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The lack of reflection in North American society reflects in our policies and economic choices. Countries that have experienced the ripsaw of neo-liberal capitalism (essentially the unbalanced “free-market” reforms that we impose on other countries to savage their people and exploit their resources) are contemplating life after the free marketers have been kicked out and those countries must once again reform a nation from the hollow shell left by ‘free-market’ plundering. In this piece from Al-Jazeera we gain an inside look at what happened at the forum and some of the topics discussed.
“I just returned from the sixth International Forum of Philosophy in Maracaibo, Venezuela, where philosophers from four continents were invited to discuss “State, Revolution and the Construction of Hegemony”.The event was inaugurated by the vice-presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia, televised by several channels, and on the last day, a prize of $150,000 was awarded to the best book presented within the Libertador Award for Critical Thinking of 2011.”
It is nice to see that somewhere in the world people can speak of the world as it is as opposed to the geo-political bias imposed by living in North America.
“Similar to the World Social Forum of Brazil, both the prize and forum aim to reflect not only upon the social progress that characterises these nations, but also the progress taking place in rest of the world; this is why only thinkers whose position is essentially leftist are invited, that is, those in the service of the weak, marginalised, and oppressed sectors of society.”
Before we jump on the ‘fair and balanced’ objection, let me remind you fair readers that the opposing point of view can be found by simply accessing any major newspaper of record, or any corporate media source.
“Regardless of how effective the conference’s statement is on the governors that read it, what is interesting for us – European academics – is the institutional significance that is given to philosophy in the region. Is there a philosophy conference or forum in the United States or EU where vice-presidents take time to inaugurate a similar event?
Before exploring this relation [between governance and philosophy], it is necessary to remember that most Latin American countries today are governed by socialist governments whose main objective is to elevate from poverty those citizens that were discarded by the neoliberal (and in some cases dictatorial) states that ruled the region in the past. This is why for more than a decade now, such renowned progressive intellectuals as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and many others have been endorsing Chavez, Morales, and other democratically elected presidents for their social programmes and economic independence from the IMF.
It might be nice to learn some of the lessons from these failed neoliberal experiments as the doctrines are still playing in Canada, US and Europe.
“But despite the social progress (since 2003, extreme poverty has been reduced by 72 per cent in Venezuela), ecological initiatives (Morales has been declared the “World Hero of Mother Earth” by the president of the United Nations General Assembly), and economic efficiency (unlike the EU, Latin American economies will grow by 4.7 per cent in 2012) of these governments, a campaign of hatred and disinformation has been taking place throughout our Western media in order to discredit these achievements.
Perhaps, as Oliver Stone pointed out in his brilliant documentary South of the Border, this campaign is a symptom of fear that citizens in the West might also begin to demand similar policies. After all, while in Europe we are cutting social services following the European Central Bank demands, Latin American states are increasing them, just as so many western protesters (“indignados”, Occupy Wall Street, and other courageous movements) demand.”
Ah, the threat of a good example. To the embattled North American Economies a threat worse than Iran, Iraq and the Taliban all rolled into one. The idea that a model focused on people rather than profit can and is working in the world. Fortunately for these Southern Cone countries they are now too big and well organized to be brought down, as Nicaragua was in the 90’s by the US.
“These Latin American countries are not calling philosophers to obtain from them rational justifications or hoping that some of us write propaganda articles for their policies. Rather, they are showing their awareness that history has not ended. I’m referring here to Francis Fukuyama’s famous theory of “the end of history” (“liberal democracy is the only legitimate form of government broadly accepted”), which has now been assimilated, if not completely incorporated, by our capitalist culture.
But history in Latin America has neither ended nor started anew. It’s simply proceeding as an alternate to our capitalist logic of economic enrichment, technological 
progress and cultural superiority. The Latin American countries do not aim to dominate others, but simply to evoke those whom Walter Benjamin called the “losers of history”, that is, the ones who have not succeeded within our neoliberal democratic system. These unsuccessful “shareholders” are represented not only by underprivileged citizens, but also by underdeveloped nations and continents. In this condition, philosophy is called upon to think historically – that is, to maintain living history. But how?”
How refreshing to see another point of view being expressed and some of the tenets of neoliberalism thoughtfully challenged. And how do we see our “free press” respond to such a conference? Observe. The silence is deafening. Such an unscrupulous avoidance news is a regular feature of our corporate news media, that exists mostly to feed and reinforce the system that it profits from, and most certainly not to educate its populace.
Let’s hope that people can find out more about alternative points of view and learn about competing narratives so they can more effectively judge the systems that they currently inhabit. The OWS movement is a step in the right direction but need to ground themselves in the historical struggle for citizens rights and power within the state capitalist system. Looking toward Latin America and what people have and are achieving there would be a good start.
Valuable insight from Barbara and John Ehrenreich about the OWS movement, class and popular misconceptions propagated by the Right.
The “other men” (and of course women) in the current American class alignment are those in the top 1 per cent of the wealth distribution – the bankers, hedge-fund managers and CEOs targeted by the Occupy Wall Street movement. They have been around for a long time in one form or another, but they only began to emerge as a distinct and visible group, informally called the “super-rich”, in recent years.
Extravagant levels of consumption helped draw attention to them: private jets, multiple 50,000 square-foot mansions, $25,000 chocolate desserts embellished with gold dust. But as long as the middle class could still muster the credit for college tuition and occasional home improvements, it seemed churlish to complain. Then came the financial crash of 2007-2008, followed by the Great Recession, and the 1 per cent to whom we had entrusted our pensions, our economy, and our political system stood revealed as a band of feckless, greedy narcissists and possibly sociopaths.
Still, until a few months ago, the 99 per cent was hardly a group capable of (as Thompson says) articulating “the identity of their interests”. It contained, and still contains, most “ordinary” rich people, along with middle-class professionals, factory workers, truck drivers, and miners, as well as the much poorer people who clean the houses, manicure the fingernails and maintain the lawns of the affluent.
It was divided not only by these class differences, but most visibly by race and ethnicity – a division that has actually deepened since 2008. African-Americans and Latinos of all income levels disproportionately lost their homes to foreclosure in 2007 and 2008, and then disproportionately lost their jobs in the wave of layoffs that followed. On the eve of the Occupy movement, the black middle class had been devastated. In fact, the only political movements to have come out of the 99 per cent before Occupy emerged were the Tea Party movement and, on the other side of the political spectrum, the resistance to restrictions on collective bargaining in Wisconsin.
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But Occupy could not have happened if large swaths of the 99 per cent had not begun to discover some common interests, or at least to put aside some of the divisions among themselves. For decades, the most stridently promoted division within the 99 per cent was the one between what the right calls the “liberal elite” – composed of academics, journalists, media figures, etc. – and pretty much everyone else.
As Harper’s columnist Thomas Frank has brilliantly explained, the right earned its spurious claim to populism by targeting that “liberal elite”, which supposedly favours reckless government spending that requires oppressive levels of taxes, supports “redistributive” social policies and programmes that reduce opportunity for the white middle class, creates ever more regulations (to, for instance, protect the environment) that reduce jobs for the working class, and promotes kinky countercultural innovations like gay marriage. The liberal elite, insisted conservative intellectuals, looked down on “ordinary” middle- and working-class Americans, finding them tasteless and politically incorrect. The “elite” was the enemy, while the super-rich were just like everyone else, only more “focussed” and perhaps a bit better connected.
Of course, the “liberal elite” never made any sociological sense. Not all academics or media figures are liberal (Newt Gingrich, George Will, Rupert Murdoch). Many well-educated middle managers and highly-trained engineers may favour latte over Red Bull, but they were never targets of the right. And how could trial lawyers be members of the nefarious elite, while their spouses in corporate law firms were not?
A greased chute, not a safety net
I know of a few parents who having a decidedly unmerry christmas this year, and every year after because their children were murdered by U.S drone aircraft.
After Jon Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, claimed in June that no civilians had been killed in US drone attacks in nearly a year, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that at least 45 civilians were killed in 10 US attacks during that period.
Overall, drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 780 civilians, including 175 children. The bureau documents 309 CIA drone strikes carried out since 2004 that have killed as many as 2,997 people. Over 85 percent were launched by the Obama administration, an average of one strike every four days. Yet the casualties of the US drone war rarely receive mention in the corporate media, except when described as “Islamic militants” or “suspected terrorists.” This is challenged not only by the bureau’s data, but also by gruesome photographs of drone victims taken by local journalists.
The Guardian described the images captured by Noor Behram, a journalist from the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, whose work appeared in an exhibition at London’s Beaconsfield gallery in August:
The photographs make for difficult viewing and leave no doubt about the destructive power of the Hellfire missiles unleashed: a boy with the top of his head missing, a severed hand, flattened houses, the parents of children killed in a strike. The chassis is all that remains of a car in one photo, another shows the funeral of a seven-year-old child. There are pictures, too, of the cheap rubber flip-flops worn by children and adults, which often survive: signs that life once existed there. A 10-year-old boy’s body, prepared for burial, shows lipstick on him and flowers in his hair – a mother’s last loving touch.
Here is my wish for the holiday season – I wish the American people will find a way to look outside the prison of their mainstream media and see what is being committed in their name, become righteously angry and put a stop to killing of innocent people.
You would think someone spiked the punch in the US Congress – they recently signed into a law (pending presidential approval) that would allow anyone (citizens at home and abroad) to be held indefinitely until war like conditions are over.
“Provisions in the bill codify an approach that allows for endless detention of US citizens and non-citizens picked up anywhere in the world. They also gives the US military the option to detain US citizens suspected of participating or aiding in terrorist activities without a trial, indefinitely.
A person can be detained “under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities”, the bill states. The hostility in question here is the “war on terror”, and at the moment, it seems to have no end.”
My first response was, are you frakking kidding me? But no, the madness is in the Senate now.
“Indeed, the chief argument against codifying these provisions and giving the military a role in domestic terrorist investigation is that the system works just fine as it is.
“You can’t find any national security experts in favour of these provisions,” said Heather Hulburt, executive director of the National Security Network, a non-profit foreign policy organisation with a focus on national security.
The list of those against the provisions reads like and institutional who’s who of national security – FBI Director Robert Mueller, CIA Director David Petraeus, Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta and dozens of senior White House counterterrorism officials, retired generals and retired interrogators have all come out strongly against allowing the US military to police US streets and detain US citizens – possibly overseas – without trial or access to their countries’ legal system.
John Brennan, the White House senior counterterrorism adviser told a US radio show that he believes the provisions are unnecessary and that “a very strong established track record of dealing successfully with individuals here in the United States who are involved in terrorism-related activities”.
Expert opinion is not what it used to be, but the list of people who work in the business saying that this bill is two fruit loops past crazy is impressive. I’m thinking that if the CIA and the FBI are saying “do not want” maybe congress should listen to their opinion.
“The bill defines the world – the entire world – as a war zone, meaning that anyone can be detained anywhere in the world and they can be said to be on the battlefield of the “war on terror”.
Was it me or did I just here the imperial march start playing…? The US routinely criticizes other regimes for doing exactly what this bill proposes; the irony is crippling.
“Take the case of Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, known to many as simply “the American hikers” during their detention in Iran, where the government accused them of being spies and sentenced them without trial. Shourd was held for more than a year, while Fattal and Bauer waited for two years before they were tried, convicted and ultimately freed.
The rallying cry to release them was strong, if not necessarily sustained. There was even a US Senate resolution, co-sponsored by two Minnesota senators – Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, both Democrats, urging Iran to free the three prisoners.
“The fact that these three innocent Americans have been unjustly detained for over a year is incomprehensible,” said Franken at the passage of the resolution in August 2010.
“The Iranian government 
needs to release Shane, Sarah and Josh immediately so that that they can be reunited with their families and start putting their lives back together.”
Franken and Klobuchar both voted in favour of the NDAA.
Given the way the US typically lambastes states it feels violating fundamental rights by detaining people without end or trial, it seems odd that it seems to going in that direction.
Between increasing troop levels within the US (roughly 20,000 to be deployed internally) and then giving them the option to pull US citizens off the streets and send them Guantanamo Bay indefinitely, the provisions in the NDAA take a page out of the playbooks of governments they routinely criticise.
“This flies in the face of fundamental rights, the constitution and recent US history,” said Manatri, referring to the 2001 attacks.
“In some ways, we’re less thoughtful, we’re less reflective, we’re less concerned with protecting individual rights now than we were 10 years ago. Were any other country to apply the terms of this bill to the US or its allies, the US would be the first to complain.”
The steady march toward authoritarian rule seems to be going unnoticed in the US. The damage wrought by fear and ignorance seems to have no bounds.
Hey, if that is a question you have to ask about a potential candidate do you think that he/she should be in the race? Nominating Gingrich would require any last vestiges of ethical conduct possessed by the Republican Party to be taken quietly into the nearest closet and strangled to death. I imagine Jebus forgives poor old Newt, so everything is hunky dory down south…
Is it just me or does every republican politician preach racism, sexism and bigotry to appeal to the wack-a-loon conservative “value voters” ( *sproing* my irony meter just imploded) and once their votes are secured by promising to disenfranchise demonized minority X (women, homosexuals, PoC, etc) they promptly ignore said base and continue to happily cement the budding plutocracy. You would think this ploy would get old like after the first five times, but behold Perry is knocking them out of the park once again.
Christmas concert banned, replaced by holiday concert! – “Happy Holidays” replacing “Merry Christmas”! – Christmas Trees not allowed in school!
Stay tuned for more stories about the oppressed majority desperately clutching their peals throughout the holiday season.
People will certainly get themselves tied up in knots over the strangest bullshite. Just ask Michael Coren from the Sun as he saunters through a frothy article about the “War on Christmas” and the evil wrought by secular forces. Bonus points if you caught the implied sneer when he compares secular people with the OWS movement.
Shitty opinion pieces aside, the fact remains that Christmas as a holiday (season) is not going anywhere soon. The Christmas season is entirely too profitable for business and by this base fact alone we will not have to worry about Christmas going the way of the dodo. Jebus needs a new blu-ray player….ohhhh yaaa! *sigh*
Rapacious consumerism is the sturdy superstructure of Christmas, the foundations are all but unshakable – all that is left to do is bloviate about which thin trappings we stretch over the capitalist orgy that defines the season. Happy Holidays? – Watch out! Holiday Tree? – Satan himself.
Does it matter? Not one bit.
Where it does matter a bit is in the public school system. In theory we have a secular school system and therefore we should not privilege any one set of magical beliefs over the other. In context of the school system it does make sense to have a Holiday Tree and to have a Holiday Concert as not every child is of the delusional christian variety. We should respect the brainwashing of other crappy mythology just as much as the flaccid christian ballyhoo and not push our beliefs unnecessarily on others.
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Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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