Bulletin
N° 789
See also Jean-Luc Godard’s controversial 1987 film production of :
"KING LEAR"
The story of “The Ear” - of a man who could not believe what he saw; but only what he heard, and the tragedy therein . . . .
Subject
: Twenty-First Century Politics: A
Tale of Misanthropes – of blind, lying, cheating, stealing, murdering
misanthropes.
18
March 2018
(147th Anniversary of the Paris Commune)
Grenoble,
France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Many
years ago, when I was writing up the research for my Ph.D. dissertation on the
anarchist French school teachers’ movement in the early years of the Third
Republic, I came across a statement by Jean-Paul Sartre, which suggested an
orientation for understanding the Post-Paris-Commune primary school teachers in
France and their militant commitment to “emancipatory pedagogy”.
What
we call freedom is the irreducibility of the cultural order to the natural
order.
--Critique of
Dialectical Reason, J-P Sartre
This
was in the early 1970s, when an intellectual collective in America had formed
around the publication, Science for the
People, and about the same time as the periodical Impasciences was
galvanizing progressive thinkers in France.
The
thesis of my Ph.D. thesis was that several thousand primary school teachers
working in the early years of the Third Republic were attracted to the ideology
of anarcho-syndicalism due to palpable contradictions in their lives (not the
least of which was the entrenched political power of the Church in French society,
stemming from the days of the Second Empire), as well as the fact that these teachers identified
strongly with their students’ intellectual and social needs for quality education. As the First World War
loomed on the horizon, these men and women joined with other socialists
around the world to denounce the nationalist preparation of future “cannon fodder” in
French public schools. They loved their students and their work, and they were
committed to preparing future generations to participate fully in making a better
society for all by acquiring methods of scientific enquiry as well as humanist
cultural assets.
Years
later, I found reading Fritjof Capra’s 1975 book, The
Tao of Physics to be an unsettling experience, to say the
least. In this lucid account of the history of “the new physics,” the author -
who received a Ph.D. in physics in 1966 from the University of Vienna and did
research in high-energy physics at the University of Paris and at the
University of California in Santa Cruz, at Stanford, and at Imperial College in
London, and is now conducting research at UC-Berkeley – describes the radical
changes scientific understanding of our material world has undergone since the
beginning of the 20th Century and compares it to the teachings of
ancient Eastern Mysticism, some 2,500 years ago.
Capra
presents this fundamental shift in scientific thinking in physics by comparing it
with ancient Hindu mythologies found in the Vedas
and the Upanishads, with Buddhist
teachings compiled in the much revered Avatamsaka-Sutra,
which was written in Sanskrit beginning about 500 years after the death of
Buddha, and with Taoism. All of these
Eastern religions embodied the idea of preparing the mind to experience reality
without a priori concepts by carefully seeking empirical evidence of the
mental states of the observer. Astute observation is also the hallmark of the
new physics by employing the most sophisticated technology. The discoveries
from both of these self-conscious experiences are remarkably similar, according
to Capra, who nevertheless identifies one current difference, namely that: Mystics
believe they know, while Scientists know they believe (all scientific
theories being tentative mental constructs).
It
seems . . . that Eastern mystics and Western physicists went through similar
revolutionary experiences which led them to
completely
new ways of seeing the world. In the following passages, the European physicist
Niels Bohr and the Indian
mystic
Sri Aurobindo both express the depth and the radical character of this
experience.(p.55)
In 1934, Bohr wrote:
“The Greatest extension of our experience in recent years has brought to light
the insufficiency
of our simple
mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on
which the customary
interpretation of
observation was based.”
In 1958, Aurobindo
wrote: “All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one’s
whole experience
of the world is
radically different . . . There is a new
vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting
things.”(ibid.)
Describing
“classical physics,” Capra writes,
The
stage of the Newtonian universe, on which all physical phenomena took place, was
the three-dimensional space of classical Euclidean geometry. It was an absolute
space, always at rest and unchangeable. In Newton’s own words, ‘Absolute space,
in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar
and immovable;’ All changes in the physical world were described in terms of a
separate dimension, called time, which again was absolute, having no connection
with the material world and flowing smoothly from the past through the present
to the future. ‘Absolute, true, and mathematical time,’ said Newton, ‘of itself
and by its own nature, flows uniformly, without regard to anything external.’
The elements of the Newtonian world which
moved in this absolute space and absolute time were material particles. In the
mathematical equations they were treated as ‘mass points’ and Newton saw them
as small, solid, and indestructible objects out of which all matter was made.
The model was quite similar to that of the Greek atomists. Both were based on
the distinction between the full and the void, between matter and space, and in
both models the participles remained always identical in their mass and shape.
Matter was therefore always conserved and essentially passive. The important
difference between the Democritean and Newtonian atomism is that the latter
includes a precise description of the force acting between the material
particles. This force is very simple, depending only on the masses and the
mutual distances of the particles.
(pp.56-57)
The
‘bootstrap’ philosophy of nature that was originated in the early 1960’s by
UC-Berkeley Professor Geoffrey Chew (b.1924) represents, according to Fritjor
Caper, the final coup de grace for
the uncritical reign of Newtonian Physics for over 300 years.
The bootstrap philosophy [which starts from
the idea that nature cannot be reduced to fundamental entities, such as
elementary particles or fundamental fields. It has to be understood entirely
through its self-consistency, with its components being consistent both with
one another and with themselves] constitutes the final rejection of the
mechanistic world view in modern physics. Newton’s universe was constructed
from a set of basic entities with certain fundamental properties, which had
been created by God and thus were not amenable to further analysis. In one way
or another, this notion was implicit in all theories of natural science until
the bootstrap hypothesis stated explicitly that the world cannot be understood
as an assemblage of entities which cannot be analyzed further. In the new world
view, the universe is seen as a dynamic web of interrelated events. None of the
properties of any part of this web is fundamental; they all follow from
properties of the other parts, and the overall consistency of their mutual
interrelations determines the structure of the entire web.
[T]he bootstrap philosophy represents the
culmination of a view of nature that arose in quantum theory with the
realization of an essential and universal interrelationship, acquired its
dynamic content in relativity theory, and was formulated in terms of
reaction probabilities in S-matirx theory. At the same time, this view
of nature came ever closer to the Eastern world view and is now in harmony with
Eastern thought, both in its general philosophy and in its specific picture of
matter.(p.302)
In
a word, the bootstrap theory of nature asserts
that "nature is as it is
because this is the only possible nature
consistent with itself."
In
the fourth chapter, entitled “The New Physics”, Capra defines what is new and
different about the new science.
Quantum
theory has thus demolished the classical concepts of solid objects and of
strictly deterministic laws of nature. At the subatomic level, the solid
material objects of classical physics dissolve into wave-like patterns of
probabilities, and these patterns, ultimately, do not represent probabilities
of things, but rather probabilities of interconnections. A careful analysis of
the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic
particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as
interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent
measurement. Quantum theory thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. It
shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest
units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated ‘basic
building blocks’, but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between
the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in
an essential way. The human observer constitutes the final link in the chain of
observational processes, and the properties of any atomic object can only be
understood in terms of the object’s interaction with the observer. This means
that the classical ideal of an objective description of nature is no longer
valid. The Cartesian partition between the I and the world, between the
observer and the observed, cannot be made when dealing with atomic matter. In
atomic physics, we can never speak about nature without, at the same time,
speaking about ourselves.(pp.71-72)
The concept of a field has been associated not
only with the electromagnetic force, but also with that other major force in
the large-scale world, the force of gravity. Gravitational fields are created
and felt by all massive bodies, and the resulting forces are always forces of
attraction, contrary to the electromagnetic fields which are felt only by
charged bodies and which give rise to attractive and repulsive forces. The
prober field theory for the gravitational field is the general theory of
relativity, and in this theory the influence of a massive body on the
surrounding space is more far-reaching than the corresponding influence of a
charged body in electrodynamics. Again, the space around the object is
‘conditioned’ in such a way that another object will feel a force, but this
time the conditioning affects the geometry, and thus the very structure of
space.
.
. .
Material objects not only determine the
structure of the surrounding space but are, in turn, influenced by their
environment in an essential way. According to the physicist and philosopher
Ernst Mach, the inertia of a material object – the object’s resistance against
being accelerated – is not an intrinsic property of matter, but a measure of
its interaction with all the rest of the universe. In Mach’s view, matter only
has inertia because there is other matter in the universe. When a body rotates,
its inertia produces centrifugal forces (used, for example, in a spin-drier to
extract water from wet laundry), but these forces appear only because the body
rotates ‘relative to the fixed stars’, as Mach has put it. If those fixed stars
were suddenly to disappear, the inertia and the centrifugal forces of the
rotating body would disappear with them.
This conception of inertia, which has become
known as Mach’s principle, had a deep influence on Albert Einstein and was his
original motivation for constructing the general theory of relativity. Due to
the considerable mathematical complexity of Einstein’s theory, physicists have
not yet been able to agree whether it actually incorporates Mach’s principle or
not. Most physicists believe, however, that it should be incorporated, in one
“way or another, into a complete theory of gravity.
Thus modern physics shows us once again –
and this time at the macroscopic level – that material objects are not distinct
“entities, but are inseparably linked to their environment; that their
properties can only be understood in terms of their interaction with the rest
of the world. According to Mach’s principle, this interaction reaches out to
the universe at large, to the distant stars and galaxies. The basic unity of
the cosmos manifests itself, therefore, not only in the world of the very small
but also in the world of the very large; a fact which is increasingly
acknowledged in modern astrophysics and cosmology. In the words of the
astronomer Fred Hoyle,
Present-day
developments in cosmology are coming to suggest rather insistently that
everyday conditions could not persist
but
for the distant parts of the Universe, that all our ideas of space and geometry
would become entirely invalid if the distant
parts
of the Universe were taken away. Our everyday experience even down to the
smallest details seems to be so closely
integrated
to the grand-scale features of the Universe that it is well-nigh impossible to
contemplate the two separately.
The
unity and interrelation between a material object and its environment, which is
manifest on the macroscopic scale in the general theory of relativity, appears in
an even more striking form at the subatomic level. Here, the ideas of classical
field theory are combined with those of quantum theory to describe the
interactions between subatomic particles. Such a combination has not yet been
possible for the gravitational interaction because of the complicated
mathematical form of Einstein’s theory of gravity; but the other classical
field theory, electrodynamics, has been merged with quantum theory into a
theory called ‘quantum electrodynamics’ which describes all electromagnetic
interactions between subatomic particles. This theory incorporates both quantum
theory and relativity theory. It was the first ‘quantum-relativistic’ model of
modern physics and is still the most successful.
.
. .
The
quantum field is seen as the fundamental physical entity; a continuous medium
which is present everywhere in space. Particles are merely local condensations
of the field; concentrations of energy which come and go, thereby losing their
individual character and dissolving into the underlying field. In the words of
Albert Einstein:
We
may therefore regard matter as being constituted by the regions of space in
which the field is extremely intense . .
.
There
is no place in this new kind of physics both for the field and matter, for the
field is the only reality.
The conception of physical things and
phenomena as transient manifestations of an underlying fundamental entity is
not only a basic element of quantum field theory, but also a basic element of the
Eastern world view. Like Einstein, the Eastern mystics consider this underlying
entity as the only reality: all its phenomenal manifestations are seen as
transitory and illusory. This reality of the Eastern mystic cannot be
identified with the quantum field of the physicist because it is seen as the
essence of all phenomena in the world and, consequently, is beyond all
concepts and ideas. The quantum field, on the other hand, is a well-defined
concept which only accounts for some of the physical phenomena. Nevertheless,
the intuition behind the physicist’s interpretation of the sub-atomic world, in
terms of the quantum field, is closely paralleled by that of the Eastern mystic
who interprets his or her experience of the world in terms of an ultimate underlying
reality.
. . .
Buddhists
express the same idea when they call the ultimate reality Sunyata –
‘Emptiness’, or ‘the Void’ – and affirm that it is a living Void which gives
birth to all forms in the phenomenal world. The Taoists ascribe a similar infinite
and endless creativity to the Tao and again, call it empty. ‘The Tao
of Heaven is empty and formless’ says the Kuan-tzu, and Lao Tzu uses
several metaphors to illustrate this emptiness. He often compares the Tao
to a hollow valley, or to a vessel which is forever empty and thus has the
potential of containing an infinity of things.
In spite of using terms like empty and void,
the Eastern sages make it clear that they do not mean ordinary emptiness when
they talk about Brahman, Bunyata or Tao, but on the
contrary, a Void which has an infinite creative potential. Thus, the Void of
the Eastern mystics can easily be compared to the quantum field of subatomic
physics. Like the quantum field, it gives birth to an infinite variety of forms
which it sustains and, eventually, reabsorbs. As the Upanishads say,
Tranquil,
let one worship It
As
that form which he came forth,
As
that into which he will be dissolved,
As
that in which he breathes.
The
phenomenal manifestations of the mystical Void, like the subatomic particles,
are not static and permanent, but dynamic and transitory, coming into being and
vanishing in one ceaseless dance of movement and energy. Like the subatomic
world of the physicist, the phenomenal world of the Eastern mystic is a world
of samsara – of continuous birth and death. Being transient
manifestations of the Void, the things in this world do not have any
fundamental identity. This is especially emphasized in Buddhist philosophy
which denies the existence of any material substance and also holds that the
idea of a constant ‘self’ undergoing successive experiences is an illusion.
Buddhists have frequently compared this illusion of a material substance and an
individual self to the phenomenon of a water wave, in which the up-and-down movement
of the water particles makes us believe that a ‘piece’ of water moves over the
surface. It is interesting to note that physicists have used the same analogy
in the context of field theory to point out the illusion of a material
substance created by a moving particle.(pp.218-223)
.
. .
In contrast to the mystic, the physicist
begins his enquiry into the essential nature of things by studying the material
world. Penetrating into ever deeper realms of matter, he has become aware of
the essential unity of all things and events. More than that, he has also leant
that he himself and his consciousness are an integral part of this unity. Thus
the mystic and the physicist arrive at the same conclusion; one starting from
the inner realm, the other from the outer world. The harmony between their
views confirms the ancient Indian wisdom that Brahman, the ultimate
reality without, is identical to Atman, the reality within.(pp. 322-323)
One
item of concern that this book raises is the problem of understanding the
infinite with what appears to be a finite mind (a mind accustomed to
apprehending in sentient everyday life no more than three dimensional space and
unable to conceptualize, via highly abstract calculations, fourth dimensional space-time with the absence of a linear
time frame). How else can one explain Capra’s chilling reference in the
Epilogue of this book, on “the problems of an overpopulated world”?
The
mechanistic world view of classical physics is useful for the description of
the kind of physical phenomena we encounter in our everyday life and thus
appropriate for dealing with our daily environment, and it has also proved
extremely successful as a basis for technology. It is inadequate, however, for
the description of physical phenomena in the submicroscopic realm. Opposed to
the mechanistic conception of the world is the view of the mystics which may be
epitomized by the word ‘organic’, as it regards all phenomena in the universe
as integral parts of an inseparable harmonious whole. This world view emerges
in the mystical traditions from meditative states of consciousness. In their
description of the world, the mystics use concepts which are derived from these
non-ordinary experiences and are, in general, inappropriate for a scientific
description of macroscopic phenomena. The organic world view is not
advantageous for constructing machines, nor for coping with technical problems in
an overpopulated world. (emphasis mine)
In everyday life, then, both the mechanistic
and the organic views of the universe are valid and useful; the one for science
and technology, the other for a balanced and fulfilled spiritual life. Beyond
the dimensions of our everyday environment, however, the mechanistic concepts
lose their validity and have to be replaced by organic concepts which are very
similar to those used by the mystics. This is the essential experience of
modern physics which has been the subject of our discussion.(p.321)
Indian artists of the tenth and twelfth
centuries have represented Shiva’s cosmic dance in magnificent bronze sculptures
of dancing figures with four arms whose superbly balanced and yet dynamic
gestures express the rhythm and unity of Life. The various meanings of the
dance are conveyed by the details of the figures in a complex pictorial
allegory. The upper right hand of the god holds a drum to symbolize the primal
sound of creation, the upper left bears a tongue of flame, the element of
destruction. The balance of the two hands represents the dynamic balance of
creation and destruction in the world, accentuated further by the Dancer’s calm
and detached face in the center of the two hands, in which the polarity of
creation and destruction is dissolved and transcended. The second hand is
raised in the sign of ‘do not fear’, symbolizing maintenance, protection and peace,
while the remaining left hand points down to the uplifted foot which symbolizes
release from the spell of maya. The god is pictured as dancing on the
body of a demon, the symbol of man’s ignorance which has to be conquered before
liberation can be attained.
Shiva’s dance – in the words of Coomaraswamy
– is ‘the clearest image of the activity of God which any art or religion can
boast of.’ As the god is a personification of Brahman, his activity is
that of Brahman’s myriad manifestations in the world. The dance of Shiva
is the dancing universe; the ceaseless flow of energy going through an
infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another.
Modern physics has shown that the rhythm of
creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in
the birth and death of all living creatures, but it is also the very essence of
inorganic matter. According to quantum field theory, all interactions between
the constituents of matter take place through the emission and absorption of
virtual particles. More than that, the dance of creation and destruction is the
basis of the very existence of matter, since all material particles
‘self-interact’ by emitting and reabsorbing virtual particles. Modern physics
has thus revealed that ever subatomic particle not only performs an energy
dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and
destruction.
. . .
For the modern physicists, then, Shiva’s
dance is the dance of subatomic matter. As in Hindu mythology, it is a continual
dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all
existence and of all natural phenomena. Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists
crated visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our
time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns
of the cosmic dance. The bubble-chamber photographs of interacting particles,
which bear testimony to the continual rhythm of the dance of Shiva equaling
those of the Indian artists in beauty and profound significance. The metaphor
of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art, and modern
physics. It is indeed, as Coomaraswamy has said, ‘poetry, but none the less
science’.(pp.255-256)
Capra
concludes in his final chapter, “Interpretation,” by discussing the parallels
between the “New Physics” and Eastern Mysticism which he claims may one day
very well converge.
It
is evident that the complete ‘bootstrap’ view of nature, in which all phenomena
in the universe are uniquely determined by mutual self-consistency, comes very
close to the Eastern world view. An indivisible universe, in which all things
and events are interrelated, should hardly make sense unless it were
self-consistent. In a way, the requirement of self-consistency, which forms the
basis of the bootstrap hypothesis, and the unity and interrelation of all
phenomena, which are so strongly emphasized in Eastern mysticism, are just
different aspects of the same idea. This close connection is most clearly
expressed in Taoism. For the Taoist sages, all phenomena in the world
were part of the cosmic Way – the Tao – and the laws followed by the Tao
were not laid down by any divine lawgiver, but were inherent in its nature. . .
.
Joseph Needham, in his thorough study of
Chinese science and civilization, discusses at great length how the Western
concept of fundamental laws of nature, with its original implication of a
divine lawgiver, has no counterpart in Chinese thought. ‘In the Chinese world
view,’ Needham writes, ‘the harmonious cooperation of all beings arose, not
from the orders of a superior authority external to themselves, but from the
fact that they were all parts in a hierarchy of wholes forming a cosmic
pattern, and what they obeyed were the internal dictates of their own natures.’
According to Needham, the Chinese did not
even have a word corresponding to the classical Western idea of a ‘law of
nature’. The term which comes closest to it is li, which the Neo-Confucian philosopher Chu His describes as
‘the innumerable vein-like patterns included in the Tao’. Needham
translates li as ‘principle of organization’ . . . .
It
is easy to see how such a view led the Chinese thinkers to the idea which has
only recently been developed in modern physics, that self-constancy is the
essence of all laws of nature. The following passage by Ch’en Shun, an
immediate pupil of Chu His who lived around A.D. 1200, gives a very clear
account of this idea in words which could be taken as a perfect explanation of
the notion of self-consistency in the bootstrap philosophy:
Li is a natural and unescapable law
of affairs and
things
. . .. The meaning of ‘natural and unescapable’
is
that (human) affairs and (natural) things are made
just
exactly to fit into place. The meaning of ‘law’ is
that
the fitting into place occurs without the slightest
excess
or deficiency . . . . The men of old, investigating
things
to the utmost, and searching out li, wanted to
elucidate
the natural unescapableness of (human) affairs
and
(natural) things, and this simply means that what they
were
looking for was all the exact places where
things
precisely fit together . . . .
In the Eastern view then, as in the view of
modern physics, everything in the universe is connected to everything else and
no part of it is fundamental. The property of any part are determined, not by
some fundamental law, but by the properties of all the other parts. Both the
physicists and mystics realize the resulting impossibility of fully explaining
any phenomenon, but then they take different attitudes. Physicists . . . are
satisfied with an approximate understanding of nature. The Eastern mystics, on
the other hand, are not interested in approximate, or ‘relative’ knowledge.
They are concerned with ‘absolute’ knowledge involving an understanding of the
totality of Life. Being well aware of the essential interrelationship of the
universe, they realize that to explain something means, ultimately, to show how
it is connected to everything else. As this is impossible, the Eastern mystics
insist that no single phenomenon can be explained.
The Eastern sages, therefore, are generally
not interested in explaining things, but rather in obtaining a direct
non-intellectual experience of the unity of all things. This was the attitude
of the Buddha who answered all questions about life’s meaning, the origin of
the world, or the nature of nirvana, with a ‘noble silence’.
(pp.305-307)
Capra
notes that the idea that each particle contains all the others has also been
expressed in Western mystical thought. He cites the British poet William
Blake’s famous lines:
To
see a world in a grain of sand
And
a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold
infinity in the palm of your hand,
And
eternity in an hour.(cited on p.315)
Modern
physicists share the same view when they examine a subatomic particle, like a hadron.
Where,
then, does the bootstrap idea lead us? This, of course, nobody knows, but it is
fascinating to speculate about its ultimate fate. One can imagine a network of
future theories covering an ever-increasing range of natural phenomena with
ever-increasing accuracy; a network which will contain fewer and fewer
unexplained features, deriving more and more of its structure from the mutual
consistency of its parts. Someday, then, a point will be reached where the only
unexplained features of this network of theories will be the elements of the
scientific framework. Beyond that point, the theory will no longer be able to
express its results in words, or in rational concepts, and will thus go beyond
science. Instead of a bootstrap theory of nature, it will become a
bootstrap vision of nature, transcending the realms of thought and
language; leading out of science and into the world of acintya, the unthinkable. The knowledge contained in such a
vision will be complete, but cannot be communicated in words. It will be the
knowledge which Lao-Tzu had in mind, more than two thousand years ago, when he
said:
He
who knows does not speak,
He
who speaks does not know.
(cited
on p.319)
The
22 items below offer CEIMSA readers some points of reference in these
turbulent times, when of social interconnection and rational conversation has been disrupted by high pitches of delusion and careful observation of behavioral patterns has yielded to chimeric illusions.
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
Professor
emeritus of American Studies
University
Grenoble-Alpes
Director
of Research
University
of Paris-Nanterre
Center
for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The
University of California-San Diego
a.
What Secretary of State Tillerson’s Firing Means
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48940.htm
by Paul Craig
Roberts
Senator Chuck
Schumer (D, NY) says Tillerson’s firing indicates that the Trump administration
is disintegrating. I understand why Senator Schumer sees it that way, expecially
following all the other dismissals and resignations.
I see it
differently. The firing of Secretary of State Tillerson, the movement of CIA
Director Pompeo to Secretary of State, and the promotion of Gina Haspel, who
oversaw the secret CIA torture prisons in Thailand (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/us/politics/cia-deputy-director-gina-haspel-torture-thailand.html),
indicate that the military/security complex has closed its grip on the Trump
regime. There will be no more talk of normalizing relations with Russia.
The combination
of the Israel Lobby, the neoconservatives, and the military/security complex
have proven to be too powerful for peace to be established between the two
nuclear powers. If you look at Trump’s administration, the above three forces
are those in charge.
==========
b.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Saturday, 10 March
Subject: [MCM] Meanwhile, there's this ocean, and our children's
food....
From Douglas Yates:
It’s rare
to see media notice anniversaries of highly consequential events. For greater
discernment,
observe
where media attention is focused while 'Rome burns.' [The piece below, from the
Vancouver
Sun, came
out in March, 2014—MCM]
On a
daily basis, the Fukushima nuke complex continues to leak 300-400 tons of
highly contaminated
water
into the Pacific Ocean. Aerosol dispersion moves additional radiation into
the global air mass.
The
leakage is absorbed by lifeforms and is cumulative. In Japan’s
contaminated zones, the flowers
of cedar
trees contain cesium levels that exceed 250,000 bq/kg. Every spring pollen
grains re-contaminate
‘cleaned’
land.
It’s a
page out of Sisyphus’ punishment routine. Wait, there’s more:
By 2048,
according to rates of bio-accumulation, radiation in the tissue of PNW
killer whales is expected
to exceed
the Canadian guideline [1,000 bq/kg] for consumption of sea food. Japan’s
food safety laws
forbid
sale if radioactive cesium exceeds 100 becquerels per kilogram for
regular food items such as meat, vegetables, and fish; 50 becquerels
for milk and infant food; and 10 becquerels for drinking water.
What’s
the intervention level for food in America? It’s 1,200 bq/kg.
When
thinking about bio-accumulation, think grandchildren, great-grandchildren.
Your choice.
From
March, 2014:
Troubled
waters: Nuclear radiation found in B.C. may pose health concerns
LARRY PYNN, VANCOUVER SUN 03.12.2014
Also:
Fukushima: Living with a Disaster
[This was
produced by Greenpeace in 2016]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1023&v=oe_TCM7f71w
==========
c.
From: "Alison Weir, If Americans Knew" <contact@ifamericansknew.org>
Sent: Friday, 9 March, 2018
Subject: Detailed exposé on how Israel works to censor the Internet
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===========
d.
The Marketplace of Ideas: Assaulting the First Amendment
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/13/the-marketplace-of-ideas-assaulting-the-first-amendment/
by Stanley
L. Cohen
A decade before
he was to become President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson (the
principal author of the Declaration of Independence) then serving as Minister
to France, penned these words for the ages. It was the eve of the French
Revolution and the world was ablaze with revolutionary ideas and potent words:
“The people are
the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep
these to the true principles of their institution… Were it left to me to decide
whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a
government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Poetry of
freedom, this verse has safeguarded the chase of truth in ways that no military
might can provide or preserve be it in the United States or elsewhere.
Almost 250 years
later, we are, again, witness to an evident onslaught upon the core of our
collective freedom… the marketplace of ideas.
===========
e.
Putin
on U.S.
election interference: ‘I couldn’t care less’
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-u-s-election-interference-i-couldn-t-care-less-n855151
by
Alexander Smith
Russian
President Vladimir Putin has told NBC News that he "couldn't care
less" if Russian citizens tried to interfere in the 2016 American
presidential election because, he claims, they were not connected to the
Kremlin.
===========
f.
NBC’s
Clueless Boost for Putin
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48977.htm
by Ray McGovern
With the Russian president in the heat of a re-election campaign, Putin sat down
to talk with NBC’s Megyn Kelly for an interview that enabled him to burnish his
credentials to the Russian electorate, Ray McGovern explains.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s team
swept a doubleheader on March 1, with his mid-day speech claiming strategic
parity with the U.S., and then the nightcap duel with NBC’s Megyn Kelly. Any
lingering doubt that Putin is a shoo-in for another term as President is now
dispelled. Putin might consider sending NBC a thank-you note.
===========
g.
From: "Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Tuesday, 13 March, 2018
Subject: [MCM] The NYTimes calls Yemen "the world's worst
humanitarian crisis"—yet doesn't cover it.
Unless I'm missing something (always
possible), it looks like the Times has run six articles
about
that
genocidal slaughter since last August, four of them last year. On Dec. 27, the Times
also pumped
out
a most indignant editorial about Team Trump's blind eye toward the
catastrophe—a blindness that
has
also struck the Times itself.
Compare its silence vis-a-vis the ongoing
US/Saudi massacre with its loud lamentations over Syria
(lamentations
that obscure the US hand behind the violence there).
Thus "America's newspaper of
record" has helped transform the USA into a "captive nation,"
where
the
most educated people think they're well-informed, because they think
the US press is "free."
MCM
50,000 children in
Yemen have died of starvation and disease so far this year, monitoring group
says
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-save-the-children-yemen-20171116-story.html
Yemeni women sit near their malnourished
children who are receiving treatment in a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, on Nov. 15,
2017. More than 50,000 children under the age of 15 are at risk of death from
acute malnutrition by the end of 2017 after more than two years of escalating
conflict between Saudi-backed forces and the Houthi rebels.
(EPA)
Associated Press
An international aid
group says an estimated 130 children or more die every day in war-torn Yemen
from extreme hunger and disease.
Save the Children said late Wednesday that a continuing blockade
by the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Shiite rebels is likely to further
increase the death rate. It says over 50,000 children are believed to have died
in 2017.
===========
h.
Authority & Expectations
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34069.htm
Video
Smart and provocative young veteran,
Wray Harris, unlocks the sufferings served by the Iraq war.
". . . deeply moving. This close up
of PTSD is something every American should see. Mr. Harris impresses me as an
intelligent and thoughtful person going through hell yet willing to help others
understand the evils of war." - - Veterans for Peace Chapter 1011
===========
i.
Go back to Raqqa & bury bodies’:
Putin calls for investigation into strikes on civilians
in Syria
https://www.rt.com/news/420923-raqqa-crimes-investigation-putin/
Russian
President Vladimir Putin has said there should be an investigation into the
massive airstrikes on residential areas in Syria’s Raqqa. Putin pointed out
that the dead are still unburied and corpses are lying in the ruins.
“As for crimes, go back to
Raqqa and at least bury the dead bodies, which are still lying amid the ruins
after the air strikes on residential neighborhoods – and investigate these
attacks,” the Russian
leader said as he sat down
for an “at times combative” interview with NBC’s
Megyn Kelly. Putin also raised the point that the battle for Iraq’s Mosul
involving the US-led forces left the city “razed
to the ground.”
The interview heated up when the two were speaking about
Syria, when the anchor asked about alleged chemical attacks, for which the West
blames the Syrian government. Those claims were rebuffed as “fake news” by the
Russian leader. Putin stressed that Damascus destroyed its stockpile of
chemical weapons long ago, and the militants aimed “to simulate chemical attacks” which
were then blamed on the Syrian army.
“All the attempts that have been made repeatedly in the
recent past, and all the accusations were used to consolidate the efforts
against Assad,” Putin told the journalist. As Kelly continued to ask about
alleged chemical attacks that led to civilian deaths, Putin noted that there
had been no thorough investigation into what had happened in Syria.
“Russia is for a full-scale investigation. If you do not
know this, I am telling you this now. It is not true that we are against an
objective investigation. That is a lie.”
===========
j.
Pentagon
‘disappointed’ by Putin’s revelation of new Russian nuclear deterrent
https://www.rt.com/usa/420766-pentagon-disappointed-putin-missiles/
Top Pentagon officials have told US lawmakers that they were
“disappointed” by Putin’s public announcement of Russia’s unmatched missile
capability, lamenting that he will use it to further “intimidate” the US and
its allies.
“I
think the statements made by Russian president Putin while not surprising were
nonetheless disappointing. While we have been aware of the development of
Russia’s capabilities and watching with concern some of the development that
has occurred in terms of Russia’s doctrine and exercise program, it is
nonetheless disappointing to see that the president of the Russian Federation
chose to feature these capabilities in a way that he did,” Under
Secretary of Defense for Policy, John Rood, told the House Subcommittee on
Strategic Forces, in a discussion on US Strategic Forces Posture and the Fiscal
Year 2019 Budget Request.
Commander of the US Strategic Command, General John Hyten,
added that “Putin’s statements are not
surprising and only reinforce Russia’s commitment to develop weapons designed
to intimidate and coerce the US and its allies.”
===========
k.
Newly Revealed Russian
Weapons Systems: Political Implications
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48928.htm
by The Saker
The first two of the five
stages of grief: denial and anger
For those
interested in the military implications of the recent revelations by Vladimir
Putin about new Russian weapon systems I would recommend the excellent article
entitled “The Implications of Russia’s New Weapon Systems” by Andrei
Martyanov who offers a superb analysis of what these new weapons mean for the
USA and, especially, the US Navy. What I want to do here is something a little
different and look at some of the more political consequences of these latest
revelations.
===========
l.
Toxic Profit: Meet the Top Super Polluters in the US
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:21284:Toxic-Profit%3A-Meet-the-Top-Super-Polluters-in-the-US
DowDuPont
tops the list of the biggest air and water polluters in the country, according
to PERI's new Toxic 100 index.
Researcher
Michael Ash breaks down the report.
===========
m.
The Price Women Pay
for Tips
https://www.nytimes.com/video/business/100000005698008/female-servers-tipping-industry.html
===========
n.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Saturday, 10 March, 2018
Subject: [MCM] Americans don't trust "their" government
This
is a revolutionary situation; or could be, if people stop to think about it.
Hence
the slo-mo crackdown on the Internet, the crackpot propaganda tarring Bernie
Sanders
and
Jill Stein as "Russian trolls," the militarization of police (who
won't be giving up their
AR-15s),
and other signs of elite desperation.
MCM
From the Pew Research Center, November, 2015:
Trust in government: 1958-2015
http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/1-trust-in-government-1958-2015/
The public’s trust in the federal government continues to be at
historically low levels. Only 19% of Americans today say they can trust the
government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (3%) or “most
of the time” (16%).
Fewer than three-in-ten Americans have expressed trust in the
federal government in every major national poll conducted since July 2007 – the
longest period of low trust in government in more than 50 years. In 1958, when
the American National Election Study first asked this question, 73% said they
could trust the government just about always or most of the time.
The erosion of public trust in government began in the 1960s. The
share saying they could trust the federal government to do the right thing
nearly always or most of the time reached an all-time high of 77% in 1964.
Within a decade – a period that included the Vietnam War, civil unrest and the
Watergate scandal – trust had fallen by more than half, to 36%. By the end of
the 1970s, only about a quarter of Americans felt that they could trust the
government at least most of the time.
Trust in government rebounded in the 1980s before falling in the
early to mid-1990s. But as the economy boomed in the late 1990s, confidence in
government increased. And in 2001, the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States
transformed public attitudes on a range of issues – including trust in
government.
In early October 2001, a month after the attacks, 60% said they
could trust the government, roughly double the share earlier that year and the
highest percentage expressing trust in government in more than 40 years. But
the rise in government trust was short-lived – by the summer of 2002, the share
saying they could trust the government had tumbled 22 percentage points.
Amid the war in Iraq and economic uncertainty at home, trust in
government continued to decline. By July 2007, trust had fallen to 24%. Since
then, the share saying they can trust the federal government has generally
fluctuated in a narrow range, between 20% and 25%.
===========
o.
Conservative
Lawmaker Who Attacked Corbyn
over
Yemen
Received
Luxury Paid Trip from Saudi Arabia
Conservative MP
Helen Whately claimed Jeremy Corbyn is "so poorly informed on Saudi and
Yemen."
She previously
led an all-expense-paid Tory junket to meet with the Saudi monarchy.
===========
p.
Syrian Army
Finds Chemical Weapons' Workshop
in Eastern
Ghouta
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201803121062431574-syrian-army-chemical-weapons/
===========
q.
Noam Chomsky and Danny Glover Condemn U.S. and Canada Over
Venezuela Sanctions
https://www.alternet.org/world/noam-chomsky-and-danny-glover-open-letter
by April
M. Short
Chomsky and
Glover are among 154 signatories asking the U.S. and Canada to reconsider the
sanctions.
===========
r.
You Still Don’t
Know,
Do You, Mr. Jones?
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/13/you-still-dont-know-do-you-mr-jones/
by Paul
Edwards
A terrible fear
is abroad in the land. The MSM has its thongs in a knot with dire
warnings that our democracy is being attacked, subverted, betrayed.
Between Putin and the Russians and Trump and his clowns the cry is that America
teeters on the brink of losing our priceless, cherished democracy.
You’re late,
people. Lifetimes too late…
Managing the
Great Charade that supports the sanctified dogma that America is a democracy
has been the first duty of the Capitalist engine that owns everything, from the
Founders down to today’s Imperial goat’s nest.
That democracy
never functions and never has, Plato predicted and history confirms.
This, notwithstanding the spin of one of the mightiest social and political
reactionaries of all time–Mr. Churchill–that “democracy is the worst form of
government known, except all others.” Hey, it worked for him.
Our own
financial upper crust–1% of the 1%–have ingested, along with all our means of
production, all organs of public information, and by relentless application
have indelibly incised their holy writ in the public soul. The sadly
ignorant public internalized their deception and nourishes itself, for want of
any substantial sustenance, on this fatally poisonous fairy tale.
===========
s.
The CIA takeover of the
Democratic Party
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/13/pers-m13.html
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t.
Newly Tapped Sec of State Mike Pompeo Comes with Deep Ties to
the Koch Brothers
"If I were on the confirmation
committee, I would be asking Mike Pompeo exactly how much money the Koch
network has invested in him that has not been publicly disclosed," says
Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and publisher
of ExposedByCMD.org and PRWatch.org.
===========
u.
Trump Replaces Rex Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo at
State; Torturer Named New Head of CIA
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/13/trump_replaces_rex_tillerson_with_cia
President Trump
has ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and said he will replace him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Trump announced the news on
Twitter this morning. He also said CIA Deputy Director
Gina Haspel will be tapped to succeed Pompeo at the CIA. Both would need to be confirmed by the Senate. If
confirmed, Gina Haspel will become the first woman to head the CIA.
Gina Haspel was
directly involved in the CIA’s torture program under the George W. Bush
administration. She was responsible for running a secret CIA black site in Thailand where prisoners were
waterboarded and tortured. We air President Trump’s remarks and highlights from
Democracy Now! coverage on Pompeo and Haspel.
===========
v.
Critics of Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana Decry State & Company Surveillance of Protesters
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/13/critics_of_bayou_bridge_pipeline_in