Category Archives: politics

politics

>Fucked by the mainstream – Part 2

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These are the cold hard facts: The major media units are huge corporations dictating what should be discussed within a certain framework. These institutions naturally work in their own interests, thus dissident opinions have no say here because that would undermine the corporation’s capital interests. The smaller media units will have to adapt to the agenda set by those in power, because they lack resources to act differently.

Knowing this, let’s look at the sources reporters use. Since they work within this framework, the sources they use are not unbiased expert sources, but rather sources that represent already established opinions and that work in their (the corporation’s) own interests. Many times the reporters are not even aware of how this works, due to the illusion of open debate mentioned in Part 1 (only pre-defined opinions within chosen subjects within a chosen framework are allowed).
If you chose to go outside these established opinions you will face major resistance. You will realize that the level of evidence requested all of a sudden is extremely high. If you’re reporting about vested interests, you hardly won’t need any verification at all. If you’re writing about atrocities carried out by the guerilla, all you need is one hearsay witness for confirmation and then you’ll be able to write endless shitty articles about it without anyone questioning you. If you want to write about torture carried out by an American military officer you’ll need videotapes, tons of witnesses and a whole goddamn mountain of evidence to back it up – or else you won’t get through in major media. One quote from a “high U.S. government official” is good as reliable evidence, while ten quotes from a dissident voice are worth nothing. Knowing this, and knowing what it’s like to work where things have to happen fast, it’s easy to understand why most journalists choose the easy way out. They have neither the time nor the pride to fuck with those in the major league. Naturally, the big boys won’t even let you do that because that would be undermining the core of the corporation. Also, a journalist simply cannot afford to lose his job…

Major media consists of a few mega-corporations and when it comes down to it it’s all about increasing profits and market shares. That’s how corporate capitalism works. It’s nothing new, it’s nothing odd. That’s the way it is. And if you’re not in there to play the game, to help your corporation to increase profits and so on, then there’s no place for you in the game. You’re voice will not be heard if you’re raging against the system. Simple as that.
You’ll have to take your work elsewhere, and sometimes not even the alternative media will be good enough. When dealing with certain subjects you’ll be forced to take your work underground, which is exactly quite the opposite of what society should want you to do, had it practised what it preaches: freedom of speech, democracy and justice for all.
Sadly, that’ not how it works and ultimately this false representation of virtues and moral will end in conflict.

politics

>Fucked by the mainstream – Part 1

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What ways are there for dissident voices to speak up and be heard? In mainstream media there are none.
Dissident voices equal a menace to society, therefore media only allows discussion within a framework that serves the interests of dominant institutions. This means we have a very limited spectrum of debate where media takes its own chosen subjects and then presents a range within that framework “open for debate”, when in reality these debates only enhances the strenght of their pre-defined assumptions. This makes us think that everything within that chosen framework represents the whole possible spectrum of opinions. We think we can debate just about everything, and it looks like that as well, but it’s nothing but a scam. The subjects are chosen by those in power and only opinions that fit within that specific framework are allowed. It’s simply a debate among people who are admitted into mainstream discussion.

So how does this work? It’s pretty easy to see. Institutions work in their own interests. If they didn’t, they’d be of no use for anyone. They would be totally meaningless in the long run.
Media consists of a few major mega-corporations who set the framework for what should be talked about, and then the smaller media units simply have to adapt to what the major media units focus on. Only major media have the resources, the money and the staff and the “credibility”, so they set the agenda.

Now… Corporations have a product to sell (the audiences) and a market they want to sell it to (the advertisers). So, the major newspapers are selling its readers to other businesses, and since the major media units consists of very privileged readers who in fact are the elite and political class that makes decisions in our society, it’s fairly easy to see what picture of the world they are presenting. To make things work, to make these huge corporations successful, that picture will have to satisfy the needs and interests of the buyers, the sellers and the market.
As already stated: Institutions must always work in their own interests, or else they won’t work at all. Of course there’s no place for dissident perspectives in such a closed system.

(These articles will be very much inspired by the thoughts of Noam Chomsky)

philosophy, politics

>The art of psychogeography

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Psychogeography is about understanding and exploring the urban landscape. That specific term (“the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals”) was defined by Guy Debord and the situationists in the late 1950’s.
In an age where cultural and environmental degradation and commercial interest reign supreme, the need for something more and spiritual arise within the souls of the damned. Public space is for everyone, it’s the heart of democracy, and not only for those in power, for those with cash, for those with superior positions in society. But we all know that democracy is a scam and not to be trusted, so to break free from this everyday slaughter and outright meaningless traditions should be in everyone’s interest.
Pyschogeography speaks to the intellect as well as the act. The act is the beauty. The act of walking out there, drifting, finding, exploring and possibly even changing. Famous opium eater Thomas de Quincey when strolling around in the cities had no other goal in mind than to satisfy his curiosity about what might be discovered around the next corner. Some of the situationists navigated through the Harz region in Germany using a map of London. Stuff like that. To break on through to the other side.
You know how easy it is to stroll the same old paths everytime you go somewhere. Try another path (the Left Hand Path maybe?) and think about where you are, where you’re going and what the surroundings mean and how they guide and control your ways.


Cause And Effect – created by Akay, Klister-Peter and Made.

The psyche, the place and the relationship between the two. That’s pretty much what it’s all about. What effect the urban landscape have on us, especially when we’re not guided by commercials, when we choose randomly. And that random choice is what makes it so exciting.
Because we surely must admit that we are being controlled by various forced options every single day, everytime we choose to walk the streets – even though most of us don’t care about that. We want to get from point A to point B as fast as possible, not having to think, preferably without moving at all. But if you do care about the shit that’s being tossed at you, then this psychogeography thing can be pretty interesting, because in my mind it many times exposes the manipulation, and only then are we able to subvert that very manipulation and make our own choices.

This is the critique of urbanism.

“Only an awareness of the influences of the existing environment can encourage the critique of the present conditions of daily life, and yet it is precisely this concern with the environment (in) which we live which is ignored.”


Are you also unconcerned? – created by Akay and Klister-Peter.

politics, religion

>The Clash of Civilizations – Part Two

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>This is Part Two in the series about Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations theory.
Part One can be found here.

It was in an article in Foreign Affairs (1993) and a subsequent book (The Clash of Civilizations and The Remaking of World Order (1996)) that Samuel P. Huntington, Harvard Professor, caused a massive stir in the world of global politics.
Huntington predicted that global conflicts after the Cold War would no longer focus on ideologies, like communism and capitalism, but rather find energy in cultural differences like old battles rooted in old cultures (look at Kenya right now). He claimed that the West, and first and foremost America – at the time the world’s only super power, was in decline and that Islamic and East Asian civilizations were on the march (look at the Middle East, India and China today).

Is Huntington saying “I told you so!” to the world? We’ll see about that later. In this post I’d like to focus on the criticism that was and is directed towards his thesis, and in Part Three or Four I’ll look at what Huntington himself has to say looking back at his own work.

First, Huntington draws the global map with a very sharp pencil. It’s the West against the rest, where the West is all alone against seven civilizations: Islamic, African, Latin American, Hindu, Buddhist, Orthodox, Sinic and Japanese. By doing this he is defining cultures by power.

But the most important – and the most dangerous – “failure” in Huntington’s thesis is, as I see it, that he fails to see the difference between Islam and radical Islam, and thus fears the conflict between Islam and the West (Christianity) for the very wrong reasons, since radical Islam does not represent the Islamic civilization. Islam is not a coherent civilization. You don’t look at Christianity like that, do you? Of course not, because we know there’s about a million ways to praise the Lord within the Christian community. We should know that about Islam as well, but “the war on terror” and its false media won’t let us.

Radical Islamists are “nowhere men”, meaning they are children of the frontier between Islam and the West, belonging to neither. USA is fighting a war against disparate groups that are independent of nation states! They are not fighting Islam, even if that is what they (and the Western world?) seem to think. Also, they cannot cope with Islam as a state of power. Just look at their current relationship with Iran…

And hey, radical islamists are already here, either knocking at the gates of Europe or living amongst us all at this very moment. Things have changed drastically since Huntington began working on his thesis some fifteen years ago. Back then, Islam was beginning to rise. Now Islam has become a big part of the West, which many see as a negative thing pretty much thanks to “the war on terror” and false media not giving the whole story et cetera and so forth… Many seem to think that every muslim is a radical militant muslim. How sad and tragic of us to think so.

What Huntington should be afraid of though, and where I think he is right, is the fact that the West is rapidly losing its coherence and culture, its will and pride, feasting on materialistic ideologies and unsparing wars (dealing with the Arab world by using military force is one example), while Islam is growing stronger everyday – in spirit and soul.
I believe and hope that spirit and soul will prevail over materialistic interests.

Criticism will continue in Part Three.

philosophy, politics, quotes

>Is world peace possible?

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>Oswald Spengler answered that with the following text, originally published in Cosmopolitan 1936:

“The question whether world peace will ever be possible can only be answered by someone familiar with world history. To be familiar with world history means, however, to know human beings as they have been and always will be. There is a vast difference, which most people will never comprehend, between viewing future history as it will be and viewing it as one might like it to be. Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals.

Life is a struggle involving plants, animals, and humans. It is a struggle between individuals, social classes, peoples, and nations, and it can take the form of economic, social, political, and military competition. It is a struggle for the power to make one’s will prevail, to exploit one’s advantage, or to advance one’s opinion of what is just or expedient. When other means fail, recourse will be taken time and again to the ultimate means: violence. An individual who uses violence can be branded a criminal, a class can be called revolutionary or traitorous, a people bloodthirsty. But that does not alter the facts. Modern world-communism calls its wars “uprisings,” imperialist nations describe theirs as “pacification of foreign peoples.” And if the world existed as a unified state, wars would likewise be referred to as “uprisings.” The distinctions here are purely verbal.

Talk of world peace is heard today only among the white peoples, and not among the much more numerous colored races. This is a perilous state of affairs. When individual thinkers and idealists talk of peace, as they have done since time immemorial, the effect is always negligible. But when whole peoples become pacifistic it is a symptom of senility. Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic. To adopt such a position is to abandon the future, for the pacifist ideal is a static, terminal condition that is contrary to the basic facts of existence.

As long as man continues to evolve there will be wars. Should the white peoples ever become so tired of war that their governments can no longer incite them to wage it, the earth will inevitably fall a victim to the colored men, just as the Roman Empire succumbed to the Teutons. Pacifism means yielding power to the inveterate nonpacifists. Among the latter there will always be white men — adventurers, conquerors, leader-types — whose following increases with every success. If a revolt against the whites were to occur today in Asia, countless whites would join the rebels simply because they are tired of peaceful living.

Pacifism will remain an ideal, war a fact. If the white races are resolved never to wage war again, the colored will act differently and be rulers of the world.”

…THE COUNTERATTACK ON WORLD SUPREMACY…THE COUNTERATTACK ON WORLD SUPREMACY…

politics, quotes, religion

>Holocaust religion

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“Philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the German born Hebrew University professor, was probably the first to suggest that the Holocaust has become the new Jewish religion. ‘The Holocaust’ is far more than historical narrative, it indeed contains most of the essential religious elements: it has its priests (Simon Wiesenthal, Elie Wiesel, Deborah Lipstadt, etc.) and prophets (Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and those who warn about the Iranian Judeocide to come). It has its commandments and dogmas (‘never again’, ‘six million’, etc.). It has its rituals (memorial days, Pilgrimage to Auschwitz etc.). It establishes an esoteric symbolic order (kapo, gas chambers, chimneys, dust, Musselmann, etc.). It has its shrines and temples (Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and now the UN).
If this is not enough, the Holocaust religion is also maintained by a massive economic network and global financial infrastructures (Holocaust industry a la Norman Finkelstein). Most interestingly, the Holocaust religion is coherent enough to define the new ‘antichrists’ (the Deniers) and it is powerful enough to persecute them (Holocaust denial laws).”
Gilad Atzmon: From Esther to AIPAC

According to the above mentioned Holocaust denial laws, Wolfgang Fröhlich has been sentenced to six and a half years (!) in prison for thought crimes (!!). Unfortunately you won’t read about that in Amnesty Press (aren’t they supposed to write about political prisoners?) or anywhere else in the major media, so here is an article in German.

Another article on the subject of Holocaust religion:
Holocaust Religion and Holocaust Industry In The Service of Israel
from State of Nature, a quarterly online journal of the Left that “stands opposed to the capitalist economic order and the imperialist ambitions of the world’s great powers” and “remains committed to the development of protest movements and the construction of a radical alternative to the status quo”, and “aims to publish essays, interviews, commentaries, reviews, poetry and photography that inspire progressive thought, unite dissenting voices, and dispel the myths of the world order.”

And in case you missed the link above, check out Gilad Atzmon‘s page! Not only is he a great writer and political philosopher, he’s an awesome jazz musician as well and you can listen to his music on the homepage.

politics, religion

>Islam and conflicting ideas

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In my humble opinion, Americans seem to focus on an all out war with Islam when they rather should look into themselves. No wonder their aggressive monocultural thinking is looked upon with frowning eyes by those examining Western ideas. Do we want an American dominated McWorld based on capitalism and materialism, or should we aim for a tiny bit more spiritual touch in our lives?
I consider George W. Bush and his crew to be more of a danger to the world than Osama bin Laden. How about that?
As for Islam, the discussion is so very narrow-minded. There are thousands of different “Islams”, just as there are thousands of different paths in Christianity.

Compare Al-Qaeda and Christian liberation theology.
Do not confuse conflict with conquest.
War cannot create democracy.
Media tells us Islam equals war.
That’s just plain stupid.

Essential reading for greater understanding:
Mattias Gardell – bin Laden i våra hjärtan (Swedish)
Christoph Reuter – Med livet som vapen (Swedish) (in English here)
David Cook – Martyrdom in Islam
John K. Cooley – Unholy wars. Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism
David E. Stannard – American Holocaust
Edward W. Said – Orientalism (Swedish) (in English here)
Ibn Warraq – Defending The West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism (for fairness…)

In the Clash of Civilizations post I wrote:
“Some say there’s a clash going on within Islam, a clash for the soul of Islam…”
Read more about that in Joyce Davis’ article Just who’s fighting the real war against Islam?, where she states that “one of the most important conflicts in the world today is fought without garnering much notice in the West. It is the battle among Muslims over the future of their faith.”

Also, check the Radical Muslim blog from time to time.

Disclaimer:
I do not support Islam.
I do not support Samuel P. Huntington.
I do not support national socialism or revisionism or anti-Americanism or whatever the hell some of you claim in your emails and comments.
I support whatever suits me in whatever context I might find it in, be it national socialist ideas or muslim thoughts or American hamburgers or Jolly Jumper’s ass or yo mama.
Supporting something 100% for the sake of being right is religion, and I’m not a religious person.
In the words of Thayendanegea (1743-1807), aka Joseph Brant, Mohawk Indian chief, when facing King George III:
“I bow to no man for I am considered a prince among my own people. But I will gladly shake your hand”.