Dear George,
It’s snap quiz time!
Question: How does a country fight two wars when it’s insolvent?
Answer: With starry-eyed dreamers who feed on their own masturbatory fantasies in the hermetically sealed hothouse we call the Beltway. They are our dark dreamers, implementing policies grounded in the hard data of make believe. To their fervid imaginations, the War on Terror is “real” and they cling to the belief that a combination of bombs, superior firepower and hi-tech weaponry will lead us to victory, just as it did in Vietnam.
It’s that good old American “Can do” spirit on steroids, and it looks as if Obama has bought into their mad clarity of vision.
As one writer put it, “The financial damage inflicted on Americans by their own government is as great as would be expected from foreign conquest. While Washington ‘protected’ us from terrorists by fighting pointless wars abroad, the U.S. economy collapsed.”
I must say, the writer sort of missed the point. The GWOT wasn’t a war, it was a diversionary tactic that directed the drone's attention from the real war—the war on the New Deal.
Part and parcel of this covert war was the backlash against licentiousness that broke out with Ronnie’s ascension to the throne. You carried it a step further when the new propriety became defined as keeping your fly zipped and your panties on while you drowned the screams of the victims with your silence. (We introduced America's teenagers to abstinence education, and they discovered oral sex.)
Another writer speaks of the “emphasis on the shocking rise of promiscuity by American teenage females.” He goes on to say:
This, of course, was a particular point of outrage among old male conservatives of all nationalities, right up until the introduction of Viagra that at least allowed the old geezers an invitation to the orgy as well.
Ironic, then, that, as the conservative era ended in the US in 2008, it culminated with an explosion of permissiveness and irresponsibility that made the free-love hippies of the 1960s look like Southern Baptist preachers. After all, the hippies never cost the American nation over one trillion dollars.
We are all citizens of Orwell’s Oceana, convinced that war simply is, just as the sunrise is. So conditioned are we to this state of mind that a third writer tells us, “The honest truth is that the United States is technically bankrupt and in a state of chronic decline, and yet the nation persists in spending a trillion dollars a year on war and preparations for war, as though America were in danger from foreign enemies.”
That writer has sunk his teeth into a half truth. There are some real enemies out there; we should know because we’ve created them. Ask yourself, what is the ripple effect of a baby whose body parts are scattered across the pavement? How many parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and grandparents does this embitter? How far does this bitterness spread among their friends and acquaintances?
No, George, as long as the Beltway dreams its dreams and lives out its fantasies, your Eternal War will be eternal because we will continue to create enemies as fast as we destroy them.
The Beltway is the new Sorcerer’s Apprentice who can’t stop the spell it's created.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Reinventing our Eternal War on whatever.
Dear George,
Some fear that Latin America is veering to the left and that our influence in the region is waning. They fear that our shattered economy and over extended military is no longer up to the job.
They are wrong.
Even as Latin America moves to the left, it remains mired in the tar pit that is our foreign policy as America’s (ours, not theirs) black angels keep gnawing at the insurgent democracy that threatens a century-long tradition of mutual cooperation and support between their oligarchs and ours.
Do not think for a minute that sixty-plus years of institutionalized paranoia is asleep at the switch. Who needs a threat to feel threatened? Not us. With the Cold War a fading memory and your Eternal War of the Empty Policy losing its panache, we are seeing the emergency of a hybrid that is the new cornerstone of our regional policy.
Yes George, we begin with that bulwark against marijuana madness and crack coitus, The Global War on Drugs. Then we throw in some Islamofascists for good measure, and sprinkle some commies on it to add zest.
What we are seeing is the merging of three separate “wars” in to one big lollapalooza that will keep the lights burning late in the Pentagon as the geeks tally up their latest appropriation.
One writer reassures us that “the Bush administration is on the alert to Iran’s presence in Latin America…This puts into context Washington’s evidence-lacking assertions that the Tri-Border Area, where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet, is a hub for Islamic Terrorists groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.”
I have no doubt these terrorists are in daily contact with the Russians and the Chinese, whose influence is also growing in the region. The Russians are conducting joint naval exercises with Venezuela, which one alert official compared to the Cuban missile crisis, and China just bought a Peruvian copper mine.
But all is not lost. As the above writer tells us, “But because of the deeply embedded and institutionalized nature of Washington’s imperial machine, it doesn’t matter which party controls the White House and Congress.” The shit will keep rolling down hill.
There are lamentations that our problems in Latin America are blowback from our rather exploitive treatment of the region. However, what some call blowback is simply good policy, and if a couple of airplanes fly into a couple of buildings, it is a small price to pay for our robust national security that has created a business-friendly environment for America’s transnational corporations.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Some fear that Latin America is veering to the left and that our influence in the region is waning. They fear that our shattered economy and over extended military is no longer up to the job.
They are wrong.
Even as Latin America moves to the left, it remains mired in the tar pit that is our foreign policy as America’s (ours, not theirs) black angels keep gnawing at the insurgent democracy that threatens a century-long tradition of mutual cooperation and support between their oligarchs and ours.
Do not think for a minute that sixty-plus years of institutionalized paranoia is asleep at the switch. Who needs a threat to feel threatened? Not us. With the Cold War a fading memory and your Eternal War of the Empty Policy losing its panache, we are seeing the emergency of a hybrid that is the new cornerstone of our regional policy.
Yes George, we begin with that bulwark against marijuana madness and crack coitus, The Global War on Drugs. Then we throw in some Islamofascists for good measure, and sprinkle some commies on it to add zest.
What we are seeing is the merging of three separate “wars” in to one big lollapalooza that will keep the lights burning late in the Pentagon as the geeks tally up their latest appropriation.
One writer reassures us that “the Bush administration is on the alert to Iran’s presence in Latin America…This puts into context Washington’s evidence-lacking assertions that the Tri-Border Area, where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet, is a hub for Islamic Terrorists groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.”
I have no doubt these terrorists are in daily contact with the Russians and the Chinese, whose influence is also growing in the region. The Russians are conducting joint naval exercises with Venezuela, which one alert official compared to the Cuban missile crisis, and China just bought a Peruvian copper mine.
But all is not lost. As the above writer tells us, “But because of the deeply embedded and institutionalized nature of Washington’s imperial machine, it doesn’t matter which party controls the White House and Congress.” The shit will keep rolling down hill.
There are lamentations that our problems in Latin America are blowback from our rather exploitive treatment of the region. However, what some call blowback is simply good policy, and if a couple of airplanes fly into a couple of buildings, it is a small price to pay for our robust national security that has created a business-friendly environment for America’s transnational corporations.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The guy is learning!
Dear George,
Obama is learning. His administration has announced that Hamas will not be a part of the peace process. We must teach uppity natives that it's dangerous to play at democracy.
As one writer pointed out, “The Gaza debacle has made one thing perfectly clear: any peace process that seeks to marginalize, not integrate, Hamas is doomed to fail—and with catastrophic consequences.”
Hell! That’s what we want, Big Guy—catastrophic consequences!
The Middle East peace process is a subtle exercise in which the sole objective is to avoid peace at all costs. There are but two conditions for peace in the Middle East: the complete annihilation of the Palestinians, and the restoration to Israel of all the lands promised it in the Bible.
That’s when Christ will return to earth to destroy two-thirds of the Jews in Israel. The only exceptions will be those on His A-list who have embraced Him as their personal savior.
I know this for a fact because the Angel of the Lord explained it all to me the last time I was stoned.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Obama is learning. His administration has announced that Hamas will not be a part of the peace process. We must teach uppity natives that it's dangerous to play at democracy.
As one writer pointed out, “The Gaza debacle has made one thing perfectly clear: any peace process that seeks to marginalize, not integrate, Hamas is doomed to fail—and with catastrophic consequences.”
Hell! That’s what we want, Big Guy—catastrophic consequences!
The Middle East peace process is a subtle exercise in which the sole objective is to avoid peace at all costs. There are but two conditions for peace in the Middle East: the complete annihilation of the Palestinians, and the restoration to Israel of all the lands promised it in the Bible.
That’s when Christ will return to earth to destroy two-thirds of the Jews in Israel. The only exceptions will be those on His A-list who have embraced Him as their personal savior.
I know this for a fact because the Angel of the Lord explained it all to me the last time I was stoned.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Dancing the Middle East Minuet
Dear George,
I wonder if your successor will be able to dance the Middle East Minuet as well as you did. One thing going for him is having APIAC’s perky blond cheerleader, Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state. But still, it takes a nimble set of feet and deft hands to execute the intricate steps required to keep Israel happy and our oil flowing.
The first thing he must master is the Orwellian use of the word “democracy”. In the Middle East a democracy is a democracy when it’s not a democracy, while a democracy is not a democracy when it is a democracy. I understand you had to write that formula down on a well-worn 3 x 5 card which you kept in your shirt pocket for easy reference.
Then he will have to attend to the care a feeding of the monolith. The bureaucratic paranoia that keeps our defense industry fat and sassy needs a monolith. Threats that are as discrete as they are scattered simply won’t do. A talented policymaker is able to glue thousands of flying gnats together in such a way that he creates a big, brown pulsating monster. This is a skill we learned during the Cold War when we cobbled together the Communist monolith that kept the Great Depression at bay until last year.
Thus it is that Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are lumped together under the faux category of “Islamofacism”, even though both Hezbollah and Hamas were democratically elected and Iran has more comprehensive elections than our “democratic” allies, Saudi Arabia and Jordon.
That doesn’t stop us from touting Israel as a shining beacon of democracy in the Middle East even though only individuals who belong to the state-approved religion can enjoy full citizenship, which is quite proper since God deeded the land to Abraham.
Irony is the backbone of our foreign policy.
The first thing your successor must do if he is to succeed in the Middle East is lose his integrity. You had an advantage in that you had none when you assumed office. Granted, Obama has taken some important steps in that direction, but he still has a way to go.
Fortunately he has surrounded himself with aides and advisors who will lead him out of the wilderness of integrity and into the promise land of duplicity.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
I wonder if your successor will be able to dance the Middle East Minuet as well as you did. One thing going for him is having APIAC’s perky blond cheerleader, Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state. But still, it takes a nimble set of feet and deft hands to execute the intricate steps required to keep Israel happy and our oil flowing.
The first thing he must master is the Orwellian use of the word “democracy”. In the Middle East a democracy is a democracy when it’s not a democracy, while a democracy is not a democracy when it is a democracy. I understand you had to write that formula down on a well-worn 3 x 5 card which you kept in your shirt pocket for easy reference.
Then he will have to attend to the care a feeding of the monolith. The bureaucratic paranoia that keeps our defense industry fat and sassy needs a monolith. Threats that are as discrete as they are scattered simply won’t do. A talented policymaker is able to glue thousands of flying gnats together in such a way that he creates a big, brown pulsating monster. This is a skill we learned during the Cold War when we cobbled together the Communist monolith that kept the Great Depression at bay until last year.
Thus it is that Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are lumped together under the faux category of “Islamofacism”, even though both Hezbollah and Hamas were democratically elected and Iran has more comprehensive elections than our “democratic” allies, Saudi Arabia and Jordon.
That doesn’t stop us from touting Israel as a shining beacon of democracy in the Middle East even though only individuals who belong to the state-approved religion can enjoy full citizenship, which is quite proper since God deeded the land to Abraham.
Irony is the backbone of our foreign policy.
The first thing your successor must do if he is to succeed in the Middle East is lose his integrity. You had an advantage in that you had none when you assumed office. Granted, Obama has taken some important steps in that direction, but he still has a way to go.
Fortunately he has surrounded himself with aides and advisors who will lead him out of the wilderness of integrity and into the promise land of duplicity.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Where there's a will there's a way, sometimes.
Dear George,
There is no doubt that your administration cut across the night sky like a dying meteorite whose stench still lingers in the air. What gave it its brilliance was the deftness with which it put ideology before reality.
If an ideology is heartfelt, then reality will conform to it, if one’s will and character are strong enough. When reality fails to conform to ideology, the fault lies not with the ideology but with a lack of will and character.
A strong will is the product of a strong character, one that possesses a pared down intellect whose laser-like sharpness sees only what it wants to see. It is an intellect that can afford to ignore history because it creates history. It is an intellect that transcends petty partisan differences. Conservatives and liberals, Republican and Democrats are equally seduced by it.
A strong will eschews nuance and subtleness because both are simply weakness by another name.
Because the will creates history, it can afford to ignore both consequences and blowback. A policy is not judged by its results, but by how well it hews to the ideological premises that gave it birth.
We are where we are today because your will was strong and pure, and the pinprick sharpness of your intellect was barely visible to the naked eye.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
There is no doubt that your administration cut across the night sky like a dying meteorite whose stench still lingers in the air. What gave it its brilliance was the deftness with which it put ideology before reality.
If an ideology is heartfelt, then reality will conform to it, if one’s will and character are strong enough. When reality fails to conform to ideology, the fault lies not with the ideology but with a lack of will and character.
A strong will is the product of a strong character, one that possesses a pared down intellect whose laser-like sharpness sees only what it wants to see. It is an intellect that can afford to ignore history because it creates history. It is an intellect that transcends petty partisan differences. Conservatives and liberals, Republican and Democrats are equally seduced by it.
A strong will eschews nuance and subtleness because both are simply weakness by another name.
Because the will creates history, it can afford to ignore both consequences and blowback. A policy is not judged by its results, but by how well it hews to the ideological premises that gave it birth.
We are where we are today because your will was strong and pure, and the pinprick sharpness of your intellect was barely visible to the naked eye.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Monday, January 26, 2009
The Tao of Idleness
Dear George,
I got quite a hoot out of the "Styles" section of Sunday’s Times. Once again, the main stream media does a shocking expose of the obvious.
The headline that caught my attention read, “Working Hard To Look Busy.” It seems employees are engaging in a lot of useless activity just to look busy so their bosses will think they’re essential to the operation. The story explains that, “Looking busy when you’re not in order to fool the boss can be something of an art form.”
Duh!
Welcome to service and finance capitalism where work has little or nothing to do with productivity. In order to explain this, Big Guy, I’ve got to run a little history past you, so stay awake!
When capitalism raised its ugly head, one of the first things it did was redefine the concept of work. In traditional agrarian societies work was task oriented. If there was a specific task to be done, such as planting or harvesting, you worked your ass off from dawn to dusk. Once the task was finished, you goofed off
The same was true for artisans who would keep their shops open until they’d made a little money. Then they’d close up and party until the money ran out.
Well, capitalists decided this work ethic sucked since they couldn’t have workers coming and going as they pleased. So, under their guidance work became time oriented. In other words, you worked a set number of hours per day regardless of the number of tasks that needed completion.
That was when teachers started bitching at their students about being on time.
In a straight manufacturing economy, work kept something of its agrarian focus since factories actually made things. However, the radical change came when corporations grew in complexity and as service and finance capitalism started squeezing out manufacturing.
As corporations became more complex, they added additional layers of management. Often time, a layer would be created for a specific project, but once the project was finished the layer remained through sheer inertia, so activities had to be created to justify its existence.
Thus was born Parkinson’s Law that work so as to fill the time available for its consumption, along with its corollary that data expands to fill the space available for its storage.
I can tell you from experience that doing something to conceal the fact that you’re doing nothing can be stressful, but, hell, you’ve known that for most of your life.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
I got quite a hoot out of the "Styles" section of Sunday’s Times. Once again, the main stream media does a shocking expose of the obvious.
The headline that caught my attention read, “Working Hard To Look Busy.” It seems employees are engaging in a lot of useless activity just to look busy so their bosses will think they’re essential to the operation. The story explains that, “Looking busy when you’re not in order to fool the boss can be something of an art form.”
Duh!
Welcome to service and finance capitalism where work has little or nothing to do with productivity. In order to explain this, Big Guy, I’ve got to run a little history past you, so stay awake!
When capitalism raised its ugly head, one of the first things it did was redefine the concept of work. In traditional agrarian societies work was task oriented. If there was a specific task to be done, such as planting or harvesting, you worked your ass off from dawn to dusk. Once the task was finished, you goofed off
The same was true for artisans who would keep their shops open until they’d made a little money. Then they’d close up and party until the money ran out.
Well, capitalists decided this work ethic sucked since they couldn’t have workers coming and going as they pleased. So, under their guidance work became time oriented. In other words, you worked a set number of hours per day regardless of the number of tasks that needed completion.
That was when teachers started bitching at their students about being on time.
In a straight manufacturing economy, work kept something of its agrarian focus since factories actually made things. However, the radical change came when corporations grew in complexity and as service and finance capitalism started squeezing out manufacturing.
As corporations became more complex, they added additional layers of management. Often time, a layer would be created for a specific project, but once the project was finished the layer remained through sheer inertia, so activities had to be created to justify its existence.
Thus was born Parkinson’s Law that work so as to fill the time available for its consumption, along with its corollary that data expands to fill the space available for its storage.
I can tell you from experience that doing something to conceal the fact that you’re doing nothing can be stressful, but, hell, you’ve known that for most of your life.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Living the Tradition
Dear George,
The true test of a great leader is his ability to scam. I.F. Stone once said that all a journalist has to remember are two words, “Governments lie.” This could explain why journalism is a dead science.
My big concern is that your successor isn’t as adept at scamming as you were. You weren’t just a great leader; you were a miracle who kept your credibility in tact through eight years of pure bullshit. Great liars are those who are believed even when people know they are lying through their teeth.
Often, the greatest liars are born hoddypeaks.
There are two scams you successor must keep alive and fresh. First, that capitalism and freedom are two peas in a pod, and second, that the United States has a divinely appointed mission to spread capitalism and freedom to the world, whether it wants it or not.
Our leaders are fortunate that history is too long term for those who live in the “now”. For the truth is that capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive. Capitalism needs political oppression to thrive. America is the capitalist powerhouse it is because nineteenth century mayors, governors and presidents were willing to dispatch police and troops to beat and gun down labor agitators.
Granted, we had a little setback during the Great Depression, but thanks to you, capitalism has managed to recoup its losses. We can only pray that your successor will continue this trend, though it makes little difference what he wants since Congress is a corporate employee.
The only people who see through these scams are our marginalized radicals. One such radical, Michael Parenti, puts it this way:
Capitalist rulers continue to pose as the progenitors of democracy even as they subvert it, not only at home but throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Any nation that is not “investor friendly,” that attempts to use its land, labor, capital, natural resources, and markets in a self-developing manner, outside the dominion of transnational corporate hegemony, runs the risk of being demonized and targeted as “a threat to U.S. national security. Democracy becomes a problem for corporate America not when it fails to work but when it works too well.
The Department of Defense isn’t about defense; it’s about marketing.
You are the gold standard for great leadership. I only hope your successor can carry on your tradition.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
The true test of a great leader is his ability to scam. I.F. Stone once said that all a journalist has to remember are two words, “Governments lie.” This could explain why journalism is a dead science.
My big concern is that your successor isn’t as adept at scamming as you were. You weren’t just a great leader; you were a miracle who kept your credibility in tact through eight years of pure bullshit. Great liars are those who are believed even when people know they are lying through their teeth.
Often, the greatest liars are born hoddypeaks.
There are two scams you successor must keep alive and fresh. First, that capitalism and freedom are two peas in a pod, and second, that the United States has a divinely appointed mission to spread capitalism and freedom to the world, whether it wants it or not.
Our leaders are fortunate that history is too long term for those who live in the “now”. For the truth is that capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive. Capitalism needs political oppression to thrive. America is the capitalist powerhouse it is because nineteenth century mayors, governors and presidents were willing to dispatch police and troops to beat and gun down labor agitators.
Granted, we had a little setback during the Great Depression, but thanks to you, capitalism has managed to recoup its losses. We can only pray that your successor will continue this trend, though it makes little difference what he wants since Congress is a corporate employee.
The only people who see through these scams are our marginalized radicals. One such radical, Michael Parenti, puts it this way:
Capitalist rulers continue to pose as the progenitors of democracy even as they subvert it, not only at home but throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Any nation that is not “investor friendly,” that attempts to use its land, labor, capital, natural resources, and markets in a self-developing manner, outside the dominion of transnational corporate hegemony, runs the risk of being demonized and targeted as “a threat to U.S. national security. Democracy becomes a problem for corporate America not when it fails to work but when it works too well.
The Department of Defense isn’t about defense; it’s about marketing.
You are the gold standard for great leadership. I only hope your successor can carry on your tradition.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Friday, January 23, 2009
Let Misery Rain
Dear George,
Tonight, before you crawl into bed, I want you to drop to your knees and pray earnestly for rack and ruin. Pray for disaster; pray for a complete breakdown of our economic infrastructure; pray that misery will stalk the land leaving the cries of the hungry and destitute in its wake.
Pray that your successor will continue to coddle terrorists until America is struck by Pearl Harbor III. Pray that terrorists attack chemical and nuclear power plants, adding to the pain of a destitute nation.
Pray that the affliction and anguish reach a fever pitch, until the American people rise up as one and demand your return. Let them cry out for your steely gaze and your firm smirk. Let them pine for another hemorrhoidal strut across the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
For the truth is that the drones prefer a stagnant pool to roiled waters. They will demand the dazed reassurance only your presence can give them.
In closing, never forget that feral capitalism lives! Greed, avarice and violence are hard wired into our DNA. These are the very qualities that you personify. And no amount of pretty rhetoric will change that.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Tonight, before you crawl into bed, I want you to drop to your knees and pray earnestly for rack and ruin. Pray for disaster; pray for a complete breakdown of our economic infrastructure; pray that misery will stalk the land leaving the cries of the hungry and destitute in its wake.
Pray that your successor will continue to coddle terrorists until America is struck by Pearl Harbor III. Pray that terrorists attack chemical and nuclear power plants, adding to the pain of a destitute nation.
Pray that the affliction and anguish reach a fever pitch, until the American people rise up as one and demand your return. Let them cry out for your steely gaze and your firm smirk. Let them pine for another hemorrhoidal strut across the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
For the truth is that the drones prefer a stagnant pool to roiled waters. They will demand the dazed reassurance only your presence can give them.
In closing, never forget that feral capitalism lives! Greed, avarice and violence are hard wired into our DNA. These are the very qualities that you personify. And no amount of pretty rhetoric will change that.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Thursday, January 22, 2009
He's ruining our prosperity!
Dear George,
My God isn’t this shaping up to be a dull administration. This two-year ban on the revolving door between government and private enterprise is enough to put a person to sleep. Look at what it is costing us: the excitement of scandal, the joy of indictment, the thrill of sentencing and the schadenfreude that can only come with seeing a peer in an orange jumpsuit.
It really grinds me that you spent eight years perfecting a most perfect union between government and business, and this turkey is trying to tear it all down.
We are witnessing the death of expertise. After all, who is better qualified to draft legislation regulating a given industry than a lobbyist who has had extensive experience with both the industry and government? What has drawn the talented to government service like vultures to carrion has been the promise of the big bucks they can make when they pass from the public sector to the private.
Your successor has forgotten that the reason evil is so appealing is that it’s exciting. Virtue stifles the senses. The man who is engaged in an illegal activity exists in a state of heightened stimulation. Because he knows that he will be ruined if caught, he lives a life in which the senses are on high alert. It is a life of daring in which he holds his breath as he sees just how far he can push the envelope without being uncovered.
Integrity deadens. Too much of it attracts idealists who actually try to solve problems rather than profit from them. In end, integrity is a threat to our prosperity.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
My God isn’t this shaping up to be a dull administration. This two-year ban on the revolving door between government and private enterprise is enough to put a person to sleep. Look at what it is costing us: the excitement of scandal, the joy of indictment, the thrill of sentencing and the schadenfreude that can only come with seeing a peer in an orange jumpsuit.
It really grinds me that you spent eight years perfecting a most perfect union between government and business, and this turkey is trying to tear it all down.
We are witnessing the death of expertise. After all, who is better qualified to draft legislation regulating a given industry than a lobbyist who has had extensive experience with both the industry and government? What has drawn the talented to government service like vultures to carrion has been the promise of the big bucks they can make when they pass from the public sector to the private.
Your successor has forgotten that the reason evil is so appealing is that it’s exciting. Virtue stifles the senses. The man who is engaged in an illegal activity exists in a state of heightened stimulation. Because he knows that he will be ruined if caught, he lives a life in which the senses are on high alert. It is a life of daring in which he holds his breath as he sees just how far he can push the envelope without being uncovered.
Integrity deadens. Too much of it attracts idealists who actually try to solve problems rather than profit from them. In end, integrity is a threat to our prosperity.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
I await your return.
Dear George,
I refuse to believe that your term has “ended; I refuse to believe that you have “left office”.
No! It is none of the above!
You are simply in a temporary exile until your minions can manipulate your triumphant return to power. And you will return! Let me explain why.
Even though I was stoned; even though I was face down on the floor inhaling the perfume of my piss-stained carpet, I could still hear your successor’s inaugural address, and I was appalled at the decency that poured from his mouth. Peace, love and understanding—it’s enough to make you barf.
Well, let me tell you, Big Guy, sixty years of martial glory has killed this nation’s appetite for decency. All we care about is wars: wars on Communism, crime, drugs, poverty, cancer and terrorism. Our tolerance for peace and understanding is limited.
The most virulent savage walking the face of the earth is the man in a dark suit and tie with an American flag pin in his lapel, for he believes himself to be above superstition and ignorance when, in truth, both rule his life. And the most pervasive superstition that rules his every thought is his belief that there are rational solutions to that collection of messy problems we call life. So this savage forces the yoke of rationality on a life that is one continuous nonlinear paradox.
A rational solution begins life as a child of pragmatism, but quickly hardens into an ideology driven by inertia, an ideology that books no opposition and, in the end, must destroy all who refuse to embrace it. A realist is a man who buys into this superstition.
These suits form a black vortex that will suck even the most decent of men into its dark hole. It makes up a vast bureaucracy that slowly turns upon its own momentum, a momentum too powerful to resist. Already we are seeing signs that the vortex is beginning to draw your successor in.
I must say, I’ve gotten quite a chuckle out of all this blather about “racial harmony” and how “historic” is your successor’s election. The greatest con game ever foisted on the American people is that there is such a thing as race. Skin color is as phony a biological determinant as being skinny is. But, it serves an important function in that it distracts the drones from the real division that rends America: class and culture.
Class and culture mark a man in the way he dresses, the way he talks and the way he acts. And the belief that your successor represents a new age in race relations hides the fact that our class divisions are growing wider. Your successor belong to the elite class, his rhetoric notwithstanding.
America will achieve true class harmony when a Black rapper takes the oath of office and begins his inaugural address by saying, “Yo! Listen up, motherfuckers!”
I await your return.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
I refuse to believe that your term has “ended; I refuse to believe that you have “left office”.
No! It is none of the above!
You are simply in a temporary exile until your minions can manipulate your triumphant return to power. And you will return! Let me explain why.
Even though I was stoned; even though I was face down on the floor inhaling the perfume of my piss-stained carpet, I could still hear your successor’s inaugural address, and I was appalled at the decency that poured from his mouth. Peace, love and understanding—it’s enough to make you barf.
Well, let me tell you, Big Guy, sixty years of martial glory has killed this nation’s appetite for decency. All we care about is wars: wars on Communism, crime, drugs, poverty, cancer and terrorism. Our tolerance for peace and understanding is limited.
The most virulent savage walking the face of the earth is the man in a dark suit and tie with an American flag pin in his lapel, for he believes himself to be above superstition and ignorance when, in truth, both rule his life. And the most pervasive superstition that rules his every thought is his belief that there are rational solutions to that collection of messy problems we call life. So this savage forces the yoke of rationality on a life that is one continuous nonlinear paradox.
A rational solution begins life as a child of pragmatism, but quickly hardens into an ideology driven by inertia, an ideology that books no opposition and, in the end, must destroy all who refuse to embrace it. A realist is a man who buys into this superstition.
These suits form a black vortex that will suck even the most decent of men into its dark hole. It makes up a vast bureaucracy that slowly turns upon its own momentum, a momentum too powerful to resist. Already we are seeing signs that the vortex is beginning to draw your successor in.
I must say, I’ve gotten quite a chuckle out of all this blather about “racial harmony” and how “historic” is your successor’s election. The greatest con game ever foisted on the American people is that there is such a thing as race. Skin color is as phony a biological determinant as being skinny is. But, it serves an important function in that it distracts the drones from the real division that rends America: class and culture.
Class and culture mark a man in the way he dresses, the way he talks and the way he acts. And the belief that your successor represents a new age in race relations hides the fact that our class divisions are growing wider. Your successor belong to the elite class, his rhetoric notwithstanding.
America will achieve true class harmony when a Black rapper takes the oath of office and begins his inaugural address by saying, “Yo! Listen up, motherfuckers!”
I await your return.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Where the Wild Things Aren't
Dear George,
The most wonderful experience an authoritarian regime can have is when people start enslaving themselves, and people enslave themselves when they begin to fear the unknown and the unseen.
This fear of the unseen begins to feed on itself, and soon a feedback loop arises in which the fear of one unseen threat gives rise to the fear of another unseen threat, as something that was mundane and innocuous suddenly seems to threatens existence. The fear of the mundane, in turn, conditions the drones to fear whatever threats their leaders chose to trot out for the purpose of social control.
I am pleased to see that increasingly the most vibrant mundane threat, the scariest “other” is none other than microscopic germs. They scare the shit out of us. Because of this fear, we have food handlers wearing latex gloves less they contaminate food with their nose pickings. Supermarkets are now offering their customers antibacterial wipes to sanitize the handles of their shopping carts so they won’t contract AIDS in the produce department.
But, the piece de resistance is a sleep sack to protect you from bacterial infection when you sleep in a motel bed. (You just don’t know what kind of skank slept there before you.)
Little by little, the germ has become a metaphor for all the wild and unpredictable things that torment our imaginations, especially the ones that either don’t exist or whose importance are greatly exaggerated by our fervid imaginations.
In the end, our greatest fear is life itself. As one writer explains:
Life itself, after all, is the most fundamental existential threat; life embraces its compliment, death. Life is full of wild things, threatening things. The word ‘wild’ means self-willed. Life itself is a threat that must be eliminated. That’s the final logic of the final solution.
The ‘dark’ ‘wilderness’ is simply full of threats, you know. We were taught that too. And if you are a white ‘American’ it is manifestly your destiny to conquer the wild threat, to tame it, to break it—to eliminate it.
The lowly is helping to slowly turn America into a gated community as we build our walls and enter the names of “foreigners” into our data banks. Our approach to wilderness is to either disinfect her or pave her over. The same is true of wild cultures that are too unpredictable for our refined tastes. It makes little difference whether we pave over wild cultures with asphalt or the rubble of their dwellings or the bones of their dead.
The bottom line is that we are civilized, and being civilized we will have order and predictability. We will place the yoke of linear rationality on a life that is a continuous nonlinear paradox. And then we will try to figure out why we screw things up so badly.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
The most wonderful experience an authoritarian regime can have is when people start enslaving themselves, and people enslave themselves when they begin to fear the unknown and the unseen.
This fear of the unseen begins to feed on itself, and soon a feedback loop arises in which the fear of one unseen threat gives rise to the fear of another unseen threat, as something that was mundane and innocuous suddenly seems to threatens existence. The fear of the mundane, in turn, conditions the drones to fear whatever threats their leaders chose to trot out for the purpose of social control.
I am pleased to see that increasingly the most vibrant mundane threat, the scariest “other” is none other than microscopic germs. They scare the shit out of us. Because of this fear, we have food handlers wearing latex gloves less they contaminate food with their nose pickings. Supermarkets are now offering their customers antibacterial wipes to sanitize the handles of their shopping carts so they won’t contract AIDS in the produce department.
But, the piece de resistance is a sleep sack to protect you from bacterial infection when you sleep in a motel bed. (You just don’t know what kind of skank slept there before you.)
Little by little, the germ has become a metaphor for all the wild and unpredictable things that torment our imaginations, especially the ones that either don’t exist or whose importance are greatly exaggerated by our fervid imaginations.
In the end, our greatest fear is life itself. As one writer explains:
Life itself, after all, is the most fundamental existential threat; life embraces its compliment, death. Life is full of wild things, threatening things. The word ‘wild’ means self-willed. Life itself is a threat that must be eliminated. That’s the final logic of the final solution.
The ‘dark’ ‘wilderness’ is simply full of threats, you know. We were taught that too. And if you are a white ‘American’ it is manifestly your destiny to conquer the wild threat, to tame it, to break it—to eliminate it.
The lowly is helping to slowly turn America into a gated community as we build our walls and enter the names of “foreigners” into our data banks. Our approach to wilderness is to either disinfect her or pave her over. The same is true of wild cultures that are too unpredictable for our refined tastes. It makes little difference whether we pave over wild cultures with asphalt or the rubble of their dwellings or the bones of their dead.
The bottom line is that we are civilized, and being civilized we will have order and predictability. We will place the yoke of linear rationality on a life that is a continuous nonlinear paradox. And then we will try to figure out why we screw things up so badly.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Making the new better.
Dear George,
Many are the ties that grip America and Israel in their danse macabre. The music plays, the couple turn and turn again around the dance floor and with each turn people die and buildings collapse.
The ties go deep, far beyond APIAC’s ownership of Congress and the Whitehouse. And the one tie that is never mentioned is Israel’s use as a testing lab for American weapons that are still in a state of development.
It impossible to judge a new weapon’s effectiveness unless it is first tested on real people and Israel’s attack on the Gaza Ghetto has been a boon to weapon developers.
On such weapon is the Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME). This little baby creates a small but lethal blast in an area 10 meters in diameter, thus minimizing collateral damage to humans, except for the collateral damage created within the blast area. Of course, we have to take into account the Circle Area Probability which posits that half of the projectiles will miss their target.
The injuries the DIMEs cause are delicious: severed or melted limbs and internal ruptures. The up side is that the weapon produces no shrapnel, only a “fine dusting of minute metal particles.” I guess we can say that Israel is going to knuckle and DIME Gaza to death. (I swear there’s nothing like a well-turned pun to take the edge off carnage.)
Then there are the flechette shells. When these babies explode they release thousands of tiny metal darts that turn humans exposed to the blast into pin cushions.
However, the boys in weapon development never rest on their laurels. The downside of the flechette is that a dart only has one point, so while the injury might be painful, it is possible it wouldn’t be lethal. So they came up with the Kalanit, a cute little goody that releases hundreds of razor sharp little discs upon explosion. You might call it death by Frisbees.
Now the beauty of these weapons is that they are not banned by international law because they are still in development.
Granted, the use of these weapons is still sinful, in a manner of speaking, but the morality of their use may be moot since Israel has declared a unilateral ceasefire, and sin evaporates as soon as peace breaks out. The dead come to life and body parts reassemble themselves. All is forgiven; all is forgotten, except among the survivors who have seen loved ones and friends slaughtered. Every grieving parent, every grieving child is an angry seed that will remain dormant until conditions are right for it to germinate and produce the rage that will continue the madness.
In peace, war crimes are glorified and failure is redefined as success.
As for the Gazian dead, a spread sheet will be their shroud upon which the jet-black numbers that tote up the cost-benefit analysis of the assault will march across the paper, paper that will be thick and heavy so the blood of the vanquished can’t soak through.
Even now, in an office buried deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, geeks are pouring over an analysis of their new weapons’ efficiency. The key to successful weapon development is to maximize efficiency, and Israel has made an invaluable contribution to our arsenal of democracy.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Many are the ties that grip America and Israel in their danse macabre. The music plays, the couple turn and turn again around the dance floor and with each turn people die and buildings collapse.
The ties go deep, far beyond APIAC’s ownership of Congress and the Whitehouse. And the one tie that is never mentioned is Israel’s use as a testing lab for American weapons that are still in a state of development.
It impossible to judge a new weapon’s effectiveness unless it is first tested on real people and Israel’s attack on the Gaza Ghetto has been a boon to weapon developers.
On such weapon is the Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME). This little baby creates a small but lethal blast in an area 10 meters in diameter, thus minimizing collateral damage to humans, except for the collateral damage created within the blast area. Of course, we have to take into account the Circle Area Probability which posits that half of the projectiles will miss their target.
The injuries the DIMEs cause are delicious: severed or melted limbs and internal ruptures. The up side is that the weapon produces no shrapnel, only a “fine dusting of minute metal particles.” I guess we can say that Israel is going to knuckle and DIME Gaza to death. (I swear there’s nothing like a well-turned pun to take the edge off carnage.)
Then there are the flechette shells. When these babies explode they release thousands of tiny metal darts that turn humans exposed to the blast into pin cushions.
However, the boys in weapon development never rest on their laurels. The downside of the flechette is that a dart only has one point, so while the injury might be painful, it is possible it wouldn’t be lethal. So they came up with the Kalanit, a cute little goody that releases hundreds of razor sharp little discs upon explosion. You might call it death by Frisbees.
Now the beauty of these weapons is that they are not banned by international law because they are still in development.
Granted, the use of these weapons is still sinful, in a manner of speaking, but the morality of their use may be moot since Israel has declared a unilateral ceasefire, and sin evaporates as soon as peace breaks out. The dead come to life and body parts reassemble themselves. All is forgiven; all is forgotten, except among the survivors who have seen loved ones and friends slaughtered. Every grieving parent, every grieving child is an angry seed that will remain dormant until conditions are right for it to germinate and produce the rage that will continue the madness.
In peace, war crimes are glorified and failure is redefined as success.
As for the Gazian dead, a spread sheet will be their shroud upon which the jet-black numbers that tote up the cost-benefit analysis of the assault will march across the paper, paper that will be thick and heavy so the blood of the vanquished can’t soak through.
Even now, in an office buried deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, geeks are pouring over an analysis of their new weapons’ efficiency. The key to successful weapon development is to maximize efficiency, and Israel has made an invaluable contribution to our arsenal of democracy.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Saturday, January 17, 2009
A Riddle for George
Dear George,
I have a riddle for you.
What is the one quality that guarantees greatness? What is the quality that allows a man to leave an indelible mark on history?
Let me give you some clues. It is the quality that made it possible for the British to bomb Iraqi villages for nonpayment of taxes between the wars. It’s the quality that gave us Auschwitz; it gave us the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden. It gave us Hiroshima and Hanoi; it made possible Baghdad and Fallujah. And it is now leading Israel to the pinnacle of glory.
So, here's the answer before you overtax your brain. The quality I am speaking of is the serene barbarity of the civilized.
It is a quality you possess in excess. It is a quality that is born of an intellect drained of emotion and feeling. It is what produces the clear-eyed realist who can transform bureaucratic sclerosis into falling bombs.
It is what has given us the highest expressing of western thought: war by laptop.
In your wildest dreams, did you ever believe that you would be a guardian of western values?
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
I have a riddle for you.
What is the one quality that guarantees greatness? What is the quality that allows a man to leave an indelible mark on history?
Let me give you some clues. It is the quality that made it possible for the British to bomb Iraqi villages for nonpayment of taxes between the wars. It’s the quality that gave us Auschwitz; it gave us the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden. It gave us Hiroshima and Hanoi; it made possible Baghdad and Fallujah. And it is now leading Israel to the pinnacle of glory.
So, here's the answer before you overtax your brain. The quality I am speaking of is the serene barbarity of the civilized.
It is a quality you possess in excess. It is a quality that is born of an intellect drained of emotion and feeling. It is what produces the clear-eyed realist who can transform bureaucratic sclerosis into falling bombs.
It is what has given us the highest expressing of western thought: war by laptop.
In your wildest dreams, did you ever believe that you would be a guardian of western values?
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Friday, January 16, 2009
The Dogs of War
Dear George,
Those who pay attention (praise God, they are few and far between) bemoan the terrible conditions in Gaza: the overcrowded hospitals, children who cling to dead parents for days before they are rescued, the indiscriminate bombing of civilians, and the lack of food and water.
Well, Goddamn it Big Guy, I think it’s time we emphasized the positive, here.
The dogs of Gaza are fat and happy. They’re eating the corpses.
Talk about a silver lining…
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Those who pay attention (praise God, they are few and far between) bemoan the terrible conditions in Gaza: the overcrowded hospitals, children who cling to dead parents for days before they are rescued, the indiscriminate bombing of civilians, and the lack of food and water.
Well, Goddamn it Big Guy, I think it’s time we emphasized the positive, here.
The dogs of Gaza are fat and happy. They’re eating the corpses.
Talk about a silver lining…
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Thursday, January 15, 2009
A Psalm to the God of Glory
GOGORINOOO!!!
I am a stoned dingleberry flitting through the galaxy ‘til I splat against the left nipple of the befuddled God of Glory beating his drum with his obsidian phallus roaring, “Suffer the little children unto me!” and with each beat of his drum comes a blinding flash and a deafening boom sowing its burning starlets on flesh that screams as each starlet burns toward the bone to the music of children crying “Mommy! Mommy! Make it stop!” and each thunder clap scatters shards of broken glass that glittered like diamonds in the moonlight deaf to the wail of sirens in the night and the stench of charred flesh for broken glass cares not nor knows not, and the demigod jehovah smiles, and the God of Glory beats his drum as he sings lullabies to the burning children.
…your whatever
…b
I am a stoned dingleberry flitting through the galaxy ‘til I splat against the left nipple of the befuddled God of Glory beating his drum with his obsidian phallus roaring, “Suffer the little children unto me!” and with each beat of his drum comes a blinding flash and a deafening boom sowing its burning starlets on flesh that screams as each starlet burns toward the bone to the music of children crying “Mommy! Mommy! Make it stop!” and each thunder clap scatters shards of broken glass that glittered like diamonds in the moonlight deaf to the wail of sirens in the night and the stench of charred flesh for broken glass cares not nor knows not, and the demigod jehovah smiles, and the God of Glory beats his drum as he sings lullabies to the burning children.
…your whatever
…b
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Dangerous Journalism
Dear George,
I’m a little pissed off, Big Guy. Israel made a simple request that foreign journalists stay the fuck out of Gaza while Israel was conducting its attitude-adjustment campaign. After all, this is a private matter between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Western journalists, being the subservient lot that they are, bowed and complied.
So what’s the story with Al Jazeera? Do they think journalism is still about telling the truth?
I was very disturbed when I came across the following clip from one of their programs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59zbDWaixjQ
My God, George, what would have happened if we’d shown newsreels of German children incinerated by our fire bombings during World War II? The moral outrage would have forced us out of the war before victory could be achieved, just as it did in Vietnam.
Somebody should pull Al Jazeera aside and explain to it that new-age journalism is not about facts, but is about propaganda. Today’s journalist is a de facto state official whose sole function is to cheerlead for the state’s policies, no matter how demented they are.
It’s not fair to the public to upset their languorous apathy with disturbing images of wounded children.
It would do much for freedom and democracy if you would arrange to have their English website blocked. You can find their site here: http://english.aljazeera.net/. Have the boys at NSA get on it right away.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
I’m a little pissed off, Big Guy. Israel made a simple request that foreign journalists stay the fuck out of Gaza while Israel was conducting its attitude-adjustment campaign. After all, this is a private matter between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Western journalists, being the subservient lot that they are, bowed and complied.
So what’s the story with Al Jazeera? Do they think journalism is still about telling the truth?
I was very disturbed when I came across the following clip from one of their programs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59zbDWaixjQ
My God, George, what would have happened if we’d shown newsreels of German children incinerated by our fire bombings during World War II? The moral outrage would have forced us out of the war before victory could be achieved, just as it did in Vietnam.
Somebody should pull Al Jazeera aside and explain to it that new-age journalism is not about facts, but is about propaganda. Today’s journalist is a de facto state official whose sole function is to cheerlead for the state’s policies, no matter how demented they are.
It’s not fair to the public to upset their languorous apathy with disturbing images of wounded children.
It would do much for freedom and democracy if you would arrange to have their English website blocked. You can find their site here: http://english.aljazeera.net/. Have the boys at NSA get on it right away.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The Politeness of the War Criminal
Dear George,
According to yesterday’s Times, it looks like your successor is going to give you a pass on your assorted war crimes. He’s starting down the same path Billy-Boy travelled sixteen years ago when he decided against prosecuting Ronnie for his little misadventures. Billy’s rationale, at that time, was that he was doing so in the name of nonpartisanship.
The Republicans then spent the next eight years trying to crucify him.
On ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”, Obama uttered that sweet platitude that is music to the ears of all criminals when he espoused “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
Of course he’s not going to investigate your policies on torture, illegal detention, habeas corpus and the use of military commissions. His APIAC handlers aren’t about to allow that given the enormity of the war crimes Israel is committing in Gaza. The United States and Israel are joined at the hip, and an indictment of the United States would be an indictment of Israel.
It is a truism that the powerful are never guilty of criminal activity since their power legitimizes their every act.
As one former White House attorney put it, “A new president doesn’t want to look vengeful, and the last thing a new administration wants to do is spend its time and energy rehashing the perceived sins of the old one.”
Moral turpitude is now defined as good manners.
Part of Obama’s good manners is a reluctance to piss off America’s intelligence establishment by calling them to task for their manifold illegalities. A former CIA official summed it up when he said, “If agents were criminally investigated for doing something that top Bush administration asked them to do and that they were assured was legal, intelligence officers would be less willing to take risks to protect the country.”
What a contrast with the 1975 Church Committee’s airing of the CIA’s dirty laundry. The difference is, of course, that the country is far more paranoid now than it was then, so it is willing to tolerate any atrocity as long as it preserves our faux sense of security.
We must be protected from our imaginary threats, and it is the duty of every administration to conduct its foreign affairs in such a manner that these imaginary threats are made real.
I'm thrilled to see your successor continuing this tradition.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
According to yesterday’s Times, it looks like your successor is going to give you a pass on your assorted war crimes. He’s starting down the same path Billy-Boy travelled sixteen years ago when he decided against prosecuting Ronnie for his little misadventures. Billy’s rationale, at that time, was that he was doing so in the name of nonpartisanship.
The Republicans then spent the next eight years trying to crucify him.
On ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”, Obama uttered that sweet platitude that is music to the ears of all criminals when he espoused “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
Of course he’s not going to investigate your policies on torture, illegal detention, habeas corpus and the use of military commissions. His APIAC handlers aren’t about to allow that given the enormity of the war crimes Israel is committing in Gaza. The United States and Israel are joined at the hip, and an indictment of the United States would be an indictment of Israel.
It is a truism that the powerful are never guilty of criminal activity since their power legitimizes their every act.
As one former White House attorney put it, “A new president doesn’t want to look vengeful, and the last thing a new administration wants to do is spend its time and energy rehashing the perceived sins of the old one.”
Moral turpitude is now defined as good manners.
Part of Obama’s good manners is a reluctance to piss off America’s intelligence establishment by calling them to task for their manifold illegalities. A former CIA official summed it up when he said, “If agents were criminally investigated for doing something that top Bush administration asked them to do and that they were assured was legal, intelligence officers would be less willing to take risks to protect the country.”
What a contrast with the 1975 Church Committee’s airing of the CIA’s dirty laundry. The difference is, of course, that the country is far more paranoid now than it was then, so it is willing to tolerate any atrocity as long as it preserves our faux sense of security.
We must be protected from our imaginary threats, and it is the duty of every administration to conduct its foreign affairs in such a manner that these imaginary threats are made real.
I'm thrilled to see your successor continuing this tradition.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Learning from the Past
Dear George,
Too many people simply misunderstand what Gaza is all about. It is not an imperial war, nor is it a colonial war. It is an indigenous war, a war aimed at forcing a native people off their native land. It’s all about real estate and the acquisition of fallow native land for future development.
Most natives are basically content to work their land and live their lives in peace, and it’s bad form for a bunch of Whiteguys to attack pastoral natives without cause. So, what the Whiteguys have to do is goad the natives into an act of aggression that becomes the propaganda “trigger” that justifies the subsequent slaughter and seizure of the native’s land.
I hate to do this to you, Big Guy, but I’ve got to run a little history past you. I’ll try to make it as brief and painless as possible.
Let’s take a quick look at Pontiac’s Rebellion.
In 1760, the French lost control of North America when the British kicked their butts in the French and Indian War. Prior to their expulsion, the French, being French, had treated the Native American’s as equals. They intermarried with them and showered the natives with gifts, including gunpowder and ball so the natives could hunt game and have enough to eat.
Another important difference was that the French weren’t big on settlers, so they kept their numbers low. The British, on the other hand, flooded the area with colonists and kept seizing Indian lands for their settlements. (Sound familiar?)
The puritanical morality of the British military commander of the British North America, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, was offended by this gift giving, which he equated with bribery. And, he wasn’t too keen about giving the Indians gunpowder and ball. I also suspect that he was appalled at the underutilization of land occupiedby, but not legally deeded to, the Indians.
He needed a trigger.
So, he stopped the gift giving, and the Indians went hungry because they had no powder and ball with which to hunt game.
The Indians rose up in revolt, and Amherst had his trigger.
The only problem was that the Indians kicked the British’s ass. The British had a string of forts that ran from Green Bay to Pittsburg. The Indians took every one of them, except for Detroit and Fort Pitt, which they had under siege.
Well, Lord Jeffrey wasn’t going to stand by and let a bunch of uppity savages make him look bad. He well understood that in indigenous warfare it’s no holds barred. So he wrote to one of his commanders, Colonel Henry Bouquet, and asked, “Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.”
Bouquet wrote back, “I will try to inoculate the bastards with some blankets that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself.”
During a parley at Fort Pitt, the Fort’s commander, Simeon Ecuyer, did just that.
The British had small pox; the Israelis have white phosphorus
In the end, the British were forced to sue for peace and strike a treaty with the Indians, knowing that the sole purpose of any sort of agreement with natives is to break it.
The Israelis, of course, are old hands at indigenous warfare and know full well how to create a trigger. On Nov. 4, they broke a long-standing truce with Hamas by attacking Gaza and killing six people. This goaded Hamas into lobbing rockets into southern Israel and gave the Israelis the trigger they needed to begin their war of expulsion.
We forced our natives into smaller and smaller reservations; the Israeli plan is to force their indigenous people into smaller and smaller cantonments. It’s simply a matter of crowd control.
Some look at Gaza and see a wanton brutality bordering on genocide. I look at Gaza and see the ongoing march of civilization as it offers the gift of progress to an indigenous people.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Too many people simply misunderstand what Gaza is all about. It is not an imperial war, nor is it a colonial war. It is an indigenous war, a war aimed at forcing a native people off their native land. It’s all about real estate and the acquisition of fallow native land for future development.
Most natives are basically content to work their land and live their lives in peace, and it’s bad form for a bunch of Whiteguys to attack pastoral natives without cause. So, what the Whiteguys have to do is goad the natives into an act of aggression that becomes the propaganda “trigger” that justifies the subsequent slaughter and seizure of the native’s land.
I hate to do this to you, Big Guy, but I’ve got to run a little history past you. I’ll try to make it as brief and painless as possible.
Let’s take a quick look at Pontiac’s Rebellion.
In 1760, the French lost control of North America when the British kicked their butts in the French and Indian War. Prior to their expulsion, the French, being French, had treated the Native American’s as equals. They intermarried with them and showered the natives with gifts, including gunpowder and ball so the natives could hunt game and have enough to eat.
Another important difference was that the French weren’t big on settlers, so they kept their numbers low. The British, on the other hand, flooded the area with colonists and kept seizing Indian lands for their settlements. (Sound familiar?)
The puritanical morality of the British military commander of the British North America, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, was offended by this gift giving, which he equated with bribery. And, he wasn’t too keen about giving the Indians gunpowder and ball. I also suspect that he was appalled at the underutilization of land occupiedby, but not legally deeded to, the Indians.
He needed a trigger.
So, he stopped the gift giving, and the Indians went hungry because they had no powder and ball with which to hunt game.
The Indians rose up in revolt, and Amherst had his trigger.
The only problem was that the Indians kicked the British’s ass. The British had a string of forts that ran from Green Bay to Pittsburg. The Indians took every one of them, except for Detroit and Fort Pitt, which they had under siege.
Well, Lord Jeffrey wasn’t going to stand by and let a bunch of uppity savages make him look bad. He well understood that in indigenous warfare it’s no holds barred. So he wrote to one of his commanders, Colonel Henry Bouquet, and asked, “Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.”
Bouquet wrote back, “I will try to inoculate the bastards with some blankets that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself.”
During a parley at Fort Pitt, the Fort’s commander, Simeon Ecuyer, did just that.
The British had small pox; the Israelis have white phosphorus
In the end, the British were forced to sue for peace and strike a treaty with the Indians, knowing that the sole purpose of any sort of agreement with natives is to break it.
The Israelis, of course, are old hands at indigenous warfare and know full well how to create a trigger. On Nov. 4, they broke a long-standing truce with Hamas by attacking Gaza and killing six people. This goaded Hamas into lobbing rockets into southern Israel and gave the Israelis the trigger they needed to begin their war of expulsion.
We forced our natives into smaller and smaller reservations; the Israeli plan is to force their indigenous people into smaller and smaller cantonments. It’s simply a matter of crowd control.
Some look at Gaza and see a wanton brutality bordering on genocide. I look at Gaza and see the ongoing march of civilization as it offers the gift of progress to an indigenous people.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Happiness is a benumbed apathy
Dear George,
As Israel continues to teach the Palestinians how to respect their betters, some ask, “Where’s the moral outrage?” The reaction to Israel’s bombing of schools and mosques seems to be a collective yawn. At least, that is how it appears in the United States, where our coverage of the affair has been as minimalist as it has been pro-Israeli.
The strongest official comment, other than the usual platitudes urging a cease fire, has been a nonbinding Senate resolution supporting Israel.
Before there can be outrage, there has to be an operative moral gyroscope that tells us when things are out of balance, and that’s been bred out of us. A man can’t think outside the box when he is convinced that both thought and the box don’t exist.
How do you break a gyroscope? Simple! Cover the past with a miasma of ignorance until every event appears totally isolated from its antecedents and the only past attached to it is that which is approved by the elite. Discourage reading. The less a person reads, the less the possibility he will compare and synthesize events from the past that all too often results in clarity of vision.
How many people have read Sven Lindqvest’s A History of Bombing? Not many. The book sits at 366,450 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list.
I rest my case.
Thanks to our educators and media moguls, the American people have settled into a state of benumbed apathy in which life is little more than an abstract mosaic of buzz words and labels from which history has been eliminated. It is a sanitized environment in which the formation of community is impossible. Living in a community requires that a man be willing to see things he doesn’t want to see, hear things he doesn’t want to hear and smell things he doesn’t want to smell. For a people conditioned to a sterile environment, the give and take of a community has no appeal.
In such an atmosphere, information is reduced to the banal chatter of coiffured and moisturized news readers nattering on about the inane and the insignificant.
Besides, with a Senate employed by APIAC, why should the public get stirred up? In addition to nonbinding resolutions, the loyal senators will send Israel all the bunker busters and F-16s it needs. We are dedicated to the support of the Mideast’s only democracy in which the sole requirement for full citizenship is belonging to the correct religion.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
As Israel continues to teach the Palestinians how to respect their betters, some ask, “Where’s the moral outrage?” The reaction to Israel’s bombing of schools and mosques seems to be a collective yawn. At least, that is how it appears in the United States, where our coverage of the affair has been as minimalist as it has been pro-Israeli.
The strongest official comment, other than the usual platitudes urging a cease fire, has been a nonbinding Senate resolution supporting Israel.
Before there can be outrage, there has to be an operative moral gyroscope that tells us when things are out of balance, and that’s been bred out of us. A man can’t think outside the box when he is convinced that both thought and the box don’t exist.
How do you break a gyroscope? Simple! Cover the past with a miasma of ignorance until every event appears totally isolated from its antecedents and the only past attached to it is that which is approved by the elite. Discourage reading. The less a person reads, the less the possibility he will compare and synthesize events from the past that all too often results in clarity of vision.
How many people have read Sven Lindqvest’s A History of Bombing? Not many. The book sits at 366,450 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list.
I rest my case.
Thanks to our educators and media moguls, the American people have settled into a state of benumbed apathy in which life is little more than an abstract mosaic of buzz words and labels from which history has been eliminated. It is a sanitized environment in which the formation of community is impossible. Living in a community requires that a man be willing to see things he doesn’t want to see, hear things he doesn’t want to hear and smell things he doesn’t want to smell. For a people conditioned to a sterile environment, the give and take of a community has no appeal.
In such an atmosphere, information is reduced to the banal chatter of coiffured and moisturized news readers nattering on about the inane and the insignificant.
Besides, with a Senate employed by APIAC, why should the public get stirred up? In addition to nonbinding resolutions, the loyal senators will send Israel all the bunker busters and F-16s it needs. We are dedicated to the support of the Mideast’s only democracy in which the sole requirement for full citizenship is belonging to the correct religion.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Friday, January 9, 2009
Popularity and Blood
Dear George,
I see Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak has torn a page from your playbook: When your popularity is in the crapper, start a war. Nothing turns the electorate on like a certified badass.
According to yesterday’s New York Times, his Labor Party’s numbers were so low, pundits thought the party might disappear altogether. That was your problem when you took a criminal act, 9/11, and hyped it into a Global War on Terror.
Just as your numbers soared, so did Barak’s. There’s nothing like an election to bring out the nastiness in a politician. As one Labor Party member put it, “Israel’s McArthur is back.” Of course, we must conveniently ignore the fact that McArthur fought an army while Barak is fighting women and children.
However, according to the Israeli propaganda machine, this is not as bad as it sounds. As an IDF spokesman explained, “Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target.” Assumingly, this includes women of childbearing age who might birth future terrorists and toddlers who will grow up to become terrorists. This makes the aerial bombing much simpler since every destroyed school and every bombed child is, post hoc, a “legitimate target.”
In other words, if you live in the same ghetto as a terrorist, you are one because you lacked the get-up-and-go to move to a better neighborhood.
Israel is demonstrating one of the basic tenets of colonial warfare: You don’t fight an enemy; you fight a label that has been elevated to the status of a buzz word that evokes a knee-jerk reaction from a public too lazy to think. In Vietnam, every dead peasant was a Viet Cong (VC). Now, every dead Palestinian is a terrorist.
As you discovered on 9/11, nothing makes a wimp appear tough on (fill in the blank) like ordering butchery without getting his hands bloody.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
I see Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak has torn a page from your playbook: When your popularity is in the crapper, start a war. Nothing turns the electorate on like a certified badass.
According to yesterday’s New York Times, his Labor Party’s numbers were so low, pundits thought the party might disappear altogether. That was your problem when you took a criminal act, 9/11, and hyped it into a Global War on Terror.
Just as your numbers soared, so did Barak’s. There’s nothing like an election to bring out the nastiness in a politician. As one Labor Party member put it, “Israel’s McArthur is back.” Of course, we must conveniently ignore the fact that McArthur fought an army while Barak is fighting women and children.
However, according to the Israeli propaganda machine, this is not as bad as it sounds. As an IDF spokesman explained, “Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target.” Assumingly, this includes women of childbearing age who might birth future terrorists and toddlers who will grow up to become terrorists. This makes the aerial bombing much simpler since every destroyed school and every bombed child is, post hoc, a “legitimate target.”
In other words, if you live in the same ghetto as a terrorist, you are one because you lacked the get-up-and-go to move to a better neighborhood.
Israel is demonstrating one of the basic tenets of colonial warfare: You don’t fight an enemy; you fight a label that has been elevated to the status of a buzz word that evokes a knee-jerk reaction from a public too lazy to think. In Vietnam, every dead peasant was a Viet Cong (VC). Now, every dead Palestinian is a terrorist.
As you discovered on 9/11, nothing makes a wimp appear tough on (fill in the blank) like ordering butchery without getting his hands bloody.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Pat Boone explains it all.
Dear George,
It looks like your successor has been falling all over himself as he climbs onto the Israeli bandwagon. During a recent visit to Israel he said, “If someone was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”
When he spoke, exactly one Israeli had been killed by the Hamas rocket launches. But, that’s all the excuse you need to slaughter over 500 Palestinians.
The solution to the Palestine-Israeli problem is so simple it’s insolvable. A return to Palestine’s pre-1967 borders would end the bloodshed. Both the Arab League and Hamas have promised to recognize Israel and guarantee her security if this condition is met.
Unfortunately, the real issue here is God. God gave the Israelis all the land sketched out in his covenant with the Old Testament patriarchs. This is the fantasy that drives Israeli leadership, and fantasy can only be made real through the application of naked power. The seizure of indigenous lands is a long-standing Western tradition, and tradition is not a war crime.
Another factor driving the slaughter is a force that is one of history’s most powerful: Martial Inertia. When a society turns to force as a solution to its problems, the first thing it does is to build up its military. This means the accumulation of a lot of military toys (compliments of the United States, which has always identified with illegal land seizures).
Once you have these toys, the only cost-effective thing to do is use them. You can’t have them rusting in fenced-off storage yards. However, when use them, you piss your victims off, and this means you’ve got to continue using them otherwise you’re liable to end up with your ass in a meat grinder.
This creates a mindset among political leaders called Martial Psychosis, in which compassion is leached from the brain as a dead child is reduced to a statistic. It is this psychosis that enabled Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to declare that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza simply because, in her eyes, there are no human beings in Gaza.
Granted, your successor did express concern over the mounting civilian casualties, but not because he gives a shit about Palestinians. Dead civilians are not a humanitarian crisis; they are a public relations crisis. And your successor understands public relations.
Pat Boone summed it all up in his stirring rendition of the song from “Exodus”:
This land is mine,
God gave this land to me.
You don’t fuck with God and get away with it, as the Palestinians are discovering to their despair.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
It looks like your successor has been falling all over himself as he climbs onto the Israeli bandwagon. During a recent visit to Israel he said, “If someone was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”
When he spoke, exactly one Israeli had been killed by the Hamas rocket launches. But, that’s all the excuse you need to slaughter over 500 Palestinians.
The solution to the Palestine-Israeli problem is so simple it’s insolvable. A return to Palestine’s pre-1967 borders would end the bloodshed. Both the Arab League and Hamas have promised to recognize Israel and guarantee her security if this condition is met.
Unfortunately, the real issue here is God. God gave the Israelis all the land sketched out in his covenant with the Old Testament patriarchs. This is the fantasy that drives Israeli leadership, and fantasy can only be made real through the application of naked power. The seizure of indigenous lands is a long-standing Western tradition, and tradition is not a war crime.
Another factor driving the slaughter is a force that is one of history’s most powerful: Martial Inertia. When a society turns to force as a solution to its problems, the first thing it does is to build up its military. This means the accumulation of a lot of military toys (compliments of the United States, which has always identified with illegal land seizures).
Once you have these toys, the only cost-effective thing to do is use them. You can’t have them rusting in fenced-off storage yards. However, when use them, you piss your victims off, and this means you’ve got to continue using them otherwise you’re liable to end up with your ass in a meat grinder.
This creates a mindset among political leaders called Martial Psychosis, in which compassion is leached from the brain as a dead child is reduced to a statistic. It is this psychosis that enabled Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to declare that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza simply because, in her eyes, there are no human beings in Gaza.
Granted, your successor did express concern over the mounting civilian casualties, but not because he gives a shit about Palestinians. Dead civilians are not a humanitarian crisis; they are a public relations crisis. And your successor understands public relations.
Pat Boone summed it all up in his stirring rendition of the song from “Exodus”:
This land is mine,
God gave this land to me.
You don’t fuck with God and get away with it, as the Palestinians are discovering to their despair.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Western Progress
Dear George,
One of the happier byproducts of asymmetrical slaughter is the progress that evolves from it. Every bomb dropped and every missile launched changes us and makes us better than we were. The proof of this is found in Gaza.
In previous letters, I have mentioned the African Syndrome. Whenever the American viewing public sees an African on the tube, said African is sick, dead or dying. After a while, this is accepted as the norm. This explains why the outrage over Katrina dissipated so quickly. They were Africans; what do you expect?
Thanks to Israel, we now have the Arab Syndrome. The new norm is the battered body of an Arab toddler wrapped in a funeral shroud accompanied by the keening of its parents.
I pointed out, yesterday, that Gaza is the Whiteguy’s last hurrah. It is the logical outcome of a twentieth century that has seen Western values curdle in the white heat of two world wars and a body count that runs into the hundreds of millions. The initial reaction to slaughter is outrage. This is followed by an ethical numbness as the mind becomes use to seeing piles of corpses bulldozed into ditches. Over time slaughter is accepted as an instrument of policy.
The net result has been the snuffing out of an Enlightenment that was once a burning torch that illuminated the world, leaving only the smoldering stench of racism and violence in its stead.
We have convinced ourselves that Whiteguys are the center of the universe, forgetting that the center of the universe is a black hole that sucks all matter to its destruction. And that is what we are doing as we lay waste to the Middle East, all in the name of the cultural purity of materialism and consumerism.
Power burlesques the values it purports to stand for as it turns them into an exercise in black humor that calls state terrorism “defense” and freedom fighters “terrorists”. Being powerful, we are above judgment because our every act is morally correct because we are powerful.
All power inevitably turns violent simply because it can get away with it. In doing so, it guarantees that even more violence will be necessary in the future. One writer, commenting on Gaza, said, “If Hamas is weakened it will not be a more moderate Palestinian group that will take the helm.”
The IDF has a lock on the future.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
One of the happier byproducts of asymmetrical slaughter is the progress that evolves from it. Every bomb dropped and every missile launched changes us and makes us better than we were. The proof of this is found in Gaza.
In previous letters, I have mentioned the African Syndrome. Whenever the American viewing public sees an African on the tube, said African is sick, dead or dying. After a while, this is accepted as the norm. This explains why the outrage over Katrina dissipated so quickly. They were Africans; what do you expect?
Thanks to Israel, we now have the Arab Syndrome. The new norm is the battered body of an Arab toddler wrapped in a funeral shroud accompanied by the keening of its parents.
I pointed out, yesterday, that Gaza is the Whiteguy’s last hurrah. It is the logical outcome of a twentieth century that has seen Western values curdle in the white heat of two world wars and a body count that runs into the hundreds of millions. The initial reaction to slaughter is outrage. This is followed by an ethical numbness as the mind becomes use to seeing piles of corpses bulldozed into ditches. Over time slaughter is accepted as an instrument of policy.
The net result has been the snuffing out of an Enlightenment that was once a burning torch that illuminated the world, leaving only the smoldering stench of racism and violence in its stead.
We have convinced ourselves that Whiteguys are the center of the universe, forgetting that the center of the universe is a black hole that sucks all matter to its destruction. And that is what we are doing as we lay waste to the Middle East, all in the name of the cultural purity of materialism and consumerism.
Power burlesques the values it purports to stand for as it turns them into an exercise in black humor that calls state terrorism “defense” and freedom fighters “terrorists”. Being powerful, we are above judgment because our every act is morally correct because we are powerful.
All power inevitably turns violent simply because it can get away with it. In doing so, it guarantees that even more violence will be necessary in the future. One writer, commenting on Gaza, said, “If Hamas is weakened it will not be a more moderate Palestinian group that will take the helm.”
The IDF has a lock on the future.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Monday, January 5, 2009
We strike another blow for peace.
Dear George,
Is it any wonder than we resonate so with Israel? The Israelis are following the same methodology we used to cement our relations with the indigenous people who occupied land that was rightfully ours: make treaties and then break them, slaughter them, starve them, destroy their crops, isolate them on reservations and reduce them to a state of total dependency.
We had Manifest Destiny; Israel has Zionism. We had Broken Knee; Israel has Gaza.
My goodness, George, this could be the Whiteman’s last hurrah. As we sink into economic ruination, it is imperative that we go out in a blaze of glory, and Israel is providing that final blaze as her brave troops and courageous tanks swarm into Gaza.
The object of both our Indian wars and Israel’s Gazian war are the same—the peace that can only be found in a graveyard.
I was pleased to see that the United States struck another blow for this peace by vetoing several UN Security Resolutions calling for a cease fire. U.S. deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff explained our veto by saying, “The important point to focus on here is establishing the understanding of what type of cease-fire we’re talking about and to ensure that it’s lasting, and to ensure that we don’t return to a situation that led to the current situation,” because the current situation is not a product of the past situation, so we need a situation that harkens back to a prior situation that will not yield the current situation even though the current situation has no antecedental situation upon which the current situation is based.
Have you ever read a more stirring ode to peace?
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Is it any wonder than we resonate so with Israel? The Israelis are following the same methodology we used to cement our relations with the indigenous people who occupied land that was rightfully ours: make treaties and then break them, slaughter them, starve them, destroy their crops, isolate them on reservations and reduce them to a state of total dependency.
We had Manifest Destiny; Israel has Zionism. We had Broken Knee; Israel has Gaza.
My goodness, George, this could be the Whiteman’s last hurrah. As we sink into economic ruination, it is imperative that we go out in a blaze of glory, and Israel is providing that final blaze as her brave troops and courageous tanks swarm into Gaza.
The object of both our Indian wars and Israel’s Gazian war are the same—the peace that can only be found in a graveyard.
I was pleased to see that the United States struck another blow for this peace by vetoing several UN Security Resolutions calling for a cease fire. U.S. deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff explained our veto by saying, “The important point to focus on here is establishing the understanding of what type of cease-fire we’re talking about and to ensure that it’s lasting, and to ensure that we don’t return to a situation that led to the current situation,” because the current situation is not a product of the past situation, so we need a situation that harkens back to a prior situation that will not yield the current situation even though the current situation has no antecedental situation upon which the current situation is based.
Have you ever read a more stirring ode to peace?
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Sunday, January 4, 2009
It's Only Make Believe
Dear George,
Every scam is like a magician’s sleight of hand in that it diverts the mark’s attention away from the deception at its core. History’s most complex and successful example of this skill is Corporatism, which rests on two deceptions: first, that the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation is a person, and, secondly, that private property is sacred.
Mythology tells us that the Supreme Court granted corporations both personhood and protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad 118 U.S. 394).
The court made no such finding. That little gem was inserted into header (a summation) of the case by the court’s clerk. The rest, as they said, is history.
The second deception, private property, is a dinosaur that lumbers along driven by its own momentum. It had validity in an era when life was lived on a smaller scale. The concept peaked during the age of entrepreneurial capitalism, but started to go into decline with the emergence of monopoly capitalism, became increasingly irrelevant in the age of corporate capitalism and is a sham in our age of finance capitalism.
Since the rise of corporate capitalism, the ownership of property has become so diffused among shareholders, mutual funds, and both private and public pension funds that corporate property should rightfully be considered quasi public property.
Don’t hold your breath, though.
This particular scam is so deep and so complex that the deception at its core will never be uncovered. My god, George, you have armies of media, academic, legislative and political forces so convinced that private property was a gift from God that it will never be questioned. The irony is that the Eighth Commandment, not to steal, is interpreted as sanctioning private property when, in fact, most private property is acquired through theft. Ask any Native American about that one.
A CEO is an employee who owns nothing. Oh, he may have a block of shares, but his ownership is so diluted by the hundreds of thousands of other shares being traded that it’s like a drop of piss in the ocean.
In the end, it's only make believe.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Every scam is like a magician’s sleight of hand in that it diverts the mark’s attention away from the deception at its core. History’s most complex and successful example of this skill is Corporatism, which rests on two deceptions: first, that the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation is a person, and, secondly, that private property is sacred.
Mythology tells us that the Supreme Court granted corporations both personhood and protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad 118 U.S. 394).
The court made no such finding. That little gem was inserted into header (a summation) of the case by the court’s clerk. The rest, as they said, is history.
The second deception, private property, is a dinosaur that lumbers along driven by its own momentum. It had validity in an era when life was lived on a smaller scale. The concept peaked during the age of entrepreneurial capitalism, but started to go into decline with the emergence of monopoly capitalism, became increasingly irrelevant in the age of corporate capitalism and is a sham in our age of finance capitalism.
Since the rise of corporate capitalism, the ownership of property has become so diffused among shareholders, mutual funds, and both private and public pension funds that corporate property should rightfully be considered quasi public property.
Don’t hold your breath, though.
This particular scam is so deep and so complex that the deception at its core will never be uncovered. My god, George, you have armies of media, academic, legislative and political forces so convinced that private property was a gift from God that it will never be questioned. The irony is that the Eighth Commandment, not to steal, is interpreted as sanctioning private property when, in fact, most private property is acquired through theft. Ask any Native American about that one.
A CEO is an employee who owns nothing. Oh, he may have a block of shares, but his ownership is so diluted by the hundreds of thousands of other shares being traded that it’s like a drop of piss in the ocean.
In the end, it's only make believe.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Living God's Will
Dear George,
Slaughter is sweet when God approves.
God is silent and the faithful hear his command to destroy the “others” in acts of destructive creation. Each bomb dropped creates a score of burnt offerings whose stench is pleasing to God.
Every dead body is a sacrifice, a word that comes from the Latin sacer (holy) and facere (make). Doesn’t it warm you heart to know that every bombed baby is sanctified? (Of course in the Jewish heaven you don’t get 72 virgins; you get 72 Jewish mothers who make you feel guilty for sins you never committed.)
Religion sharpens its steel when it morphs myth into a linear history complete with a deed to the property. It is when this history is in place that limbs are torn asunder and viscera rots in the noonday sun, all to the greater glory of God.
God blesses the righteous who do his will, as they understand it, which they never do, but it doesn’t matter because God’s will has nothing to do with anything even though it fills their hearts with the fire of carnage and mayhem, all to the fulfillment of a destiny grounded in make believe, but the truth is that evil thickens into a black, vicious stew when it is leavened with the Spirit of God.
This is why God is so important. We are a nasty species, but our overly developed brains need a justification for our nastiness. Without it, we might feel guilty over the carnage we love to create. But doing God’s will makes it all right. With God on our side we can wade through blood up to our waists and not feel a flicker of remorse. Rape and pillage come easily to the devout.
(Jesus almost blew it with his message of “loving your enemies.” That’s why Paul was given the mission of destroying Christianity, and he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations by twisting Christianity from a religion of universal love into one that promises the redemption of individual sins. The faith has been marginalizing Jesus ever since. The Prince of Peace has been demoted to our “Personal Savior.”)
Where would we be without the piety that facilitates progress by ridding the world of backward natives who lead backward lives in backward societies that would be content with a patch of land and a few olive trees?
I’d drop to my knees and offer up a prayer of thanksgiving, but God wants me to go out and kick some ass…at least I think he does. Or was I hallucinating? Was it God, or the pipe?
…does it really matter?
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Slaughter is sweet when God approves.
God is silent and the faithful hear his command to destroy the “others” in acts of destructive creation. Each bomb dropped creates a score of burnt offerings whose stench is pleasing to God.
Every dead body is a sacrifice, a word that comes from the Latin sacer (holy) and facere (make). Doesn’t it warm you heart to know that every bombed baby is sanctified? (Of course in the Jewish heaven you don’t get 72 virgins; you get 72 Jewish mothers who make you feel guilty for sins you never committed.)
Religion sharpens its steel when it morphs myth into a linear history complete with a deed to the property. It is when this history is in place that limbs are torn asunder and viscera rots in the noonday sun, all to the greater glory of God.
God blesses the righteous who do his will, as they understand it, which they never do, but it doesn’t matter because God’s will has nothing to do with anything even though it fills their hearts with the fire of carnage and mayhem, all to the fulfillment of a destiny grounded in make believe, but the truth is that evil thickens into a black, vicious stew when it is leavened with the Spirit of God.
This is why God is so important. We are a nasty species, but our overly developed brains need a justification for our nastiness. Without it, we might feel guilty over the carnage we love to create. But doing God’s will makes it all right. With God on our side we can wade through blood up to our waists and not feel a flicker of remorse. Rape and pillage come easily to the devout.
(Jesus almost blew it with his message of “loving your enemies.” That’s why Paul was given the mission of destroying Christianity, and he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations by twisting Christianity from a religion of universal love into one that promises the redemption of individual sins. The faith has been marginalizing Jesus ever since. The Prince of Peace has been demoted to our “Personal Savior.”)
Where would we be without the piety that facilitates progress by ridding the world of backward natives who lead backward lives in backward societies that would be content with a patch of land and a few olive trees?
I’d drop to my knees and offer up a prayer of thanksgiving, but God wants me to go out and kick some ass…at least I think he does. Or was I hallucinating? Was it God, or the pipe?
…does it really matter?
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Friday, January 2, 2009
Why I Love Whiteguy Leaders
Dear George,
One of the things I enjoy about being a Whiteguy is that Whiteguy leadership is so fucking brain dead that it makes me look like a total genius, even when I’m stoned out of my mind.
Case in point: Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Their rationale for their extensive use of aerial bombing, and their doctrine of collective punishment of the Palestinians, is to so break their morale that they will rise up and drive Hamas out of Gaza.
Hello!
Been there; done that; got the flak jacket!
I’m going to run some history by you, Big Guy, so try to stay awake.
In 1921, an obscure Italian army officer, Giulio Douhet, published a book, The Command of the Air. Whiteguy military commanders ate it up.
Douhet was a proponent of massive aerial bombing, not of an enemy’s military targets, but of its civilian population. He referred to this as “the morale effects of bombing”. His argument was that extensive aerial bombardments would break civilian morale and cause the enemy’s traumatized citizens to rise up against the leaders and either force them to surrender or to turn them out of office.
There was only one problem: it didn’t work.
Fast forward to World War II. Great Britain’s Air Marshal Arthur “Mad Bomber” Harris not only bought into Douhet’s doctrine, but set out to prove it. For four years RAF bombers flew nightly missions in which they torched German cities, but the German’s never rose up against their leaders.
Besides, as a New Yorker article pointed out many years ago, military and political leaders always have the deepest bunkers.
One of the great things about Whiteguy leaders is that the more bankrupt a theory is, the greater the tenacity with which they cling to it. (And don’t go throwing Hiroshima at me! The Japanese had offered to surrender before we nuked them.)
So it was that we tried to apply Douhet’s doctrine in Vietnam where we subjected Hanoi to constant aerial bombardment. What we discovered is that this doesn’t break a people’s will; it only pisses them off, royally.
So, whenever I open the paper and read of Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza, I feel like I’m a Wellington or a Napoleon, and I thank them for allowing me to feel like I know what I’m doing.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
One of the things I enjoy about being a Whiteguy is that Whiteguy leadership is so fucking brain dead that it makes me look like a total genius, even when I’m stoned out of my mind.
Case in point: Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Their rationale for their extensive use of aerial bombing, and their doctrine of collective punishment of the Palestinians, is to so break their morale that they will rise up and drive Hamas out of Gaza.
Hello!
Been there; done that; got the flak jacket!
I’m going to run some history by you, Big Guy, so try to stay awake.
In 1921, an obscure Italian army officer, Giulio Douhet, published a book, The Command of the Air. Whiteguy military commanders ate it up.
Douhet was a proponent of massive aerial bombing, not of an enemy’s military targets, but of its civilian population. He referred to this as “the morale effects of bombing”. His argument was that extensive aerial bombardments would break civilian morale and cause the enemy’s traumatized citizens to rise up against the leaders and either force them to surrender or to turn them out of office.
There was only one problem: it didn’t work.
Fast forward to World War II. Great Britain’s Air Marshal Arthur “Mad Bomber” Harris not only bought into Douhet’s doctrine, but set out to prove it. For four years RAF bombers flew nightly missions in which they torched German cities, but the German’s never rose up against their leaders.
Besides, as a New Yorker article pointed out many years ago, military and political leaders always have the deepest bunkers.
One of the great things about Whiteguy leaders is that the more bankrupt a theory is, the greater the tenacity with which they cling to it. (And don’t go throwing Hiroshima at me! The Japanese had offered to surrender before we nuked them.)
So it was that we tried to apply Douhet’s doctrine in Vietnam where we subjected Hanoi to constant aerial bombardment. What we discovered is that this doesn’t break a people’s will; it only pisses them off, royally.
So, whenever I open the paper and read of Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza, I feel like I’m a Wellington or a Napoleon, and I thank them for allowing me to feel like I know what I’m doing.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Thursday, January 1, 2009
A New Year Greeting
As we leave the wreckage of 2008 behind us, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Ring Out Wild Bells is says it all.
Ring out wild bells to the wild sky,
The flying clouds, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
They year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kinder hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
May it be so.
Happy New Year
--cw
Ring out wild bells to the wild sky,
The flying clouds, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
They year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kinder hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
May it be so.
Happy New Year
--cw
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