Sunday Musings and The Iron Wall

First, here's a great article - American Psychosis - from Adbusters Magazine - by Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, who is the author of a book - Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. I was just trying to get through the book, before it has to be returned to the library, but I think this article is a bit of a precis - saving me some time! In part, he says:

Our culture of flagrant self-exaltation, hardwired in the American character, permits the humiliation of all those who oppose us. We believe, after all, that because we have the capacity to wage war we have a right to wage war. Those who lose deserve to be erased. Those who fail, those who are deemed ugly, ignorant or poor, should be belittled and mocked. Human beings are used and discarded like Styrofoam boxes that held junk food. And the numbers of superfluous human beings are swelling the unemployment offices, the prisons and the soup kitchens.

It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. Michael Jackson, from his phony marriages to the portraits of himself dressed as royalty to his insatiable hunger for new toys to his questionable relationships with young boys, had all these qualities. And this is also the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. It is the nationwide celebration of image over substance, of illusion over truth. And it is why investment bankers blink in confusion when questioned about the morality of the billions in profits they made by selling worthless toxic assets to investors. . .

. . . The belief that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the accumulation of vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others is exposed as a fraud. Freedom can no longer be conflated with the free market. The travails of the poor are rapidly becoming the travails of the middle class, especially as unemployment insurance runs out. And class warfare, once buried under the happy illusion that we were all going to enter an age of prosperity with unfettered capitalism, is returning with a vengeance.

Unfortunately, given his great analysis, Hedges really suggests no cure, no respite. He, in fact, suggests that Americans should start thinking like people under the Apartheid regime in South Africa or dissidents in the Soviet Union. He suggests the emergence of a corporate state and ultimately a fascist state is nigh upon us. . . He says:

Resistance movements will have to look now at the long night of slavery, the decades of oppression in the Soviet Union and the curse of fascism for models. The goal will no longer be the possibility of reforming the system but of protecting truth, civility and culture from mass contamination. It will require the kind of schizophrenic lifestyle that characterizes all totalitarian societies. Our private and public demeanors will often have to stand in stark contrast. Acts of defiance will often be subtle and nuanced. They will be carried out not for short term gain but the assertion of our integrity. Rebellion will have an ultimate if not easily definable purpose. The more we retreat from the culture at large the more room we will have to carve out lives of meaning, the more we will be able to wall off the flood of illusions disseminated by mass culture and the more we will retain sanity in an insane world. The goal will become the ability to endure.

But I remain more of an optimist - or maybe it is that I live in Canada (alright not as optimistic as I would have been before I saw the police state emerge and not be denounced by all at the G20) and not in the U.S., but I still believe that there is hope - although if we moved to a true democratic state that worked for people I guess that the U.S. might feel compelled to bring their military to bear. . . but that doesn't seem immediately likely - at least not while our Prime Minister is busy buying 9 BILLION dollars worth of fighter jets that cannot reach the arctic but work great on air craft carriers of which we have precisely ZERO!

I still think it is possible that we can build a state that at the very least moderates (if not eliminates) the "free market", that works for people instead of corporations and that can find a way to keep all children out of poverty (their parents, and people without children, too!) I have been to India, and Kerela really is a miracle - a miracle born not of increased development but of improved distribution!

It is possible to have jails/prisons but to keep them humane and to assume that every one in them is innocent until proven guilty - a point I embarrassingly must admit I got from Conrad Black and that got driven home by the detention situation at the G20; but also by a friend who was arrested and jailed over night because he "forgot" (with good reason if you knew the whole story) about a trial in which he was the witness - he was the victim of a crime and wanted to go to court and testify - anyway he got locked up , cold, no food, no coffee etc. Pretty bad scene, and something that can and should be fixed.

Instead I do think it is true that TV, The Web, social networking video games etc keep everyone distracted and living under an "illusion" that things are OK as they are and that they don't require fixing - just tweaking - until it is your child or friend who arrested, or fired or becomes homeless - and then the system seems to need a kick! Let's start kicking and screaming, instead of going to bed, getting high and watching another reality TV show!

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Just a little story that usually gets away - I happened to notice this and cannot believe (well OK I can believe it) that this is not bigger news. Story is that Wall Street, specifically the Wachovia Bank, now merged with Wells Fargo, is laundering drug money, making a fortune and getting away with it - because - get this! - these banks are too big to fail , and as Smith says in this article:

No big U.S. bank . . . has ever been indicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act or any other federal law. Instead, the Justice Department settles criminal charges by using deferred-prosecution agreements, in which a bank pays a fine and promises not to break the law again . . . . Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory. Indicting a big bank could trigger a mad dash by investors to dump shares and cause panic in financial markets.

Here is some of the detail - but you can read the whole story at Bloomberg.com

Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers -- including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years. . .

. . .

Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history -- a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product. . .

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case. . .

“It’s the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy,” says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia’s branch network. . .

The bank didn’t react quickly enough to the prosecutors’ requests and failed to hire enough investigators, the U.S. Treasury Department said in March. After a 22-month investigation, the Justice Department on March 12 charged Wachovia with violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to run an effective anti-money-laundering program.

Five days later, Wells Fargo promised in a Miami federal courtroom to revamp its detection systems. Wachovia’s new owner paid $160 million in fines and penalties, less than 2 percent of its $12.3 billion profit in 2009.

If Wells Fargo keeps its pledge, the U.S. government will, according to the agreement, drop all charges against the bank in March 2011.

Additionally there is more analysis of the story at: Alternet

There are not many other stories except on blogs, and a reprint of the Bloomberg story in the Edmonton Journal. Sigh - peaceful protesters go to jail and banks can launder billions for Drug Cartels and simply get away with it because they are too big too fail.

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Most people have now seen the clip on Youtube of a young woman getting told she will be arrested for assault if a bubble touches an officer -





but I was pleased to see that it was actually covered in a story today in the National Post!!! and sympathetic to the bubble blower - who was later arrested for having eye wash in her back pack.


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Saw a fabulous film today called The Iron Wall - if you get a chance see it - even though it is 5 years old - it is a fabulous history of Israeli Zionism and Palestine and I did not know how things were (and now they are worse) in Hebron. I cannot imagine. Break the Siege of Gaza!! Free Palestine. There is little hope left for a two state solution but I am an optimist!
You can see the whole thing here but it is a poor copy from google video. I suggest that you order your own copy from the Palestine Store and support the film makers - or have a look at the website at: THE IRON WALL




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And lastly comes this story, in the Toronto Star, about an NGO in Afghanistan called in the article Team Canada because the real name cannot be used - the reporter says to keep the workers safe - but I am suspicious of this whole thing and I don't know why - maybe because they all are ex-military - they may be heroes but they may be mercenaries - I cannot figure it out - so I am looking for feedback. . . anyone been in Afghanistan and know this makes sense - sounds like they have a lot of money to spend - and I just worry that it is more military - and also its paying people to dig ditches - literally - but at least they don't just fill them in again. . . and what about the women?