CHAPTER 8: As Long as You Have Obedient Servants

 

You Can Forget about Justice

 

(And Just How Bad Is the System of Survival We Have in Place?)

 

We have some bad news and some good news. This is a terribly sad chapter, full of more information that is hard to accept and nevertheless true. It is sad, but true. And it is unavoidable. At least we can begin with the slight hope we do have, which few people know about. It is a vision. The vision that allows us to tolerate the current reality also helps us begin to change it. Here is that vision first, to be used as a prelude to the bad news we are adding to the stockpile.

Even though technology is largely responsible for our current dilemmas, such as chemical, oil and coal pollution, deforestation, nuclear waste, warfare, and so forth, there are some new social technologies that could solve some of our problems of greed gone wild. These new methods of dialogue and deliberation result in co-intelligence rather than co-supidity. And they work almost all the time.

Further, we have the capability to establish and demonstrate when people are lying, thus giving us a dependable way of knowing when they are telling the truth. We can do this soon with a greater degree of certainty than ever before in human history.

By putting people on trial based on fundamental principles of justice based on sustainability, we can establish a whole new legal system—one that is sleek and highly reliable, and quick to barbeque and redistribute human "beans" fairly and equitably if necessary. When we integrate the Truth Machine and the new social technology based on co-intelligent dialogue and deliberation into this new system of justice, a vision of a new world order quickly emerges.

To say it another way, we have the power to establish a new, highly-simplified system of justice that holds the priority of preserving humankind, other species, and the earth over the protection of the interests of corporations and those who own them. It would be managed under the supervision of a government made up of citizens on short-term service, who are paid to dialogue and deliberate in groups designed for co-intelligent collaboration. In this scenario, we would have all we need—cannibalized (hahaha)—from the formerly misused technology of the very military-industrial-congressional-media complex of cannibals who are currently devouring the earth and killing our children.

Justice

Before we go into the details of a whole new system of justice, we need to start with a quick review of what justice is and the way justice has worked until now in the civilized world in which all of us have grown up. Unless we are clear about the terrible abuse of justice that exists as our warped system, as we speak, we cannot advance to a new one. I start with a quote from a person I greatly admire, Derrick Jensen. This is one of his descriptions about the true nature of the justice system, as it exists right now in America. It has been this way, pretty much throughout history. I think this is eloquently descriptive and right on, not to mention good, poetic, and honest.

According to Jensen, writing in Endgame, Volume 1: The End of Civilization (Seven Stories Press, 2006)1: "Here's how it works. Those in power pass some law. It doesn't much matter how stupid or immoral the law is, it will be enforced by people with guns: the police and the military. Or maybe some judge sets a precedent. Once again, it doesn't matter how stupid or immoral the precedent is, it will also be enforced by people with guns. This law or precedent may be that human beings are property, that is, without rights (only responsibilities). It may be that corporations are persons, that is, with rights (and in this case, without responsibilities). It may be that corporate lies are protected free speech. It may be that corporate bribes are protected free speech. It may be that those who kill in the service of production are protected from accountability. It may be that who destroy property 'owned' by corporations face decades in prison as declared 'terrorists.'

"Those in power often con the rest of us into being proud of being good, defined—by them and by us—as being subservient to their laws, their edicts. They con us into forgetting—and in time we become all to eager to con ourselves into forgetting—that those in power can and usually do legalize reprehensible activities that increase their power (for example, stealing land from the indigenous, invading countries with desired resources, debasing the land base, all done legally, because those in power declare it to be so) and criminalize non-reprehensible activities that undercut their power (soon after the most recent invasion many people were arrested in New Your City for pasting up pictures of Iraqi citizens, that is, humanizing the U.S.'s current targets; consider a law proposed in the Oregon legislature mandating twenty-five year minimum sentences for anything that would disrupt transportation or commerce, including standing in the street during an anti-war protest (I'm not kidding). Another way to say this is that those in power make the rules by which they maintain and extend their power. Of course. And then those in power hire goons—for when you take away the rhetoric of protecting and serving, the job of police and the military boils down to being muscle to enforce the edicts of those in power—to keep the people in line.

"When we forget that the edicts of those in power are merely the edicts of those in power, we lend these edicts a moral weight they do not deserve. Those in power (usually the rich) declare that those in power under certain circumstances can kill those not in power (most often the poor), and the rest of us forget they're doing no more than using their power to get away with murder. Those in power declare that those in power may under certain circumstances devastate the land bases—oh, sorry, 'develop the natural resources' —of distant communities, and the rest of us forget they're doing no more than using their power to get away with murdering communities and murdering the earth. Those in power declare that those in power may under certain circumstances destroy entire peoples, and the rest of us forget they're doing no more than using their power to get away with genocide….

"The thirteenth premise of this book (Endgame): Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist."

This System of Injustice Has Been Going on for Decades, in Fact for Centuries

Okay, before I say more about justice, here is just one more quote to conside, from the preface to the book Grunch of Giants (Design Science Press, 2008) by Buckminster Fuller, a book that was written thirty years ago!

"An army of abstract legal entities (called corporations) now controls the economic and political future of mankind. In this urgent sequel to Critical Path, R. Buckminster Fuller traces the evolution of these multinational giants from the post-World War II 'military-industrial complex' to the current world economic crisis— an evolution, he argues, that threatens the imminent bankruptcy of the U.S. and the collapse of the world economic system.

"As these economic giants have grown beyond the control of the political units (nations) into which the earth is currently divided, they paradoxically threaten to bring about a world-wide depression while perhaps signaling the emergence of a new form of political and economic organization for the beleaguered inhabitants of Spaceship Earth."2

 

Current Slaughter and Abuse by the Empire

I agree wholeheartedly with Bucky Fuller. I admire him for how accurately he named what was going on in our culture, and for how well he predicted what has occurred.

Now, let's update that analysis from twenty-eight years ago, by jumping to very recent times. Just one example among many, this is from Project Censored in California, posted online on New Year's Eve 2009, to start off the beginning of 2010. Every year, Project Censored comes out with a report summarizing the most under-reported stories of recent times.

"Among the most important corporate media censored news stories of the past decade, one must be that over one million people have died because of the United States military invasion and occupation of Iraq. This, of course, does not include the number of deaths from the first Gulf War nor the ensuing sanctions placed upon the country of Iraq that, combined, caused close to an additional one million Iraqi deaths. In the Iraq War, which began in March of 2003, over a million people have died violently primarily from US bombings and neighborhood patrols. These were deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government. Among US military leaders and policy elites, the issue of counting the dead was dismissed before the Iraqi invasion even began. In an interview with reporters in late March of 2002 US General Tommy Franks stated, 'You know we don't do body counts.' Fortunately, for those concerned about humanitarian costs of war and empire, others do.

"In a January 2008 report, the British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) reported that, 'survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003. We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000. If one takes into account the margin of error associated with survey data of this nature then the estimated range is between 946,000 and 1,120,000.'

"The ORB report came on the heels of two earlier studies conducted by Dr. Les Roberts and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and published in the Lancet medical journal. The first study done from January 1, 2002 to March 18, 2003 confirmed civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. The second study published in October 2006 documented over 650,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the start of the US invasion and confirmed that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths. Over half the deaths were directly attributable to US forces. The now estimated 1.2 million dead six years into the war/occupation, included children, parents, grandparents, cab drivers, clerics, and schoolteachers. All manner of ordinary Iraqis have died because the United States decided to invade their country under false pretences of undiscovered weapons of mass destruction and in violation of international law. An additional four to five million Iraqi refugees have fled their homes. The magnitude of these million-plus deaths and creation of such a vast refugee crisis is undeniable. The continuing occupation by US forces has guaranteed a monthly mass death rate of thousands of people, a carnage that ranks among the most heinous mass killings in world history. More tons of bombs have been dropped in Iraq than in all of World War II. Six years later the casualties continue but the story, barely reported from the start, has vanished.

"The American people face a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been conducted in their name. Yet most Americans have no idea of the magnitude of deaths and tend to believe that they number in the thousands and are primarily Iraqis killing Iraqis. Corporate mainstream media are in large part to blame. The question then becomes how can this mass ignorance and corporate media deception exist in the United States and what impact does this have on peace and social justice movements in the country?"3

How Do We Remain so Ignorant?

How do we not know about this as it happens? How can this slaughter go on and get paid for by us without us being informed about it? How can we remain so passive and pathetic and stupid?

This all works because the media hide the truth from us and we avoid learning what disturbs our sleep. This also all works because the police work to protect the rich—using the same technology as that of war, but moderated for the sake of not getting too much bad publicity. The goons are paid specialists in domination and control who are there to support the lies perpetrated in the media, to protect the thieves and murderers, the corporate capitalists…

Police Use Painful New Weapon on G-20 Protesters

By Allison Kilkenny (AlterNet, September 28, 2009)4

"Police used 'sound cannons' to break up G-20 protest groups demonstrating in Pittsburgh.

"This technology has been deployed in Iraq as an 'anti-insurgent weapon' and it could easily be used as a torture tool.

"Pittsburgh police demonstrated the latest in crowd control techniques on protesters when they used 'sound cannons' to blast the ears of citizens near the G-20 meeting of world economic leaders. City officials said this was the first time such sound blasters, also known as 'sound weapons,' were used publicly.

"Lavonnie Bickerstaff of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police uses benign language like 'sound amplifiers,' and 'long-range acoustic device' to explain the new weapons in an attempt to sanitize what is essentially a painful weapon that leaves no visible marks on its victims. The Mob utilized a similar tactic on snitches when they would beat everywhere except the face. If victims have no outward bruises to show, the world is less likely to believe their stories of assault and harassment.

"Unlike aerosol hand-grenades, pepper spray, and rubber bullets (all traditional methods of protest suppression also used at the G-20 protests), the damage from sound cannons is entirely internal, and can only be preserved on video, but even then, the deafening noise cannot be fully appreciated unless one hears it in person.

"The 'long range acoustic device (LRAD)' is designed for long-range communication and acts as an 'unmistakable warning,' according to the American Technology Corporation (ATC), which develops the instruments. 'The LRAD basically is the ability to communicate clearly from 300 meters to three kilometers' (nearly two miles), said Robert Putnam of American Technology's media and investor relations during an interview with MSNBC. 'It's a focused output. What distinguishes it from other communications tools out there is its ability to be heard clearly and intelligibly at a distance, unlike bullhorns.'

"Except, police aren't trying to send a distress call to allies two miles away. They're literally blasting this extreme decibel of noise directly into the ears of protesters (or any unwitting citizens) standing mere feet from the cannons. Depending on the mode of LRAD, it can blast a maximum sound of 145 to 151 decibels—equal to a gunshot—within a three-foot (one meter) range, according to ATC. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) reports that permanent hearing loss can result from sounds at about 110 to 120 decibels in short bursts or even just 75 decibels if exposure lasts for long periods.

"But there is a volume knob, Putnam notes, so its output can be less than max, purportedly to give us comfort in the knowledge that deafening citizens is left to the discretion of power-hungry police. On the decibel scale, an increase of 10 (say, from 70 to 80) means that a sound is 10 times more intense. Normal traffic noise can reach 85 decibels, reports MSNBC, but these sound cannons cannot be compared to standing beside a busy New York City road.

"The BBC reported in 2005 that the 'shrill sound of an LRAD at its loudest sounds something like a domestic smoke alarm, ATC says, but at 150 decibels, it is the aural equivalent to standing 30 meters away from a roaring jet engine and can cause major hearing damage if misused.'

"This technology has been deployed in Iraq as an 'anti-insurgent weapon,' and the sonic weaponry is also being used on protesters in Honduras. Seattle Weekly reports that this weapon could easily be used as a torture tool if one doesn't already think this is its only use.

"Sonic weaponry is now being deployed domestically to put a chill on free speech. We're told this is the 'humane' way to deal with protesters, but it's really just a convenient way to suppress citizens without the messy aftereffects of having to explain bullet holes to reporters. A bunch of protesters complaining about ruptured ear drums doesn't make for dramatic news."

 

It is Not the Job of the Government to Protect Us from the God Damned Truth

This opinion piece from the latest issue of Time offers an interesting take on the role of the public. I particularly like the paragraph that starts… "Here are some things Obama did not say…"

The Lesson: Passengers Are Not Helpless

By Amanda Ripley (Time, December 30, 2009)5

"Since 2001, airline passengers—regular people without weapons or training—have helped thwart terrorist attacks aboard at least five different commercial airplanes. It happened again on Christmas Day. And as we do each and every time, we miss the point.

"Consider the record: First, passengers on United Flight 93 prevented a further attack on Washington on 9/11. Then, three months later, American Airlines passengers wrestled a belligerent, biting Richard Reid to the ground, using their headset cords to restrain him. In 2007, almost a dozen passengers jumped on a gun-wielding hijacker aboard a plane in the Canary Islands. And this past November, passengers rose up against armed hijackers over Somalia. Together, then, a few dozen folks have helped save some 595 lives.

"And yet our collective response to this legacy of ass-kicking is puzzling. Each time, we build a slapdash pedestal for the heroes. Then we go back to blaming the government for failing to keep us safe, and the government goes back to treating us like children. This now familiar ritual distracts us from the real lesson, which is that we are not helpless. And since regular people will always be first on the scene of terrorist attacks, we should perhaps prioritize the public's antiterrorism capability— above and beyond the fancy technology that will never be foolproof.

"Instead, we hear this blather from President Obama: 'The American people should be assured that we are doing everything in our power to keep you and your family safe and secure during this busy holiday season.' He forgets that Americans have never really wanted the government to do 'everything in its power' to keep us safe. That would make this a terrible place to live. And yet, after eight years of paternalistic bluster from President George W. Bush, we have grown accustomed to the cycle of absurd promises followed by failure and renewed by fear. Bush liked to say that the authorities have to succeed 100 percent of the time and terrorists only once. The truth is, authorities never succeed 100 percent of the time at anything. And they never will.

"By definition, terrorism succeeds by making us feel powerless. It is more often a psychological threat than an existential one. The authorities compound the damage when they overreact—by subjecting grandmothers to pat-downs and making it intolerable to travel. Even though the Christmas bombing suspect had been stopped, stripped and cuffed before the plane landed, we still talk like victims. '[This] came close to being one of the greatest tragedies in the history of our country,' New York Congressman Peter King said on CNN, criticizing Obama for not holding a press conference sooner.

"When Obama did speak, three days after the incident, he first listed all the security reviews to be conducted while the rest of us sit tight. Only then did he briefly acknowledge reality: 'This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.'

"Here are some things Obama did not say: He did not propose that we find ways to leverage the proven dedication and courage of the public. He did not call for Congress to cut spending on homeland-security pork and instead double the budget of Citizen Corps—the volunteer emergency-preparedness service that was created after 9/11 and that most Americans have never heard of. He did not demand that the government be more open with us about the threats we face. He did not discuss the government's obligation, as homeland-security expert Stephen Flynn puts it, to 'support regular people in being able to withstand, rapidly recover and adapt to foreseeable risks.'

"Karen Sherrouse was a flight attendant on the jet that Richard Reid tried to blow up. When one of her colleagues tried to stop Reid, Sherrouse rushed to help. But she couldn't get down the aisle because so many passengers had already joined the melee. 'They were instantly on him,' she remembers. 'It was a group effort.' And so it should be. The flight attendants can't be everywhere at once. Nor can TSA officers or the FBI.

"After the passengers of Flight 253 deplaned in Detroit, they were held in the baggage area for more than five hours until FBI agents interviewed them. They were not allowed to call their loved ones. They were given no food. When one of the pilots tried to use the bathroom before a bomb-sniffing dog had finished checking all the carry-on bags, an officer ordered him to sit down, according to passenger Alain Ghonda, who thought it odd. 'He was the pilot. If he wanted to do anything, he could've crashed the plane.' It was a metaphor for the rest of the country: Thank you for saving the day. Now go sit down."

How Lightweight Critiques Appear to Have Substance, but Hide the Real Truth

The article above, while appearing to be critical and thoughtful and daring, is lightweight, typical Time magazine committee writing, appearing to be 'risky' with opinions. Thus Time's staff fulfills their role as protector of corporate rule by appearing to be critical of big government, which, though it is a problem, is not nearly as big a problem as corporate control of big government. Socialism for the rich is okay, but if it spreads to the middle class and poor people, it is anathema to the political establishment. Virtually all our media operate accordingly.

When we, the public, become as willing to attack the corporate terrorists who are the real murderers of this world, in our own defense, at least as well as we attack the other terrorists on planes, then we will get somewhere.

And we must defend ourselves against their agents and lackeys, including, unfortunately, Barack Obama. Then the real conversation begins, and real action is possible.

At the time of this writing, I had just returned from three weeks of travel to Sweden, Egypt, and Germany, and I found that the entire pain in the ass security system in place in airports is based on everything except willingness to consider why billions of people are angry and completely justified in wanting to kill anyone remotely related to the corporate capitalist murder-for-profit machine.

Hidden behind the phony patriotism of the idiots in Congress, in the banking system, on Wall Street, in the defense industry, working in the upper echelons of the abusive worldwide economic order, representing countries sitting on the U.N. Security Council, stacking the deck of the International Monetary Fund, running the corporatist fascist government of the United States, and so on, are the profiteers. The true main motive of these killers is simply more money. Kill, starve, and strip— do whatever makes a profit.

The United States of America is not the best country in the world. It is very near to the top of the list for the worst. That needs to be said, acknowledged, repeated, and understood by its dumbed-down populace.

The great deceit behind the Time magazine article is that it wrongly explains how Obama has failed. The way Obama has failed has nothing to do with how well he has protected us against 'terrorism.' He has greatly increased the likelihood of it by the way he has stepped up state terrorism and surrendered to the temptation of accepting fundamental American cultural ignorance and blindness as if it were real thought, treating Republican dumb asses and Blue Dog Democrats with phony respect for the sake of manipulation, rather than for the purpose of open confrontation, engagement, and passionate advocacy. He has failed to call the populace out based on real compassion and real passion, and he has violated those of us who trusted him at the time of the election, not just here in our country, but the whole world over.

The wait is over. Obama is not going to do shit to change a goddamned thing. Through his bailouts on Wall Street and of the corporations that manufacture cars and sell out to pharmaceutical companies, etc., Obama has fully demonstrated he is a corporate slave. He has no guts. No balls. No view above the incredibly provincial law school education he received at Harvard University that overrode his humanity, just as it was supposed to. A Harvard brainwashing is just another goddamned brainwashing. There were some things, as Time asserts, that Obama did not say, but their cutesy little list didn't cover a goddamned one of them.

To maintain "security" with the totally screwed up airport security systems and the stupid Homeland Security bureaucracy is the same kind of condescension as maintaining slavery to protect the slaves from starving. Rather than respecting that the passengers often take care of themselves better than the system anyway, treating the passengers like they are the problem, adding insult to injury, is the perfect analogy for the whole bigger problem of our current form of government—corporate capitalist fascism.

The world is our homeland. That's the way things are. And that's the way things ought to be. That is why feeding rich people to poor people until a new balance of capital and protein is achieved, korporate kapitalist kannibalism, is the best way we, the citizens of the world, can love our enemy, just like Jesus said we should—maybe sautéed and with a little wine from their wine cellars.

The Tyranny Currently Called Justice

We are dominated and controlled by fascist corporate dictators, wielding a phony system of justice. As long as we are comforted and have the promise of getting to be as advantaged as our dictators are, we are willing to stay stupid, look the other way, and let them get by with it. So get this point here, because you won't find it in a lot of other places.

In his two-volume book series Endgame, Derrick Jensen's lists twenty premises at the beginning of both volumes. I read them over frequently like a goddamned Bible freak. I agree 100 percent with at least fourteen of Jensen's premises and even if you don't read those books in full, I highly recommend that you at least take a look at them. All one thousand two hundred-plus pages of these combined works are chock full of evidence in support of these premises.

Here is premise number five: "The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice."6

We saw an example of this premise in operation in the run-up to the Iraq War when Colin Powell was making a case for the United States to go to war without there being any real merit for the U.S. to do so. Colin Powell, who even the left, including myself, up to 2003, thought had integrity and could be trusted, turned out to be just a good ass kissing slave who would lie for George W. Bush and his handlers when asked to, and in the process he sold out the American people. He knew goddamned good and well he was lying too, because I knew it then and I knew he knew it too, and he lied anyway.

As it turns out, both Colin Powell and Barack Obama are, in the end, just good slaves for their corporate owners. I realize how offensive it is to repeatedly call these black men slaves. I intend the offense. If the end of times comes as a result of these last fifteen years or so of selling out, in the final analysis, we can be pretty sure it was the good slaves that did us in. Some of them were white, like Bill Clinton, for example, but "knew their place" and folded and kissed ass eagerly when they were expected to. They went along to get along. People who do that, which is most of us, are the agents of no change, and that is leading to the apocalypse.

Enough

Okay, folks, I am not spending much more time here to establish that the existing so called "justice system" the world over is total bullshit as far as actual justice is concerned, including and particularly the entire legal system of the United States of America, land of the brave and home of the free. That bullshit won't work on me anymore and I hope to hell it won't work for you either.

I spent forty years of my life in the non-violent civil rights, anti-war, pro-hippie and various other social reform movements in this country, and even when we won we still lost. I know how this works. If you don't know that this is how things really are by now do your own goddamned homework and get back to me. Or you can stop reading right now and kiss my ass. (But if you are rich enough, keep an eye out, I may barbeque your ass someday. I am not fucking ideologically non-violent anymore. As a practical matter, I have not actually been violent yet, and I haven't killed or eaten anyone yet, but I am making a list. I no longer feel morally constrained to act civilized, and I am not alone.)

We need a new set of rules and they should involve honesty about nurturing some and killing others, and killing some beings on this planet for the sake of the remaining beings on the planet and for the sake of the planet itself.

So that's it. I am moving on to the fundamental question raised by everyone I have quoted so far in this book, about how we can all become more honest and establish a real system of justice. I believe that our last chance before chaos and being subjected to little roving bands of mafia control all over the world, our only chance, is to stop lying. In fact, we must give up lying because we can't get by with it anymore. Then, once we can know what is true, I have some ideas about how we can develop a system of justice that is actually just.