Our Status as A Free People

The News: England's Home Secretary has put forth a proposal to have the private sector manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use 24/7. The proposal's proponents said that it included "tougher legal safeguards to guarantee against leaks and accidental data losses." (But not to safeguard privacy.)

The Note in the News: Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, said the proposed database would be "an unimaginable hell-house of personal private information," "It would be a complete readout of every citizen's life in the most intimate and demeaning detail. No government of any colour is to be trusted with such a roadmap to our souls." McDonald added:

"The tendency of the state to seek ever more powers of surveillance over its citizens may be driven by protective zeal. But the notion of total security is a paranoid fantasy which would destroy everything that makes living worthwhile. We must avoid surrendering our freedom as autonomous human beings to such an ugly future. We should make judgments that are compatible with our status as free people."

The BARFO wishes its readers the courage to stand for a Free and Autonomous New Year.


©Barfo, 2008

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Holiday Bashing

The News: Gay and transgender groups in England and Italy have bashed Pope Benedict for bashing gays. According to the Guardian and BBC News, in a Christmas address to the Roman Curia, the Pope allegedy said "that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was as important as protecting the environment." Gay groups denounced the comments as "unacceptable" and "unscientific."

The Note: The Pope said no such thing. The word "homosexuality" does not appear in the address at all; and one is left to wonder why the BBC feels compelled to concoct quotes out of whole cloth. In response, Father Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said that the pope had not wished specifically to attack homosexuality or sex change operations in his speech. "He was speaking more generally about gender theories which overlook the fundamental difference in creation between men and women and focus instead on the role of cultural conditioning,"

Not surprisingly, the press does not provide any link to the actual text of the address; however a James Crossley's blog provides the following unofficial translation:

Eminent Cardinals,

Venerated brothers in the Episcopate and the Priesthood,

dear brothers and sisters!

The Nativity of the Lord is at hand. Every family feels the desire to get together in order to enjoy the unique and unrepeatable atmosphere that this feast is able to create.

Even the family of the Roman Curia finds itself gathered today, according to a beautiful custom thanks to which we have the joy of meeting together and exchanging best wishes in this special spiritual climate.

To each of you I address my heartfelt greeting, with full acknowledgment of the much appreciated collaboration that you render to the Successor of Peter.

I sincerely thank the Dean of Cardinals Angelo Sodano , who has spoken in behalf of all who are here and those who are at work in the various offices of the Vatican, including the Pontifical Representatives.

I have referred to the special atmosphere of Christmas. I like to think that it is almost a prolongation of that mysterious joy, that intimate exultation, that was felt by the Holy Family, the angels and the shepherds in Bethlehem the night when Jesus was born.

I would call it 'the atmosphere of grace', thinking of the expression St. Paul used in the Letter to Titus: "Apparuit gratia Dei Salvatoris nostri omnibus hominibus" (The grace of God has appeared, saving all men)(cfr Tt 2,11).

The Apostle affirms that the grace of God manifested itself 'to all men'. I would say that this also shows the mission of the Church, and in particular, that of the Successor of Peter and his co-workers, namely, to contribute so that the grace of God, the Redeemer, may be ever more visible to everyone, and may bring salvation to everyone.

The year that is about to end was rich in retrospective looks at significant dates in the recent history of the Church, but also rich in events which brought with them signs of orientation for our path towards the future.

Fifty years ago, Pope Pius XII died. Fifty years ago, John XXIII was elected Pope. Forty years have passed since the publication of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae and thirty years since the death of its author, Pope Paul VI.

The message of these events has been reported and meditated in many ways during the course of the year, so I will not dwell on them again at this time.

But memory looks beyond just those events in the past century, and in this way, also brings us to the future.

On the evening of June 28, in the presence of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, and the representatives of many other Churches and ecclesiastical communities, we inaugurated the Pauline Year at the Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls to commemorate the birth of the Apostle of the Gentiles 2000 years ago.

For us, Paul is not a figure of the past. Through his letters, he still speaks to us today. And whoever enters into contact with him is impelled by him towards the crucified and resurrected Christ.

The Pauline Year is a year of pilgrimage not only in the sense of a visit to the Pauline sites, but also and above all, a pilgrimage of the heart, along with St. Paul, towards Jesus Christ.

Paul teaches us definitively that the Church is the Body of Christ, that the Head and the Body are inseparable, and that one cannot love Christ without loving his Church and her living community.

Three specific events of the year drawing to a close stand out particularly.

First of all, World Youth Day in Australia, a great feast of faith, which gathered together more than 200,000 young people from all parts of the world, bringing them together not only externally - in the geographic sense, but, thanks to sharing the joy of being Christian, bringing them together interiorly.

Alongside WYD, there were the two trips to the United States and to France, in which the Church was made visible before the world and for the world as a spiritual force that can show ways of living that through the testimony of faith, brings light to the world. These were, indeed, days that radiated luminosity. They radiated confidence in the value of life and in the commitment for good.

Finally, we must recall the Bishops Synod - pastors coming from around the world met together about the Word of God which they exalted together, around the Word of God, whose great manifestation is found in Sacred Scripture.

That which we often take for granted daily, we grasped freshly in its sublimity:

- The fact that God speaks to us, that he answers our questions.

- The fact that he, using human words, speaks to us in person and we can listen to him, and in listening, learn to know him and to understand him.

- The fact that he enters our lives to shape it, and we can step out of our life in order to enter the vastness of his mercy.

Thus we realised all over that God in his Word addresses each of us, speaks to the heart of every being. If our heart is awake and opens itself to listen, then everyone can learn to hear the Word that is addressed specifically to him.

But only when we hear God speaking to each of us in such a personal way, then we can also understand that his Word is meant to bring us each closer to one another, so that we may find the way out of what is only personal.

This Word has shaped a common history and will continue to do so. And so we realize all over that precisely because the Word is so personal, then we can understand it correctly and totally only within the 'we' of the community instituted by God - always conscious that we can never exhaust it completely, that it always has something new to say to each generation.

We have understood that, of course, the Biblical texts were written in specific times, and therefore constitute in this sense a book from the past. But we also saw that their message does not remain in the past nor can they be kept there. God fundamentally always speaks in the present, and we will have heard the Bible fully only if we discover the 'present' of God, which calls to us now.

Finally, it was important to experience that in the Church, there is a Pentecost even today - that the Church speaks in many tongues, and this, not only in the external sense that all the languages in the world are represented in her, but in an even deeper sense: in her are found the multiple ways of experiencing God and the world, the richness of different cultures, and only thus can we see the vastness of human existence, and because of this, the vastness of the Word of God.

We have also learned that Pentecost continues to be 'under way', it is still incomplete. There are a multitude of languages which still await the Word of God in the Bible translated for them.

And it has been moving to see the multiple testimonials of lay faithful who in every part of the world not only live the Word of God, but suffer for it.

A precious contribution was the address of a rabbi on the Sacred Scriptures of Israel, which are our Sacred Scriptures too.

And an important moment for the Synod was when Patriarch Bartholomew, in the light of Orthodox tradition, and with penetrating analysis, opened for us another way of access to the Word of God.

Let us now hope that the experiences and acquisitions of the Synod may effectively influence the life of the Church: on personal relations with Sacred Scriptures; on their interpretation in the liturgy and in catechesis as well as in scientific study - so that the Bible does not remain a Word of the past, but that its vitality and actual relevance may be read and disclosed in the vast dimensions of its meanings.

The pastoral visits this year also had to do with the presence of the Word of God. Their true meaning can only be in serving that presence.

On such occasions, the Church makes itself publicly perceptible, and in this way, the fact that faith is at least the question of God. This public manifestation of the faith calls out to all who seek to understand the present and the forces which operate in it.

The phenomenon of the World Youth Days, particularly, has become increasingly an object of analysis, by those who seek to understand this particular species, one might say, of youth culture.

Before this, Australia had never seen as many people from all the other continents as during the last World Youth Day in Sydney, not even during the Olympics. And if earlier, there had been apprehensions that the appearance of such great numbers of young people would represent a threat to public order, paralyze traffic, block daily activities, provoke violence and make room for drug use, all such fears were proven to be unfounded.

It was a feast of joy - a joy that ultimately involved even those who were reluctant. Ultimately, no one felt it as an annoyance or a disturbance.

The days of the youth became a feast for everyone. Or rather, it was the first time everyone realized what a feast is, a celebration - an event during which everyone is, so to speak, outside himself, beyond the self, and therefore, truly with oneself and with others.

What then is the nature of what takes place during World Youth Day? What are the forces that act? Fashionable analyses tend to consider WYD as a variant of modern youth culture, as a type of rock festival modified in the ecclesial sense, with the Pope as somewhat of a star; and that with or without faith, these festivals would basically be the same thing. In this way, such analyses would do away with the question of God.

There are even Catholic voices who share this tendency, seeing WYD as a great spectacle, beautiful even, but with little meaning for the question of faith, and on the presence of the Gospel in our time. They would consider them days of festive ecstasy which, in the end, would leave everything just as before, without making any deep influence on life. Thus, they can find no explanation for the specialness of those days and the particular nature of their joy, the creative power of communion.

But first of all, one must note that the World Youth Days do not simply consist of that one week during which the events are publicly visible to the whole world. There is a long exterior and interior path that leads to them.

The Cross, accompanied by the Icon of the Mother of the Lord, goes on pilgrimage through the countries of the world. Faith, in its own way, needs to be seen and touched.

The encounter with the Cross, which is carried and touched by the faithful, becomes an interior encounter with Him who died on the Cross for us. The encounter with the Cross inspires within the hearts of young people the memory of the God who made himself man and suffers with us. And we see the woman whom he has given us to be our Mother.

The solemn WYD days are only the culmination of a long road along which young people proceed to encounter each other and to encounter Christ.

In Australia, it was not by chance that the Via Crucis through the inner city became a climactic event of those days. It synthesized once more all that had happened in preceding years and called attention to him who brings us all together - the God who loved us to the point of death on the Cross.

And so, the Pope is not the star around which these events take place. He is totally and only the Vicar [of Christ]. He points to the Other who is among us.

Finally, the solemn Liturgy is the center of all the celebration, because in it, what we cannot realize takes place, that for which we are always in wait. He is present. He is among us. He has torn open the heavens and this makes the earth bright. It is this that makes life joyous and open, and that unites us with one another in a joy that cannot be compared to the ecstasy of a rock festival.

Friedrich Nietzsche once said: "The question is not how to organize a feast, bit to find the persons who are able to derive joy from it". According to Scripture, joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (cfr Gal 5,22): this fruit was abundantly perceptible in the days at Sydney.

Just as a long road precedes every World Youth Day, another long road follows. Friendships are formed which inspire a different lifestyle that is interiorly sustained. The great World Youth Days, not least of all, have the purpose of inspiring such friendships capable of making new places of faith emerge in the world, which are also places of hope, and of charity that is practised and lived.

Joy as a fruit of the Holy Spirit - thus we come to the central theme of Sydney which was, in fact, the Holy Spirit. In this retrospective, I wish once more to point out in summary the orientation that was implicit in the theme.

1. First of all, there is the affirmation that comes to us from the start of the story of Creation, which tells of the Creator Spirit that moved over the waters, created the world and continuously renews it.

Faith in the Creator Spirit is an essential element of the Christian Creed. The fact that matter has a mathematical structure, is full of spirit (energy), is the foundation of the modern science of nature.

Only because matter is structured intelligently, our mind is able to interpret it and actively remodel it. The fact that this intelligent structure comes from the same Creator Spirit that also gave us our spirit, implies a task and a responsibility.

The ultimate basis of our responsibility towards the earth is our faith in creation. The earth is not simply a property that we can exploit according to our interests and desires. It is a gift of the Creator who designed its intrinsic order, and through this, has given us the orientative indications to follow as administrators of his Creation.

The fact that the earth, the cosmos, mirror the Spirit Creator also means that their rational structure - which beyond their mathematical structure, become almost palpable through experimentation - carries in itself an ethical orientation.

The Spirit that shaped them is more than mathematics - it is Goodness itself, which, through the language of creation, shows us the road to correct living.

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public.

In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself.

It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not metaphysics that has been overcome by time, when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected.

This has to do with faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, which, if disregarded, would be man's self-destruction and therefore a destruction of God's work itself.

That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term 'gender' effectively results in man's self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator.

The tropical rain forests deserve our protection, yes, but man does not deserve it less as a Creature of the Spirit himself, in whom is inscribed a message that does not mean a contradiction of human freedom but its condition.

The great theologians of Scholasticism described matrimony - which is the lifelong bond between a man and a woman - as a sacrament of Creation, that the Creator himself instituted, and that Christ, without changing the message of Creation, welcomed in the story of his alliance with men.

Part of the announcement that the Church should bring to men is a testimonial for the Spirit Creator present in all of nature, but specially in the nature of man, who was created in the image of God.

One must reread the encyclical Humanae Vitae with this perspective: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against consumer sex, the future against the exclusive claim of the moment, and human nature against manipulation.

2. I would like to add some more brief observations on other aspects of pneumatology [knowledge of the Holy Spirit]. If the Creator Spirit manifests itself above all in the grand silence of the universe, in its intelligent structure - faith, beyond this, tells us something unexpected: namely, that the Spirit speaks, so to say, in human words; it has entered history, and as the force that shapes history, is also a Spirit that speaks. It is the Word which comes to us in ancient Scriptures and in the New Testament.

What this means for us was expressed wondrously by St. Ambrose in one of his letters: "Even now, as I read the Divine Scriptures, God is taking a walk through Paradise" (Ep 49,3).

Reading Scripture, even today we can ourselves almost roam the garden of Paradise and meet God as he walks there. Between the theme of World Youth Day in Sydney and the general Assembly of the Bishops' Synod, there is a profound internal connection.

The two subjects "Holy Spirit" and "Word of God" go together. Reading Scripture, we also learn that Christ and the Holy Spirit are inseparable.

When St. Paul with surprising synthesis says, "The Lord is the Spirit" ( 2 Cor 3, 17), we see not just the trinitarian unity between the Son and the Holy Spirit, but above all, their union with respect to the story of salvation.

In the passion and resurrection of Christ the veils of purely literal sense are taken down, making visible the presence of the God who speaks.

Reading Scripture together with Christ, we learn to hear in human words the voice of the Holy Spirit, and we discover the unity of the Bible.

3. We come now to the third dimension of pneumatology which consists, precisely, in the inseparability of Christ and the Holy Spirit. It is perhaps most beautifully manifested in St. John's narration of the first apparition of the Resurrected Christ to his disciples: the Lord breathed on his disciples and thus gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Just as the breath of God at the dawn of Creation had transformed the dust of the earth into living man, thus the breath of Christ welcomes us to ontological communion with the Son - it makes us new creatures. And this is why it is the Holy Spirit that makes us say with the Son, "Abba, Father!" (cfr Jn 20,22; Rm 8,15).

4. Thus, as the fourth dimension, there emerges spontaneously the connection between the Spirit and the Church. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, showed how the Church as the Body of Christ is thus an organism of the Holy Spirit, in which the gifts of the Holy Spirit merges all individuals together into a single living organism.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Body of Christ. In the entirety of this Body we find our task, we live for each other and each one dependent on the other, within the depth of him who lived and suffered for all of us, and through his Spirit, draws us to himself into the unity of all the children of God.

"Do you, too, want to live in the Spirit of Christ? Then, be in the Body of Christ", Augustine says in this respect (Tr. in Jo. 26, 13).

oOo

Thus with the subject of the Holy Spirit which oriented World Youth Day in Australia, and in a more hidden way, the weeks of the Bishops Synod, the entire breadth of Christian faith is made visible, a breadth which leads, from responsibility for Creation and for man's existence in tune with Creation, through Scriptures and the story of salvation, to Christ, and from there, to the living community of the Church - in its structure and responsibility, as in its vastness and freedom, expressed as much in the multiplicity of charisms as in the Pentecostal image of the multitude of languages and cultures.

An integral part of celebration is joy. The feast iself can be organized, but not joy. This can only be received as a gift. In fact, it is given to us in abundance, and for this, we are grateful.

Just as St. Paul describes joy as the fruit of the Holy Spirit, so too, John in his Gospel, links the Spirit and joy closely. The Holy Spirit gives us joy. He is joy itself. Joy is the gift in which all the other gifts are contained. It is the expression of happiness, of being in harmony with oneself, which can only be achieved by being in harmony with God and his creation.

Part of the nature of joy is to radiate itself, the need to communicate itself. The missionary spirit of the Church is nothing but the impulse to communicate the joy that has been given to us.

That such joy may always be alive in us and thus iraddiate the world in its tribulations - that is my wish at the end of this year. Along with a sincere gratitude for all your efforts and work, I wish that this joy which comes from God may be given to us abundantly in the New Year.

I entrust these wishes to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Mater divinae gratiae, asking her that we may experience the Christmas festivities in the joy and peace of the Lord.

With these sentiments towards all of you and the large family of the Roman Curia, I impart the Apostolic Blessing from my heart.

Translated by Teresa Benedetta (Papa Ratzinger Website)

©Barfo ,2008

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So that Government of the Bank, by the Bank and for the Bank shall not perish from the Earth

Want a Billion or Two? Sign here.....

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©Barfo, 2008

Shoeless in America

The News: Enraged by Bush's smirking arrogance, Muntader al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist for Al-Baghdadia television, hurled his shoe at the ducking president and then the other, calling Bush a dog. He was immediately subdued and severely beaten by security thugs. Almost immediately, thousands of supportive Iraqis took to the streets demanding al-Zaidi's release. According to the New York Times, a "thinly veiled glee" pervaded the Arab world.

The Note: And doubtless beyond.

©Barfo, 2008

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New York Times Shields U.S. from Incoming Truths

The News: In an article headlined "Russia Backs Off on Europe Missile Threat," the New York Times reported that "President of Dimitri Medvedev of Russia retreated Friday from his threat to deploy missiles on Europe’s borders, ... if President-elect Obama joined Russia and France in calling for a conference on European security by next summer." The Times continued that "at a meeting in Nice hosted by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Mr. Medvedev backed away from the bellicose speech he gave last week." According to the Times, Sarkozy "helped ease the way for Mr. Medvedev’s retreat" by supporting "the idea of talks" on a new security architecture for Europe to be held this coming year between the United State, Russia and European states. The Times added that "Mr. Sarkozy made clear that he wants the United States to think again about the missile defense systems that it plans to build in Poland and the Czech Republic."

The accompanying photo showed perturbed Medvedev standing at attention looking like an oversized schoolboy being admonished by Sarkozy.

The News: In an articled headlined "Sarkozy backs Russian calls for pan-European security pact," the UK Guardian reported that "President Nicolas Sarkozy of France joined Russia in condemning the Pentagon's plans to install missile defence bases in central Europe yesterday and backed President Dmitri Medvedev's previously ignored calls for a new pan-European security pact." The article went on to say that "Both presidents concluded a Russia-EU summit... with an agreement to convene a major international conference next summer at which the Americans, Russians and the 27 countries of the EU should come up with a blueprint for new post-cold war "security architecture" in Europe.

The accompanying photo showed a smiling and assured Medvedev shaking hands with a determined looking Sarkozy.

The Note: Thank God we can count on the flagship of U.S journalism to do what's right by the country.

©Barfo, 2008
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MEXICO SOLVES LIQUIDITY CRISIS

MEXICO CITY -- Scientists at the National Autonomous University of Mexico announced today that they had discovered how to make diamonds from tequila. The discovery comes as the world recession is hiting Mexico. A happy president Felipe Calderon, announced that the discovery had solved Mexico's endemic liquidity crisis.

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Delirium Tremens

So, Barack Obama has been elected president by a hefty margin.   Liberals and Progressives are overjoyed and are vociferating as if (a mere eight years late) the New Millenium has indeed arrived.

I am sorry to rain on the party, but Obama is not going to introduce any fundamental change to the neo-liberal regime which has gotten us to where we are. Nor is he going to reverse the irreversible course of history, which is that all empires have to rise and fall.

A neo-con is simply a neo liberal gone punk. Domestically and diplomatically Obama will provide some emollients and better manners, but I doubt little else. He may take a few paltry steps towards realizing Bismarckian social benefits and he may go back to an Eisenhower-esque diplomacy of working "through" allies and international institutions. Otherwise the Flush Democrats are already "warning" us not to expect a new New Deal (i.e. a new faux social democracy) and the New York Times is peddling its usual demented ravings telling us it's time to leave off the "folly" of Iraq and focus on the "necessary" war in Afghanistan. No you dimits!!!! I am not Jove, I am Neputne!!!!!!

I admire Obama. He is likely the most intelligent president we've had since that racist bastard, Woodrow Wilson. Obama is engaging, informed and in control. I am glad most Americans showed that they could overcome their obsessive compulsive disorder over skin hue. But, to paraphrase Tolstoy, politics is something more than personality. Americans' disastrous propensity for exceptionalism has blinded them both to understanding the true nature of the country and to thinking that historical laws do not apply to us.

Like all leaders, Obama is constrained by his context and the material he has to work with. It may be that, far from being a creature of his time, he stands outside it at some Archimedean Point and understands that neither the actual nor the merely possible reflect the ideal. But assuming that to be the case, he is still constrained by the calculus of history. I fear his options are limited. I wish I were wrong.

©Barfo, 2008

Sodom & Gomorah

The News: Bank of America and JP Morgan/Chase are seeking to stem the tide of foreclosures by renegotiating the terms of a select number of at-risk mortgages. Chase officials said their effort was not an act of charity or a response to government pressure. By renegotiating loans with borrowers, the bank is hoping to reduce the losses it incurs in the foreclosure process.

The Note: Charity!??? Perish the thought! God forbid that as we enter the Advent Season we should be mindful of widows and orphans or the humble and distressed. How repugnant to think we should incur some loss to help out our neighbor.

What a radically perverted culture we have become. The Fetish of the Commodity has devoured us.

©Barfo, 2008

World Condemns U.S. Unilateral Blockade of Cuba

The News: With three dissents and two abstentions the World Community in General Assembly voted near unanimously to condemn the U.S. blockade of Cuba. The three dissents were: the United States, Israel and Palau. The two abstentions were Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.

The Note: In other words, the United States and Israel stood alone against the entire rest of the world except for three welfare States totally dependent on US aid. The US media, of course, did it's dutiful best to insulate the American public from the opprobrium of the rest of humanity.

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Extending Zones of Democratic Peace

The News: U.S. Blackhawks and special forces attacked the village of Sukkariyeh, Syria, on the border with Iraq, and claimed to have killed a “top” Al Qaida operative during a gun fight at an alleged terrorist “compound.” Syrian officials said that the attack killed eight people including four children. U.S. military spokesmen denied that any“women or children” had been killed and said that “"American troops [i.e. the attackers] put themselves at risk to ensure children and women would not be killed in the Syria incident." Another spokesman told the Associated Press that "This operation is just part of a wider campaign to take the fight to (al-Qaida in Iraq) not just inside Iraq but to other areas."

The Note: What needs to be understood is that this small village raid is not simply “an incident” in the evolving chaos of the Iraqi war but rather an essential and integral component of the neocon policy of homeland security-through-war. To understand how this is so, it is necessary to see how this policy evolved from the broader tradition of U.S. hegemony.

In the early days of the Cold War, various policy wonks (mostly neo liberal types) concocted a theory to the effect that global peace and prosperity could be promoted by setting up zones of democratic peace around the world. The nearly absurd premise was that “democracies” don’t wage war against one another but are rather naturally inclined to do nice things such as engaging in commerce and cultural exchanges. Western Europe was such a zone, and the goal was to establish such zonal outposts until the world become one happy network of prosperous democracies.

Alas! The theory’s definition of “democracy” all but crashed on the rock of absurdities. An early definition held that a democracy was a country that held periodic elections in which at least 10% of the population voted. Later definitions argued that democracy existed when 30% of the males acquired the franchise. Virtually all definitions have equated democracy with market and free trade economic policies.

Of course, it was all just pamphletering in the cause of American hegemony. As against this onslaught on credulity, one would rather the up-front honesty of the ancient Athenians who said simply enough: We have the best way of life and we are going to make sure you share in it.

The inspiring thing about Jack Kennedy was his essentially Athenian spirit. There could be no question that he espoused the aims of “zonalism” but pursued these goals by dressing them in altruism and appealing to youthful enthusiasm, as was the case with the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress. The essential feature of such programs was simply that they propagandized our way of life through peaceful (and often helpful) means. It is difficult to fault an empire for pursuing it’s imperial aims by peaceful means.

To be sure, Kennedy zonalism was not all wine and roses. The other side of his policy was confrontation with the Soviet Union, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination of Diem and the establishment of “special forces” -- the first open and institutional acknowledgement that the U.S. was prepared to engage in dirty war for the sake of democratic peace.

We shall never know how Kennedy might have balanced light and dark. Under Johnson and McNamara, Vietnam became our first modern zonal war, waged disgracefully and ending in defeat. Nixon ended the “police action” disaster by, in effect, turning it into a full-theater regional war which we won for a sufficiently decent interval to wash our hands and claim that the denouement was none of our affair. Thereafter Nixon and subsequent US policy contented itself with a lower profile zonalism based on routine black ops, such as assassinating elected leaders or assisting in remote jungle brush battles and the occasional sabre rattling.

Putting aside the First Gulf War as a basically exceptional international police action against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, U.S. zonal policies became more ostensible and pro-active under the Clinton Administration. The fall of the Soviet Union enabled us to throw our weight around more easily and we did, most particularly in Yugoslavia and later in our ongoing aerial degradation of Iraq. It is not necessary to review the heap of lies and excuses smothered in the smarmy sauce of hypocritical hortatory that was served up to justify these policies. The basic fact is that the United States reverted to a more proactive zonal policy which did not shy from the overt use of force to establish puppet states around the world.

Enter the Ghouls of Neoconservatism, whose contribution to U.S. foreign policy was clearly and candidly set forth in September 2000 in a document entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses. While this document’s protocols drew quick attention abroad, even today, eight years on, they remain effectively ignored in what passes for American public discourse. Back in 2002, the Moscow Times called the document an “American Mein Kampf” And with reason

In summary essence, what the neocons argued was that the use of force was “nothing to be ashamed about” (their words). The United States should dispense with elaborate justifications and intricate diplomatic dances aimed at achieving some facade of multi-national cooperation and international legality. If we could “use” diplomacy to get other nations or institutions to subserviently tag along with the shots we were calling, fine. If not, to hell with them. The means and goal of American policy should be to “project” our power around the world. To this end, the United States had to have the ability to: (1) wage multiple simultaneous full theater wars; (2) control space and cyberspace and (3) engage in ongoing “constabulary” actions designed to “secure and extend zones of democratic peace.”

Under these geo-military protocols, the concept of zones of democratic peace was metamorphosed from a network of allied client states to what the neocons called the Homeland’s forward based “security perimeter.” In the immediate near term, this so-called security perimeter was to extend from the Baltic States, through the Balkans, to the Caucasus and South Central Asia. It also included converting Iraq and Afghanistan into “zones of democratic peace” which were to be secured by “constabulary” actions.

In neocon jargon, “constabulary” actions are not traditional peacekeeping operations which are explicitly rejected. Constabulary operations are those which meld isolated special forces operations with traditional military engagements so as to carry out hybrid military-police actions in regional areas. These forces are to be equipped with blackhawks, missiles and drones on the one hand, and “intelligence” units, the aim of which is to “penetrate” local society so as to “shape the security environment”.

The key to understanding constabulary operations lies in a conjunction. Under neocon doctrine, the overall mission of constabulary forces is to “secure and extend” zones of democratic peace.

Thus, given that Iraq and Afghanistan are each zones of democratic peace, the goal is not simply to “secure” them (that is to destroy civil society and reduce them to exploitable and rubble) but also to “extend” them. The only way to extend a zone is to incur and invade into the neighboring zone, which is precisely what the U.S. is currently doing in Pakistan and now Syria and which it tried unsuccessfully this summer in Georgia. The perverted theory behind these “actions” is that “the Homeland’s” security (and that of our “key” regional allies) is promoted only by degrading and rubbelizing our regional neighbours.

In short, everything we see happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere has gone exactly according to neocon plans -- first drafted by Cheney in 1991 and ultimately published by the P.N.A.C. in 2000. What is important to grasp is not simply the evolving genesis of this execrable doctrine, but also not to loose sight of the substantive alteration of policy embodied in the changes of means and degree. When all is said and done, American hegemony in the Fifties and early Sixties did in fact seek to “build up” liberal societies around the world and this involved appreciable degrees foreign aid and other essentially constructive measures. Neocon policy could give a damn. It is only interested in destruction and despoliation and seeks only to metastasize itself around the world in an ever spreading stain.

In its waning days, the neocon Bush Administration is adhering to its protocols with iredentist mindlessness. It will be up to an Obama Administration to put an end to this psychotic derangement masquerading as policy and to return us to the happier cold war policies of the Eisenhower years.

©Barfo, 2008

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Murkan Mantra, Bimbo Bugaboo & Robinson Crusoe

The News: Speaking for millions, Joe (Wurzelbacher) the Plumber has denounced candidate Obama's plan for a 3% tax rate increase on incomes over $250,000 as "un-American". According to Joe, Obama “wants to distribute wealth. ... that’s kind of a socialist viewpoint. You know, I work for that. You know, it’s my discretion who I want to give my money to; it’s not for the government decide that I make a little too much and so I need to share it with other people. That’s not the American Dream.”

The Note: Actually Joe, it's known as "society" and all societies are "socialist" to the extent that every single society that has ever existed has depended on distributing wealth. Society could not exist otherwise. Building a road, setting up a school, providing for fire-brigades, doing any of the thousands of things societies do, all require "distributing wealth" -- taking wealth from some people and distributing it to others for other purposes.

The knuckleheadedness of Joe the Dumber and fellow-travelling morons is beyond belief.... In fact, beyond belief of even the average, hard-clobbering Neanderthal.

Joe's "Socialism Bugaboo" is the correlative of a deeper dementia -- what Karl Marx called Robinsonades, the mythical capitalist apology which foists the notion that every man is his own Robin Crusoe as if "society" were no more than a collection of islands.

The core fallacy of the Robinsonade is to confuse self-reliance with self-sufficiency. Self-reliance is a good thing. All animals practice it; man should do no less. But unless man is to live like an animal, sheltering under a bush and cracking nuts with his teeth, self-reliance is not sufficient. To enjoy even the most minimal tools, shelter, clothing and simple variety of food-stuffs requires the time, talent and treasure of others. No man could possibly do it all himself; not even Robinson Crusoe who survived only because he was able to salvage a treasure trove of tools and basic supplies from the wrecked ship -- tools and supplies which had been provided by none other than society.

The vast and bountiful expanse of a continent that helplessly awaited the rape and plunder of English settlors gave rise to the Robinsonade's aura of self-evidency. Anglo-Americans eagerly swallowed the lore that all they had to do was Go forth and chop. It was as if the Pioneer on the Hilltop, basking in God's silvery rays, became the illusion we used to hide our sins of despoilation, aggression and plunder.

Of course, it was all utter nonsense because the Robinsonade is nonsense. If this continent was settled and civilized it was not through individual effort but through social organization. The earliest colonial settlements, both in Massachusetts and Virginia, were chartered affairs -- complex social contracts which, particularly in the Bay Colony, regulated every aspect of social and economic life. ... to say nothing of mandatory tithes. The early push West, through the Cumberland and Altoona passes and via the Eerie and Baltimore-Ohio canals, were municipal enterprises, organized and underwritten by the governments of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. The long caravans of wagons, winding their way West were likewise ad hoc cities on wheels, drawn up by charter, requiring subcription and above all highly regulated norms of conduct. In short, nothing was possible and nothing is possible without social division of labor and allocation of value -- without a distribution of "wealth" in its various forms.

And yet despite this obvious social fact, evident to the first jungle-men and to all men ever since, the Republican Party repeatedly sounds the Robinsonade as millions of mindless morons like Joe the Dumber reflexively jump to the call. "It’s not for the government decide that... I need to share [my wealth] with other people."

If Joe allocated a tenth of the energy he spends on egotism to taking a look about, he would realize that the government is always deciding how much he must share; and that what the government under successive neo-liberal administrations has done, is to share his wealth upwards towards Big Plunder and Big Hoard and Big Hedge. Sometimes government does this by regressive tax policy and at other times through complex "unseen" financial manipulations that devalue the worth of Joe's dollar.

Of course, the malevolents that run the Republican Party understand which way is up, even if Joe doesn't and the only thing more nauseating than Joe's stupidity is their venality, cunning and hypocrisy.

©Barfo, 2008
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Joe The Dumber Accuses Obama of "Tap Dancing" -- NAACP Demands Tattoo Check

October 16, 2008 - Buelah, Ohio -- Joe "Skin Dude" Plumber -- McCain's poster-boy for the average Murkan Neanderthal, accused Obama of "tap dancing" like Sammy Davis Jr., in front lawn comments made to a throng of Fourth Estate lemmings. Wilbur C. Jackson, president of the Cleveland chapter of the NAACP, responded by demanding that Joe Wurzelburger submit to a tattoo check. "We need to see up front exactly where Joe's been plumbing around," Jackson said.

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No Tears for Bully

Just when you thought the U.S. couldn’t cover itself in more shit, along comes defense secretary Gates to announce that the United States would not be adverse to sitting down and chatting it up with the Taliban. “At the end of the day, that's how most wars end," Gates said. DUH

At the beginning of the day that’s how most wars are avoided, - .

But no....the Talking Turd that besmirches the Offal Office, had to go “Smoke ‘em out” and “Bring ‘em On” and rally up the Yeeehaw Boys who were getting so little regular sex that they had to stomp round the flag, hardness in hand vowing to kick ass and never nego-she-ate with turrurists...especially them rag head types.

So where is the First FlyBoy now? He sure as hell ain’t strutting his codpiece on the flight deck. No... he’s hunched over a podium telling a world that could give a fart that the “fundamentals” of an economy he and his cronies bankrupted are “sound”. No... he blathers platitudes to a General Assembly so openly laughing at him that the ever servient Murkan press had to shield the public from the disgrace

The New American Century did not even last a fucking eight years. Bush’s Kick Ass strutting, Cheney’s scowling unilateralism, Scumsfeld’s smirking preemption have been replaced with Shylock Tears for “please can you lend us a bail out?”and beggaring whines “..for some troops, please, to help out in Afghanistan...” Hectoring Condi’s World Lecture Tour has been replaced by articles entitled “A New Multi-Polar World” and “The End of Liberal Imperialism” and most cuttingly by Putin’s remark that the U.S. was in no position to lecture anyone.

Where the fuck is smirking Billy Kristol now to tell us why the world despises and hates the U.S. Come out of the New York Times editorial rest room Billy and tell us what happened to your Kick Ass Bully Boy wet dream. The repulsive slime.

Now, it is possible that in the incestuous intrique that constitutes Beltway politics, Gates was "signalling" that he supports Obama (who favors talking) over McCain (who favors crash-bombing). But that doesn't remove the vicious irony. The United States which eight years ago ran up the red penant of no quarter now wants to chit-a-chat, tin cup in hand.

It would be laughable had not so many innocent people been killed, maimed and made to suffer by these putrid, infected, scum that have indelibly stained the corridors of government. It would be laughable had not Iraq and Afghanistan been shock and awed back to the stone age; had not an entire city been “shaked and baked” (yeehaw yuk yuk) with phosphorous bombs; had not old men, boys of 15 been and innocent shepherds and farmers been kidnapped, beaten, (“pulpified”), drugged and thrown into isolation cells for years where they slowly went crazy and tried to kill themselves while morally degenerate “Injustices” spewed judicial vomit over the finer technicalities of The Great Writ....for seven goddam years. It would be laughable had the United States not been turned into a frank and open police state, that respects NO law, international or domestic, that spies on its citizens as “potential” enemies, breaks into houses without warrants, that arrests people without cause and whose ThugKops stomp about with the same body armor and kill-toys as their fellow KombatKops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would be funny had not this cancerous administration done everything within its metastasizing power to eat up the environment, kill species and drive whales insane.

It would be funny, if any of these things could be undone. But they cannot be. That is not the way history works. That is not the way Nature works.

These diseased aliens from a lower dimension together with the cowardly, venal, whoring degenerates in Congress and the Judiciary have destroyed everything: the environment, civilization, language, law, comity and cooperation and now the economy. They have done so just as Barfo said they would, and they have done so while the U.S. demos as a whole sat around, guzzled chips and gas, scratched their anuses, and pondered the next re-fi. It’s known -- as Palin reminds us -- as Murkan Exceptionalism. Hey Da Rulez don Apply to Us! We’re the Shining Bacon on the Hill.

I wish I could feel sorry for my country; but I don’t.


©Barfo, 2008
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McCAIN Vows To Create New Department of Filth

October 9, 2008 - Grand Rapids, MI. -- Republican presidential candidate John ("Crashboy") McCain vowed today to set up a new Department of Filth & Mud Resources, if elected. It was time, he said, for government to step in a coordinate shit- flinging and dirt-scooping in public life. Speaking to a cheering crowd of Country Firsters, the candidate said ""We also need a standard, national code for racist slurs

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The Voice of Respectability Shrills Again

The News: Cook County Sheriff, Thomas J. Dart, announced that he will refuse to carry out foreclosure evictions in his bailiwick. Dart explained that too many of the evictees were innocent rent-paying tenants of landlords who had failed to pay their mortgages. Although landlords pocketted the rent money, they never bothered to inform their tenants who remained unaware of the foreclosure suits until deputies showed up with a Get-Out-Now order. Under Illinois law mortgage companies are supposed to advise the court of the building's occupants before asking for an eviction, but of course hadn't bothered to do so.

The Ilinois Bankers Association is outraged. Simply outraged. The Association declaimed that Dart "was elected to uphold the law and to fulfill the legal duties of his office, which include serving eviction notices." Getting haughtier still, the Association chastised the sheriff for "ignoring the law and his legal responsibilities" and indulging in "vigilantism at the highest level".

The Note: This is why it is easier to thread a rope through a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. They will not part with a penny out of sufferance for the poor and they parade the corpse of oppression in the mantel of justice. It is also why, on the latter day, it is a comfort to knit and drink wine while the blade chops.

©Barfo, 2008

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These Empty Times

The News: Judith Warner, an op-ed contributor at the NY Times writes that the (alleged) Sinking of Wall Street is no time for schadenfreude.

"Schadenfreude is impossible (she writes) because the fat cats — the ones who bent the rules, the ones who pushed the envelopes, ... the ones who opposed regulations on the banking and mortgage industries — are taking us down with them."

No... Instead, according to Warner, "A great emptiness — and a gnawing kind of fear — has taken its place"

Yes, it's so true. A great, great emptiness, as when Marie Antoinette looked at her silver breakfast platter and realized there was no more brioche!!

This is the kind hollow, self-absorbed kitsch-angst that ranks the Times as All the News that's Fit for the Litterbox. Has it ever ever occurred to Warner or anyone on the Times that while they "made do" in Manhattan the GREAT EMPTINESS of HUNGER filled the bellies of children from the heart of Africa to the heights of the Andes?

No ... it never occurred to these toney-trendies. It never occurred to the likes of Warner, writing books about the travails of life on the Upper West Side (or was it East?), that some people were being gnawed at by more than fear... that the neoliberal policies of the Times had already taken down millions of the truly poor the globe over.

For them... for those on empty stomachs, sleeping on cold door stoops, schadenfreude is the only satisfaction they have left.

©Barfo, 2008
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Palin Bats Eye Lashes in Triumph

The News: The Great Veep Debate was held yesterday evening, billed as "Palin vs. Biden" as if it were some World Federation Wrestling match. When it was over, most of the insta-comment called it a draw, although most of the insta-polls gave it to Biden 65-35 or thereabouts.

The Note: Given that these debates are Non-Substantive Occasions (NSO), Palin clearly won; not simply because she "held her own" without making a complete ass of herself, but because she is a great communicator, a runner up to the Great Ronnie himself.

First off, Palin had culled and organized her bumper stickers. That's more than anyone can say for Bush who simply blabbers sound bites with little regard for consistency and coherence.

Second, Palin's sound-bites resorted to tried and tested clichés that sell-well with the American demos. Bush's sound bites have largely resorted to unfamiliar themes of fear and revenge that most Americans feel vaguely uncomfortable with once the Yeeehaw Moment has passed. Palin reverted to the Golden Granola Morning motifs of the Great Ronnie. To the extent that there was an edge, it was the ol' "... if Govmint caint help it can at least git outta da way..." What can be more American than, "Awwwww Mom... I can do it myself."

Third, Palin "connected" with her audience, with her twinkle eye-lash batting, teasing smiles and little bang-shakes of the head. She came across as "genuine," and "earnest" and -- this is key -- not self-important. In fact, her presence had an aura of self-humour about it that said "this is totally crazy for me to be here, but heck it's fun." Not since Ronnie has anyone been able to connect with the Vast of America in this down home, upbeat way.

I should be clear, that if a woman or a job applicant came on to me the way Palin was coming on to Us Folk, I'd say, "Save your time, honey, save your time." But then again, Ronnie never did much for me either. Hell, I couldn't even sit through Kings Row without reaching for the Bromo.

©Barfo, 2008
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It's Time for Punitive Voting

It’s time to start punitive voting.

The concept of punitive voting is very simple: If we loose, YOU loose.

As things are now run, Democrats (like Pelosi, Franks, Feinstein, Biden, and even Boxer) think they’ve got Progressives in a corner. After all, who else are we going to vote for? So they toss us the occasional chicken feed while they

vote billions for war and destruction

vote billions for insurance companies that deny health coverage

vote billions for the banksters that rob and plunder America, all

while they deny bankruptcy protection for people who loose their homes because they committed the crime of falling ill,

while they deny environmental protection for a poor earth that is whitering and dying under the unslaught of naked greed

while they do nothing of any serious importance to assure people a life of wellbeing and freedom.

The senawhores and pimprasentatives who do this figure we’ll vote for them anywyays because what are we going to do, vote Republican?

Hey, the way I see it, if you act like a Republican you should be treated like a Republican. We loose anyway, so we might as well kick your sorry ass out.

It may take a cycle or two, but that is the only way to work for change. You can’t plant until your clear.

VOTE PUNITIVE.

P.S. Call up your local congressoid’s office and tell them about the concept. and listen to the stunned silence at the other end. Oh shit......

©Barfo, 2008

The Pig Sings

Barfo QuickNotes takes a quick look at Piglip Palin's first weigh-in .

The Pig Sings

The News: In her first interview without training wheels, Sarah ("Piglips") Palin demonstrated that she is an ignorant idiot.

Ignoring Georgia's assault on S. Ossetia, Palin, accused Russia of having initiated an "unprovoked" invasion of a smaller democratic country. She asserted she understood U.S. relations with Russia because "they're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska ..."

Palin asserted that US troops in Iraq are "on a task that is from God," although in the same breadth she humbly confessed that she "would never presume to know God's will."

But she would never "second-guess" Israel if it decided to bomb Iran. Presumably she would continue not to second-guess nothing as oil soared past $200.00 a barrel, the dollar's value sank to less than a peanut, and the world (including Alaska) plunged into a depression.

The important thing is "that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on," And that mission is? " "To rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying our nation. "

"It is for no more politics as usual, and somebody's big fat resume that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment"

The Note: Yeahuh... who needs big fat resumes with degrees in stupid shit like international law and relations, economics, political theory, compartive cultural studies, and all that pointy headed librul crap. Hey!!! One pig's squeal is as good as another's.

Sad thing is must Uhmurkans would agree.

©Barfo, 2008

The New Constables

Don't say Chipster didn't tell ya' -- Constabularism has arrived in uh'Murka.  The crowd control scenes from the Republoscum convention  show that the only difference between the Goon Staat thugs in Iraq and those in St. Paul is the colour of the Keflar.

As this article shall explain the militarization of domestic police forces is the necessary correlative of the constabularization of the military abroad.  Both are aimed at maintaining a state-of-seige in which the civilian population is regarded as a “suspect enemy”.  The result is the brutalization of everything. 

Constables in Minneapolis & Baghdad

For those who haven't been diligently following this blog: What is Constabularism?

"Constabularism" is Neo-con double-talk for imposed regimes of ongoing state-intimidation and oppression.  The word was first forged on the anvils in Smirky Billy Kristol's Cave known as Project for the New American Century, to describe a military strategy formulated "to secure and expand the 'zones of democratic peace."   In case anyone didn't quite get it, this entails equipping and training the military to "shape the security environment in critical regions.”  The shaping entails a blend of military, intelligence, propaganda, policing, and provocation simultaneously working externally from the zone and internally into it.  This "full spectrum" military blurs the distinction between military and civilian, war and peace.   And don't think that "the Homeland" isn't a "critical region."

In order to grasp the malignant perverseness of everything Neo-con scum do, it is necessary to understand what is meant by "zones of democratic peace."  Although claiming lofty antecedents in Kantian idealism, the phrase denotes a post- World War ("II") sociological wackjob which "argues" that states adhering to so-called democratic values tend not to go to war against one another; ergo world peace can be maintained by extending zones of democratic peace! 

Of course, the "hypothesis" is prima facie ridiculous.  "Democracy & Peace!"  Sounds great.  But even to those inculcated with our cultural prejudices, the vexing question arises: what is "democracy"?  The prevailing view among the Zones Crowd is that a "democracy" is any kind of elected government where at least 10 percent of the population votes.  Oh Wow!  By that definition neither Athens nor the Roman Republic would ever have lifted a finger against their neighbours. When it comes to "what is peace?" the whole hypothesis collapses as sociologists make attempts at arguing international law only to peter out into unscientifically reaffirming certain "self-evident" contemporary, plati-truths which may be summed up as "Hitler started it". 

Without pressing the matter too hard, the zones of democratic peace theory is the simply the catch-phrase for a polemic that seeks to extend capitalist materialism as a way of life.  This is nothing particularly new.  It was, after all, the "Liberal Agenda" throughout the 19th century. The Monroe Doctrine was the first Zonal Declaration used to "mark out" the Spanish Empire for the extension of Anglo-American political liberalism and free trade.  If anyone wants to get an idea of what zones of democractic peace look like, they need only go to Latin America.  The post-War neo-liberal agenda simply trumpets an old tune; and it bears remarking that every US president at least since Wilson has blown this horn in one fashion or another.  In other words, the Zones Theory simply asserts that Free Trade and a Global Market Economy will bring peace and prosperity to all but a few.

The best that can be said for this theory is that anyone is free to  proselytize his favorite snake oil.  The murderous neo-con perversion consists in advocating the extension of democratic peace through war and semi-war. Scumbag Kristol's core tenet is that the United States should  “preserve and extend” its military “preeminence” by simultaneously fighting “multiple theater wars” in order to “shape the security environment" and "extend zones of democratic peace."  What Kristol and his PNAC gutter-buddies have done is to fuse "liberalism" with "preeminence" and "extension" with "conquest". It is one thing to commercially compete, to argue,  tempt and persuade; it is quite another to bring "democratic values" at the tip of a sword and under the heel of a boot.


Under the heel of a boot -- because constabularism is the necessary next step in "securing" the peace once democracy has been "extended".

The September 2000 PNAC Report (Rebuilding America's Defenses) emphatically urged that "constabulary missions" were not to be confused with traditional "peacekeeping" roles.  Why not?  Because "peacekeeping", as it has been understood in international law, is basically a question of buffering between belligerents or maintaining basic services and public order during an occupation.  When armed belligerents are involved, the military peacekeepers (like the U.N. White Hats) simply position themselves and patrol between them.  It's a very basic proposition.  In terms of occupation which presupposes a conquest of territory, the peacekeeping basically amounts to being a big proctor over society.  The military stand guard, while the country's normal and domestic police, postal and hospital services continue to operate as usual, reporting to the occupying military authority instead of the erstwhile government.

But taking Israel's "pro-active peacekeeping" in the West Bank as a paradigm, the neocon Report insisted on dispensing with U.N. auspices and limits.  "Shaping the security environment" meant more than patrolling the streets. It included "maintaining" such things as "no-fly zones," conducting its own intelligence operations and be configured with "combat service support personnel with special language, logistics and other support skills."

What has to be understood (and few have) is how the word-drones in the neocon workshop interwove traditionally distinct and even exclusive categories.  The technique was to speak in conjunctives and then to cross over categories which didn't match.  A perhaps key example was their speaking of "extending" and "securing" zones while maintaining operative intelligence capacities. Military intelligence needed for extending (i.e. conquering) territory is one thing, police intelligence for securing occupied (i.e. no longer hostile) territory is quite another.

Traditional military intelligence consists in finding out where the opposing forces are and what their game plan is so that you can go out and kill them before they kill you.  But what is involved in police intelligence, conducted by the military, in an zone which is no longer the theatre of hostilities and the occupants of which are supposedly peaceable (if resentful) civilians?  Traditional police intelligence, even in the 20th century, has been fairly limited.  It involves undercover work with organized crime or drug dealing, keeping tabs on specific suspects and maintaing contacts with various snitches and other  unpleasant people.  None of this is particularly useful in terms of occupying and "securing" a "zone of democratic peace."  Nor was it anything the PNAC needed to fuss about since the use of existing police forces by the occupying authority is well established in practice and under international law. 

No.  Although the PNAC was intentionally confusing issues for those not cued into their neocon speak, they were not in the least concerned with anything that a normal person would think of as "constabulary."  What they meant was that the occupying army would continue to presume that the entire population within the new "democratic zone of peace" was in fact hostile and therefore suspect. But unlike an opposing army or even opposing guerillas, ordinary civilians do not wear uniforms and are not in any particular place "over there" to be shot at.  Unlike ordinary criminal elements, ordinary civilians under occupation aren't doing anything suspect other than being a "potential enemy" in an asymetrical situation.  Of necessity, the mission of the so-called constabulary forces would comprise security-shaping actions against anyone on an ongoing basis.  These actions would include random searches and arbitrary detentions not guided by any constitutional limits; the use of snitches, double agents, to penetrate and provoke;  the use of "turned" locals to act as propagandists or spreaders of disinformation.   In short, in the militarization of civil police procedures and the reduction of civil society to a new form of battlefield. According to the PNAC report itself these "constabulary missions" are "likely" to "generate" violence. Gee.... why would that be?  The purpose of all of this has nothing to do with policing or "intelligence" and everything to do with letting those we have "freed from tyranny" know who their new master is. 

Welcome to Abu Grahib

Thus, under the infected language of the neocon bacillus "securing and extending zones of democratic peace" meant turning a liberated country into a vast terrorized and degraded concentration camp.

 

“Suspect enemy.”  We no longer hear the cynical ambiguity. A suspect is someone who might be something, or might not. Conjoined with “enemy” it does not mean that the person is an enemy, only that he might be.  But the phrase has come to sound and mean the same as “enemy suspect” -- ie. a definite enemy who might be doing something wrong. But in war being an enemy is the “wrong.” What the phrase does is to destroy the concept of civil society.  Societas means and is founded on a principle of unsuspecting fellowship. I see you - you see me and we are friends.  The Fiend's “shaping the security environment”  destroys this principle.

Smirking Billy Kristol and his Gutter-Buddies, understood that such constabulary missions could not be carried out with traditional military hardware alone.  Maintaining no-fly zones and blitzing rural villages off the map can only go so far.  For that reason, the PNAC report called for using "transformation technologies”  and for taking the battle to the internet itself.

What are some of these technologies?  Spy drones, developed by the Israelis, some almost as small as an insect that can fly into homes and hovels to "monitor" and -- hey, why not? -- kill the inhabitants. Sonic Cannon (Long Range Acoustical Device -LARD), which make noise so loud it prevents thinking and turns you into a stupid,  passive zombie.  Slippery Goo, a slick ground spray that is so hyper-slick that it prevents even the minimal friction required to stand.  Not only are you brain-blasted dead, you are become a flopping fish on the ground, if that.  Lastly, there are laser burn rays, that will give you the exquisite feeling of being burned alive, without leaving a mark. All of this is nothing super-secret.  It has been reported quite openly here and there on the internet.  But they are facts that do not exist in the weltanachauung of the New York Times and other official media.

As for the internet, the PNAC Report chapter “Space and Cyber Space” says it all.  The rebuilt mission of the U.S. military was to dominate inner and outer space.  Needless to say, outer space will include more domestic and military spying and inner or cyber space will include proactive disinformation actions, aka “controlling the narrative.”

When any of this is disclosed in the press it is usually done under the myth of developing "more humane or effective" battle-field weapons. Some of it is. But a lot of it is really designed to be used in constabulary missions against essentially defenseless civilians in order to disable them when they get restless and terrorize them thereafter.  

That, in brief, is the New American Century's Global Dystopia.   It ought to be of some concern, therefore, when the following picture appeared in 2004

Is that the sort of Baghdad in Manhattan we want to see?  Not me.  But I did not hear or read a single expression of shock.  On the contrary.  Murkans were relieved that their security was being protected from the never seen but ever potential evil one. 

Cartoon, Le Monde, March 2003

It ought to be of some concern when it gets announced that the LAPD started experimentally using "spy drones" in its "fight against crime."  But the average American is too goddamn stupid to put two and two together. What is taking place is the creation of a full spectrum police force that is a mirror image of the full spectrum military.

The coverage of the "riots" in St. Paul are a case in point.  It is essentially irrelevant who started it, whether the rioters were peaceably assembled until provoked or whether they were lawless anarchists.  It is also not particularly important whether the protesters or the police got out of hand. Riots happen, have happened and always will happened. They are a routine and uninteresting phenomenon. 

What is far more menacing is simply the fact that the police were decked out in body armour, no different from our constabulary forces in Iraq.  This, in itself, indicates a planned level of over-reaction that is not consistent with crowd in control in a civil society.  

But there was more.  The broadband farts that pass for mainstream news aren't worth mentioning.  Speaking duely and dully of 'pepper gas'and mass arrests, even the leftist  or "liberal" press glossed over some salient facts.  The police used used sound canon and stun grenades. They used police intelligence service to invade and disrupt entirely peaceful groups.

The neocon occupation forces that have taken over government are slowly inuring us to accepting the Thug Staat as a normal variant of civil society.  The presence of Borg-Units mechanically stomping down the street, is  seen as "normal".  Tasers are standard equipment, and standard equipment get used as standard operating procedure.  Four years on from 2004 and we now allow stun grenades and sound bombs to be used (at low levels for now to be sure).  Slowly but surely, and with hardly a whimper, we are being trained to live in a zone of democratic peace.

That this brutalization of society is taking place to varying degrees throughout the world is not to say that it is inevitable or desireable.  It is neither, but it does go to show the extent of global corporate police state, the undergirds the glitzy world of malls and consumer glitter.

Some may say that you can't arrest a person without a choke hold or taking him down.  Some may argue that there is no reason to expose our valiant Donutheads to being hit by bricks and bottles.  Some may argue that there is no way to effect mass arrests without herding people like cattle into holding pens.  But all of this misses the point.  Crowd control does not require militarization of government and the  employment of the most intimidating and thuggish means possible.  The message being sent is simply  "Our Boot.  Your Face"

It is a total canard to say that protestors are getting more cunning and violent.  They are not. Most protest assemblies are peaceable, and the scenes from St. Paul show ordinary people of all ages in ordinary clothes.  It was the police who were dressed for violence. 

It is nothing but cowardly ignorance to palaver about "lawn'order" and the intolerability of riots.  Riots are the price of freedom. 

“There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

“It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.”  (Federalist Paper No. 10.)

That was James Madison, the chief architect of our Constitution.  All freedom runs risks.  Risks that people will abuse it or take things too far.  Any assemblage can get rowdy and when it does, it is entirely normal for the police to respond.  If it gets uglier, then the police can respond more forcefully.  But there is no need in a free society to preemptively cage and beat up protestors.  None.

Comparing pictures of Baghdad and St. Paul, of Iraq and Afghanistan and the U.S. it is misplaced to think that "what goes around comes around."  What is seen are aspects of the same underlying phenomenon taking place simultaneously. 

Some may wonder why we use such insulting language against neo-cons.  We do it because it is the only way to approach truth-in-reporting.  The neocons shaping external and domestic policy  are not "political opponents" they are malignant, corrosive, utterly evil excrescences on the body politic.  In their cunning but morally-mindless way they are out to destroy all civic good and will leave a brutalized wasteland where civilization once stood.

©2008 Woodchipgazette