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harryweaver · 3 years

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Terrorists

Written in 2013

Terrorists

Who Are They?

I took a plane flight the other day.

While waiting for take off I was looking round, noticing the ever decreasing amounts of metal employed in the interior of aircraft these days, consistent with the need for weight saving. Even the little there was appeared to be aluminium, or an aluminium alloy type, to make it lighter and I thought about the degree of fossil fuel involvement in: its removal from the ground; transport to the foundry; during the processing and moulding; and then transport to the assembly facility. Even the minimal amounts employed by the power tools necessary for assembly. Then I thought of all the other metal aspects in the wiring and the exterior fabrication, the fossil fuel requirement there and the associated transportation factor. After that, I envisaged the insulation involved, looked at the plastic, overhead locker housings, the vinyl seating and paint, the polyester involved in the carpeting, stewardess' uniform and even her nail polish. All petroleum based.

I thought about what our 'civilisation' would be like without oil and realised we'd be back in the days of the horse and cart, looking round for something to grease the axles.

The thought then occurred how foolish it would seem to have the entire basis of your economy in someone else's hands.

Iraq.

Not two wars, but two fronts in the one war with a blockade to provide the siege factor between. With the blockade in the Gulf of Arabia ensuring that such things as wheelbarrows were not permitted through as they might conceivably be employed as tools in the construction of nuclear weaponry sites. Vaccines were not permitted through, as they were deemed capable of being employed as the basis for the production of biological weaponry, although, as any secondary school biology student could tell us, the bacteria that make up the vast array of vaccines are dead. As a direct result of this latter action 200,000 Iraqi children, in their first five years of life, died during the Iraqi occupation while doctors in hospitals begged, unsuccessfully, for the release of the vaccines needed to save them. These are just two examples of assessment guidelines imposed, to facilitate the degree of compliance required, that had nothing to do with international rulings.

Not to mention such aspects as the destruction of Fallujah. One of the more direct modes of winning hearts and minds.

The carefully targeted destruction elsewhere in Iraq, destroying some of the very foundations of known civilisation. Destruction of cultural identity - the hallmark of genocide.

All this in a country where, before the latest Kuwaiti invasion (No, it hasn't always been a convenient part of Britain), 98% of households had a potable water supply and the same percentage of the population had unrestricted access to a quality tertiary education. But none of this has relevance in relation to our own requirement, obvious when it's observed that the high-minded motive for the launch of the second front was a decidedly fuzzy, high-resolution satellite picture of a garbage truck. The siege simply wasn't meeting the time frame.

Moslem acquaintances of mine had been united in the assessment that, in traditional Arabic tribal culture, even if Saddam Hussein was removed, somebody just as bad or even worse would take his place. The tribe in power always abuses the privilege (and in this, I see little to differentiate Western cultures), other tribes that were associated in their ascendancy reaping concessions, with ancient grudges ensuring placement in the substrata of the social order. This tribal mode of behaviour is practically genetic in Arabic culture and not about to transpose into a 'Rag-Head' copy of 'America the Beautiful' as the result of some eye-blink stop-over, which makes zero difference to a cultural outlook that was ancient before America was mistakenly discovered by Columbus.

'America the Beautiful' is losing some of her sheen now, with the rapidly growing efficiency of direct information exchange mediums making it obvious that, for example, a new trade good described as 'foreign aid' is to be supplied to some deserving situations that have some strategic value while others just as deserving, but with no advantage to offer, receive none. Some, like Eritrea, are not even 'recognised'. This appears to do nothing toward slowing the death rate, however. Nothing of their plight appears on the pages and screens of a corporate media that has a product to sell that, these days, appears to have nothing to do with the concepts implied by the terminology, 'journalism'.

As far as the armed forces go, sentient beings, even in those instances where their full intelligence quotient might not have been permitted full flight by peer pressure and their adversary has had their humanity stripped from them by appellations such as 'Rag-Heads', know when they are being conned. They are aware, if only on a subconscious level, that they are involved in the first of the major corporate wars.

Being asked to die for corporate requirement instead of the principles laid down by Founding Fathers that created an admirable American ideal, that exists now only in the memories of a rightfully proud and ever diminishing American few. Could this be the reason American servicemen are at their lowest ever ebb in regard to the morale factor? And American armed forces conscription is at an all time low also?

There appears to be a great level of confusion on this level, as illustrated by the case of Bradley Manning, a Private, First Class in the American Armed Forces who hears one stance espoused by the commanders of those forces, sees what are obviously radical discrepancies that contradict that stated stance, takes those discrepancies to his direct superiors and is told to 'Go away'. Then, apparently having no other direction to go in, he decides to go public with an ethical stance that does himself, the armed forces he serves and his country proud. As a product of the confused maelstrom of contradiction posed by stated policy and actual practice, he is branded a traitor, locked up on the sole evidence provide by a madman and subjected to the latest fashion in psychological torture practices for a grossly extended period, before, and this is yet to happen, he is sent to trial to determine his guilt or innocence.

And then there's Afghanistan. There are too many other examples of global tragedies, that have no fiscal/material benefit to offer that go ignored and unattended, to have any faith in the much trumpeted ethical stance any longer. Let's not forget that the Taliban were originally founded and funded by the American taxpayer, to the tune of four and a half billion dollars, in order to destabilise the Soviet presence in Afghanistan.

And now, with regard to Afghanistan's massive predisposition for poppy farming, the world's basis for pharmaceutical commodities of everything from basic Codeine all the way through to Heroin (oops, sorry, Morphine) placed in 'Protective Custody'? Suddenly there appears to be the outline of what could be interpreted as an intentional drive toward a stranglehold on oil and pharmaceuticals, the two largest global corporate economies.

With other bonuses

Which are enacted upon, as quickly as possible

Idealistic standards of the past supply no more than a format for the oratory, that enables the future plundering of assets, with techniques that bear little relation to the rhetoric.

While the location, location, location aspect screams to be recognised with the border of mainland China just a short flight up the Hindu Kush. And in the middle, between Iraq and Afghanistan (Oh! Amazing coincidence!), Iran, with a production of over 4 million barrels of oil/day.

Terrorism.

Who are the terrorists?

Actually?

If your party spills over into the neighbours’ backyard and you start stealing his beer, you'll get a negative reaction.

If you invade half the middle east, taking from them control and ownership of the only commodity they have that keeps the desert warm at night and cool during the day, you don't think you are going to get an adverse reaction? Go back and repeat the slow learner class!

As Noam Chomsky once said, `If you want to stop terrorism, stop participating in it’.

There are many conspiracy theories surrounding such phenomenon as the Twin Towers tragedy, but when a complex of this size, where 50,000 people worked on any weekday, with another 200,000/day passing through as visitors, it's a marvellous thing to me that only 2,800 were killed - including over 400 utilities workers who came along afterward. The complex was so large, it had its own zip code: 10048, so nobody had to leave the complex to go to lunch when it happened, at 8.45 a.m.

It was the Twin Towers incident that 'launched' the 'War On Terror'.

But perhaps there is something else at work here also?

Barack Obama and his would-be Mini-Me, the then Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, both arrive on the last day of the recent international climate change conference to abundantly demonstrate how concerned they weren't with the issues. Massive industrial outsourcing investments have gone into both China and India, to take full advantage of the cheap labour overhead, so they'll never be asked to cut emissions. No advantage in that. It'd just drive up the price of the product. That's the reason they were outsourced in the first place. The demand for oil will only increase within industrial and commercial environments that follow production processes that require them. An entirely new definition of pollution, powered by over half the world's population, will be carried along by water-tables, ocean and wind currents, phenomena that have absolutely no respect for national boundaries either.

As pollution increases, natural resources will suffer in quality and availability and, as a consequence, escalate in value. Future wars will be fought over water and that won't be too far into the future. The overtures have already been well and truly played.

As I have said previously: We consider our 'selves' to be a separate entity to our environment, rather than an integral, interacting aspect of it, so any harm we inflict on the environment has no real effect on our situation, we surmise. (The comparative example of this would be that of a race of people, travelling through endless space, systematically destroying the space ship they are travelling in.) There have been highly qualified dissenting voices to this supposition, even economists like E.F. Schumacher who advise that, "If we ever find ourselves in the position of winning our battle with nature, we will automatically find ourselves on the losing side".

As a species, are we really this stupid? Or do we employ our elected political heads to make these awkward decisions for us, while we fiddle as our ethical state burns and we hide our heads in the sands of short term profit? And we pretend not to know until, only occasionally, the truth of the situation finds its way through the cracks in the walls of mainstream media platitudes. Truth finally hurled in our faces to the point where we can no longer ignore it and we throw our political, human sacrifices on the fiery, self righteous altars of our conscience?

Absolution!

Let's do it again!

Is this the trade off?

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'Religion is regarded by the common people as true,

by the wise as false,

and by the rulers as useful.'

- Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

Terrorism, the new religion?

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We'll live quietly, in our allocated suburban box and pay you very well, if you'll perpetuate our preferred illusions? The veneer of civilisation, over the greatest predator in the history of the planet, isn't even rice paper, Bible-page thick.

Yes, we can go ahead and pretend that none of this is happening, but if we create a Golgotha that is free of any chance of vice, we will have removed the only stage where virtue has the opportunity to dance, so what spiritual aspect to existence will we have to console us then?

Spirituality is no longer a required attribute in a Production Unit however:

Religion, as described above, will do as a substitute;

Basic diet requirement, yes;

Health maintenance, also (any need for it to be preventative would be associated with the lowering of retraining cost);

and a little R&R as a last condescending concession to our humanity, to aid in compliance and prove corporate benevolence.

It'll suffice.

After all, why not give up our civil liberties?

We weren't using them anyway.

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harryweaver · 3 years

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Baseline

Individual Point of Perception is Dependent on Conditioned Mode of Thought.

Our conditioned mode of thought is determined by a number of aspects including:

our formal educational conditioning;

our cultural background;

the perceived power personalities that influence our sociological conditioning;

...to name a few.

I originally began this article with a view to confining it within the first classification of educational conditioning, but by way of natural process all seemed to apply.

Then, as it felt presumptuous and unwieldy to force a subject scope worthy of a treatise into a blog format, I have had to restrict the situation to how science has influenced and placed limits on our thinking.

Very much in shorthand....

All of science is based on direction defined by philosophy and Rene Descartes appears to have been the pivotal point in this instance. He introduced a way of perceiving things that took an observable entity and broke it down, analytically, into its individual unit parts. Dualism and other aspects, illuminating then, seem second nature to us now.

The evolution of this form of thinking was passed on into the capable hands of Francis Bacon who, in turn, hand balled it to Isaac Newton, both of whom provided substantial modifications to advance this concept of fragmentation. What we have inherited is what might be termed the 'Doctrine of Direction' for the entire westernised civilisation.

What these theorists neglected to consider and what Quantum theory is in the process of giving back, to those of us who care to take note, is an appreciation of the 'links' or aspects of interrelationship between these basic building blocks of fragmented, alienated entities. An aspect every bit as important as the 'units' themselves, as it is only by way of these continuously, communicating interfaces that we arrive at wholistic entities that are greater than the sum of their individual parts.

Unfortunately, we still model our mode of individual and collective advancement on the thought structures that built Empires that have long ago ceased to exist. Momentum, obviously, is capable of carrying us too far in the wrong direction.

I don't wish to appear to be a detractor of the theories of these giants of our past, or even of the ones who 'stood on their shoulders', who took those theories and gave them application within the sociological framework. What I am attempting is to show how the limited style of scientific mindset, that is drilled into us by way of our current educational process, has engendered our individual and therefore collective point of perception. This in turn has determined our current life situation. Man is a reflection of his environment, yes, but the opposite is every bit as true.

We have made fantastic advances with our 'scientific' thinking. We can gauge, almost to the centimetre, where we can land a rocket on the moon, over an almost unimaginable distance, with a mind numbing number of variables all taken into account. And after that, bring it back again. We are communicating concepts through mediums such as we are employing at this very moment, as you read this, and there are a myriad of other examples.

But, there is a dark side.

Having adopted, through conditioning, this mode of perception, we have alienated ourselves from our environment, from each other and even created alienation within our very selves. Our 'self' from this viewpoint, by way of illustration, does not include our body. 'I' am a separate entity and my body is a mere physical, mechanical housing, when in fact our bodies are a fully incorporated aspect of our 'selves'.

'Us and Them' is destroying 'Us'.

Take a look at what our alienating point of perception is doing:

(1) to our shared environment. We consider our 'selves' to be a separate entity to our environment, rather than an integral, interacting aspect of it, so any harm we inflict on the environment has no real effect on our situation, we surmise. (The comparative example of this would be that of a race of people, traveling through endless space, systematically destroying the space ship they are traveling in.) There have been highly qualified, dissenting voices to this supposition. Even economists, like E.F. Schumacher, who advise that, "If we ever find ourselves in the position of winning our battle with nature, we will automatically find ourselves on the losing side". Conditioned thought structure, however, pays little heed to logic, unless it is incorporated into an 'approved' educational process and therefore transposed into the paradigm;

(2) to our estranged sense of interrelationships. By over emphasising the self concept, to compensate for a social structure that appears intent on drowning the individual in a sea of homogenised anonymity, we automatically place almost insurmountable barriers to interpersonal integration;

(3) within our fragmented personal selves. In this context, the major effort appears to be the creation and continuous maintenance of a self image rather than the cultivation of the actual personality. A self image that bears little relation to the real person hiding within, who sadly perceives the camouflage to be more socially acceptable than him 'self'. Applied to extreme, the individual places so much personal energy into the maintenance of this persona, that he 'starves' himself. A major cause of mental dis-ease and what can amount to total breakdown of the individual existence.

Relationships can only exist between personalities. Relationships are not possible between facades, which are essentially illusions, so the illusion that they do doesn't exist for any length of time. This somewhat pointless exercise only exists because many believe that it's all they have to offer, as the real entity is seen as being insufficient to the situation.

One of the many sociological phenomena that appears to endorse all this is the fact that, in all westernised countries, divorce statistics come close to equaling marriage statistics and quite commonly surpass them.

It's a little unfair, however, to endow philosophers and scientists with the full responsibility of our present life situation. There are other buttressing influences. Sir Isaac Newton's writings within other fields were for all intents and purposes totally ignored, as they still are. The bias of thought at that time was all for the new clockwork bent that held so much potential for industrial advancement, as it still does. An illustration as to how long the industrial lobby, by way of political sway, has been placing paradigms on the full spectrum potential of our advancement as a species.

So, just while we are in the vicinity:

A corporate entity doesn't have a personality, other than the one on loan and frequently patched from the public relations departments, so don't look for human qualities;

The corporate ideal is to be in the position of dictating to the marketplace (yes, that's you!) and they never sleep in the pursuit of this goal;

Corporate entities see themselves as being subject to only one law and that's the law of economics. When economic precept shows any potential to limit short term profit, they're not above bending that out of shape either.

This latter point requires a little expansion, I feel.

Feel free to disagree.

According to the science of economics, there are two varieties of resource: rivalrous and non-rivalrous. A rivalrous resource is one that can be used up faster than it can be replaced, if it can be replaced at all, e.g., fossil fuels and the natural environment. A non-rivalrous resource, on the other hand, is a resource that is inexhaustible, i.e., it can't be exhausted as it is continuously replacing itself at a rate faster than it can be employed.

Now, considering the fact that human beings breed their own replacements, in the sort of volumes commonly described as 'population explosions', which of these two categories do you imagine employees slot into, within the corporate mindset, in these days of outsourcing?

`Safety before Production’, is the corporate catchphrase, but it will never be the reality because it doesn't need to be. An appearance is put up in order to establish a good 'Employer Brand Name', yes, but mostly because other powerful economic entities like insurance companies 'persuade' them to do so. And insurance companies are only prepared to do that because it has direct bearing on their own economic status.

This automatically creates another translation of the 'Us and Them' syndrome, the 'Divide and Rule' format. Musashi's 'The Book of Five Rings' and Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War', amongst other treatise on war strategy, make their way into every board room these days under the arms of those who would subordinate their productive work force to their will. Strategies that work within one set of environmental circumstances don't necessarily translate well into others, however, and 'Divide and Rule' is a classic example. When looking at a combined productive exercise, it simply isn't profitable to view and treat your production sector as though they are the enemy. This will automatically cost you money and the longer you persist with a faulty strategy, the more it will cost you. The variety of tactics employed, to gain the 'ascendency', are far from what is required to assist in establishing a sense of cooperation and self worth within the individuals that make up the bulk of westernised populations. And a sense of self worth is the foundation stone of a happy individual. A happy employee is more productive and produces a better quality product, so the strategy is obviously flawed.

Our mode of technological advancement has cost us dear, obvious in the stultified mental and spiritually bereft realms we have allocated to ourselves, from a set of values that is blinkered to the full spectrum definition of wealth. I have met people who, having worked continuously for, say, $500.00/week for a number of years, don't even consider pressing for more when their mode of employment changes, because they have been conditioned, over time, into believing that $500.00/week is their sum total worth as a human being. The comprehensive definitions of degradation and defeat are achieved when the victim is persuaded.

If western civilisation (sic), would just halt its frenetic, lemming-like race to the cliff edge long enough to look at the life philosophies of the various indigenous cultures on this planet, we would be in a position to provide ourselves with the requisite wholistic life perception required to save ourselves, and those same indigenous communities, from that inevitable extinction that we are imposing on other species at this very moment.

A different way of seeing is there, for our adoption, any time we want it. We find it not just in the wholistic, indigenous community and environmental Gaia mindsets, but in the most obscure of niches as well as the most obvious of places.

By way of an 'obscure' example, I recall reading Aleister Crowley's 'Magick' in the dawning of my adolescent rebellion, somewhere between Enid Blyton and 'The Russians'.

Wholly from memory:

`The practitioner of Black Magic employs his art to raise his level of existence above that of his environment’ - which doesn't sound so bad really, does it? Just looking round, it appears to be what everybody is doing, or attempting to do. Yes/No?

But then he goes on to say:

`Whereas the practitioner of White Magic employs his talent to raise the level of his environment, and in so doing raises his own level of existence’.

A totally different translation of existence, richer by far, achieved by a mere shift in perception.

As a natural extension of our adopting this different definition of existence, the changes within our culture would be dynamic to say the least. Mental health institutions would almost cease to exist, as the dysfunctional personality is no more than a symptom of the dysfunctional group. The dysfunctional group, no more than a symptom of a dysfunctional social order. Primary catalysts of physical ill health, such as stress, would almost cease to exist also, along with associated overloaded hospital systems and massive requirement for, along with associated abuse of, medication.

Street people would not feel a need to retreat to the streets anymore, but would see a form of society that they would want to be a part of. A form of society that they could see themselves as being a part of, alienated no longer.

Dare I mention prisons?

I could continue, but I'm sure you get the gist.

All aspects of our social and personal direction are compromised when we operate from a biased or false premise. Our proud, emphatic (dare I say, arrogant?) denunciations of 'this is wrong', or 'that's not right' appear as shallow as mainstream media. Any observation from a false premise can only produce an inaccurate end assessment. A silk purse don't come from no sows ear, boy!

Therefore it naturally follows that judging others, or even ourselves, by our own standards is automatically a travesty of natural justice and nothing more than a gross, if unintended, hypocrisy. Because we, unquestioningly, inherit standards of judgment also.

It is possible to establish valid existence only by exploring the depths of established standards, understand where they stem from and, by doing so, determine as to whether they still have relevance in regard to personal existence, now, in our current environment. Retain the standards that do have relevance, rid ourselves of false standards that represent the crippling detritus in our lives, and adopt any new standards that are seen to promote required existential standing.

This is normally considered to be the philosophers function, yes, but a little philosophy won't hurt any of us if it results in our finally reaping the substantial rewards of a valid sense of social responsibility. We have that duty to ourselves, each other and toward our shared environment. Wholistically.

The answer to all the worlds' problems lie in the future within our children, but we need people qualified to teach them how to move the world, through a paradigm shift, from here to there. There's only one way to achieve that, so we need to get to work on ourselves, individually, very quickly.

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