We live in a plutocracy, for pluto is acceptable that the philosofical elite lies to the citizens of the city.
That is just what happens, the world is run by fear, and by what Plato called the noble lies.
The formula used to rule the world is called the hegelian dialect and it is the update done by
Georg Hegel to the work of Pluto.

Human rights, the united nations, world bank, central banks are the temples of society.
Since they control everything they can lie and make the lie the truth.
Politicians are just avarage idiots bribed and theated. They just say what they are told to.

People are led to belive that they are responsables

and led to war to kill each other 

 

No: using the words "destroy" and "creative" in the same sentence is simply not the same as using the linked two-word phrase "creative destruction." It is Schumpeter who paired those words in a phrase that entered the lexicon of social analysis. mtbrad is correct.

Victor, where did you get 'creative destruction'from? Is it used in elite discussions? It was originally used Schumpeter to describe the process of captialisms expansion, 'the creation then distruction and rebuilding only to destroy again of capitalisms revolutionizing advancement'. Incorrect. The term originates with Mikhael Bakunin, a 19th century Russian anarchist, who's ideas germinated into the armed wing of Spain's CNT, the FAI---who was the first to rise against Franco's military dictatorship. Bakunin's phrasing was "the urge to destroy is a creative urge". (Added a second later) Which, of course, is one of the marks of fascism: using the tools and techniques of social revolutionaries in the service of the reaction to it. -- James Cape @ http://blog.ignore-your.tv

Well, in response to the Anonymous comments on the Democrats' spinelessness, here's the thing, as spelled out by Davis in the New Left Review article I linked in my last comment:

"Despite majority public belief that Iraq is a ‘bad war' and the troops should come home, the current Democratic strategy is to snipe from the sidelines at Bush's ruinous policies while avoiding any decisive steps to actually end the occupation. Indeed, from the standpoint of cold political calculus, the Democrats have no more interest in helping Bush extract himself from the morass of Iraq than Bush has had in actually capturing or killing Osama bin Laden [emphasis added]. Accordingly, as the Los Angeles Times recently reported, ‘Pelosi and the Democrats plan no dramatic steps to influence the course of the war'. [23] Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean, who once claimed to be the very incarnation of the anti-war movement, now cautions that the most the public can expect from the new majority is ‘some restraint on the president'. [24] Likewise Pelosi has renounced from the outset the Democrats' one actual power over White House war policy: ‘We will have oversight. We will not cut off funding'. [25]"

There's plenty of spinelessness to be sure but there's also the cold calculus of a totally perverse electoral system, which creates a strong incentive for the Democrats to want Bush (and hence Republican Party) to be seen as mired in the fiasco up through the 2008 extravaganza.   

The poor always constitute a latent danger for the rich, the powerful, the order strengthened by ancestral slaughter. The formalism of “the law” kills because the rich desire the death of the poor; it kills without consciousness of “fault.” T

It is clear that the republicans need to own up to the disaster, there

is no question, as Paul Street pointed out.

 

HOWEVER, the republicans do have a point. If the democrats had the balls, they would not be afraid of having to vote on the funding of the

troops. The republican bluff also brings out the democrats' spinelessness.

Sorry not to be more participatory; I am down to the wire with a submission but can at least say I'm knocked out by the comments here and think mtbrad and victor are pointing in the right direction on the importance and nature of imperial designs. The empirical historian in me always wants primary sources (documents) cited on elite strategy (and other matters) of course but this is just a blog. One of the challenges with Harvey and other fancy Marixian academicians (ie. Arrighi, Amin [I can rarely follow him] and the rest) is how to translate them in a way that is useful for non-specialists. Hope to return to these matters when current publishing nightmare passes and in meantime want to link for everybody a very important and readable Mike Davis (NLR) article that ZNet put up a few days ago - it's about the Democrats and how little should be expected of them. It's worth printing and reading at least once.

. . . does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Blowin' in the wind. T

This on the MSNBC site today - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17160574/from/RS.1/ How we take care of our injured soldiers after all the huff and puff about supporting the troops. Further, the Bush administration has submitted a budget that effectively reduces a strained veteran's budget even more over the next few years. We are more than willing to "support out troops" by sending them into harm's way. But what do we do when they return? Makes me ill at the level of hypocrisy in this Administration.

Apologies for that. My mistake. (by the way, didn't you realize that you ARE one of the bad guys?) Try this...it also contains other links http://www.un.org/events/smallarms2006/ or this http://www.controlarms.org/ or here..... http://www.iansa.org/ These should get you started. Good reading, and good luck!

No, this website is all wrong. Disheartening. T

Victor, I checked out this arms trade website. It's unaware of who the enemy is (I'm being charitable). It seems to analyze the big culprits (Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, etc.), but its focus is always on keeping weapons out of the hands of "terrorists." The bad guys are always Arabs or Cubans or Chavez's Venezuela or other assorted conventional "others." The researchers' hearts may be in the right place, but I doubt it. I think it' a "liberal" exercise aimed at the (patently absurd) project of disarming "terrorists" so the US can safely approach with its well-meaning "democracy." Multiple layers of deceit with a troubled but salved conscience at the receiving end. T

In case you haven't seen it below, Victor sent me this link about arms: http://fas.org/asmp/?gclid=CKe-za6rsYYCFSNRQgodbyshAg It looks like something real. T

I vacillate; some days I feel absolutely sure that something totally unexpected will occur and we'll be on the road to survival and a better world. I think sometimes that even if Israel in its fury does nuke Iran (the most likely scenario for 2007 I suspect), the ensuing horror will be bad but still some of us will survive and "humanity" will at last have learned a lesson. (Yeah right, you say!) Maybe I've read too much post-holocaust SF (mostly bad, but do you know Philip K. Dick?). Maybe I'm one of those odd Marxists who falls back on faith, because what else is there? It's true that talk of "the human spirit" sounds hollow these days. . . On bad days I see clearly that our "civilization" (which I must admit I love in most of its artistic manifestations) was just a bubble, a dream that strutted and fretted its hour upon the stage. But I don't want to feel that despair, desperately I don't want to feel that despair, so I hope and hope and hope. T

. . . I'll take a closer look. Thanks! May I pass along the link to whoever it was a few posts ago looking for an arms trade expose?

Seen this one? http://fas.org/asmp/?gclid=CKe-za6rsYYCFSNRQgodbyshAg

mtbrad - The subject area you open for discussion is clearly, at least in my mind, at the crux of world politics/militarism. It's all about money and capital accumulation. It always has been. All other issues are simply tools to get the job done - patriotism/nationalism, religion, freedom, democracy, free markets, hatred of leftist principles, and so on. In my mind the capitalist system is a growth dependent cancer that must spread to the ends of the earth to survive. Nothing will get in its way. Even America, which though she has mothered the modern capitalist structure and provided it with an ideal and fertile environment to prosper, she has at last, like all others, fallen prey to its greed and destructiveness and religious fervor. The end of capitalism is predestined and predictable. Like yeast in a vat of ripened fruit juice, it will eat voraciously, and multiple exponentially - nothing can stop it. Until all the sugars are gone. Then suddenly the entire yeast population will die - not slowly, but suddenly. The big question is - can we as a species afford to wait it out? I don't think so. Capitalism has led in large part to the ability of man to multiply his numbers far beyond this planet's ability to sustain him naturally, thus leading to ever more demand growth. And its voracious appetite for cheap energy to fuel all this growth has led to a heavy and unsustainable dependence upon limited, though cheap, energy sources which will someday run out, and an environmental disaster of planet-threatening proportions which already is threatening not only our climate, but our supply of fresh potable water and our sources of food. We will likely not have time to change to another horse even if we wanted to. Until people understand that it is not a particular nation at the base of our world problems, but instead a vast system of economics highly dependent upon men's insatiable greed and selfishness, unmanaged growth, wild consumerism and unlimited capital accumulation, we will never be focusing our attention on the right problem. Many on this site and others remain convinced that the USA is the prime evil operative in the world today. And while they are correct in one sense, they are ultimately....tragically wrong.

I don't know of any specific clearing houses of info on arms. Try Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, also the UN I think has a council on the arms trade. There was a story in the MSM about the specific national sources of arms and it showed the US as supplier of something like 60% of the global arms. You might want to Lexus Nexus for that article. You are correct that the arms trade can act as a good site of consciousness raising. The problem is in seperating security from the other forms in the minds of most. You are also talking about creating some sort of governmental form to regualate the arms trade, which most people today would reject because of the dominance of the neo-liberal mindset ('the ideas of the ruling class are in all eras the dominant ideas'). Good Luck.

An understanding of the expansion of the capitalist system through the use of 'creative destruction' has been the topic of some of my recent resurch. I base it in what Marx called “the annihilation of space through time” and the constant revolutionary movement of capital accumulation. As the system expands it reaches limits imposed by the organizational structure which becomes a yoke on the economy, preventing the dispersal of capital through reinvestment leading to an overaccumulation crisis, as Schumpeter put it “its very success undermines the social institutions which protect it” (Schumpeter 1954: 61). David Harvey employs a term to explain how capitalism overcomes this recurring tendency, “accumulation by dispossession”, which he describes as the tendency of capitalism to require something “outside of itself” or that “capitalism necessarily and always creates its own other”, and that this movement into the territory of the “other” is the dispossession of the outside and bringing it into the inside (2003:141). “Accumulation by Dispossession” is Harvey's term for what Marx, following Adam Smith, had called “primitive” or “original” accumulation and Luxemburg, following Hegel, had seen as capitalisms need to continually acquire solutions to internal problems “outside of itself” (2003:141-144). Accumulation by dispossession argues that capitalism, because of its tendency of the rate of profit to fall and the resulting overaccumulation crisis, needs an outlet in non-capitalist social forms, and therefore, needs imperialism to survive. Luxenburg had argued that the contradiction lies in that “it strives to become universal” and at the same time needs the outlet in non-universalized forms and that this leads it to use militarism as “a weapon in the competitive struggle between capitalist countries for areas of non-capitalist civilization” (Luxemburg 1963:467). The current bout of 'creative destruction' can then be viewed in this light but also as the process of deleting those societal forms of organization that do not work for neo-liberal capitalism. The destruction of the sites of resistance to neo-liberal capitalist forms of control penetration through the application of military dominance. What Waber called “the world historic destructiveness of the modern era” (1978: 354). This destruction facilitates neo-liberal forms of capital to flow in and colonize a new area, which if it does not form correctly will be bombed to rubble to reattempt the proper colonization by the dominant form once again. Nicholas Luhman outlined a theory of 'autopoetic social systems replication' where a dominant form is copied again and again and expands in concentric circles. It is simular to World Systems Theories understanding of the historical advancement of capitalism (although Luhman was a diehard conservative anti-Marxist). This is what we see in the ME as the former societal forms have failed to produce the elite desired response in the form of capital penetration and control. I don't mean to sound overly structuralist in my analysis, I actually attempt to explain the phenomena through the agency of the individual cought in the hegemonizing struggle fought out in media and political discourse. The understanding of creative destruction is an important insight into contemporary geo-politics. I believe it can help uncover the movements and stratigies of the neo-cons that we were discussing before. It can help overcome the reactive attempts to understand conjuctural events we see in the analysis as advanced by MSM and even most of the blogosphere. Through the historicization and problematizing of these events in a more radical analysis based the juxtoposing of the totality and the specific, we can unearth the kernal of the forces of creative destruction.

I too am filled with an uneasy and dark feeling that in reality I know nothing for certain. The national and global game being played is sophisticated beyond my ability to comprehend. One can no longer trust sources of information, as they seem to be often infiltrated and corrupted by psyops agents (this includes Znet, I suspect) in the case of alternative news media, and by the drive for profits in the dominant media. In the face of such insecurity over the reliability of news sources, I can only take a very negative and pessimistic view of what is REALLY happening and where we are being driven. I used to think there was hope, but advances in technology and the dark side of applied psychology are driving hope to despair over our future as a species. Revolution was America's only hope. But that will have to be taken underground for the foreseeable future. What America needs and what will arise out of all the pain the common man will soon endure is an American Hizbollah, but American society is not ready for that.....yet.

I've come across the term "creative destruction" a few times. In one place somebody (Palast?) observes that the neocons learned it from Israel. I think it might be a development of the famous Kissinger "madman" doctrine, which says that the world should be aware that at any moment the US can fly off the handle and do something totally irrational. Going farther back into the Cold War, I think there might also be a relation to George Kennan's fear (at one of his disillusioned moments--or enlightened moments, depending on your point of view) of the "unquenchable rage" that he saw at the heart of US foreign policy. About arms suppliers: This is very important because identifying them and who their customers are is one of the more available ways to influence public opinion for the better. Nobody likes arms suppliers. But it's hard to get information, for that very reason of course. If we could drum up widespread awareness of, e.g., the companies that manufacture and sell "child-size" weapons to children in Congo (see the marvelous book by Barouski, free download on ZNet), we could open a very effective pathway to raising general consciousness about the roots of this horror that we survivors are trying to live through. T

Well spotted. To my knowledge Shumpeter is the first to have used the term (Capitalism Socialism and Democracy??) esp applied to economics, though Nietzsche was probably the first to verbalize its philosophical basis. The term and its attendant principles has stuck and been re-applied in a political/military sense in more recent times - I believe Michael Ledeen, a prominent neocon, has latched onto this concept to describe the role of America in transforming the world in a revolutionary fashion.

I think that we have tapped an important line of inquiry into current events that even most left/progressive blogs dismiss. To this Terence is correct, it is all the product of a marketing scheme projected onto the public opinion. Therefore, we should reject the notion of even analyzing conjunctural events through the lens of mainstream (dominant) society. Seeking instead to uncover the radical (root). This can be problamatic because we are trying to break through the fog that is US public opinion as one goal, and the other being to formulate and problimatize events in a radical way. Paul, I think the prevention of meaningful self-determined democratic Middle East nations has, and is, the goal of most of the US's foreign policy in the region. I do agree with your point about multiple contingency plans and their altering of their focus due to events as they unfold. Iraqi democracy, if managable by the US would have been a goal. Conversly, a chaotic violence that spreads through the region and justifies/legitimates a strong US presence and prevents the forming of alternatives seems to be the current goal. Imgine the problems that would arise for US hegemony if the youth of Iran would succeed in taking control of the country. If a Bolivarian revolution sweept through the oil rich Middle East (I can dream can't I). In the view of the elite this must be avoided at all costs, dictatorships and chaos is prefered to radical challenges to US hegemony. Look to Israel for examples of its funding, then using the chaos of Palestinian groups to legitimize its control and expansion. This brings me to the role of the creation of chaos in framing the parameters of resistance. The cries for democracy by the US and its counter promotion of chaos limits the spaces of resistance to a terroristic or violent forms. This further fuels the chaos while simultaneously placing the blame for their democratic falure in their own hands. 'They are not capable of democracy' cries the elite international relations professors, 'they are culturally incapable of living in peace'. The role of the revolutionary risistance movement is controled and managed in a way that only intrenches US involvment as the police of the 'poor violent people of the ME'. The control of the parameters of resistance is not only happening in the ME but also is emerging as a tactic in overdeveloped societies. As history reveals they forge their techniques of control in foreign lands and then bring them home. That is why we must construct new forms of resistance that incorporates and overcomes this elite tactic. This requires an advanced understanding of the issues that looks beyond the ubiquitous notions of a stumbling neo-con movement that is being supplanted by a benevolent liberal one. An understanding the does not take the semblance of contemporary events at face value and seeks to uncover the vicissitudes of US hegemonic maintenance. Victor, where did you get 'creative destruction'from? Is it used in elite discussions? It was originally used Schumpeter to describe the process of captialisms expansion, 'the creation then distruction and rebuilding only to destroy again of capitalisms revolutionizing advancement'.

of this article [End of The Strongmen - it might also be somewhere on znet] by Jonathan Cook. I'm still not completely convinced that this situation was their plan, although your argument is reasonable. Greg Palast says something similar Armed Madhouse (he also gives some detail on the differences between the the oil block represented by Powell and that of Cheney). I just don't have enough time to read up on all this stuff... nor, i must confess, am I really interested in these inner debates of empire... i am interested though in where all these fighting groups get their weapons from; anybody know a good expose on arms trade?

mtbrad - I believe you are correct when you say there is a higher strategic plan. The picture I am getting is that there are basically two long-term objectives of the Empire. One is the establishment of control over most of the world's oil supply and trade routes, creating a dependency upon the American Empire to behave or else suffer loss of energy - a means to bring in Pax Americana if you will. The second objective is the eventual containment of China who is thought to be the greatest threat to American world hegemony. The plan, as I understand it, is to foment "creative destruction", designed chaos if you will, across the entirety of the Middle East, causing such widespread chaos and destruction as to cause virtually all Middle East governments to fold, being balkanized (broken up) and finlandized (pacified), and being replaced by new national boundaries more in line with ethnic majorities. It is assumed that when the national boundaries basically mirror the major ethnic divisions that it will be a more peaceful Middle East, more subject to American military and economic influence and its oil controlled by American interests. While this is happening America hopes to be strengthening its military and economic presence in Central Asia essentially surrounding and containing Russia via the expansion of NATO to its West and encroaching upon the former Soviet states to its south. Such countries would include Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The military, of course, already has used 9/11 as a way of establishing a military presence in these countries. They will not leave. This will allow them to control a large and critical slice of the flow of oil from these countries and the Middle East to China. In the meantime, the American Armada will seek to increase its influence in the South China Sea establishing control over the critical sea routes along which oil and essential natural resources are shipped throughout Asia. These folks really believe all this will work. They really will destroy Iran's military and infrastructure. They really will work with Israel to foment extreme ethnic unrest throughout the region. They want chaos. They are working for chaos. They really think they these governments will fall and peace will be established in the region by doing so. They do not believe for a moment that the existing map of the Middle East can ever be relied upon to bring peace to the region. And while they are doing all this, they don't think that Europe, China and Russia will do much more than complain. And if you were to really press me, I would say that even the above strategy is itself likely only a part of an even greater one to re-form the governments of the world into a more manageable state (the so-called New World Order that Bush and the neocons promote) - all brought about by more and more domestic (yes, even America is a target) and international chaos and disintegration via their beloved "creative destruction" method. So yes, I believe there is a greater strategy at play. And I believe everything is proceeding as planned as crazy as it might appear to all of us watching. The people playing this game are extremely smart and they are deadly serious.

Just to say I agree with mtbrad 100%.  To top it off , they are moving in Kurds to help in Bagdad, this will just get another group into the self inflicting, confusing,  slaughter, with less loss to the americans. It is hard to figure some moves such as Brzezensckys speach to congress.  When he is down on paper to take over the middle east, more posturing to confuse the home land I suppose? Every day I awake, to here of a bombing incedent with Iran. I don't think they really care that much how extreme of an excuse, they need to dream up.  Obviously from the retoric, they are determined, with the democrats just as willing.  Mass resistance or impeachment seem the only way.  Pelosi said impeachment is off the table.  That may force them to show their true colors to do that .  The public resistance is really the only way.  Now I see where Jeb Bush is being courted by family to run for president.   

Although I too instinctively feel that the Iraq chaos is deliberate (and not monumental stupidity as the left majority seems to believe), I can't help feeling these days that we know nothing. Maybe there is a master plan kept close in a few heads, maybe the "risk" factor (a la von Neumann game theory) has been expanded, maybe we're being distracted from something else, maybe we're being bombarded beyond all possibility of interpretation with disinformation, maybe it really is simply big stupid bullying jerks driving the vehicle over the cliff (Tom Englehart's image). . . I suppose we'll find out eventually. But right now I suspect that even my sense that "it's gonna happen any day now" is planted. T

mtbrad you are undoubtedly on to something but it's hard to know exactly what their real plan is - they may be making a fair bit of it up as they murderously plod along. I sometimes wonder if  faith in their ever-more lethal imperial technology is underestimated as one of the explanations for why they went in without enough troops.

Basically they've determined that all the last risk has been drained from U.S. democracy and that they can get away with damn near anything under the existing balance of forces inside and beyond the U.S.

They are daring some of us to essentially go underground and become Red Brigades (I personally have little moral objection to appropriately targeted and carefully executed assassinations of ruling-class criminals but I do not confuse that with a meaningful politics and know that it can have reactionary consequences...and I guess then that would be a moral objection)

The very fact that we the mere citizenry has to puzzle over what's going on in their minds - and those of the twisted Dems -- is in one sense itself the issue.

There does seem to be a longstanding U.S. interest in chaos and division in the the region and of course there is always this underlying imperative of preventing the people in the ME from getting meaningful democratic and independent control of all that super-strategic oil that resides under their not-so sovereign soil.

As any kindergarten graduate ought to be able to determine, that black liquid gold is the main reason Uncle Sam claims to care about "democracy" in the region. He cares so much about democracy there that he is a close ally and sponsor of the vicious arch-reactionary/feudal state Saudi Arabia, with whose obscene rulers that great liberator and human rights activist Dick Cheney recently had a nice visit.

I just want to post this once.

Paul, as I have been saying here for the last couple of years, the chaos in Iraq *is* the strategic plan. Why would you not send enough troops when most of the generals were calling for more? Why would you not secure weapons caches once the occupation began? Why would you leave the boarders basically open? Finally, why would you not deal diplomatically with Iran, especially after the Iranian offer? One simple answer to all of these questions, to create a flame of war chaos that will burn across the middle east. The Sunni/Shia issue is an important point that most of the polity simply don't understand. What is the purpose of supporting the sunnis who as you rightly point out are responsible for most of the anti-US occupation aimed violence? Furthermore, why support the religious group closest to al-Qaida and attack the one who is the majority and who are aligned (I mean this in the least possible way) with Iran? I for one, think the Democrats should do exactly what the Republicans are goading them to do but which they know they will not. Defund the war! All of the talk about the anti-surge resolution is simply an obfuscatory maneuver by elites to frame the debate as surge/anti-surge. Its like the old saying, 'do you want me to hit you once or twice', which takes the true choice (no hit, why hit) off the table. Of course the MSM would spin any fund cut into an act of treason. If the dems were serious they could counter, but alas they are a joke. A sick twisted, catastrophic joke!