The Horsemeat Saga

Sappington shoots a horse for show

 (I would rather not link to this or any other video of horse-slaughter)

Living in rural New Mexico, one is around livestock -- including horses -- all the time. We don't have a ranch, but there are good-sized ranches all around here, some of them running cattle, others fallow because of the drought. Lots of people have horses, whether they are ranching or not.


Given the drought and the cost of feed, it's getting tougher to hold on to any livestock these days, though some ranchers are managing. They say that this is the worst drought since the 1950's, and that was the worst since the Dustbowl in the '30's; it could get a good deal worse before it gets better. Climate change and all.

Meanwhile, outside of Roswell, a fellow named Rick de los Santos has been trying to get USDA approval to re-open his shuttered (cattle) slaughterhouse as a horsemeat slaughterhouse, and it's been just one thing after another for him. Trouble. Compounded recently by the now-viral video of his one employee shooting a horse -- just because he can -- and saying "Fuck you, animal activists!" as he does so.

Slaughtering horses for human consumption was banned in the US in 2007; the EU has banned the importation of US slaughtered horsemeat in any case. Supposedly, de los Santos intends to sell his horsemeat to Mexico, but there is little likelihood of it happening, given the fact that the meat of horses slaughtered in Mexico is sold to the EU. There is no foreign or domestic market for US slaughtered horsemeat, and yet for some time there has been a strenuous push to revive US slaughtering of horses for meat, and the saga of Valley Meats out of Roswell has become the showpiece of the story. (The ban was lifted by President Obama in 2011.)

Valley Meats used to slaughter cattle but apparently got into some difficulty when the USDA inspector became aware of cruelties to livestock and unsanitary conditions and suspended inspections, thus shutting down the plant in February of last year. Supposedly, there was a plan to correct the problems, but it was never put into effect, and the plant stayed closed. So far as I've been able to find out, de los Santos decided to switch to horse-slaughter instead of cattle and has been trying to get inspections and a permit to operate since last April. The permitting and inspection process has been delayed time and again.

There has been plenty of political pressure to deny any permits for horse slaughterhouses in New Mexico, and there is surprising unanimity by state officials against opening the Valley Meats plant outside of Roswell for horse-slaughter. Of course, as always, the counter-argument is that those against horse-slaughtering for human consumption are "just being emotional," and shouldn't be listened to.

After all, "emotions" mean nothing...

What will happen ultimately is anybody's guess, but at the moment, both the Sappington video and the many death threats against him and de los Santos are being investigated by the FBI.

It's out of control.

And of course this situation provides plenty of grist for the civil libertarian and propertarian mills, as Sappington's statement ("Fuck you, animal activists!") as he shoots the horse is both condemned and defended, while his right to shoot the horse -- and say anything he wants to -- is highlighted and declared quintessentially "American". De Los Santos's right to slaughter horses or cattle or any other livestock he wants to without interference from the Nanny State will be debated ad nauseum, while safety and legal issues will be nit-picked to death (so to speak) ad infinitum. This is the way these things tend to go. Even in New Mexico.

But there's another layer to all of this. Sappington seems to have some real power issues which he gives vent to by killing a horse on camera and posting the video on his Facebook page, while cursing and denouncing "animal activists" -- who have done what to him, exactly?  They've interfered with the re-opening of the Valley Meat Co. slaughterhouse to be sure, and they've made a big deal over resumption of horse-slaughter in the US -- including New Mexico. But there is no prohibition -- that I know of -- against horse owners slaughtering their own horses for food for themselves, nor am I aware of "animal activists" interfering unless the situation is egregious. In this case, it is egregious because of the video which was clearly intended to provoke, shock and enrage. So Sappington is taking shit for it. Gee. Who'd a thunk? He's demonstrated for all the world to see that he has the power to kill at will, and he seems to want to have that power confirmed to him without consequence or responsibility. He wants the absolute right in other words, apparently to do anything he wants with his property and then put the video on display for anyone to see.

De los Santos seems to following a somewhat different script. From what I've seen of him, he seems to be more interested in the profit potential of slaughtering horses and selling the meat than anything else, but there is no real market in the US or abroad. US slaughtered horsemeat is banned in the EU, and there is so little domestic demand for horsemeat outside the EU that it is hard to imagine that there really is a profit potential. So I can only assume that he and the other advocates for the resumption of horse slaughter for food in the US intend to create a market, probably domestically since restrictions abroad are so severe. Who would want US slaughtered horsemeat? Few people would eat it, though it might wind up in pet food or...

What happened in Europe could be instructive. Horses were being slaughtered in Eastern Europe, and somehow the horsemeat wound up in the commercial beef supply chain. Hm. How could that have happened? It wasn't sold as beef, it was incorporated into beef used for commercially prepared food such as frozen lasagne and such. In other words, it was like "pink slime" -- an extender of sorts, though apparently in some cases, all the meat was horsemeat. Controls were lacking, it seems, and without sufficient regulation and inspection, there is nothing to prevent horsemeat -- or any other "surprise" meat -- from being used this way. If it's cheaper, commercial preparers will buy it, no? Profits! 

I tend to doubt that US slaughtered horsemeat would be cheaper than beef, but you never know. The point is to have a market and exploit it to the hilt. If that means creating a market for horsemeat -- even a fraudulent one -- that's what will happen.

So far as I'm aware, there is no humane way to slaughter horses in a slaughterhouse environment. They panic and fight, and the whole process is gruesome and dangerous for both horses and workers. Horses are not like other livestock commonly slaughtered for food -- which probably has more to do with why they aren't commonly slaughtered for food than any other issue, such as "emotions."

The push to revive commercial horse-slaughtering in the US now that the ban is lifted seems to be driven by something other than a market need -- there isn't one in any realistic sense. Is it more a power-thing? Sadism? Or something else? I've heard the complaints that it has become so expensive to keep horses that there is a need to have some way to dispose of surplus or unwanted -- or unaffordable -- horses that doesn't cost an arm and a leg itself or lead to unnecessary cruelty or neglect, but this argument fails miserably as a rationale for reviving horse-slaughter. The treatment of horses being held for slaughter is appalling, and what happens to them at the slaughterhouse is worse. The fact that a kill-buyer will pay a small amount for a horse to be taken to slaughter shouldn't compensate, but maybe it's enough for those who can no longer maintain a horse. I don't know.

It typically costs an owner several hundred dollars to euthanize and dispose of a horse that's sick or injured or can no longer be cared for, so it may be that being paid a small amount by a kill-buyer instead is worth it.

On the other hand, horses are not raised for food in this country, and simply selling them off to a slaughterhouse is a dead end. Someone winds up paying... Unless, of course, that market for horseflesh is created.

So that's what I think is behind the current push. The viral video of Sappington killing his horse will quite likely delay -- but probably not prevent -- the development of that market.

Shedrow Confessions is a good resource to follow the saga. There is much more to it than just the New Mexico story...

A Wounded Vet's Letter to the Neo-Con Punks Who Engineered the Iraq

clusterfuck:

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

—Tomas Young

 Thanks to NeonLX at another site for pointing me to it.

---------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE:

Tomas Young appearing on Democracy Now! March 21, 2013:

 

"Francesco vai..."

Francesco vai, ripara la mia casa!

Someone was carrying a huge banner with that phrase on it at the Papal Installation yesterday. The crucifix at the ruined church of San Damiano near Assisi where St. Francis had gone to pray is said to have spoken to Francis, saying, "Go, Francesco, and repair my house."

Francis is said to have interpreted this to mean that he should repair the ruins of the church of San Damiano where he was, something he set out to do forthwith. The church which stands today is said to be the one Francis repaired with his own hands. A replica of the crucifix that spoke to him hovers over the simple altar at San Damiano. The original one is now in the basilica of Santa Chiara (St Clare) in Assisi, she being the founder of the Order of the Poor Clares, ordained by Francis himself.

We have a bulto of St. Francis here in what we call the "Jesus Room," and there is a larger statue of him (with animals) at the front door. Were I inclined to the Church in my dottage, it would be in honor of St. Francis, with whom I may share a certain spirit. But I am not so called at this point of my life, the Church and I having parted ways too long ago now for a rational reconciliation.

St. Francis, though, I hardly consider a churchman at all. He's a spirit of nature.

This Pope has taken Francis's name, the first to do so, and I'm cynical enough about Vatican politics to think he's intentionally committed a sacrilege. After all, Francis shamed the sacred and secular institutions alike in his own day, and he preached to the birds and animals.

On the other hand, at least in the first few days of his reign, this Pope Francis seems to be doing everything right -- and sincerely, too.

Maybe he will repair his spiritual house.

Enroning Iraq and America

Ten years on, yes. Ten years since the Bushevik invasion and aborted occupation of Iraq. The question raised in the aftermath should be: "Was it right?" Instead the question raised throughout the media, including most of the New Media, is: "Was it worth it?"

Ie: did the interests that rule the United States of America and its allies in the Mesopotamian Adventure gain from the exercise of Imperial power, and if so, was it enough to outweigh the losses? Let us examine the Balance Sheets of Empire.

There is no doubt the interests gained enormously, they gained by the trillions of dollars, and their risk in the adventure was practically nil. I remember back in the day that there was a single voice on the Internet, one Bartcop who some may recall, who was saying about the looming war, "This will mean trillions for the corporate interests," and he was right. He was I think the only one at the time who had a real and comprehensive understanding of what this adventure would cost (trillions), who would be paying (you and me) and who would benefit (the corporate powers that ruled us.)

It was obvious as sin to Bartcop because of Enron.

Nothing that's happened in domestic or world affairs since 2000 makes any sense without understanding the influence of Enron on changing the course of American and ultimately world events. Once that change was made, Enron could be made to go away. Poof! As if it never was. But like an incubus, its influence remained -- and remains -- as strong as ever. You could almost say it is a spiritual thing.

Ken Lay, after all, was a preacher's son who was always after the salvation of souls -- by robbing them, plundering the commons, and forcing people to believe in some clap-trap about "rewards" in the end.

Oh, there was much more clap-trap than that. Enron was built on a tissue of lies, fabrications, and fantasies of "rewards" that would come -- in the end -- from faith in the goodness of the Company and its leadership. It was no different in its own peculiar way than an evangelical church run by an entrepreneurial pastor -- of which the United States has been abundantly supplied from the get.

The Prime Directive of Enron was robbery. Fleecing of the sheep, if you will. In a way that the sheep like it and come back for more.

It worked like a charm -- for just as long as it was necessary. And then Enron... vanished. But it never really went away. Its Way became ingrained in the day to day ethics ("") and operations of the Highest of Our Mighty. Enron became the model. Surely someone should be able to make it work in perpetuity.

And I would argue that we are very close to that point now, if we haven't actually passed it.

As some wags have been able to fathom recently, the whole -- and really the only -- point of the Iraq invasion and occupation was for the money, not so much what could be stolen from the Iraqis (they didn't have that much after all), but for what could be pried out of the US Treasury -- all our pockets, individually and in toto -- for the sole and complete benefit of certain favored corporate interests. It worked like magic.

Within a few years, trillions and trillions were looted from the pockets and stored wealth of Americans, not to pay for the Imperial War of Aggression in Mesopotamia, but simply to take the money, to have (see), because it could be taken. The sheep were ripe for fleecing after the trauma of 9/11, and they willingly went to the shearing. Some, of course, went to the slaughter. That was the point.

The Imperial War of Aggression, still hasn't been paid for, and in realistic terms it never will be.

Was it worth it? For those who collected the riches and the rent, of course it was.

They never dreamed they could have such easy money so fast, money for nothing in many cases, and yea verily, all the chicks and cocaine they could consume at the same time. It was magic.

I've long been fascinated that the Imperial War of Aggression in Mesopotamia and the mindset -- as well as all the looting -- that went with it is almost never considered as a fundamental part of why the rest of us -- but not the Imperial Elite -- are in a permanent economic recession from which there appears to be no exit.

This disastrous war doesn't figure into the equations, apparently not at all, any yet it was and is fundamental. The economic tribulations most Americans (and many, many people around the world) are facing are supposedly the result of systemic financial collapse due to poor regulation, leading to real estate bubbles, and so on. Uh, there's more to it than that. Everything that led to the global financial collapse is to be found presaged at Enron, and the lies, the frauds, the violence, and the looting that was fundamental to Enron was played out on the battlefield that was Iraq.

It all links together. It's derived ultimately from cultic religious beliefs that require certain events be played out -- apparently in certain locations -- for the fulfillment of Prophecy.

One of the things that was so striking about the Iraq invasion and occupation was that the soldiers and the American people had no idea where this drama was unfolding and who the people were "we" were at war with. None whatsoever. Mesopotamia is not just some dusty corner of creation, after all. The whole of Iraq is filled with Biblical sites, from the Garden of Eden, to Ur of the Chaldees and Sumer/Shinar to Babylon and Nineveh and all the rest. The troops didn't know this (at least they didn't learn it from their leaders) and Americans by and large still don't know it. Mesopotamia was where civilization as we know it began; the people of Iraq are at least in part the descendants of the Sumerians, the Babylonians, Assyrians and so many of the others who were the very peoples of the Bible.

Even more striking to me was that there was -- and is -- absolutely no interest in learning any of this remarkable history, at least no interest by Americans. American troops set up camp outside the walls of Babylon, for example, with apparently no idea where they were, nor any interest in finding out, and during their stay, they destroyed a significant part of the archeological record without a concern in their heads. How much of the overall archaeological record in Iraq has been looted or destroyed as a consequence of the invasion and occupation is still being assessed, but it is not slight at all. When the museums were looted in Baghdad and elsewhere following the invasion, Americans -- led by Rummy -- simply shrugged. "Oh well!"

It was bizarre to witness this complete obliviousness to the people, the culture, and the history of Iraq during the American blitzkrieg and occupation -- that seemed to me to be more an echo of the German invasion of Poland than anything else -- and the murderous contempt with which the invading troops regarded the natives. It was shocking to learn of the casual way our valiant troops murdered Iraqi civilians with complete impunity simply because they were in the way, or as often happened, because the troops were... afraid. Even some of the troops were shocked at casual murder they witnessed, the utter disregard for the lives and property of the people they had conquered. Some knew deep in their souls that what was going on was wrong. Fundamentally wrong.

But as horrifying and disgusting as the behavior of the troops often was, it was matched and frequently exceeded by the behavior of the mercenaries brought in for "security." Casual murder and worse were the order of the day. And when the natives rebelled, the Death Squads were deployed, just as in Central America, and before that in Vietnam.

If there hadn't been a civil war before, the invaders made sure there would be one. The invaders' mindless cruelty made the horrors all that much worse.

The arrogance, the cruelty, the mind-numbing ignorance, and the greed that characterized the Iraq War and occupation can all be found in analog running like a river through Enron and all its projects and works. There is no way to separate the Busheviks -- and especially G W Bush himself -- from the corruption that was Enron.

Ten years on, our rulers have learned no positive lesson at all from either Enron or Iraq. The only lessons they've learned are negative: specifically how to manage the looting of the masses and Imperial Wars of Aggression with more finesse....

Surely these lessons can be put to the test with a nice and tidy obliteration of Iran, yes?

The Continuing Fascist Fascination

How is it that some version of neo- or theo- Fascism appears to be the dominant political/economic faith in the world today? It is really quite stunning.

The point of Fascism, after all, was to serve as a reactionary counterweight the looming triumph of Communism. Remember when all the world was thought to be "falling" to Communism On The March? I do.

Well, what I remember is Post-War anti-Communism and all the propaganda and conditioning that went with it. In those days, though, one had no truck with Fascism, either. The wounds of World War II were still too recent and raw, and the memory of Mussolini, Hitler, Tojo and all the rest of the Fascist dictators and militarists who had been storming all over the world for the past decade and a half was too deeply seared into consciousness -- and conscience.

What wasn't really clarified during the Post-War period, and what really didn't become clear until the 1970's, was the present-day persistence of Fascism in Spain and Portugal and throughout Latin America and its development and growth in parts of the Middle East (the Ba'athists who became such a thorn in the side of Americans in the Middle East were/are old line Fascist nationalists; the Pan-Arabism of Nasser, on the other hand, was a more universal form of ethnic Fascism). Fascist juntas were frequently encountered in various parts of the world, from Greece to Indonesia. And many of the newly-liberated former colonies of European Powers adopted Fascist -- rather than, say, "democratic" -- governing principles upon independence.

In other words, Fascism per se wasn't really defeated in World War II; it remained almost as prevalent after the War as before it, though its profile was much lower after the War, and its centers in Italy, Japan and Germany were... "cleansed" of the taint of militaristic Fascism and of the more outré aspects of genocide and so on. 

So long as there was a perception of a "Communist Threat," Fascism and Fascist dictatorships were sponsored, tolerated, or installed by and on behalf of the United States and the political and economic interests of its elites.

But then the "Communist Threat" disappeared with the evaporation of the Soviet empire. The first wave of "color revolutions" in the late '80s and early '90s included heady revolts against Fascist dictators (such as in the Philippines) as well as nationalist revolts in Soviet satellite states.

Dictatorship and totalitarianism were themselves the targets of these revolts. Doing away with them was human nature -- or so it seemed.

And yet here we are twenty some-odd years since the end of the "Communist Threat" and for reasons I cannot fathom, Fascism seems to be resurgent as never before. It should have disappeared with the "Communist Threat" it was designed to counter. But it didn't. It adapted and evolved, mutated and metastasized and became a nearly universal operating system for governments around the world, even many of those which espouse -- or formerly espoused -- Social Democratic principles.

Why?

What is the fascination and appeal of Fascism?

I don't have an answer. Perhaps it's not even the right question. The neo- and theo- Fascism of today is not the same thing as the rightist populist totalitarian movements of the past. In fact, Fascism of the moment barely acknowledges "the People" in any way -- except as resources to be corralled, exploited and disposed of.

No, today's Fascism is almost entirely a phenomenon of the High and the Mighty, a tool of the rich and powerful. It follows Mussolini's classic dictum and possibly apocryphal definition of Fascism:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

We've certainly seen the progressive merger of state and corporate power in the United States since the advent of the Bushevik reign, but it was apparent well prior to the judicial coup of 2000.

Many of the Busheviks appeared to openly emulate Fascist principles of rule, and some, like Rumsfeld, were enthusiastic admirers of the Wehrmacht and other aspects of Nazi unpleasantness. The invasion of Iraq was certainly evocative of the German invasion of Poland in 1939.

I think that perhaps the key to understanding the continuing fascination with Fascism -- when there really isn't any need for it -- is to be found in the typically adolescent mind-set of so many of the rich and powerful.

Not all adolescents are susceptible to Fascism, not by a long shot, but some, especially boys, are attracted to and mesmerized by it. The ideal of imposed order and the belief in natural superiority are strong among some of the young.

Is the fascination with Fascism due to the extended adolescence of some of those in power? Could be.

But I'm sure it's more than that.

Today's Fascism is not the rightist populism of the past, to be sure. Nevertheless it is as dangerous and destructive today as it ever was. Given the absence of any realistic challenge from Global Communism, the survival of Fascism (in its neo- and theo- guise) and the continuing fascination with its principles among the High and Mighty is bizarre.

Liberation?

Francesco, Il Papa

Liberty for whom? To do what?

"I demand the liberty to impose my authority on you."

It seems that Il Nuovo Papa was selected for the Triple Tiara from among such an august conclave of worthies in part due his excellent service on behalf of the fascist military dictatorship that ruled Argentina during the Unpleasantness often referred to as "The Dirty War." Which was part of the murderous rightist dictatorships and rampages throughout much of Latin America during a particularly unfortunate period of history. Not so very long ago.

I don't have all the details by any means, but the outline of Bergoglio's complicity in the disappearances, torture and murder of thousands of Argentinians is crystallizing, and it ain't pretty. Oh no. Not a bit.

Say what you will about Ratzinger's Nazi associations -- Hitler Youth and all, but of course renounced after the War when he went into the priesthood. This Bergoglio was not committing the typical youthful indiscretions. He was apparently actively upholding "liberation" -- of the Argentine military and its dictatorship in order to stamp out the Evils of Leftism, the Very Devil Himself as it were, in Argentina and wherever else on God's Green Earth it was to be found.

No matter its cost in the blood and treasure of the innocent. They will, after all, receive their reward in Heaven.

Yes, he loves the poor, every one of them, let there be more of them, let the Church Itself be Poor, world without end, amen.

Liberation? For whom? To do what?

It is being bruited about in rather appalling detail how opposed Bergoglio has been to the error and heresy of Liberation Theology, once embraced by the Church, especially in Latin America, but now renounced in no uncertain terms. When priests at mass, bishops on their rounds, nuns in their cloisters, and Catholic laypeople of all sorts are brutally shot down, their bodies dumped where the feral animals can feed on them, and when civilians are tortured and murdered en masse, entire villages put to slaughter, it seems to concentrate the minds of hierarchies of all sorts, not solely that of the Church, to dwell on the errors of their ways, and for the Church Universal, the error identified was the very Liberation Theology that had done so much and gone so far to raise up the People from their abject state toward the Light of Heaven.

Liberation? For whom? To do what?

When I witnessed the rapturous crowds in St. Peter's Square cheering the sight of white smoke pouring forth from the Sistine Chimney, then screaming accolades to their new and relatively unknown Pope, simply because he had been chosen, I reflected on the summer of '63, and the first papal transition I remember witnessing (I probably saw the television coverage of the transition from Pius XII to John XXIII in 1958, too, but for some reason I don't recall it.) The pomp and ceremony was mesmerizing. I'd never seen anything like it. The wildly cheering crowds of Faithful. The full pageantry of the Church on display. Those were the days when the Pope was still carried around in his gilded and red velvet throne by husky young Italian Men of Faith,  fan bearers on either side slowly wafting their ostrich plumes to cool His Holiness's tiaraed brow and ensure the ample distribution of the Holy Spirit among the multitudes (so I interpreted it, anyway).

John XXIII had been a champ, but this Paul VI, eee, what a sourpuss. Not the same at all, and his benedictions didn't carry nearly the warmth and charity of his predecessor. From his throne carried high on the shoulders of his litter bearers, he seemed to be a throwback to the Church of yore, a Church full of cobwebs, empty ritual, and corruption. In those days, one never mentioned the unmentionable goings on in the sacristies and cloisters. You mean it was happening then, too? Ohfergawdsake, yes.

I've been told since then that Paul VI was actually quite a forward thinking progressive prelate -- at least compared to more recent heirs to St. Peter -- and that while he may have lacked the common touch and charisma of John XXIII, he was no slouch when it came to opening up and airing out the mustier corners of the Church. There have even been claims that it was he who put the Imprimatur on Liberation Theology, though my own recollection was that he was not in favor of it and tried to suppress its growth and development.

Well. It was a long time ago, and as one ages, one's memories fade and combine with unrelated snippets of this or that occurrence or story from times gone by.

Liberation?

In the context of the Church? One must think it through. So many millions have given up the Church, consciously separating themselves from its tender mercies and for good reason, one of which is their dawning liberation from its stultifying embrace.  My father was excommunicated for daring to defy his bishop and marrying my mother (A Divorced Woman), but he thought of his dismissal from the Bosom of the Church as his own liberation from its more ridiculous strictures. "Picking and choosing" as it were. A Cafeteria Catholic -- as most typically are. When a priest was sent to administer the Last Rites after his heart attack, my father is said to have revived and practically drove the poor man out with a stick. At any rate...


There has been much to-do over the fact that Bergoglio is a Jesuit, something no Pope has ever been, but I wouldn't make too much of it. The Jesuits and all the rest of the many Orders have long since been absorbed into the Borg (to coin a phrase), and there is no independence of either thought or action among them, especially not at the level of Cardinal. They are a unit.

No, what seems to make Bergoglio the unique and chosen one to be Pope is his antipathy toward anything modern, let alone anything "leftist."

From the World Socialist Website, we have this:

But some of Bergoglio’s harshest critics come from within the Catholic Church itself, including priests and lay workers who say he handed them over to the torturers as part of a collaborative effort to “cleanse” the Church of “leftists.” One of them, a Jesuit priest, Orlando Yorio, was abducted along with another priest after ignoring a warning from Bergoglio, then head of the Jesuit order in Argentina, to stop their work in a Buenos Aires slum district.

During the first trial of leaders of the military junta in 1985, Yorio declared, “I am sure that he himself gave over the list with our names to the Navy.” The two were taken to the notorious Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA) torture center and held for over five months before being drugged and dumped in a town outside the city.

Bergoglio was ideologically predisposed to backing the mass political killings unleashed by the junta. In the early 1970s, he was associated with the right-wing Peronist Guardia de Hierro (Iron Guard), whose cadre—together with elements of the Peronist trade union bureaucracy—were employed in the death squads known as the Triple A (Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance), which carried out a campaign of extermination against left-wing opponents of the military before the junta even took power. Adm. Emilio Massera, the chief of the Navy and the leading ideologue of the junta, also employed these elements, particularly in the disposal of the personal property of the “disappeared.”

Yorio, who died in 2000, charged that Bergoglio “had communications with Admiral Massera, and had informed him that I was the chief of the guerrillas.”

Yes, well... It gets much worse.

The collaboration with the junta was not a mere personal failing of Bergoglio, but rather the policy of the Church hierarchy, which backed the military’s aims and methods. The Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky exposed Bergoglio’s attempted cover-up for this systemic complicity in a book that Bergoglio authored, which edited out compromising sentences from a memorandum recording a meeting between the Church leadership and the junta in November 1976, eight months after the military coup.

The excised statement included the pledge that the Church “in no way intends to take a critical position toward the action of the government,” as its “failure would lead, with great probability, to Marxism.” It declared the Catholic Church’s “understanding, adherence and acceptance” in relation to the so-called “Proceso” that unleashed a reign of terror against Argentine working people.

This support was by no means platonic. The junta’s detention and torture centers were assigned priests, whose job it was, not to minister to those suffering torture and death, but to help the torturers and killers overcome any pangs of conscience. Using such biblical parables as “separating the wheat from the chafe,” they assured those operating the so-called “death flights,” in which political prisoners were drugged, stripped naked, bundled onto airplanes and thrown into the sea, that they were doing “God’s work.” Others participated in the torture sessions and tried to use the rite of confession to extract information of use to the torturers.

This collaboration was supported from the Vatican on down. In 1981, on the eve of Argentina’s war with Britain over the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands, Pope John Paul II flew to Buenos Aires, appearing with the junta and kissing its then-chief, Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, while saying not a word about the tens of thousands who had been kidnapped, tortured and murdered.

Now of course, Bergoglio was only the Jesuit Provincial back in the day, he was not even Archbishop of Buenos Aires, a mitre he did not receive until 1998.

A Provincial takes orders, you see.

Whatever could he do?

Liberation? For whom? To do what?

Habemus Papem -- Placeholder?

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From what little I've been able to learn about His Newly Minted Holiness, he's a nice man who lives simply, speaks well, observes the pieties and tells the rest of us to do likewise -- and who does not stand in the way of Bad Things

During the Dirty War and military dictatorship in Argentina, where his Italian family had previously emigrated, Archbishop Bergoglio was quiet as a mouse; nay, some are saying he was actively supporting their bloodthirsty rule of torture and murder and disappearance -- and advising his flock to do thou likewise. Others point out that the Good Archbishop assisted parishioners, priests and others to escape the clutches of the State, so no matter what he and the rest of the Church said during those dark years, what he and others did is what matters. And what he did was protect the vulnerable, shelter the hapless, and win release for the persecuted. Well, some of them.

What a mensch.

From reports (whose veracity is unknown)  he may well have been a good man acting on deeply held values of charity and mercy who occasionally intervened on behalf of persecuted Argentinians, but as an Archbishop, he was bound to the political positions and teachings of his Church, and in those days -- today as well -- the Church reserves its harshest criticisms for "leftist" regimes, generally tolerating when not actively assisting the death squads of rightist regimes -- even when its own people are gunned down, put to the screws or dumped out of airplanes.

The fact is, the Church has long maintained a kissing-cousin/cozy relationship with some of the worst human rights violators and neo/proto-fascist dictatorships on earth, while virulently excoriating "leftists" of all stripes. The political ideology of the rightists almost never elicits a rebuke from the Church (economic ideology sometimes does) while socialism and communism are treated as the Devil's Workshop to be denounced and destroyed forthwith.

Oh, but Bergoglio took the name of Francis! So there is that! Stop saying those things! Francis was a saint, for doG's sake!

Yes, well. Which Francis are we talking about here? Francis of Assisi or Francis Xavier? People are quite naturally thinking Francis of Assisi, patron saint of Italy and the very most wildly popular saint among the People world-wide. But Bergoglio is a Jesuit, and Francis Xavier is a founder of the Jesuit Order. Ahem.

Surely even non-CatLicks understand that they are very different characters in Church history, and their legacies are quite different as well. On the whole, I'm very fond of Francis of Assisi and his message (though not that "obedience" part). Except for some episodes of unpleasantness in the Americas, the Franciscans have been far and away the most appealing cloistered order the Church has going for it.

As for the Jesuits, well.

I don't have quite as high an opinion of them as some people do. Let us say they are far more worldly than the Franciscans (again, by and large), and they tend to be far more conscious of their role as leaders (or indeed, shapers) of men rather than followers of God.

It's the old "Jesuits I have known" issue.

So which Francis is Bergoglio evoking with his choice of Papal Name? My bet? Francis Xavier. But he and the Vatican certainly want you and me to think of Francis of Assisi when we hear the name of the Pope. And of course the Holy Father can shift back and forth as he sees fit.

Whatever the case, it seems to me that Bergoglio was chosen to play a public role as the Church undergoes an internal revamp of some sort. Exactly what sort of revamp is hard to tell. For many years, the Church in Rome has appeared to be under the spell of Opus Dei, as have many governments world-wide. Certainly JPII and Ratzinger were creatures of the cult, and who knows how many of them have wormed their way into the Vatican and Church hierarchy? The recurring scandals of corruption and abuse and wild sexual escapades that have characterized the Church for the past thirty years and more might make one suspect that the institution itself is rotten to the core. What institution isn't, though?

But the sex scandals, the financial corruption, and much of the other peculiar business that has come to characterize the Church in modern times, let alone its abandonment of Liberation Theology and the Church's absurd positions on questions of women's reproductive health (not just abortion) and the Homosexual Peril, among so many other things, have driven many tens of millions out of the Church, to the point where -- at least in the West -- its presence and future are in some doubt. Of course we're talking about the Roman Catholic Church here, the oldest and one of the largest institutions in the world. It's been through many episodes of relative decline only to revivify somehow. I have my theories, but I won't go there just yet.

On the one hand, we have Giotto's image of St. Francis (of Assisi) holding up the corner of the church in Pope Innocent's Dream:

On the other, there is the sight of lightning striking the dome of St. Peter's soon after the announcement of Ratzinger's "retirement:"



Let us pray...

What's It All About -- The Vortex Visonary "Controversy"

I was over at Bad Astronomy checking up on the comet I haven't been able to see due to storm clouds in our area, and I stumbled upon one of the classic "scientific debunkings" of our time.

At issue: a YouTube video. Well, two of them, actually. One showed the video artist's rendering of his interpretation of the motion of the sun and planets in the solar system -- a helical motion or a vortex, he said, not the stately clockwork of Copernicus, et al; the other depicted the motion of the helical solar system in orbit around the galactic center.

My, the Scientific Outrage!!!™

Over a couple of videos? Really? What was going on?

Well, it appears these videos have been seen by plenty many people. 700,000 and change in the case of the Solar System video; 150,000 in the case of the galaxy video. They are darned nice. Very well done, by someone who clearly has high caliber video animations skills.

And these videos have led to questioning the Standard Model of the Solar System, the heliocentric model of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Newton and the rest, who, after long cogitation on the mighty problem of the motion of the spheres came to the startling conclusion that the Sun must reside at the center of the Solar System and the planets must make stately progress around the Sun year by year.  Like clockwork.

Indeed, the clockwork model of the Solar System is still with us, though long ago rejected in the planetary sciences, because we always see the Solar System depicted thus:

The Wikipedia solar system diagram at several scales

In the Standard Diagram, the sun is stationary at the center of the planetary system, the planets "circle" the sun in a counter clockwise direction, and the whole is enveloped in spherical ball of comets called the Oort Cloud.

The video artist attempted to demonstrate that essentially none of this is true or factual. First of all, the Solar System is not horizontal like a dinner plate with reference to the galactic plane, it is tilted at a severe angle -- which he depicts at ninety degrees in the solar system video, sixty degrees in the galaxy video. The sun is not stationary but is moving quite rapidly in orbit around the galactic center, and thus the planets cannot and do not orbit in neat (and ever-so-tight) little ellipses, very nearly circular, as is always depicted in Solar System diagrams. Their orbital motion is helical around a moving target, if you will. All of which has long been known to planetary science, but it is rarely depicted, partly because diagramming it is difficult (though Sky and Telescope Magazine somehow manages to do so every month in its sky charts)  and partly because doing so can mess with people's innate understanding or what they've been taught about the way things are.

The dinner plate/clockwork diagram has sufficed for hundreds of years, anyway, so why upset the apple cart? We're just getting past the notion that the interiors of the Outer Planets are "icy," after all.

Where the video artist commits heresy, however, (at least as stated by Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy) is in his depiction of the sun leading the planets in their helical journey through space, and in his outrageous claim that heliocentrism is itself in error.

Heresy! Burn him!

How many people, after all, went to the stake because they believed in heliocentrism? Well, at least one.

So clearly, anyone who would dispute this fundamental of planetary science after such sacrifice should go to the stake himself. Burn him!!!

This tendency for scientists to become overwrought when their supposed fundamental beliefs are challenged, especially by untrained and probably unwashed people outside the field, has long been one of the least appealing behaviors of those in scientific practice. It suggests a violent streak on the one hand, and very tightly closed minds on the other, both of which, unfortunately, strongly resemble the mindsets of deeply religious and even cultic Believers.

As he explains in his blogpost responding to his Bad Astronomy thrashing, what he calls "heliocentrism" is the Standard Diagram, which literally everyone learns is the way the Solar System works, and it's wrong. Simply wrong.

That is not the way the Solar System works. True enough. Every planetary scientist will acknowledge as much. Well, they would, except many of them won't in this case, not because they don't know the difference between the Diagram and the reality, but because an upstart outsider has made point -- rather stunningly and beautifully, too -- that they themselves feel little or no obligation to bother with from their own scientific perspective.

As many commenters say to the debunkers, "If the artist's rendering of the actual motion of the Solar System is so very 'wrong,' why don't you depict it correctly?" This they will not do, no way, no how. Not their job. Their rejoinder is, "Why doesn't the artist get it right in the first place? Harrumph!" As they flounce off to their enervating projects -- not necessarily what they want to do, but what they have to do to maintain standing in the field. Harrumph! Indeed.

How dare he?!

That's the basic attitude on display. It's highly evocative of the attitude of Ptolemyists  toward Galileans back in the day. "Everyone knew" the geocentric model proposed by Ptolemy was correct, and these snotty upstarts putting the sun in the center were simply out of touch and out of their league. How dare they?! 

In this case, though, the issue is a relatively minor one of definition of terms and accuracy of animation,  not "fundamentals."

So the big deal that is being made of it is somewhat, shall we say, manufactured?

DjSadhu is objecting to the diagram of the Solar System that everyone learns. He is calling it "heliocentric" -- which it is -- and is objecting to "heliocentrism" as depicted in the diagram. His alternative vision, as illustrated in his animations, are far closer to the reality than the heliocentric diagram is, but they are still not quite right according to findings of scientists -- oh, and good luck finding those findings, given the difficulty of public access to scientific papers thanks to the lock JSTOR still has on so much of it.

The main objection to DjSadhu's animations that Phil Plait brings up at Bad Astronomy (once you figure out what he's really objecting to) is the fact that some of Sadhu's insight about what the real motions of the sun and planets are and what it really looks like comes from the work of Pallathadka Keshava Bhat. Bhat was less a scientist than he was a spiritualist, and that is anathema among real scientists. Obviously, the man knew nothing.

Therefore, DjSadhu's animations are teh suxor. Even though they are gorgeous, and even though they more accurately depict the motions of the sun and planets than the Standard Dinner Plate Diagram, they suck and cannot be redeemed for they are based on the ravings of a heretical madman.

Unfortunately that is the way too many arrogant and egotistical scientists approach challenges from "outside."

On the whole, I thought Phil Plait's debunking of DjSadhu's animations was pretty hilarious and typical. His objections were least of all on substance, because for the most part Sadhu got the (helical motion) substance pretty much right. Plait's objections revolve mostly on matters of definition of terms, perceived insults and lack of decorum, and minor adjustments to his helical models of motion (which he inflates into massive errors). There is no basic objection to the helical model itself. The objection is mostly over who is proposing and describing it.

DjSadhu is objecting to the dinner plate model of the solar system and its motions and he is illustrating an alternative model -- which is more accurate, despite its errors. Neither Plait nor any of his supporters acknowledge that the dinner plate model is fundamentally wrong, though they do acknowledge that a helix is a more accurate description of planetary motion.

What would be useful at this point would be for planetary scientists to work with computer animators to illustrate what they believe is the correct understanding of the helical motion of the planets and solar system. 

But I won't hold my breath.

Disturbing

James Steele, Operator

Well, not in the sense that one didn't know that these things -- and much worse -- were going on during our continuing warriorism in the wastelands of the former Turkish Empire, but in the sense that another name and face have now been put to a throughline of atrocity that characterizes so much of the American Imperial Ambition. From the get go.

Many Americans, of course, will claim not to have known about any of it, and not to believe it now, for the simple reason that America is Good and Doesn't Do These Things -- unless necessary. You understand.

Therefore, the Wogs (Must) Deserve It.

What I saw, though, in this BBC/Guardian co-production (apart from the use of so much unrelated and uninformative video) was something I doubt many Americans are even remotely conscious of:

Steele and his ilk are operatives throughout the American corporate-government realm. So far as I can tell, they don't actually run things themselves; they carry out the directives of and report back to their Betters -- who are actually in charge. It was very obvious who was who during the Bushevik Reign, but it's not so much so now.

The exception to this rule is in the American prison industry and their gulag offshoots -- where the ilk does run things, and in many cases, they are free to do whatever sadistic shit they want. And they'll lie about it, too.

While it doesn't touch on America's domestic imprisonment industry, focusing instead on the development of Iraqi interrogation centers and death squads modeled on previous counter-insurgency wet work done in the fields of Vietnam and Central America under the guidance of Steele and people like him, Americans should long ago have come to the realization that this sort of thing comes from domestic American experience with prisons and prisoners. It has never been confined to "over there" somewhere in wartime.

Brutal interrogation -- torture -- has long been routine in America's domestic law enforcement practices. False confessions. Summary execution. Round ups of the innocent. Intrusive and constant surveillance. Property seizures. For all I know, "disappearances" as well. This is going on domestically and has been going on for many years. There has long been a synergy between what goes on domestically and how these things are done overseas by client states. None of it is happening in isolation or in a vacuum.

It's all linked together.

What's revealed in the BBC/Guardian production is actually not that much, and strangely a name that is strangely never mentioned in it is John Negroponte, perhaps the pre-eminent American Lord of Darkness, of torture and death squads. Once he was assigned to Iraq, the wet work commenced in earnest. Everyone knew it, too. Many cheered.

But putting other names and faces to what was happening Over There is useful. The bloody business of the day wasn't some aberration, it was intentional. Considered necessary. Effective. For a time at any rate.

The scale and the style may be somewhat different domestically. There are far more domestic prisoners, after all, most of whom are simply warehoused and rarely used for interrogation purposes since few of them have any information the government needs or wants. There have been exceptions, however. Round ups and street justice ("") are typically confined to particular jurisdictions and wards therein, generally neither witnessed nor even recognized by most people. Out of sight, out of mind.

Unless of course the Authorities want their cruelties and brutalities and their occasional street executions to be seen and appreciated by the rest of the herd -- in which case very public displays are made. This happens all the time, but many people don't seem to understand the deliberate nature of these displays. They are intended to induce fear leading to submission and cooperation. They generally do it well.

The problem is that eventually people become so inured on the one hand and fed up on the other that they revolt. Revolts that can lead to revolution. Ultimately, for example, even the client officials in Iraq revolted against the American intrusion, just as the Afghan clients are doing. Empire done so bloodily and brutally cannot last. The British should have learned this back in the day, but apparently they still believe they can impose their rule by main force forever, particularly if it is done through their far more brutal and bloodthirsty American proxies.

It doesn't work.

Compare and Contrast -- Hugo vs Hugo

The outpouring of grief over the death of Hugo Chavez is matched by the contempt of a certain class of want-it-alls who rule us and seek to rule Venezuela once again.

But the contrast isn't just between grief and contempt. It's between celebration and lies, between accomplishment and fabrication, between admiration and insult.

This is the Class War limned in bright tropical colors, the global war between the haves-who-want-it-all and everyone else.

The day after Hugo's death, two sectors of what passes for 'lefty' media in the United States -- the Diane Rehm Show on NPR and Democracy Now! on Pacifica -- demonstrated just how deep those divisions run, even on the so-called Left.

Rehm had three panelists, one of whom was a stone liar rightist from Venezuela now on wingnut welfare at the Carnegie Institute. His lies were nonstop, pure propaganda, and they went essentially unchallenged by the other panelists, let alone the hostess (who tolerates no challenge to her perspective and authority on her show). The other panelists were Tom Gjelten of NPR and Geoff Thale of something called The Washington Office of Latin America. Gjelten presented the US government line on the matter of Chavez and Venezuela and Thale presented a somewhat softer version of the Government Line.

Rehm was at sea, vaguely drifting around, but knowing that Chavez was indubitably A Bad Man. Socialist dictator that he was. And all the rest of it.

Transcript

Listen

Interestingly, many of her callers, emailers and commenters seemed to be fed up with the, shall we say, anti-Chavez bias of the program and said so more or less politely. Diane feigned perplexity and badly mischaracterized the comments she was receiving apparently throughout the show. 

Read the commentary

I don't ordinarily listen to Rehm. I did because of the topic. I was disgusted and offended.

Later, Democracy Now! presented what I thought was a much fairer and more people centered, rather than government-institution centered, remembrance of Chavez, for good and ill. What was striking to me was that several of those speaking about Chavez and Venezuela had personal knowledge of him and Venezuela. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez had interviewed him (albeit in New York) and Eva Golinger had been one of his friends and advisers in Caracas. I don't recall offhand, but it could be that other panelists had known him personally. At any rate, even when they didn't necessarily approve of some action or policy of Chavez and his government, even when they acknowledged that he and his government got some things wrong, they certainly saw him as a worthy figure with profound influence in Latin America and beyond.

Quite the contrast with the Diane Rehm Show.

Democracy Now! Video and transcript.

Now of course I should not consider Diane Rehm and NPR to be the "left"  -- and ordinarily I wouldn't do so. But in the United States, the mainstream media, like government, is divided between rightists and fascists. There is no "left" at all. Consequently, various outlets within the rightist-fascist mainstream are designated "left" -- NPR, PBS, MSNBC, the "Communist News Network," so as to have demons to thrash, even though all of the mainstream outlets are pretty much on the same page, and it is a page that's written by Ailes and Murdoch.

Meanwhile, Pacifica has ventured pretty far from its radical/revolutionary -- and yes, leftist -- roots, having been captured in a sense by Puritans and Propertarians. I won't go into the Take-Over sturm und drang here, but it was dramatic to say the least. While there is a leftist gloss to the place still, it shows (to me at least) far more signs of straightlaced libertarianism than Leftism in much of its programming, including the flagship Democracy Now!

The American media and what's fundamentally wrong with it, however, are topics for another day.

Let it just be noted in this instance that NPR and Diane Rehm performed the role of FOX "News" to in contrast to Democracy Now! doing a creditable version of an MSNBC "moderate" take.

That is all...

Cheer Up -- There's Always YouTube!

As I've pointed out in the past, I'm not into Doom Blogging. There's a whole genre of it, however, and it's very popular. A subgenre is Survivalism. And its antithesis. Thus the video up top. Ain't YouTube grand?

Out in the country, though, I'll admit you do think about these things, sort of a constant drone in the background of daily tasks and routines. Storms have periodically shut the interstate, after all, sometimes for days at a time, and the local roads can be difficult to travel even if they are open. There were two groceries in town, now there's one. What would happen if it closed or couldn't be supplied regularly?

But we stockpile food because we're lazy and don't want to have to go to the market every day. We have a lot of materials and supplies for all kinds of eventualities, simply because it is easier to keep them on hand than to have to go out and hunt them down in the event they're needed. If we were like some of the locals, we'd stockpile a lot more than we do.

We are advised to have guns because -- "You never know."

There's a clinic in town, but it would be one the first things shut were The Ultimate Collapse to come. We've been using a clinic in Albuquerque anyway (and I'd bet you it would stay open!) We keep a larger supply of medications on hand than we might otherwise, though, so as to be sure it's here if we can't get refills quickly.

All kinds of little adjustments.

The video is one of a series. Oh my.

Hugo

Viva

After a long struggle with an unspecified cancer, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has died.

He was a man of extraordinary zeal, strength and courage who set out to change The Way Things Are in Venezuela, to shine a light in the darker corners of his country and the global plutocracy in general, and to build up his people, to develop the human potential of Venezuela and Latin America in general and to serve as an inspiration for struggling peoples everywhere. "Si, se puede."

He became a monumental figure to me and many other Americans as well as struggling peoples around the world when he did this at the United Nations in 2006:

 

""The devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of. Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world." [President Bush] ...came [to the General Assembly] to share his nostrums to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world."

This made him the implacable enemy of the United States' government, which, through various nefarious means, set out to destabilize and destroy him and his quest for social and economic justice.

In this strange war of many unkind words and some bizarre deeds, Hugo always seemed to wind up on top -- at least until he took ill with an initially entirely mysterious malady, eventually acknowledged as cancer which was being treated in Cuba. There are claims, naturally enough, that his malady was induced by some means or secret method of the CIA or one of the other "agencies" Our Government unleashes on its enemies. Cuba is the laboratory.

Castro's Cuba, the other implacable enemy of the United States' government. Forever condemned to perdition, the both of them, Cuba and Venezuela, at least for so long as their "strong-man dictators" hold sway over the unfreedom of the people.

In these cases it is abundantly clear that those who clamor loudest for "liberty" and "freedom" devoutly wish the freedom from responsibility to others, the liberty to exploit and enslave whomever they choose. They wish the "liberty" and "freedom" of the olden days in which a handful of hyper-wealthy owners-plunderers took from the masses without let or hindrance, what they wanted and when they wanted, as if by right, with no obligation toward the masses, or indeed any interest in them beyond how they could be made to serve Their Betters more fully, efficiently and profitably.

Ah Liberty!

Ah Freedom!

Anything and anyone who interferes must be isolated, crushed, destroyed. Viz: Honduras and the coup against democratically elected Manuel Zelaya in 2009, a coup backed by the United States government, operating strictly on the pattern established during the Red Scare 1950's during which any Latin American popular uprising or election to office of People's candidates were ruthlessly subverted, stamped out or overthrown.

Or take the Reagan Era, when the bloodiest reign of terror in hundreds of years was imposed from Washington's nether reaches (the various agencies and their private sector offshoots) through their proxies in Central America as a warning and a lesson to the uppity natives throughout Latin America that their impertinence would not be tolerated. The question was not "submission or death," it was merely a matter of when Death would come and in what hideous manner. Even the Church felt the wrath of Washington.

All of this was prelude.

500 Years of Prelude you might say.

Hugo Chavez was at first dismissed by the Better People of Venezuela (interestingly, Venezuela was  conquered and initially settled from Europe by Germans not Spaniards) as a zambo upstart, worthless and meaningless, and simply impossible to consider seriously. His popularity among the People soared.

Latin America has a myth of racial tolerance and indifference to matters of racial superiority or inferiority. It is a comforting myth but hardly accurate. Throughout Latin America, and through its long, tortuous history as colonies and dependencies of Spain, Portugal and the United States, Latin America has been marinating in racial discrimination, much of it derived directly from the patterns and policies instituted during the Reconquest of Iberia -- Andaluz as it were -- from the Moors.

Everyone was classified according to skin color, ethnic heritage, race, and religion, and the darker the skin, the more African and/or Indian the ethnicity, the lower down the social ladder one was. The purer the sangre (the blood) or the race -- ie: the whiter -- the higher one was. Not to be Catholic, of course, was not to be considered at all.

My introduction to Venezuela was through the telenovela Pura Sangre which didn't beat around the bush about these things...

Hugo was considered to be a zambo -- something like a mule in the eyes of los ricos blancos. A cross between an African and an Indian, therefore barely recognizable as human. So they (los ricos) thought they could get away with anything they wanted by insulting and denouncing him, perpetrating coups against him, attempting to assassinate him, subverting elections, and so on. All of this, of course, and much more was backed wholeheartedly by certain high-placed private interests, and not unexpectedly, many of the attempts at subversion and overthrow of Chavez were covertly -- and on occasion overtly -- backed by the United States Government.

The idea -- the very idea -- of using the wealth of the nation to uplift the People, as Hugo set out to do in Venezuela, was and widely is considered daft, crazy, insane, appalling, unjust, and worse. Hugo was hammered for it relentlessly by the press and media in his own country.

The very idea!

We Americans are not far from the very same situation as our own press and media giddily anticipates the next round of granny-starving budget cuts for the masses and tax cuts for the rich. They can't help themselves. They are beside themselves with glee

I've noticed that most of the objections to Chavez have to do with his supposed authoritarianism, but for the most part, these objections are not coming from anti-authoritarians. Oh no. They are coming from other authoritarians who simply don't like the fact that their authority was not the ruling authority -- or even acknowledged -- in Caracas.

In fact, for all the accusations of suppression of opposition in Venezuela under Chavez, the opposition seemed to be quite healthy and openly defiant (and wildly rich to boot) throughout his presidency. Interesting, eh?

Will Hugo's reforms and social reconceptions survive?  At this point, it's hard to say. Much the same question is being asked about Cuba after the Castros. Will it revert to the criminal hell-hole it was before the Revolution?

My own view? Yes, probably. Take the Russian example after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Reversion is almost certain.

People will put up with a lot of misery -- far more than they think they can or would -- before they will take control of their fate from their Betters. They will happily let go of their own control if someone stronger and seemingly smarter comes along. Hugo's fundamental reform was to teach the People to hold on and not give up, not give over, not retreat. In other words, his goal was to ensure that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela endures long after his passing.

Whether it will or not remains to be seen.

So long, Hugo. Thanks for the memories, thanks for the laughs. Heaven smiles on you.
------------------------------------

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", a documentary about the 2002 coup in Caracas (enthusiastically supported by the New York Times, do not forget...)

"Tribute"

Money for nothing 
And chicks for free...

--Dire Straits 1985


1990 Performance

The goal for capitalists and their fellow travelers is no different than that of the fictive MTV Star made infamous in Dire Straits megahit "Money for Nothing"  -- an anthem of sorts for the dispossessed and disenchanted in the Thatcher/Reagan era. We might call it The Era of Greed.

The goal is always to get "money for nothing" and your chicks for free.

While the rest of the poor sods work themselves to death making sure the fancy people get the tribute and freedom they want and demand -- on the wan hope some of that tribute will fall into their own gnarled hands before they die.

"That's the way you do it
Lemme tell ya
Them guys ain't dumb

Maybe get a blister
on your little finger

Maybe get a blister
on your thumb."

Permanent Deficit Hysteria --> Permanent Recession

That's the way it is.

I'm not one to accept the notion that Deficits are somehow Apocalyptic Now when they Didn't Matter At All a decade ago during the Bushevik Gung Ho Period. Government spending deficits are now what they have always been, useful and necessary for the conduct of private and government business. In fact, the United States Government has nearly always run a deficit, and when state governments are forced to run deficits contrary to their charters (more and more common thanks to the lootage they've experienced at the tender mercies of the financiers and plutocrats) somehow the sky doesn't fall.

Deficit hysteria is a crock, but it has become a permanent fixture of our Ruling Class, and the permanence of deficit hysteria ensures that Americans will endure a permanent recession.

It's the strangest recession, though, isn't it? Corporate profits and the remuneration of the High and the Mighty have never been better, ever, in the entire history of greed and capitalism -- so they say. Yet the puny salaries and benefits of the workers whose toil ensures the privileges of their masters continue to fall. Tens of millions of Americans are forced into poverty. Homelessness and hunger stalk the land.

Hm. Maybe there is a connection of some sort? Ya think?

From appearances -- and from hearing the rhetoric of doom all the time -- Americans are coming to recognize that there will probably never be a return to a growth economy. The Powers That Be are intent on asset and wealth stripping from what remains of the middle class -- the working class and the poor having already long ago been looted of anything of value they once may have been able to accumulate.

The major mass media (and much of the new media) is practically giddy at the imposition of the latest kabuki, the so-called sequester, and they look forward to the re-allocation of the sequester cuts from the defense ledger to the social spending side. This makes them so happy, they can hardly stand it.

The high-stepping and baton twirling has only just begun.

THIS is what they have been waiting for.

The Graphology of Inequality

This video/graphology of wealth inequality in America has been getting a lot of play lately. It speaks for itself.



 Hell in a handcar propelled by the greedy and crazed end-timers. They've got all the wealth. What more could they possibly want???

Republicans All The Way Down

Shipoopi-Kabuki

The Dreaded Sequester is now upon us. Apparently. Well, given the Kabuki that is Washington Theater, we never really know whether anything is ever an actual yay or nay -- or even whether it matters -- in that otherworldly realm. They will do what they want and when they want to screw the rest of us, and if that screwage is most effectively accomplished through Sequestration, then so be it.

Now of course in Washington Theater, everything is always the result of Republicans doing something nasty to the Democrats -- who are always, of course, being entirely reasonable and completely powerless.

This has been going on for decades now. The actors and the victors are always the diminishing handful of Republicans -- such as Dame Mitch McConnell, or everyone's least favorite Munster-cousin Paul Ryan. The hapless Dems just take it, whatever "it" may be at the moment, and then when they are not being hapless, they're totally feckless. When their fecklessness fails, they are simply craven.

It is now Iron Law. It was not ever thus, nor need it be thus, but it is thus, and for whatever reason,  the plot cannot be changed. Republicans are the actors in our play. Dems react. If they aren't simply cowering in the corner.

The notion of cutting the federal budget during a now essentially permanent recession seems slightly, somewhat, just a teense counter intuitive, especially given that it is relatively obvious -- even to Republicans and the media who serve them -- that continuing reductions in government workforces are a major drag on economic recovery. Republicans make clear they understand this full well when they scream and fuss about all the military budget cuts and all the military contractors who will be forced to cut back their work-forces because of the Dreaded Sequester. They know full well that their rhetoric about the Government Never Creating A Job is bullshit, but they figure that the Dems are too feckless and craven to counter these lies effectively, and they're too hapless to point out the glaring hypocrisy of paying for endless military spending (on top of the bloated Imperial Domestic Security State)  on the basis of "jobs, jobs, jobs!"

Yeah, well.

This performance on the Washington Stage is being brought to us by a unified company. It includes both parties in Congress and the White House, acting in concert to accomplish certain mutually agreeable ends. Those ends include the fleecing and screwage of the rest of us.

The concept that it is all the Republicans' fault -- or all the Democrats', or Nino Scalia's -- fault is kind of essential myth making and propaganda, intended to maintain division among the Lower Orders. That division is essential for continuing control of said Orders, and that control is necessary for the continued unmolested fleecing and screwage -- which is all Our Betters think the rest of us deserve anyway.

The Dreaded Sequester does little in the context of the overall budget -- because it is such a tiny percentage of overall spending. But because of its focus on bang for the buck, so to speak, the harm caused to ordinary people will be significant -- intentionally. The harm to the poorest among us will be especially harsh, and few will pay much attention because that's the way budget cuts have been implemented for many years now.  But intentional harm to the collapsing middle class will be significant as well.

Obviously, Republicans don't have to worry about what happens to ordinary people in any case because they don't have "constituents" as the term is ordinarily understood. They have client who they serve -- as long as the price is right. Dems may have the same or different clients, but they lack "constituents" as well. The People matter not a whit to the Rulers.

It is so because even when the People become restive, they are still reluctant to do anything that Rulers believe they need pay any attention to. Nobody expects the Paris Commune, but it's well past time to demand something better out of the Washington image machine -- something beyond "it's Republicans all the way down!" (And oh how the "Left" loves to play that game!)

Interestingly, there is some nascent ferment on the Constitutional front, even going so far as to suggest replacing the antiquated, indeed fossilized and ignored, establishing document we have with something appropriate and new. The Voting Rights issue seems to be a trigger to the realization that the establishing document itself is deeply, terminally flawed (because there is no People's right to vote in the Constitution). Regardless of what you believe about the ideology of the Supreme Court majority, if they are going to rule based on what they believe the framers of the Constitution meant, and they will not allow any deviation, then perhaps -- just maybe -- it is time to abolish the whole rickety mess and start over.

Will wonders never cease.

Imperial Police State Marches On

Itself

The Sacred Second Absolutists continue to be in complete denial about the extinction of the Republic as it used to be. Those who claim to be ready and able to defend to the death the rights of Americans as enshrined in the Constitution are completely oblivious to the fact that those "rights" are mere figments these days, and soon enough they will be little more than historical relics, whether or not the gunners are allowed to keep their arsenals.

By now, it should be perfectly clear to Americans -- as it is around the world -- that private arsenals do not and cannot prevent the "imposition of tyranny." In fact, they enable that imposition.

Perhaps the most glaring example in recent times is Iraq under the Ba'athists and that Old Devil Saddam. It wasn't all that long ago, you know. Everyone was ordered to be armed to the teeth under Saddam, and all those armaments in civilian hands did nothing -- nothing -- to prevent the imposition of Saddamite tyranny, in fact, civilian arms helped maintain it. Duh. It was only through massive intervention from outside that the Ba'athists were at first contained and then driven out of power.

Far from being the fantasized "protectors of Liberty" they imagine themselves to be, heavily armed civilian populations typically function as tools of tyranny. After all, the origin of the Sacred Second is found in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the purpose of which was the arming of Protestants and the disarming of Catholics so as to ensure the perpetuation of Protestant authority and rule over the Realm. That's what the English Civil Wars were about, and that's what the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 was about. It was nothing less than a fight over which religious faction would have authority -- tyrannical authority -- over the whole.

There was no thought of "liberty" for the common people at all, and there was certainly no thought of universal "liberty." The idea was absurd.

The American experience was not that much different. From the beginning of British settlement right up to today, the notion of universal "liberty" somehow preserved, protected and defended by a heavily armed civilian population is patently absurd. Civilian arsenals enable no "liberty" for the masses whatsoever; instead, they enable endless individual gun deaths and periodic mass murder that keep the People in a state of fear and near panic, which enables... tyrannical rule. Surprise, surprise.

That's the point.

And one of the principles of Sacred Second Absolutists is no different than that of the English version of 1689: while some civilians are allowed essentially unlimited access to weaponry, other segments will be disarmed by law and custom.

This enables those with armaments to more effectively rule over those who are disarmed. For example, in the early days of the Republic, armed white militias were utilized against disarmed slaves and Indians -- and from time to time, domestic rebels. Later, they would be utilized against supposedly free blacks and workers who dared to question the authority of and exploitation by their bosses and the corporations they served.  The definition of the "liberty" being protected was the freedom to exploit an underclass without hindrance.

It's not all that different today, though the gun rights issue is once again leading straight to a civil war.

Absolutists, for example, insist on their right to defend themselves against marauding Negroes and other swarthy-brown-black Criminals. The occasional innocent slaughtered in the struggle is just "the price you have to pay" they say, for the "liberty" to assert your dominance over the marauders. Or anyone who looks like them. Or might be one. Or has an attitude. Or who makes you scared. Or...

In the meantime, an Imperial Police State is imposed from Above while the gunners and absolutists are oblivious -- when they are not actively encouraging it. After all, so long as the Police State ostensibly only applies to Designated Out Groups and Swarthy Others, why should the gunners and absolutists care?

In my view, the only way to solve this untenable situation on behalf of the People is through Civil Disarmament -- in other words, essentially eliminating civilian arsenals, and strictly limiting civilian access to guns and ammunition. By "civilian arsenals" I mean those of the police too.

As many Americans know all too well, the police have become part of the problem of gun violence in this country. Reducing their access to and utilization of armaments will go a long way toward reducing the overall level of gun violence in these United States.

Gunner Absolutists have long been in the business of supplying weapons to factions within impoverished American communities, on the premise that armed competitors (gangs as it were) will wipe each other out in the by and bye. While they are engaged in their continuous armed struggle, non-combatants will live in perpetual fear -- which will make them much easier to control than they otherwise might be.

What works so well in impoverished communities has its application to better off communities through the periodic means of apparently random mass shootings at sites otherwise considered "safe": schools, malls, movies, churches and so on. Each time there is another of these mass shootings, people panic and tremble in fear. It's a good thing in the eyes of those who wish control over the masses.

On the other hand, calls for even modest gun control get nowhere, in part because the weapons industry is so profitable and so generous to officials, and in part because the gruesome level of gun violence and mass murder in this country is useful to those in power. So long as they are not the targets -- and they only rarely are -- what's to worry?

If gunners and absolutists really had any interest in thwarting tyranny they would have long ago applied their arguments (ahem) against the abrogation of the other provisions of the Bill of Rights, but this they -- tellingly -- do not do, not on a bet and not on a prayer. In fact, they feign utter obliviousness to any imposition by the Imperial Police State so long as there is no interference with the domestic (let alone international) weapons trade.

It's Just Business, see?

Certain Libertarian factions like to "stand up to tyranny" by video recording their resistance to and encounters with TSA and Border Control. Occasionally, they'll take on the day to day harassment and abuse of the public by local police forces. Some media figures have made entire careers out of it. The problem is that the tyrannies they are so manfully standing up to are usually the smallest ones, the relatively minor irritations and harassments that come with the territory. We face a situation in this country which is the result of collapsed and imploded institutions -- including much of government -- being replaced by ever-more authoritarian, draconian, and even totalitarian policies and procedures, often -- as in the case of the DHS -- imposed by entirely new departments and agencies acting with apparently impunity.

Don't blame it on '9/11'; essentially all of what is being imposed was pre-programmed well prior to those attacks.

It is always in the nature of government to seek means to expand its authority, something that is in-built into the institution itself.

None of the tyrannical incidents cited in this post -- and there are many hundreds more available -- require or utilize civilian weapons arsenals to counter or thwart the imposition of tyranny, nor would the employment of these arsenals be of any use in thwarting these tyrannies. In other words, the purported reason for maintaining civilian arsenals -- the thwarting of tyranny -- is bogus. In fact, in the incidents cited, deft argument on the scene or in court following the incident generally suffices to... erm... thwart the immediate imposition of tyranny.

Much the same could be said about out of control, violent, and too frequently deadly policing.

Ergo, time to engage in civil disarmament.