOffice, yet I can still fine-tune. It's nice.

^ posted at 1:06 AM

 

New Chomsky interview

In Iraq as Trial Run. Chomsky gives his opinions about the current Iraq invasion, and the apparent future of US foreign policy. Here are some excerpts:

The trial run is to try and establish what the U.S. calls a "new norm" in international relations. The new norm is "preventive war" (notice that new norms are established only by the United States). So, for example, when India invaded East Pakistan to terminate horrendous massacres, it did not establish a new norm of humanitarian intervention, because India is the wrong country, and besides, the U.S. was strenuously opposed to that action.

This is not pre-emptive war; there is a crucial difference. Pre-emptive war has a meaning, it means that, for example, if planes are flying across the Atlantic to bomb the United States, the United States is permitted to shoot them down even before they bomb and may be permitted to attack the air bases from which they came. Pre-emptive war is a response to ongoing or imminent attack.

In the last few months, there has been a spectacular achievement of government-media propaganda, very visible in the polls. The international polls show that support for the war is higher in the United States than in other countries. That is, however, quite misleading, because if you look a little closer, you find that the United States is also different in another respect from the rest of the world. Since September 2002, the United States is the only country in the world where 60 per cent of the population believes that Iraq is an imminent threat - something that people do not believe even in Kuwait or Iran.

Furthermore, about 50 per cent of the population now believes that Iraq was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. This has happened since September 2002. In fact, after the September 11 attack, the figure was about 3 per cent. Government-media propaganda has managed to raise that to about 50 per cent. Now if people genuinely believe that Iraq has carried out major terrorist attacks against the United States and is planning to do so again, well, in that case people will support the war.

Compare North Korea and Iraq. Iraq is defenceless and weak; in fact, the weakest regime in the region. While there is a horrible monster running it, it does not pose a threat to anyone else. North Korea, on the other hand, does pose a threat. North Korea, however, is not attacked for a very simple reason: it has a deterrent. It has a massed artillery aimed at Seoul, and if the United States attacks it, it can wipe out a large part of South Korea.

So the United States is telling the countries of the world: if you are defenceless, we are going to attack you when we want, but if you have a deterrent, we will back off, because we only attack defenceless targets. In other words, it is telling countries that they had better develop a terrorist network and weapons of mass destruction or some other credible deterrent; if not, they are vulnerable to "preventive war".

For that reason alone, this war is likely to lead to the proliferation of both terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

^ posted at 12:57 AM

 

sometimes, at the very end of articles, something interesting finds its way into American media

From this story in Newsweek:

Last Wednesday, CIA officials gave a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill about the rising tide of anti-Americanism sweeping the Arab world. Particular emphasis was placed on Jordan and Egypt. As agency officials discussed the depth of hatred for U.S. actions, the senators fell silent. There were delicate discussions about the uncertainty, if the war was protracted, of “regime stability.” After the briefing, “there were senators who were ashen-faced,” said one staff member. “They were absolutely depressed.” Much of what the agency briefed would not have been news to any close watcher of the BBC or almost any foreign news broadcast. “But they [the senators] only watch American TV,” said the staffer. Most of the senators had been led to believe that the war would be quick and that the Iraqi populace would be dancing in the streets.

^ posted at 8:54 PM

 

Arundhati Roy: Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates

Arundhati Roy is a brilliant writer. her comments on Operation Iraqi Freedom are spot on. Here are some excerpts:

On March 21, the day after American and British troops began their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, an "embedded" CNN correspondent interviewed an American soldier. "I wanna get in there and get my nose dirty," Private AJ said. "I wanna take revenge for 9/11."

To be fair to the correspondent, even though he was "embedded" he did sort of weakly suggest that so far there was no real evidence that linked the Iraqi government to the September 11 attacks. Private AJ stuck his teenage tongue out all the way down to the end of his chin. "Yeah, well that stuff's way over my head," he said.

According to a New York Times/CBS News survey, 42 per cent of the American public believes that Saddam Hussein is directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC news poll says that 55 per cent of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein directly supports al-Qaida. What percentage of America's armed forces believe these fabrications is anybody's guess.

It is unlikely that British and American troops fighting in Iraq are aware that their governments supported Saddam Hussein both politically and financially through his worst excesses.

...

In the fog of war - one thing's for sure - if Saddam 's regime indeed has weapons of mass destruction, it is showing an astonishing degree of responsibility and restraint in the teeth of extreme provocation. Under similar circumstances, (say if Iraqi troops were bombing New York and laying siege to Washington DC) could we expect the same of the Bush regime? Would it keep its thousands of nuclear warheads in their wrapping paper? What about its chemical and biological weapons? Its stocks of anthrax, smallpox and nerve gas? Would it?

Excuse me while I laugh.

In the fog of war we're forced to speculate: Either Saddam is an extremely responsible tyrant. Or - he simply does not possess weapons of mass destruction. Either way, regardless of what happens next, Iraq comes out of the argument smelling sweeter than the US government.

^ posted at 4:04 PM

 

Kerry: US needs its own 'regime change'

The 2004 Presidential race is going to be interesting. I fully believe that whoever has the balls to stand up for peace and point out, in a truthful and progressive manner, the bullshit coming from Washington lately will win tremendous popular support. I think America is, in this time of crisis (or actually crises), on the verge of a revolution of sorts. I don't necessarily mean a coup d'etat, but unrest is very high right now.

Furthermore, this is not a simplisitic "North vs. South" situation, either. Neighbors and family members disagree with one another. The next few years are gonna be interesting.

^ posted at 3:54 PM

 

Could the Pentagon possibly be exaggerating on this one?

Saddam Hussein is worse than both Hitler and Stalin, according to the Pentagon. Umm, sure. I mean, by all accounts Saddam is a monster, but worse than those two, who killed millions of people?

If they are exaggerating about this one, then what else are the exaggerating about?

^ posted at 5:15 PM

 

"Shock and Awe" Photo Gallery

This page, while not for the squeamish, makes a very powerful point about the realities of "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Though I'm turned off by and suspicious of claims of "Zionism" (that word has become a popular buzzword to simplify a highly complex situation), these people don't look all that free to me.

^ posted at 4:46 PM