A brief examination of the 20th and 21st century within capitalism

Frequently on television as I was growing up there was a ticking time bomb, and a hero gained the glory of saving the day and the temporary relief of not dying by defusing it. What does this situation require? Not only a confident hero, but a masochistic one, to use the threat of annihilation to achieve success. His confidence is only generated by his terrible fear.

This is the psychological reality in the minds of people during the Cold War, where the ticking time bomb was averted day after day by the “heroes” who save us all by avoiding pushing the death button.

This theory, or philosophy, of “progress through threat of annihilation” is the basis for industrialization. The technology of the 20th century is often heralded as a success, as a justification for civilization and capitalism. It’s nearly never stated that the reason for the frantic technological development is to save the world, and that industrialization is the root cause of the need to save it.

That’s the core lure of industrialization, the seduction – at the very time it’s causing such utter fear, depression, and despair it’s offering solutions to those very problems. It’s both the disease and the cure in one. It’s annihilating the Native Americans and then “preserving” them. Who knows? Perhaps without their very annihilation they would have gone extinct without being brought under the domineering umbrella of capitalist civilization. So human beings are killed in order to maintain their life – capitalism is the necromancer who gives “undying life” to the very people he kills.

True believers say it will never stop. The Endless Summer so popular in the United States at the height of Cold War terror is the idea that industrial capitalism will always produce the cure to every life-threatening disease, through the magical powers of “innovation” and “entrepreneurial activity”. They point to technological progress as more sign of The Cure, which one day will provide the Final Cure which will render all future diseases moot.

The final stage of reality to true believers is when human beings can do literally anything they want, total license, with zero negative repercussions, because all cures are technologically built-in. Hugh Hefner’s dream vision of sexuality is a metaphor for how the true believers, such as Gene Roddenberry, view capitalism.

The purpose of capitalism is to transform the world into one which produces and maintains the final cure to itself.

Capitalism no longer believes in this “positive” vision of capitalism. Capitalism is no longer seeking to generate the Final Cure for all of humanity. Capitalism is now generating an “escape the earth” model where a few people may escape the earth, “repopulate the human race”, “make the desert of outer space bloom”, and the rest of the people will be “left behind” on earth to die.

This is the core reason for the death of the global middle class. The vision of the Final Cure involves bringing all of humanity into the heart of the system, at least as intimate to the system as patients are in a doctor’s office. But this new vision, that of Escaping the Earth – that involves the rejection of humanity by the escapists. In other words, the Zombification of humanity in order to justify it’s extermination by the “noble humans”.

This is why I often object to the use of “problem” by liberals and progressives when they speak of various capitalist antics. Like, the war in Afghanistan is a “problem”. How is people dying and being terrorized and as a result others being better positioned to escape the earth a problem, exactly? It’s certainly not a problem as far as the current capitalist vision is concerned. How is torturing people in Guantanamo Bay a “problem”? It’s part of the solution.

What I truly object to is not so much deep ignorance on the part of people who believe themselves good but their lack of any alternative vision to the terrible but at least extremely clear and logical capitalist vision. As a hungry man says “I’m eating terrible food, but it’s better than nothing”. It may well be a symptom of humanity that it prefers a terrible vision to no vision at all, and if this is correct then what is desperately needed today is a positive vision of a future. Unlike most “positive visions” offered, a worthwhile one needs to become real if it’s people make it real, so it needs to be founded in reality, just as Escape the Earth is despite it’s seemingly unlikely nature (the low probability of sustaining human life outside of earth).

Guantanamo SERE Standard Operating Procedures

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Countering Palestine Solidarity Work in Canada

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The Torture Agenda

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The Lords of Capital Decree Mass Death by Starvation

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Critique of the Elite and India: Disappearing the Poor

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Although this article is largely about India, it’s equally true in the United States. India is becoming an imitation of the US in terms of it’s elite culture.
I don’t own a television (haven’t since June 2000) but I watch some at work.
The Judge shows are proliferating on daytime TV. These shows run parallel to garbage “freak shows” like Maury Povich. The singular features of both Jerry Springer and Judge Judy and their imitators is that they serve to demean and dehumanize the poor and the working class. It’s tragedy as spectacle. These shows should be illegal and would be in any moral society. They are far more damaging than a stabbing that can get someone put in jail for many years and they are several orders of magnitude more damaging than smoking pot which can likewise earn a hefty prison sentence. But in a nation run by a ruling class that has killed millions, impoverished somewhere between tens of millions and billions and abused billions, I suppose drawing some logical relationship between degree of damage and punishment is irrelevant.
In terms of daytime TV the best thing on is soap operas. It’s a sad day when that is the case. Soap operas are insipid, worn out, lifeless, and often poorly acted, but at least they aren’t aggressively abusive. Are you aware that there is now a TV show where spouses are given a lie detector test to determine whether or not they are telling the truth when they say they are not cheating on their spouse, with their spouse present (for the reaction shot when the “lie detector reveals the truth!”)
After the sun goes down “reality TV” comes out – nevermind that there is no reality and can never be when the cameras are out and the “real people” become actors. Reality is what happens when there are no cameras. Instead comes more abuse – classically related by Simon Cowl on American Idol but present in one form or another on all of reality TV.
There is always only one reason for abuse – the ruler loses his just authority. This vast increase in abuse by the elite, seen in any number of ways (economic policy, reaction to disasters, causing disasters, manner of “entertainment”, etc.) means they no longer are trying to be a just authority, which means they have lost control of themselves as rulers. When rulers lose control over their ability to create just actions but retain their power very very bad things happen. I see no end to this problem because I see no end to the present configuration of the ruling class. Americans just aren’t responding to this condition. They aren’t turning off the TV, they aren’t doing critiques, they aren’t debating, they aren’t caring. Britney Spears’s “Hit Me One More Time” was quite accurate.
Another sad but I suppose potentially good thing – Americans are more outraged about gas prices than anything else. Truckers have now implemented a major strike. Countless dead in Iraq – no problem. Hundreds of billions funneled from American taxpayers to a few American multinational corporations by way of death and destruction, billions impoverished by American policy – no problem. Gas prices go up a couple dollars a gallon and it’s time to be outraged! I keep hearing that “Americans are a compassionate people”. Obviously this is true – they are outraged at the death of cheap gas. The extinction of a species!
In any case – tomorrow’s another day on the neofeudal corporation plantation of wage slavery in order to avoid further impoverishment. Another day of seeing hopelessness and despair on the people and abuse on the television that “entertains” these people, free of charge of course through irrationalist advertising designed to program their consumption and colonize their imagination. It’s another day of seeing overpriced food that causes malnutrition and early death – the row of vending machines issuing sweets and salts. On the wall next to the machines is a poster that urges a healthy lifestyle, and next to that is one that tells employees earning $7 to $9 that they are “remarkable”. It’s funny how those signs are never present when workers earn $12 to $14 an hour. Or rather, it’s “funny”, since what it truly does is presents a quite effective moral argument that the most just action one can take is to destroy the American ruling class.
I remember reading dystopian short stories. Why were they always set in the future? The dystopia is now. Stories of life in hell should be set in the present. Stories of life on earth should be set in the future. Earth is to me what heaven is to people who fantasize.
There is a followup to Martin Luther King Jr.’s phrase that “There can be no great disappointment where there is no great love” – Love is only fulfilled on a two-way street. On earth that two-way street exists and King’s love comes back to him. In hell King’s love is trampled.
Where are we living?

Let Them Eat Ethanol!

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White Lies – A "Top Ten" List

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City of Walls

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Baghdad is starting to look like Palestine. Although in Baghdad the walls are used for protection, they also control and restrict access, allowing for many checkpoints around the city. This is the future for much of the world in the neofeudal corporatist nightmare.

Empire, Class Warfare, Triumphalism, and Dehumanization in the Gaming Industry

79% of mainstream PC games feature killing. The reason for this is to condition players (largely youth) to view obstacles as things to be eliminated. The concept of negotiation in a computer game is seen by players as ridiculous – the majority have never played a obstacle-oriented game with anything but killing whatever opposes the protagonist (controlled by the player). The typical gamer’s idea of what is done in a video game other than killing is building up a base before killing or building an empire before killing (and taking over the world). War is the overwhelming motif used time and again in video games.

There is a massive difference between the mainstream games market and it’s 79% killing rate and the amateur games market and it’s 49% killing rate. Consider that the primary source of inspiration for the design of amateur games IS the mainstream games market.

Mainstream games developers have given a few reasons over the years for why they make so many games about killing:

— It’s exciting for the player. Therefore the player enjoys it, therefore the player buys our game, therefore the game makes money, therefore publishers continue to fund our games, therefore we continue to work in the industry.

— It’s simple to develop.

— Game developers themselves are young, immature, and male, and therefore they themselves enjoy killing in games and hence develop those games.

All of these reasons are problematic. Ratings on Newgrounds show that players enjoy games that don’t include killing just as they do ones that do.

When immature young male writers write stories they don’t feature killings by the protagonist 79% of the time, or anything close to that.

It may be “simple to develop”, but that’s only because the industry has a long history of developing games that include killing, to such an extent that the development of the industry itself is dominated by that. Hence the prevalence of “physics engines”, which are often used to track bullet trajectories and the flying apart of objects following violence.

The one reason heard least often but which is the most interesting is that developers make so many games which feature killing because publishers want it that way. Money talks and the money is saying “Make us games that feature killing”. This begs the question of why.

The publishers of video games are overwhelmingly from modern industrial Western countries. Japan and the US dominate the industry, with the UK and other European and Western-friendly Asian countries trailing behind. This Western bloc as a semi-unified force has been an Empire since the end of WWII.

The US requires propaganda to turn children into killers to be fed into the war machine. No other country has this requirement to any similar degree. This fact has startling repercussions on the industry. Japanese publishers are far less favorable toward killing in games. Whole genres have been created by the Japanese, such as dating sims and pet management (breeding and raising creatures). American publishers tend to favor “shooting shit and blowing stuff up”.

Other aspects between allied Western powers however converge. Triumphalism, Supremacy, and Dehumanization are traits that all imperial states need to instill in their populace. A popular genre in Japan as well as the US is the role-playing game, where players lead a group which cleanses (exterminates) the world of monsters while completing a world-saving quest. Over the span of this game the players become more and more powerful, gaining supremacy over the world and ultimately standing triumphant. At the end of the game, truly nothing and no one can stand in their way (and barely anything remains to even try).

“Saving the world” is used time and time again as the justification for absolute atrocities. Every obstacle in the way of “saving the world” is deemed a monster which not only can be slaughtered without thought but should be slaughtered, nay, must be slaughtered, or the world will not truly be saved. Game developers must be proud – not even the Nazis were this ruthless.

As the player progresses through the game, he becomes stronger and stronger, and this kind of hedonistic “progress” is similar to the “rise” of a drug dealer who devastates whole communities as he enriches himself. Except even a drug dealer usually avoids killing.

Is it really any wonder that humans who have spent in many cases years playing these kinds of games can go to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Iran, or wherever the Empire wants to strike next, call the people there “monsters” which is equivalent to “hajji”, and exterminate them? These people truly are victims of their upbringing. I’m not so much surprised that American forces commit so many atrocities as that they sometimes don’t.

The game publishers are part of the capitalist class, the ruling class, the elite, that benefit from war as well as economic and military domination. Hence US publishers finance games which feature killing, and US, Japanese, and other friendly publishers finance games which feature domination, extermination, dehumanization, triumphalism, and supremacy. All of this is done to control and dominate the target group, the first victims – their own people. The buyers that they claim to “serve”. Poison is always this chef’s special of the day.

Pure Pwnage is a landmark game-parody series which covers a few of these issues, especially triumphalism and supremacy. It’s very light-hearted and fails to draw connections between gaming and the larger world, except in terms of culture.

Alcoholism and Racism – a study in contrasts

America is a racist society and likes itself as such. By contrasting racism with alcoholism (which America does not like) it becomes easy to see this.

For alcoholism the elite (those with positive access to state-supported power) set up Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and facilities, where alcoholics go and receive support and treatment. The idea here is to combat and perhaps eventually to eliminate alcoholism.

In contrast, when anyone stands up and announces he is a racist (see examples such as Michael Richards, Don Imus, Mel Gibson) he is vilified, given attention, and shunned. This is virtually the opposite treatment shown to alcoholics.

According to the American elite, the crime that Richards, Imus, and Gibson committed is not racism, because if that was their crime they would be encouraged to go to Racists Anonymous meetings for support. Their crime is a *display* of racism. That is to say, their crime is to show the world the racist that they are.

If we shunned alcoholics, what they would do is to be alcoholics in private and try to hide their alcoholism in public. Since we shun racists, this is exactly the way they usually behave, and when they don’t they are publically abused.

Except to the industry that produces alcohol and minor related industries, alcoholism is harmful. An alcoholic has reduced, sometimes severely reduced, productivity. He becomes more dangerous. Alcoholism has a negative impact on the economy and therefore the elite does not like alcoholism, despite it’s weakening of the individual.

Racism, however, is a completely different story. While racism hurts the economy as a whole greatly, it helps the economy with respect to the elite, as any slaveowner in the old south could tell you. Racism allows the elite to divide and conquer the working class, as they play one side against another and keep them from unifying to increase their wealth.

The elite don’t have anything in particular that they like about racism, so if some other methodology to divide and conquer or otherwise control the working class arose, in theory racism could be done away with.

But for now, the elite will not show compassion for racists, they will not establish Racists Anonymous meetings, and they will not treat racism as they do alcoholism. Because that could actually end racism, and they can’t have that.

Black Prison Gulag and the Police State

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"Overcoming Zionism" by Kovel – 2/16/08 in Berkeley, CA

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The Obama Doctrine?

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Imperial Fascism

This is very noticeable in both Japanese animation as well as American media. It’s the lone hero fighting against seemingly insurmountable odds. This kind of media prepares the citizenry for fascism.

Democracy never features a lone hero. Democracy is about mass popular movements constraining and ultimately controlling the elite. I have yet to see this portrayed in any elite media. It’s not difficult to reason why.

It hardly matters whether the lone hero defeats the “evil empire” or not. All that happens is the lone hero will then have the power, and the people will be in a similar situation.

Anime portrays the common people as helpless victims of the vast destructive war between the “good guys” and “bad guys”. Screaming in terror is common – faceless and then a corpse is also common. A democratic story would show the democratic struggle rather than people living mundane apolitical lives followed by violent death.

But it can’t be portrayed this way – since the lone hero model, whether it be Chuck Norris, Arnold Swartzenegger, Shinji Ikari, Motoko Kusanagi, or any of countless others and all it implies (a complete lack of democratic energy in the populace) presents an extreme vision of fascism, which is the propaganda model the media wants to portray, and consistently does portray.

Imperial media shows two sides battling for power, with the winner getting the right to enslave the people and the loser receiving subjugation. Yet, sadly, it’s the people themselves who make up the majority of the viewers of this material. Of course, the media does not portray the battle in those terms. It’s portrayed as one side fighting “for peace, justice, and freedom” and the other fighting “for domination, subjugation, and slavery”. George W. Bush’s rhetoric is hardly any different.

Why Will No One Hear Our Voice?

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Abbas Needs a Miracle

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Taslima Nasrin & "Free Speech"

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The Israeli Agenda and the Scorecard of the Zionist Power Configuration for 2008

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Washington Gets a New Colony in the Balkans

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Framing Muslims and Locking Up Their Money

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Presidential candidates made easy

Barack Obama is a rich white man with a black face.

Hillary Clinton is Bill Clinton with breasts.

John McCain is a Neocon.

Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney are made invisible by the corporate media.

Democracy is a fun word to use – the elite make sure it doesn’t mean a thing.

2008 is just another year in America.

Serbia and Kosovo

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Revisiting 2003 with Dennis Kucinich: "No More 16 Tons In America"

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Rigged Trials at Guantanamo

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