we need less anarchist writing by economists and philosophers and more anarchist writing by artists. i know. i'll get to it.

i've posted this a few times. i don't absolutely identify with any single strain of anarchist thought, but this is really the closest thing i've seen to articulating my own viewpoints.

" Now as the State is not to govern, it may be asked what the State is to do. The State is to be a voluntary association that will organise labour, and be the manufacturer and distributor of necessary commodities. The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful. And as I have mentioned the word labour, I cannot help saying that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour. There is nothing necessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours, on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt. All work of that kind should be done by a machine.

And I have no doubt that it will be so. Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community. All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man. There is no doubt at all that this is the future of machinery, and just as trees grow while the country gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure – which, and not labour, is the aim of man – or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. And when scientific men are no longer called upon to go down to a depressing East End and distribute bad cocoa and worse blankets to starving people, they will have delightful leisure in which to devise wonderful and marvellous things for their own joy and the joy of everyone else. There will be great storages of force for every city, and for every house if required, and this force man will convert into heat, light, or motion, according to his needs. Is this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.

Now, I have said that the community by means of organisation of machinery will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things will be made by the individual. This is not merely necessary, but it is the only possible way by which we can get either the one or the other. An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him. Upon the other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft. A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist. Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the world has known. Crime, which, under certain conditions, may seem to have created Individualism, must take cognisance of other people and interfere with them. It belongs to the sphere of action. But alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.

And it is to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this intense form of Individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it in an authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as it is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide difference. If a man of science were told that the results of his experiments, and the conclusions that he arrived at, should be of such a character that they would not upset the received popular notions on the subject, or disturb popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of people who knew nothing about science; if a philosopher were told that he had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought, provided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were held by those who had never thought in any sphere at all – well, nowadays the man of science and the philosopher would be considerably amused. Yet it is really a very few years since both philosophy and science were subjected to brutal popular control, to authority – in fact the authority of either the general ignorance of the community, or the terror and greed for power of an ecclesiastical or governmental class. Of course, we have to a very great extent got rid of any attempt on the part of the community, or the Church, or the Government, to interfere with the individualism of speculative thought, but the attempt to interfere with the individualism of imaginative art still lingers. In fact, it does more than linger; it is aggressive, offensive, and brutalising.

In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them, they leave them alone. In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in which the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of popular authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces such badly-written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form, such silly, vulgar plays as England. It must necessarily be so. The popular standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it. It is at once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is too easy, because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style, psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most uncultivated mind. It is too difficult, because to meet such requirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament, would have to write not for the artistic joy of writing, but for the amusement of half-educated people, and so would have to suppress his individualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, and surrender everything that is valuable in him. In the case of the drama, things are a little better: the theatre-going public like the obvious, it is true, but they do not like the tedious; and burlesque and farcical comedy, the two most popular forms, are distinct forms of art. Delightful work may be produced under burlesque and farcical conditions, and in work of this kind the artist in England is allowed very great freedom. It is when one comes to the higher forms of the drama that the result of popular control is seen. The one thing that the public dislike is novelty. Any attempt to extend the subject-matter of art is extremely distasteful to the public; and yet the vitality and progress of art depend in a large measure on the continual extension of subject-matter. The public dislike novelty because they are afraid of it. It represents to them a mode of Individualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects his own subject, and treats it as he chooses. The public are quite right in their attitude. Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. In Art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them. They endure them as the inevitable, and as they cannot mar them, they mouth about them. Strangely enough, or not strangely, according to one’s own views, this acceptance of the classics does a great deal of harm. The uncritical admiration of the Bible and Shakespeare in England is an instance of what I mean. With regard to the Bible, considerations of ecclesiastical authority enter into the matter, so that I need not dwell upon the point. But in the case of Shakespeare it is quite obvious that the public really see neither the beauties nor the defects of his plays. If they saw the beauties, they would not object to the development of the drama; and if they saw the defects, they would not object to the development of the drama either. The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms. They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry, and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions – one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true. The former expression has reference to style; the latter to subject-matter. But they probably use the words very vaguely, as an ordinary mob will use ready-made paving-stones. There is not a single real poet or prose-writer of this century, for instance, on whom the British public have not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality, and these diplomas practically take the place, with us, of what in France, is the formal recognition of an Academy of Letters, and fortunately make the establishment of such an institution quite unnecessary in England. Of course, the public are very reckless in their use of the word. That they should have called Wordsworth an immoral poet, was only to be expected. Wordsworth was a poet. But that they should have called Charles Kingsley an immoral novelist is extraordinary. Kingsley’s prose was not of a very fine quality. Still, there is the word, and they use it as best they can. An artist is, of course, not disturbed by it. The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself. But I can fancy that if an artist produced a work of art in England that immediately on its appearance was recognised by the public, through their medium, which is the public press, as a work that was quite intelligible and highly moral, he would begin to seriously question whether in its creation he had really been himself at all, and consequently whether the work was not quite unworthy of him, and either of a thoroughly second-rate order, or of no artistic value whatsoever."

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/

you got all these people trying to convince the world that their mythology is history. i'm more interested in convincing the world that history is mostly mythology.

the reacts section is changing. the recitations of written essays will end. the reasoning underlying it has altered.

i started the reacts section to deal with rants to old youtube videos, precisely because they weren't going to be up-to-date. so, the section had a specific purpose of capturing thoughts that i had while eating. it was shortly after this that i noticed that my posts on youtube were only visible to myself. so, i decided that if my written word was going to get censored like that then i'd recite what i was saying instead, so that it was at least available.

youtube was compromised, but google+ was at least safe as storage even if you couldn't see everything; youtube is public, whereas google+ is private. i rationalized the censorship, and decided the writing would be safe if posted in a private place. at the beginning of december of this year, that assumption was challenged: posts on google+ started disappearing, and some experiment on my behalf pointed towards a censoring filter as the most likely cause. don't tell me that's impossible because they'd tell us if they were doing it; i'm telling you i was censored by a filter, and you need to adjust your analysis to fit that new evidence. they are doing it, and they're not telling you. clear? if it's not, then fuck off.

once i became aware of their intent to censor, i immediately stopped posting to google+. i may be rationalizing further, but i do feel that the information is safer at blogspot, and will until further notice. i have no reason to think it's not accessible. yes - i'll be backing up regularly. but, i no longer feel any need to recite the information into a video, because i feel the writing is in a continually accessible place.

this change, retroactive to december 1st, 2016, will have a large effect on the lengths of my vlogs and will also dramatically cut down my editing time.

i'm fooling myself in thinking i can stop ranting. but, i don't need a video component to go along with these rants, either.

the odd one? maybe? it's not likely.

Nov 27, 2013

so, given that black friday is the day of the year where things cost the least, and we're mostly all going to convert stupid amounts of our money into christmas presents anyways (some of you may, like me, entirely boycott christmas...it's to the point that i don't even make cards, which hasn't left me popular with friends or family), why do we choose this day to boycott?

oh yeah. it's because we're a bunch of privileged liberals that can walk in a few weeks later when the sales are over and shell the cash out without it hurting us. of course. carry on as before.

just don't forget to snicker at those silly poor people for thinking that, if they beat the line, they may be able to afford christmas this year, and maybe keep a little bit of their constantly eroding social pride. wtf are they thinking. silly poor people.

i mean, don't get me wrong. i'm sitting here boycotting the whole thing. the boycott's as much religious as it is anti-capitalist. when i say 'fuck christmas', i mean it. heartily.

but converting normal people into jaded fuckers like me is a long, difficult process full of traumatic experiences. most people have to deal with this shit. those 70% mark downs are kind of useful, if you've got two kids and four in-laws to prove you're not desperately poor to, in between handing out 95% of your income to various types of rentiers.

naw. silly poor people. look at them run into each other. they're funny.

i have conquered all of the mortals.

the only thing left for me to pwn is time.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/11/the-end-of-classical-music/

i have spent the last few days in the alter-reality and have a large number of updates:

this is for the nov 24th track:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/11/its-late-on-saturday-night-and-im.html

this is for the review of the second bush record:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/11/its-rusty-razorblade-on-that-suitcase.html

this is my initial reaction to the first third of the grapes of wrath:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/11/beginning-grapes-of-wrath.html

dec 1st track:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/12/demo-14-mosh-pit-song.html

grapes of wrath second reaction:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/12/the-middle-section-of-grapes-of-wrath.html

dec 8th track:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/12/this-is-new-song-that-i-wrote-this-week.html

these are the last two posts on the grapes of wrath:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/12/finishing-grapes-of-wrath.html
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/12/final-thoughts-on-grapes-of-wrath.html

dec 15th track:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/12/demo-16-viewless.html

note at the end of exams:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/12/a-little-worried-about-math-exam.html

starting christmas holidays:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/12/supermans-dead.html

dec 22nd track:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/12/in-completing-this-track-i-have-now.html

often when i see pictures of a middle eastern family, i'm taken aback by how white the women and often the children are, and how differently looking the men are.

it's just a reminder that the middle east is an integral component of western civilization, and that such a large part of western civilization originated in the middle east during a period when the inhabitants were primarily light-skinned: hittites, iranians, greeks and romans.

waves of migrants flushed into the region, some now argue as a consequence of climate change but certainly as a complicated set of inter-related causal push forces. from the south. from the east. from the north. the migrants killed the men that lived there, and took their wives. the phenotypic expression of this historical narrative is fascinating.

i'm just finishing up the steinbeck, and...

this is for the alter-reality, which is staggered by 20 years. and, i'm a little behind - so it was actually a few weeks more than twenty years ago. that's a long time to remember the details clearly.

i remember the text's value as being largely historical. or, at least i interpreted it that way. in reapproaching the text, i wanted the political and philosophical components to be paramount, yes. but, the truth is that when i read it the first time, i interpreted these components as an aspect of the plotline. these are the components that stuck with me over the years, and time may have distorted their priority in my mind. i've been reminded that the purpose of the text is historical, and all aspects of it are subservient to this aim.

marx would refer to the kind of socialism promoted by the novel as "utopian", and reject it as a push backwards against progress. steinbeck was apparently channeling emerson; while i have never found much of anything relevant to my life in the history of american puritanism, and have hence broadly avoided it, i do recognize the ideas as ultimately rooted in those of charles fourier and robert owen. i have no historical connection to american puritanism, either; unlike many southern canadians, i do not, to my knowledge, have american ancestry. i believe that the only nineteenth century ancestry that i have on this continent is indigenous. my mom's side came from norway in the early 20th century, and my dad's side came from italy even later than that. so, i've always looked at american puritanism as something that is foreign and strange to me; it is not my history. my history is distinct: it is canadian, but it comes directly from europe, without passing through the united states. and, i am consequently better able to understand utopian socialism through marx than i am through any american writer.

the point i'm getting across is that i cannot pretend that i endorse the politics in the novel. steinbeck does a good job in helping us understand the plight of these farmers, and that includes helping us understand how they think. in the process, he sides a little too closely with them, and repeats many of the errors that they would have no choice to make, given their immense ignorance of what is happening around them, but that he should have known better than to make.

we are waging a war that was begun by our distant ancestors, so distant that almost nobody understands it. i am pessimistic that this war will ever be won, in any abstraction. but we may be entering a period where it shifts, and hybridizes with the last remaining other-wars - locking us into a ubiquitous eternal struggle with ourselves.

one of the other-wars is the struggle between the chinese and the japanese, which has interacted with the ancient war but has not yet been subsumed into it. the ancient war has of course shifted and hybridized many times, but it always asserts itself as the ancient war, in the end.

why? well, why did the egyptians and hittites fight over kadesh? for tax revenue.

the ancient war has always been for profit, and that is why it can never end. the divisions are characteristics, and useful to build collective identity, but they are not reasons for conflict.

yeah. i'll say something about syria.

May 11, 2013

so, not ditching assad was a failure. ok.

if you want to take that approach, it's just that the plan failed. syria has air defense systems. this guy got elected because the media confused people into thinking he was a peace candidate. even a single downed plane would have ruined him.

likewise, he couldn't send a ground force in next door to iraq, for obvious reasons.

so, he had to do it the way he's doing it. the approach, though, just didn't work...

there's maybe a theme here of americans underestimating their opponents. you know who did that to his detriment? hitler. you know why? because he was a racist.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/07/leave_bad_enough_alone

May 12, 2013

the wsws are trotskyists. and, on this point, they're correct to attack the iso as being co-opted or ignorant.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/11/isos-m11.html

the document in question is full of clear propaganda language that crosses the line into doublespeak.

consider this short section, as an example. will next week's report claim we've always been at war with eurasia?

(ironically, we have)

"The Syrian revolution has confronted a world upside down, one where states that were allegedly friends of the Arabs such as Russia, China, and Iran have stood in support of the slaughter of people, while states that never supported democracy or independence, especially the U.S. and its Gulf allies, have intervened in support of the revolutionaries."

hrmmn. or, perhaps, the world is not upside down at all.

it's bastards all around here, there's no question. moral arguments designed to pick a side here aren't possible. there isn't a side that has popular support, either. there's been millions of refugees, and that is what truly reflects the will of the syrian people.

but what the organized rebels want is an islamic state stretching between iraq and syria that enforces traditional sunni orthodoxy, roots out the heretics and aligns itself with the gulf monarchies in an eventual conflict with iran. what socialist group declares solidarity with this?

at least assad was trying to step down. and i keep saying this: the reason the saudis sent in the rebels is because assad WAS trying to step down and open up a democracy. the saudis don't want democracy in the area - gives people ideas.

oct 12, 2013

it was always about containing russia and china. it's not a shift in policy so much as the launch of a new objective. once assad is removed from power, the americans will have control over all of the former soviet allies in the region (iraq, libya, syria). i think they're going to stop with syria, though. i don't think invading iran is possible....or at least it isn't at the moment....

the next stage is africa, and it's going to be more violent as the proxies are more developed. the americans will want to contain the conflict. how long before china figures out that their better strategy is escalation?

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19349-old-game-new-obsession-new-enemy-now-its-china



jan 12, 2014

nothing like a little mind aids to clarify your thinking. happy birthday to me.

the russians have been prioritizing deepwater ports for centuries. they really, really value having access through the black sea, past the dardanelles and into the mediterranean. so, the transit point in syria (tartus) is of central priority to a continuous russian naval strategy going back centuries. and there has equally been a british, and anglo-american, strategy to contain russian shipping through this region, for nearly as long as the russians have been valuing the access. this is a really basic struggle over control of shipping lanes by two powerful monarchical centres, two empires, that precedes the existence of the modern world.

the time was right for russia to be more aggressive in it's strategy, arguably even devastatingly too late. whether through real naivete or some kind of strategic fake naivete, the russians passively allowed themselves to be outmaneuvered for decades, stemming for an apparent (or contrived?) attempt to legitimately establish peaceful and common interests. with each clumsy russian gesture towards friendship, the americans became more contemptful in their deceit. something seems to have finally clicked after libya, where the russians were rudely discarded as fools. the russians seem to realize, finally, that the americans have no desire to be at peace. this is a very important recent shift in the balance of world power.

so, syria is quickly turning into a militarized russian base to protect those interests. assad is losing control, alright, but not to the rebels - to the kremlin. in the end, that's who picks up the spot on the risk board.

and bloody hell cry the saudis, who started the mess in the first place, by launching an attack from a position of weakness. the russians will happily allow assad to follow his enemies, and one cannot think there is any other option should he remain in power, under kremlin guidance or not. assad cannot simply quietly rebuild, and show up cheerily to the arab league meetings. revenge is inevitable. and why wouldn't the russians nurture that? some ruthless asshole probably pointed out that you'd better kill the fucker while you get the chance, when in such situations.

but in the end it's just the russians and english fighting over shipping lanes. same shit as for the last forever.

jan 24, 2014

i think he gets it mostly right, but he doesn't answer the question of "why now?". ok, the arab spring was an opportunity. it's only half the answer.

assad was actually democratizing before this mess. he wanted to move to a party system. the west is casting the guy as this authoritarian nut, but he's actually an eye doctor by training. he inherited power from his father, but didn't want it. far from wanting to extend his power, he's been trying to step down in an orderly fashion.

so, why not just step aside? because he's trying to be responsible. he doesn't want to hand over power to an american or saudi-backed military dictatorship (see egypt). he wants to set up a democracy on his way out. maybe not a really liberal democracy, but where does that actually exist?

i know this sounds incredible, but do the research. assad is an eye doctor that wants to relieve himself of the power he inherited and didn't want and focus on his practice. seriously.

the reason the saudis are invading now is that they don't want a democracy in the region. which is the same reason they're hostile to iran.

so, do you see what they've done? they've tricked you into thinking we're supporting forces that desire democracy. in truth, we're suppressing democracy. just like we do everywhere else in the region...

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11368

Feb 17, 2014



he's really exaggerating the opposition to assad. syrians seem to have temporarily aligned with the government as a lesser evil. ironically, the best way to actually remove assad would be to pull the foreign islamist fighters out and let the people rise against him. but, that moment may now be lost for many years, as the state effectively mobilizes it's citizens against the terrorist groups.

whatever assad's crimes, it's hard to blame syrians for choosing secular stability over religious fundamentalism. i mean, it's the old "would you rather saddam husseein was still in power?" canard. the reality is that a huge number of iraqis would say "yes". i think commentators really need to work that out more strenuously in understanding the depth of the opposition to these islamist groups.

there's this desire to project this third option that it seems like syrians realize isn't realistic in the short term. in the short term, the focus seems to be on saving the country from the fascists, rather than aligning with them to topple the government.

it's a constant problem. even in a simple occupy context, there were nazis popping up all over the place. we decided it was more important to kick the nazis out. so, for me, reproducing that line of thinking is very easy. if i'm choosing between upholding parliament and shooting nazis? it's not even a choice, give me a gun. the only good fascist is a dead one.

so, the revolution in syria is not likely to carry on.

but it doesn't fall under the category of "blunder" the same way that the screwed up sanctions do because the crux of the operation was to *prevent* democracy in syria (assad was building a constitution at the time).

it's not the preferred outcome, but it's an acceptable result in the short run.

to an extent, i'm reminded of the spanish or russian revolutions. there were far deeper anarchist movements there than in contemporary syria, and there was a lot of debate, but in the end they had to align with statist interests to fight a far greater threat - franco and the bolsheviks, respectively. they lost in both cases. but they picked the right side of the fight.

it's interesting today, fwiw, that nobody talks about the slaughter that the republican forces were no doubt responsible for. i'm deducing this, i can't cite anything.

i should probably get a good book on the topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror_%28Spain%29

it's maybe perilous to draw an exact analogy, but you get the point.

war's a shitty deal all around.

i mean, we see what's happened in libya, and that is far less organized. just total racist and sectarian slaughter. i shudder to think at would what happen if these groups actually succeed, and i think "the average syrian" is well aware of what the stakes are in supporting assad to defeat them.

if anything, support seems to have strengthened. there was supposedly a huge pro-assad rally yesterday.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/syrians-support-assad-western-propaganda

presstv should be read critically, rather than dismissed. they may be exaggerating. i can't possibly know, i can just read the reports skeptically.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/02/16/350993/syrians-hold-progovernment-rallies/

April 22, 2014

i watched the first half hour or so of this and was disappointed by how western putin came off.

first, he looked into the camera and flat out lied. very american behaviour. second, the entire thing is noticeably a pr stunt, with questions designed to produce populist responses.

not that this is new, or anything. the western narrative has always been hard to square with russian propaganda. sure, you had these shots floating around of putin wrestling bears and taming tigers, but what the western reports cut out is that the reason he was taking on these predators was to save some helpless kittens. it's not the kind of fascist machismo that arnold was preparing us with, it's strong-protect-the-weak type stuff; less terminator, more kindergarten cop.

but it's propaganda, nonetheless. there's really little use in watching it.

as for my shot of reality regarding the russians, it's not that i was naive about russian interests or accepted everything they took at face value. it's not hard to see what their actual interests are in syria, for example. however, i had interpreted them as being fundamentally disinterested in aggression, carrying out defensive strategies and ultimately in a position where pointing out america's bullshit around the world was actually a good preservation tactic. i've pointed out repeatedly on this page that russia has done everything it possibly can to not react to american provocations, but that ukraine is simply too close to moscow to not react. the important thing i'm trying to get across is that russia cannot merely react in a careful, controlled manner - the moment it reacts is the moment it shifts strategy from passive, defensive maneuvers designed to shift world opinion to aggressive, pre-emptive type action. it's still defensive, but it's taken up a notch from diplomacy to action. one could say it's moving from a war of words to a proxy war. it's still not a hot war.

...although few people seem to realize the extent of this defense shield, even pussy cat putin himself. the london-moscow conflict is not far from a mate, at this point. dangling nukes from a string over putin's head is the power necessary to facilitate an overthrow. gas prices? lol.

whether the russians get it or not, and i mean really get it (it's abundantly clear that they understand the threat abstractly), is still unclear to me. however, it's very clear to me that that pandora's box is now opened.

that means that we all need to be more critical about russian press, as well as russian-backed sources.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PyEspLz8UQ

another actor that cannot merely carry on is assad. whether assad was actually, really a military dictator five years ago or not is an open question, although those informed would mostly lean towards not. he is now, and he has no option but to counterattack.

the future blowback that this administration is creating will haunt the world for decades to come.

May 2, 2014



it took me a while to getting around to watching it, but this is an important speech, historically, that will be cited for decades to come. you have to get through a little bit of propaganda to come to it, but putin is announcing a drastic shift in russian foreign policy: an end to american appeasement. that is provocative language, but in the era of over the top propaganda the truth is indeed often provocative. and, like churchill before him, putin is too late: this is the end of the russian empire. what remains to be seen is whether the new regional power is going to be europe or china, or whether they just split russia down the middle.

see, here's the thing i was worried about and we've seen confirmed in the east of ukraine: russia may have been forced into crimea by threat of losing it's strategic regional bases (if one pushes a spring, it does indeed bounce back at you, as vlad said), but it cannot simply stop with that reaction. it's like setting a string of dominoes in motion. russia now has no choice but to attempt to reassert it's hegemony over all of eastern europe, which will lead to it's imminent collapse..

likewise, once assad has rooted out the rebels he will have no choice but to launch a counter-attack against saudi arabia. there's a major proxy war in the region on the horizon with a less certain outcome attached to it.

now, it's a new century. generally speaking, excluding the middle east, tactics are very different now. nobody wants to set off a war of alliances. i'm not suggesting that russia is planning an invasion of poland, which would start a nuclear war. i'm suggesting that russia is moving into a period where it attempts to control events in eastern europe through economic leverage and covert intelligence operations, like we're seeing in the east of ukraine. goals include taking power in these countries long enough to pull them out of nato, and crucially long enough to prevent the construction of that missile shield, which will reduce russia to a slave of nato. i think annexations like we've seen in crimea will be exceedingly difficult to organize.

it's a race against time, and one russia is destined to lose. especially if it continues to waste time in eastern ukraine, while nato further fortifies the baltics.

none of this is really new. it's in the pnaa. supposedly, books have been written about it (i haven't read them). but let's be clear what the theatre is in this war: it's the famous resources triangle of instability. what's changed is that a serious front is opening in eastern europe.

one of the different aspects of this front is that nato and america are on the defensive, which i think is unique in the post cold war world. that's not to assign the russians a position of strength. it's very illusory.

so, this is what has changed: russia has reacted, and now cannot reverse the machinery it has set in motion until every former warsaw pact member has resigned it's membership in nato. which will not happen.

warsaw is the new moscow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDLwu4E35us

dontlaughtoomuch11 1 year ago

"russia now has no choice but to attempt to reassert it's hegemony over all of eastern europe, which will lead to it's imminent collapse.."

====>Retard bitch, you made the TERRIBLE mistake but TERRIBLE mistake of confusing Sovjet Russia with Modern Russia, seriously??? Has the USA yankee propaganda made your brain that weak that you can't even think straight?!

jessica 1 year ago (edited)

+dontlaughtoomuch11 well, no. i'm equating modern russia with soviet russia with czarist russia, actually. all of these things are different stages of a russian empire. none of these stages were communist or capitalist in any meaningful way, they all shared the ideology of empire.

there was no such thing as the cold war. there was a conflict between london's empire and moscow's empire that heated up a little after the french revolution, when they became the two dominant empires vying over global control. london was replaced with washington, but this is an insignificant detail; the american empire is the lineal descendant of the british empire. and, one can maybe extrapolate that back further, by connecting london to rome and moscow to constantinople. there has always been a conflict between the empire to the east and the empire to the west.

such is the nature of a world broken up into states.

that is not a result of propaganda. i don't watch western media, but i doubt there's many western talking heads comparing putin to churchill or voiding the american revolution by reducing it to a civil war within the british empire. it's the result of having a solid understanding of history, and being able to see when an empire is on the brink of collapse.

the reason russia cannot reverse the attack is that, if it does, nato will become more aggressive. every sign of weakness from russia merely strengthens america's kill reflex.  if they do not take control of latvia, nato will place missiles there directed directly at moscow that will eliminate all russian sovereignty. if they do not take control of poland, it will be used to retake latvia. and etc. there is no end to this, other than the west changing it's mindset out of this endgame/final-kill/conquer-russia mode and into one that respects their boundaries.

but all of this is completely impossible. putin is fifteen years too late to reverse the collapse of the russian empire - which he is responsible for by not reacting to the expansionism by the american empire. all he can do is watch helplessly as his allies turn against him in a rush to steal the country's resource wealth.

the kill is approaching, and the world will feast on the carcass.

 

may 30, 2014

again: i love that vice is doing this, because it provides some hard evidence to back up the reports coming out of the region and this just isn't coming from elsewhere in the western media. yet, i feel this video requires some context. the basic explanation is that what you're seeing here is turkish-backed militias fighting with saudi-backed militias for control over a post-assad syria. but, let me explain further.

whatever the causes of the initial uprising, the situation was taken advantage of by outside forces looking to advance their geostrategic interests, as also occurred in libya and, at a higher level, in egypt. this led to an influx of saudi-backed fighters looking to expand saudi influence in the region. something that's very interesting is that, before all of this happened, assad was actually on the path to relinquish power to a civilian government. i believe that the overriding interest of the saudi monarchy is to prevent this transfer of power, and install a saudi-style theocratic government instead.

unlike his father, the assad that is in power now did not seize control through a military coup. he inherited power in a way that is more or less monarchistic. but, something that the western media has completely ignored is the reality that he hasn't ever seemed to actually be interested in ruling. if a prince is interested in ruling, does he move to britain to study optometry? how does that help him in learning how to rule a nation? rather, it's been clear for years that the younger assad is more or less an empty figurehead in a state that is run by a junta of military generals, and that he basically wants to step down and focus on his life outside of government. western media rarely reflects anything approximating truth, but it's treatment of assad the individual (rather than the regime that uses him as a figurehead) is a really extreme example of outlandish messaging.

if you've been following syrian politics behind the mess, what you actually see is a state this is trying to democratize by modifying it's constitution to allow for strengthened democratic institutions. one could suggest they're following the "turkish model" in a slow democratization that could take many years. but, ignoring hillary clinton's scoffing reaction, that seemed to be the path the syrian state was heading down.

now, if you think it through, elections in syria might not be what the west really wants. for example, it could allow hezbollah into power, or it could lead to a strongly anti-zionist government. certainly, it would lead to instability. the west always prefers a strong dictatorship that it understands over the uncertainty of popular opinion. so, it initially backed the saudis in their attempt to take control of the region before a democracy could be established.

however, over time it became clear that such a theocratic state would not have popular support in syria, which has been a secular (if not particularly free) society for many decades now. when given the opportunity to support assad or support the saudi rebels, the syrian people chose to support assad. so, the entire thing backfired.

realizing this, a coalition of american allies that includes turkey and qatar have broken with the saudis. there has been a wide realization that the tactics the saudis want to use will not be successful in taking stable control of syria, but will merely lead to decades of war. in order for western interests to take control of syria with popular backing, they need to present themselves as a more moderate force.

so, this is what you're seeing, here: it's all about putting a softer image on the rebels, to make them seem more moderate, in order to generate support for them. but, the interests driving the conflict have not at all diverged.

there's potential for a wider conflict developing amongst nato-aligned nations, which threatens to severely damage american influence over the region. the americans have long been following a british-inherited policy of divide and conquer, where they simultaneously build up each of the major players in the region (turkey, egypt, israel, saudis, iran) and play them off against each other. this asserts their own hegemony while eliminating any local hegemony. should one country threaten to become too powerful (as the saudis have threatened to recently), you can expect the americans to throw their weight behind their competitor (which would be iran). but, the most important strategic ally always has been and remains turkey.

so, the key thing to understand is that the saudis are not only advancing western interests, they also have their own interests, which also includes toppling the shia ("heretic") government in iraq. isis is operating over a wide swath of territory. the boundary between iraq and syria does not truly exist at the moment. and, this is both the cause and the effect of obama's attempt to soften his approach towards the heretics in tehran, too.

it's not widely understood in the west that there remains a great deal of animosity between turks and arabs over control of the levant, where arabs are still bitter over a millenium of turkish imperialism and the turks remain leery about allowing saudi-backed fundamentalists to set up bases too close to their borders.

so, while the general conflict between nato and russia is driving the big picture, and the saudi-iran conflict is driving the civil war, what is driving the actual fighting on the ground is a turkish-arab conflict over the post-assad space.

and, we should hope that doesn't get out of hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cb3OURdl3g

jessica 1 year ago

and i just want to add that the purpose of this message control is to facilitate an upcoming nato bombing campaign, which is now possible due to the russians being distracted in ukraine.

Bman Chu 1 year ago

You make some pretty outrageous, sweeping claims about the west without providing a shred of evidence in support. The west is not one single entity united in conspiracy against the middle east and russia. The west has many different faces and desires as well as many free and informed voices.

jessica 1 year ago

+Bman Chu kinda, but not really. if i was unclear, i was really referring to the nato alliance, which is (excluding minor squabbles) under the unitary command of the united states.

jan 11, 2015

you need to be careful with these think tankers, as they're all working for somebody.

the sunni/shia thing is a tool to promote various conflicts, rather than the point of the conflict itself. well, there may be some legit nutbars in saudi arabia. but it's a secondary concern. it's not hard to guess what it's actually about. it starts with an 'o' and rhymes with "coil".

take a step back. the meta conflict remains the cold war. the intelligentsia has wanted to move on for years, but it's a lot of delusional neo-liberalism. history didn't end. it didn't even shift. same shit carried on without a blip. it's just that the americans got a step up on the game. what's been happening since 1990 is that russian influence has been waning, and the chinese haven't been able or willing to step in, which created a power vacuum. the various proxy wars are the result of local interests stepping into this power vacuum and jockeying for control.

so, you've got this saudi arabia v iran thing. but this is not the dominant conflict. the saudis are armed to their teeth with billions of dollars of us arms. the iranians know better than to poke them. it's a conflict that's over before it starts. even the israeli intelligence people have come out and stated that iran is unable to pose any kind of a military threat to anybody in the region.

rather, the dominant proxy war happening right now is between turkey and saudi arabia. unlike the iranians, the turks are serious players and pose a serious threat to saudi ambitions in the region. europe's continual refusal to allow turkey in (and if i were turkey, i wouldn't even want in at this point) has forced them to focus to their south. syria. iraq. egypt. all this instability is the result of turkish aligned groups fighting with saudi-aligned groups to walk into the vacuum created by the assumed inevitable russian pullout (which is in fact not inevitable, and not happening).

meanwhile, america is doing what the british have been doing for centuries, which is keeping everybody at each other's throats and profiting off the conflict from all sides.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sxi0xJVMbI

koala central command 1 year ago

i mean, what's been driving this mess in syria is the question of which american ally is going to take over when the russian-backed assad regime falls - the saudis or the turks. but, in fact, it seems as though the russians are going to maintain control of the region, even if it means that all that's left of it is a pile of rubble.

may 16, 2015

broadly speaking, he's got the right idea. but i think this is a good example of how you can get lost in something and lose perspective. it's been a plank on the left for a while now to defer to voices within a conflict. and, there's certainly value in ensuring those voices don't get lost. but, if you were to do a survey on global conflicts - that is, look at this empirically - i think you'd find it's more often the case that being outside it allows for a broader perspective.

the blame everything on israel thing is easy, and they're certainly rarely "good guys". but, what's happening here is bigger than israel. he points out that turkey and the gulf states are proxies for nato, and they have their own interests. he's able to see the conflict for what it is, but is lost in the battle on the ground.

the commonality with countries that america has attacked since yugoslavia is that they are all former soviet allies or puppets. it's clear as day when you look at it from a cold war perspective: yugoslavia, afghanistan, libya, syria. egypt and iraq are somewhere in between, but let's not forget the history of the baath party and it's connection to "arab socialism". now, sure, it's a long time ago in some cases. but the key point is that these are not "our guys" in power. and, now ukraine - tomorrow it'll be kazakhstan.

the meta level analysis is that all these conflicts are about prying states away from russian influence at what is perceived in the west as the end of the cold war. russia is defeated. it's time to clean up. israel doesn't play much of a role in that, besides providing for the odd air strike - because it can't. anybody can get involved except israel.

what that does is open up a power vacuum. or, at least, it would if it were a correct analysis. if you're stuck in this hegelian unfolding of history with liberal democracies as the end point, you assume that assad evaporates on contact. then, the power vacuum opens up, and you get these american allies jockeying for influence.

but i also wanted to say something about kosovo, because i think he has the exact wrong idea with that. kosovo happened when the west was hooking up to the internet, which broke the state's media monopoly and allowed for a wider cross-section of news to get out. as a young person at the time, i remember the war against serbia as the moment that i stopped trusting the state. i had access to that information. my parents didn't, and didn't quite understand; they thought i was reading pravda or something. but, there's no turning back from that point. and, i think that story is widely shared.

iraq produced a massive backlash. that required a shift in approach. the american-backed wars of the future are going to look like the funding of the contras or the mujahideen in afghanistan - or indeed of isis in the levant. secret wars. wars beyond critique.

that's of course what happened after vietnam, but that neo-con clique thought it had an answer. that failed to generate the support they were hoping for. so, it's back to the cia ops.

and, that's why it's useful to get that outside perspective. standing from where i am, all i see is a lot of co-option by state interests.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEX05-7IGaA

aug 10, 2015

here's the thing about this guy...

he doesn't want this. any of it. he wants to be running a medical practice. he's an eye doctor.

somebody killed his brother, and he got stuck with something he didn't want. he's been trying to organize an orderly transition since the day he was appointed. a democratic transition is what he was trying to put together. willingly. with no prodding.

but, you can't do that under these conditions. and, guess who hates democracy? starts with an s, ends with "abia".

the saudis launched a war in syria to prevent a democratic transition.

the official narrative is so wrong as to channel orwell.

but, now he must step down as a condition to end the fighting in the area - and his generals must step down with him. after years of destruction and chaos, he cannot be trusted to let this go. should he be left to gather strength in the region, he will return the favour. and, as much as i'd like to see the saudis firebombed to hell, it can't happen like that. the stronger assad becomes the more necessary it is that he be removed.

he was not his father when he got the job. but, he will become more and more like him with each passing year spent fighting an existential war.

sept 3, 2015

Jessica Murray

this particular assad, the younger assad, was not groomed for power. it was his brother that was groomed for power. but, his brother was killed and the responsibility fell to him.

while his brother was being trained as a military planner and a statesman, the younger assad was training to become an eye doctor. he had has life planned out as a private citizen outside of government.

circumstances thrust him into power. but, he had not planned for this and did not want it. so, he set in motion a process that would transfer power from the military to the people.

this is when the saudis stepped in. they cannot allow for peaceful transfers of power to civilian governments. they are ruthlessly consistent on this point: all attempts to pursue democracy must be obliterated by all force possible.

the rebels in syria are not fighting for the people against assad. they are fighting for the saudi theocracy against the people. cynics will claim that of course assad will be popular when the other option is armed thugs that will publicly execute you for wearing the wrong clothing. but, the reality remains: assad represents the popular will, which is to defend the nation against foreign-backed extremists.

it's only half your fault for being misinformed. the media has indeed failed to understand and educate the western populace on the situation at hand. and harper himself may legitimately not understand what is actually happening.

but, there is a single solution: the government in riyadh needs to be removed. unfortunately, that solution is not being contemplated,

Archie D. Bunker

I realize it didn't make the MSM yet, but I wonder how the CPC, LPC and US Democrats and GOP(Republicans) are reacting to the rumor that Putin is sending some of his air force pilots into Syria to help Assad get rid of ISSIS.
Putin (if it's true) actually helping us in fighting our terrorists?, an enemy that we can't ( or don't want to?) ever catch and eliminate?
And if he succeeds at eliminating ISSIS, we could repeal Bill C-51 as a useless bill, and the institutions that required it could be shut down to save the taxpayer some dollars, that can be spent on more useful things like food and shelter, infrastructure etc... All these fake jobs would be lost....so sad!
Obama seems to be awfully quiet about this!
I think they don't like the idea that Russia will be shooting at the U.S.' proxi army.
Putin would be calling Obama's bluff big time,... if it's true

Jessica Murray

syria was a russian cold war ally. syrian generals rely very heavily on russian generals for "advice"; that is the sneaky way to say that the syrians are essentially under russian military command, much as canada is under american military command. russian involvement has consequently been very strong - dominant, in fact - from the start

Sept 4, 2015

www.cbc.ca/news/world/refugees-hungary-riot-police-1.3215706

the gcc states are the source of isis funding. the reason that they are not accepting refugees is that they are fully in favour of slaughtering shiites, christians, druze, moderate sunnis and anybody else that deviates from their rigid interpretation of islam.

they are not doing next to nothing. they are not ignoring the problem. they are pro-actively supporting the genocide. it's on their orders. their design. their desire.

--

@qricket

it is not confusing. they are funding the "terrorist" groups. they are the root cause. a greater influence for the gcc states is a faster path to genocide. and, ignoring this reality is sentencing the minorities in these regions to their deaths.

a military solution is necessary. but it is not in bombing isis. isis is the symptom. the cause is saudi imperial policy, which is cleansing the region in preparation for expansion. and, the inevitability - now or twnety years from now - is that we will need to have regime change in riyadh.

in the meantime, these people must be allowed an escape route. and an escape route to their tormenters is not an escape route.

the only difference between being a refugee in syria and a refugee in saudi arabia is that you can be *legally* executed in public in saudi arabia.

--

@CeeDeeEnn

if they did allow them in, they would behead them in public for heresy.

you cannot be a christian in saudi arabia. that is punishable by death. you cannot be a shia, either. this is a nonstarter, because these countries are as tyrannical as what they're fleeing from and would not treat the refugees differently than the terrorists do.

--

@Leigh

this is complicated. for example, the egyptian dictatorship is very reliant on saudi money, and is of course dealing with it's own internal problems (caused largely by overpopulation). and both lebanon and jordan are full of palestinian refugees - as was syria, before the mess hit. libya is dealing with the same problems. and, algeria is sort of quiet lately, but isn't exactly a bastion of stability. neither turkey nor iran are arab countries, both they're both doing about as much as they can. whatever the causes for all of this, the reality is that only the gulf countries have the potential resources to really step in and make a serious difference. but, they're actively funding the groups that are killing people, to further their own social engineering goals.

all long term options rely on regime change in riyadh. bombing isis doesn't accomplish much if the gcc countries continue to send them funds. and, even with russian help, the reality is that the people in these places are outmatched. if you want a wwII comparison, it's like belgium trying to fight against germany. hitler was not defeated by french and polish radicals. he was defeated by a massive soviet offensive. and, as it was for minorities in belgium and poland, there is no short term option here for these people but escape.

fwiw, "alan" is not an arabic name or even a kurdish one. it's an an ethnonym for an iranian people that the greeks referred to as "scythians". they occupied an area to the north of the black sea, and were involved in waves of migrations into europe (including the hunnic and gothic migrations) which saw them settle across europe, and especially in breton areas of france. you might recognize the french name of alain and think it is celtic. in fact, this is a consequence of iranians settling in france; the english "alan" came to britain with the normans.

the alans, today, are associated with ossetian groups in the caucasus, which is that area on the map in between the black and caspian seas. they're not quite russians, and not quite kurds - but are certainly not arabs,« less

--

@Mikey

for the sake of historical accuracy, it is worth pointing out that germany was in fact a colonial power, albeit not in the middle east. most of the countries that we see in eastern europe did not exist at the time - they were either in the ottoman empire (itself a colonial state) or austria-hungary, which through a fluke of history had few colonial possessions outside of it's own territories [because they almost all ended up in spanish possession].

i would push back against trying to blame the current situation on colonialism, exactly. it's an oversimplification.

the state with the longest history of colonialism in the region is the turks. the british & french actually cut a deal with the arabs in world war one to help them throw off turkish domination. to the arabs, world war one was a war of liberation from turkish colonial rule. but, of course, the anglo-french pact was slow to live up to expectations and put in place a series of repressive governments to uphold it's own interests.

this led to a cold war conflict, where masses of arab peoples got together - with soviet backing - under the banner of "arab socialism", which was a kind of stalinism designed for local consumption. it didn't help matters much, it just swung some dictators to moscow instead of washington. but, the hard reality is that many arabs would have rather lived in a syrian stalinist state than a salafist saudi state. they were both awful, but we tended to support the more extreme religious dictators while the russians supported military despots that wanted to push secularism and modernization by force.

after the cold war, these russian-supported areas became lost in a time warp. they were stuck in stalinist systems, while russia had moved on. the americans have adopted a geo-political strategy of trying to take control of these old russian satellites, which included afghanistan, libya and syria, as a sort of "cleaning up" process of the cold war - although the russians obviously don't like this, and have tried to reverse the premise. but what that's done is open up a vacuum for control. the turks were the colonial power in syria up to ww1, but the saudis see it as in their sphere for deeper historical reasons. and, this conflict between the turks and the saudis for control of the area in a post-soviet reality (while the russians and iranians continue to back the assad regime) is what is driving the bulk of the fighting on the ground.

so, it's not exactly a consequence of western colonialism. i mean, it's hard to frame it that way - the turks were the colonizers. it's more a consequence of the process of decolonization, which itself is kind of funny language, because saudis controlling syria is still colonization. but it's a fight over who gets to be in control of the region in the post cold war period. sort of. the russians are still a big factor...

Sept 9, 2015

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/susan-on-soapbox/2015/09/new-robocall-poll-assesses-stephen-harpers-response-to-syria

the brookings institute as a valid source of information? really?

it's not that you shouldn't read information from the brookings institute. it's useful to understand the propaganda. it's that you shouldn't take it seriously. this is ground zero for the source of right-wing lies to fuel the american war machine.

if you want to know what's going on in syria, i would advise looking into the work of the independent left-leaning journalists in the area, like robert fisk and patrick cockburn.

there has never been a civil war in syria. it was invaded by foreign troops looking to topple the government, of which isis is a rogue contingent. if it weren't for assad protecting the civilians in this region from this onslaught, we would not be talking about the "syrian civil war". we would be talking about the genocide in syria.

that's not to say the assad government should be shielded of criticism, but it's the kind of criticism that you would level at churchill for the firebombing of dresden. which is not to compare him to churchill, either. but, he's fighting bad guys with surplus russian arms that are largely unable to carry out the pinpoint strikes we claim we can. and he's been fighting bad guys from the start.

just take a look at syrian public opinion. it is firmly backing assad.

taking out isis is the right strategy. but, it's not possible by merely bombing them. their source of funding and supplies needs to be cut. and, washington refuses to do what is necessary to accomplish this.

Arachne646

Umm...I would agree with pretty much everything you say, except that President Assad is a cruel dictator, even more than his father. However, he did hold a democratic Presidential election last year, I was surprised to see, with multiple candidates, and multiple international observers proclaimed it "free, fair and transparent". There is some opposition in Syria. There's Kurdistan, with a Kurdish militia, and opposition like our Occupy or Black Lives Matter, which takes guts to go up against the army violently suppressing you from the start, apparently; the protesters were violent from the start, I guess, too, armed and destroying government buildings.

But, as you say, from the start, there was foreign involvement, by the Turkish intelligence agency, which transported anti-tank weapons to the rebels. Soon tens of thousands of extreme Islamist foreign fighters, and weapons and supplies to match, were trucked in by Western countries, in the summer of 2012, because secular, religiously diverse Syria that Assad ruled was not at all what they envisioned. It is a proxy war to remove a Russian-backed dictator and install a U.S./Israel puppet dictator as in Egypt. This was planned ahead of time in Washington, and many other places.

deathtokoalas

your second paragraph gets it right (although it is missing the dynamic of a struggle between the turks and saudis for control. when you hear talk of a conflict between "moderate" and "extremist" rebels, what it means is a proxy war between turkey and saudi arabia. and, this is much to the annoyance of washington.). but, the first is propaganda.

the current assad was not groomed for power. it was his brother that was supposed to take over. but, his brother was killed and the role fell to him - against his will.

the truth is that this guy is a doctor. he planned his life around running a medical practice. when the circumstances came up that he had to step in, he accepted it but he immediately set in motion a transfer of power to a democratic system. if you listen to hillary clinton talk about the (now not so) recent elections in syria, she makes it sound like they were meant as a concession. in fact, it was the first thing assad did when he was appointed, because he was an unwilling participant from the start.

but, when the war started, he had to modify the situation because....you can't transfer from decades of military rule to pluralism when you're fighting a war against extremists.

it's widely understood that he has no influence in the military, which is co-ordinating the anti-terror campaign largely as a proxy of russia. well, he has no military training.

i mean, go down to your local hospital and find a doctor and tell me how good you think this person would be at running a military dictatorship. they wouldn't have the slightest idea...

in the long run, the military will need to be dismantled entirely. they cannot be left in place at the conclusion of the war, as they cannot be expected to forgive and forget (and understandably so - this is an existential struggle, for the syrians). but, this will do nothing to end the conflicts that exist. it's a post-war, reconstruction aim. and, few people in syria would be more likely to agree with this than assad himself, should the circumstances bring us to that point.

Sept 29, 2015

obama is actually right that the leadership in syria needs to be changed, but what the western media is ignoring is that putin actually agrees with him. it's a difference in approach, not in preferred outcome. nor is the issue assad, exactly, but the military junta that props him up; assad is in truth a mostly powerless figurehead.

suppose we wake up tomorrow and isis is destroyed and syria's borders are again secured. can that be the end of the war? in truth, it cannot. the devastation created by these foreign mercenary fighters is far too great to be forgiven by the very same people that have been waging the war. i'm not going to talk about cultural realities. it transcends that. syria is defending itself against an existential threat; destroying isis does not eliminate that existential threat, it only abolishes it's most outward manifestation. if you leave the generals in power, they will plot their revenge by turning the tables in launching an attack on riyadh.

even that is likely not enough. the real change that is required is in saudi arabia. the only way to truly end the conflict in syria is through lasting regime change in saudi arabia.

but, in the short run, to at least end the current phase of hostilities, syria cannot be left in tact to fester hostilities and plot it's revenge. that is obvious to everyone. the difference is that putin wants to see the state transitioned peacefully through the introduction of democracy, and obama wants to tear the state down by force.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDx8Bvlw3es&lc=z13nht0ilyqouvnqn04cfztqkzaxdd3wsbk



Nov 13, 2015

what if i told you that i thought it was the russians?

evidence:

- too organized for a terrorist group
- pattern fits with russian operations
- who else gets kalashnikovs into france?

anybody doing this would set it up to look like a muslim attack. if it was france trying to create a police state for cop21, they'd make it look like muslims. if it was the oil industry trying to create a diversion for cop21, they'd make it look like muslims. if it's nato trying to create an excuse to increase the attacks on syria, they'd make it look like muslims.

but, ironically, we can be pretty sure that it's not - because they didn't take responsibility. isis has no motive to kill people in france, unless everybody knows it was isis. now, isis may take responsibility for something they didn't do, sure. but, they'd never carry out an attack and then deny it. that would make no sense, relative to how they operate.

so, we can actually rule out immediately that it's not isis or al qaeda.

that doesn't mean we won't be told it is, or that nato won't use it as an excuse to further their own goals.

motives for the russians:

- to pre-empt increasing threats of terrorist attacks in russia
- to divert attention from cop21
- to create pressure for france to pull back from syria. are the french prepared for the consequences of further involvement, or will they pull back like spain did?
- to give their allies in france (like the national front) an opportunity to campaign against muslims.

if the russians were going to do something like this right now, the reality is that france is the most strategic target.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDe_CQYUWnY&lc=z13pvryhdsb3dnvyx04cjz3beortchnb3vs0k

j3 months ago (edited)

+Michael P none of the previous attacks in france have been like this.

and, i don't think 9/11 was carried out by terrorists, either. i actually think it was....the germans. no, really. i know that's out of nowhere, but if you look at the information carefully, it all points to berlin. the motive was to crash the dollar.

i don't know if this was ever figured out. and, i don't expect to hear anybody blame the russians, even if it's understood that they did this. nato reacted to 9/11 by carrying out plans it wanted to do anyways - afghanistan is strategic, and iraq had nothing to do with it. as mentioned, i could very well see america reacting to this similarly. or, perhaps, you could interpret escalation in syria as a direct response, anyways.

Michael P3 months ago

+deathtokoalas vlog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_France

Michael P3 months ago

+deathtokoalas vlog ISIS claimed responsibility now...that part of the russion conspiracy?

j3 months ago

as i stated: isis will take responsibility for things that they did not do, but they will not deny things they did do.

i don't feel that isis has the capability to pull this off, and i think they would have taken credit immediately if they were actually responsible. they're taking credit for somebody else's work.

but, this is what the russians wanted. it's up to american intelligence to work it through, if they want to. it may serve their own aims to have people think it was isis, too.

j3 months ago

there are other reasons to doubt the narrative. if you understand the real dynamics on the ground, the idea that it was isis doesn't really make any sense.

i'll give you a condition to look out for in the upcoming days and weeks: if nato responds by increasing pressure on assad (or even taking him out directly), you'll know what the claim of responsibility is really about.

and, i'd keep an eye on how the french public reacts to what marine le pen has to say about this. that's what the russians would really be angling for. we'll see if it works.

Michael P3 months ago

+deathtokoalas vlog How exactly do you "understand the real dynamics on the ground"?

You are making connections without connecting them...Just because nato responds a certain way does not mean your vague theory is correct unless you can actually connect the dots with something more than a hypothesis.

Michael P3 months ago

+deathtokoalas vlog I just gave you a list of the "dynamics on the ground" by the way

j3 months ago (edited)

+Michael P i want to be clear that i'm not making authoritative claims about who is responsible. there are other explanations, too. we are at the whim of what we're told. we'll never really know.

what i'm arguing is that the russians are the most likely culprit, for the reasons i'm suggesting, and that isis is a very unlikely culprit - even if they took responsibility after the fact, after nobody else did, and after they took the time to prepare a statement.

understanding what's happening in the region of the middle east is very complicated. there's about ten wars happening at the same time. but, the biggest war that's happening is a struggle between a handful of american allies (mostly the saudis and turks - who are themselves in conflict with each other over who is taking the lead) and the russians for control over syria. this relies on the neo-con perspective that russia is weak due to the collapse of the soviet union and must be dismantled before it can regain it's power. removing assad from power is a part of the greater post cold war geo-political struggle between russia and the united states that, until recently, was a process of the americans knocking off russian client states.

isis exists within this context. it's an organization that is funded at arms length by saudi oligarchs to increase their own control in the region. the saudi long plan is the collapse of the borders in the region and the establishment of a larger, integrated arab-sunni state that includes most of iraq, jordan, kuwait, egypt and syria. in the short run, this would operate basically as an arab league. this goal itself goes back to the first world war.

the conflict you're seeing is far too complicated, and yet far too transparent, to call a conspiracy. it's more like a tactic to break the region up. and, france is ultimately in the alliance that is in favour of this.

an isis attack on france would be an attack on their own benefactors.

yet, it makes sense for them to claim responsibility, too, even if they did not do it - if it results in increased pressure on assad.

we live in a world where the conflicts that exist around us are kept obscure so that we do not understand them, because if we did understand them then we would oppose them.

it's consequently very hard to have these discussions in a medium such as this, as there is so much disinformation to cut through.

but, the dynamics on the ground - along with the way events have unfolded, and the complexity of the attack - all but rule isis out, despite what the media says, and what they say themselves, and how the military reacts.

j3 months ago

you can surely agree that responding to these attacks by stepping up pressure on assad has no clear causal basis.

so, you should agree that i'm on to something if that is, in fact, what happens.

Michael P3 months ago

+deathtokoalas vlog I'm not buying any of this. You're a person on their computer postulating and theorizing. It's all very clever and imaginative and would make for a great alex jones video. You talk about all this disinformation....your comment is a big part of that disinformation. Others read it, it sounds cool and scandalous, but its nothing but imagination and theories, and then it gets repeated, and it soon becomes misinformation.

j3 months ago (edited)

+Michael P well, i actually think that alex jones is a russian spy, too.

i don't claim it's more than theorizing, but we don't have another option if we want to understand what's happening. if you're serious about understanding world events, you have to begin with the basic starting point of being skeptical about official explanations and then try and deduct what's happening from there.

but, i do think that my perspective is educated. i'm not talking about aliens or new world orders. it's all very rooted in well understood academic themes. further, i've provided you with a predictive empirical test to check whether what i'm saying makes sense or not. we'll find out in a few days.

Michael P3 months ago

+deathtokoalas vlog Islamic terrorists coordinated an attack on French civilians and then admitted to it. Same as last time and the time before and the time before. There is really not much to it. And obviously since the attackers were Islamic terrorists claiming allegiance to ISIS that world leaders will put more pressure on Assad. Thats the logical progression. It doesnt mean some wild conspiracy theory is proven true. That is not an empirical test. 

j3 months ago

+Michael P so, the way to combat isis is to help them carry out their goals? intriguing.

the logical response would be to co-ordinate with assad in helping him stamp out isis.

nov 24, 2015

so, this is very bad.

turkey is a nato member state. that means that any russian retaliation is a formal declaration of war against the united states.

you'd have to think the russians will not be so stupid.

but, you'd have to think the turks would not be so stupid as to shoot down a russian jet, too.

i wouldn't freak out just quite yet. i doubt this amounts to anything. but it demonstrates the possible ramifications of what's happening in syria, right now.

one drunk russian general overreacting is all it would take to start world war three.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/turkey-shoots-down-russian-jet-near-syrian-border-and-video-shows-plane-coming-down-a6746206.html

the turks are claiming they broke airspace. that's unlikely, but who the fuck knows. the truth is it probably doesn't have anything to do with it.

to understand this, you have to understand what the russians are doing. stated simply, they're propping up the government in syria. they intend to win back all the area that has been lost to the various factions, reassert syrian sovereignty and then figure out what to do with assad afterwards.

there's a lot of different groups fighting on the ground. but, you can split the opposition into two major groups. the first is saudi-backed rebels (including isis and al-nusra). the second is turkish-backed rebels (including what's left of the free syrian army). the turkish and saudi groups are fighting with each other as much as they are fighting against the syrian government.

the russians seem to be disproportionately targeting the turkish-backed groups, probably simply because it's strategically easier to deal with. if they can control the northern border, it will be easier to control the southern and eastern borders.

so, when you see the turks shoot down a russian plane that was no doubt targeting groups that the turks are backing, it's hard to take their claims of breaking air space seriously, or even to think it has anything to do with it. chances are higher that they were trying to stop a particular air strike.

of course, the russians no doubt understand this and it's the reason why you shouldn't expect a stupid response from them. but, it's starkly reckless from the turks.

what the russians - and everybody else - needs to know is whether this was a snap turkish decision done without consultation or whether the take down came with american knowledge.

if anybody gets hurt here, i suspect it's erdogan. if this is rogue, that's grounds for something serious.

they've been setting this up for weeks...russians had to have seen it coming...
https://euobserver.com/foreign/130566

still bad news, though.

Nov 25, 2015

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/11/24/prime-minister-trudeau-says-canada-will-help-de-escalate-tensions-between-russia-turkey_n_8642134.html

i miss the old isolationist conservatives.

c'mon, guys. this has nothing to do with us. and there's absolutely no reason driven by any sort of discernible national interest why you'd want to make it have something to do with us. shouldn't you be arguing that we should be minding our own business?

i think the best we can do is get some of the chretien old guard in touch with some of the clinton old guard to try and ensure nobody's thinking about over-reacting.

otherwise?

the reality on the ground is that the russians are blowing up turkish bases, and those turkish bases are trying to oust an internationally recognized government with serious russian backing. i don't know how long they thought they could do that without some sort of retaliation, but there's not any good way to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. you're looking at dramatic shifts in foreign policy by all of the powers involved, or this will keep happening. i consequently can't think of a reason in the world why we ought to involve ourselves in this, other than to avoid something like an article 5 invocation that would drag us into it.

the best solution is for the turks to pull out, for the international coalition to align with russia to take out isis and to then let the russians transition assad out when the borders are secure and the state is put back together again. and, that's actually the popular consensus in turkey, if you're curious. but, it's not the washington consensus. it's impossible until at least jan 20, 2017 - and probably for at least four more years after that.

assuming washington continues it's existing policy, the only way this ends is if some combination of diplomacy and force pulls the russians out and assad falls to the turkish-backed militants. but, what the russians are really trying to do is move the war out of their homeland (ukraine) and into their periphery, where the threat of conflict is less existential. there's consequently almost nothing nato could do that would force the russians to pull out, outside of a serious attack in russia proper. that is, to end the war in syria, washington must launch a war in russia. while that may actually be consistent with long term american strategic geopolitical objectives, it's tactically impossible in the short term. i mean, if you want the russians out of syria? like, tomorrow? nuke smolensk. you don't like that answer, though. you shouldn't, either. fat chance with any other tactic...

so, if the american position is not up for discussion and the russian position is an existential necessity, the only way to break the deadlock is for one side to win the fight. well, the russians aren't winning this fight any time soon. sure: they could probably beat the rebels, as they exist. but, they can't beat the tactic of raising more rebellion. the americans could probably drive the russians out through sheer use of force, but if they start doing that the gloves are off.

so, then could we get a ceasefire? a demarcation zone? a line of control? a korean peninsula? see, it's not a peninsula. and, the situation is too complex to enforce.

i'm all for alleviating tensions and everything, but one needs to pick their battles. this isn't going to end any time soon, and there's not anything we can do about it. so, considering that we don't truly care about anything besides the humanitarian aspect of the conflict - and should not, as we have no national interest tied into one side or the other - our reaction should reflect that: we should not care about anything besides preventing an article 5. our position should be less neutral, and more non-interventionist.

and, of course, we should do what we can to help the victims of pointless imperialist conflicts.



Nov 26, 2015

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/11/25/canada-nato-envoy-says-russia-not-communicating-prior-to-jet-downing_n_8649224.html

hard to say whether this is ignorance or politics. she did indicate that she realizes that the russians were bombing turkish assets, so i'm left to conclude it's politics.

you could imagine how such a communication would carry out.

"greetings, unwashed turkish hordes. we're sending some planes to blow up your allies at 11:00 gmt. so, try to suppress your barbarian instincts for a few hours and let us eliminate your investments."

"no problem, russky. btw, we're sending a convoy over the pass at 12:00 gmt, to refuel the positions you're bombing. but we know you're too backwards and incompetent to be able to hit the target, anyways, so we're going to move our positions forward. try and get out of our way before we get to the village, so we don't have to kill anybody. and, send assad our regards. i'm sure we could have been great friends under different circumstances."

it would be one thing if they were just upholding a narrative. and, maybe i'm demonstrating the fact that i haven't had a tv in 15 years - maybe i don't even know what the propaganda even is anymore. but, who doesn't understand that they're bombing turkish assets?

this has driven me mad for years. a noble lie is one thing - i'll argue against this in most cases, but i'll at least recognize the motives. but, it has to be convincing, first. it can't be deconstructed by easily googled facts. then, it's not a noble lie. it's just an obvious one...

Dec 17, 2015

the americans had no right to demand that assad step down in the first place.

the propaganda has been very thick, and this will likely produce much convulsion. but, the americans are making the right choice in backing off from this demand. they can't pull this off. they need to back off, get rid of the crazies, re-establish the syrian and iraqi states and then talk about letting assad - who wants to step down anyways - work his way out in an orderly transition.

they should have done this years ago.

also realize this: they may be trying to get out to destroy a paper trail linking them to isis before the next election.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-assad-can-stay-once-again-u-s-capitulates-to-russian-demands-on-syria



Dec 17, 2015

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-isis-chris-hall-1.3368691

after reading dozens of articles on the topic, i'm still not clear about what is unclear.

but, to answer a few questions posed in the article...

does committing to further bombing require purchasing new jets? how much will those jets cost? who will benefit from the defense contract? who might be pushing for that defense contract?

i think the liberals have been crystal clear - and that you should take them at face value. but, if you want to really delve into this, i think you need to be prepared to ask some questions, and receive some answers, that you're maybe not prepared for.

--

eggshaped

So, does that mean he will withdraw the jets but put our military personnel in harm's way by putting boots on the ground, even if only in a "training" capacity? Or is he going to wait for other countries to subdue ISIS so we can then take in the remnants?

Jessica Murray

the idea is that the only way to build stability in the region is to enable local actors to do it. not western ground troops, but iraqi ground troops.

it's something any expert will tell you. nato can't win this war. there is no tactic that will be successful. only iraqis can win this war. and it requires convincing the civilian population to work with the state. nothing else will ever work - and carpet bombing will just make it worse.

i think there's a bit of a caveat to that. if civilians begin aligning with isis, then they become isis and must be targeted. maybe we screwed something up to get there (or many things up...), but the end result remains. see, but then we're bombing villages - and canadians cannot stomach that the way americans can.

where it gets even more complicated is that the same logic suggests that only assad can win this war. worse, iraq seems to be increasingly aligning with assad. you put two and two together, and there's no way out besides pulling out altogether, or escalating dramatically. the inevitable outcome right now seems to be a russian-back syrian/iraqi alliance to reconstruct both states. and, while that is probably the fastest way to end the war, supporting this would put as at odds with the americans.

the only specifics i've heard relate to supporting kurdish troops, which really sidesteps the issue.

ONCE CALIFORNIA BELONGED to Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a
horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in. And such was  their hunger for land
that they took the land—stole Sutter's land, Guerrero's land, took the grants and broke
them up and growled and quarreled over them, those frantic hungry men; and they
guarded with guns the land they had stolen. They put up houses and barns, they turned
the earth and planted crops. And these things were possession, and possession was
ownership.
The Mexicans were weak and fled. They  could not resist, because they wanted
nothing in the world as frantically as the Americans wanted land.
Then, with time, the squatters were no  longer squatters, but owners; and their
children grew up and had children on the land. And the hunger was gone from them,
the feral hunger, the gnawing, tearing hunger for land, for water and earth and the good
sky over it, for the green thrusting grass, for the swelling roots. They had these things
so completely that they did not know about them any more. They had no more the
stomach-tearing lust for a rich acre and a shining blade to plow it, for seed and a
windmill beating its wings in the air. They arose in the dark no more to hear the sleepy
birds' first chittering, and the morning wind around the house while they waited for the
first light to go out to the dear acres. These things were lost, and crops were reckoned
in dollars, and land was valued by principal plus interest, and crops were bought and
sold before they were planted. Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer
little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned
with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer
farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops, little manufacturers who must sell before
they can make. Then those farmers who were not good shopkeepers lost their land to
good shopkeepers. No matter how clever, how  loving a man might be with earth and
growing things, he could not survive if he were not also a good shopkeeper. And as
time went on, the business men had the farms, and the farms grew larger, but there
were fewer of them.
Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did
not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese,
Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. They live on  rice and beans, the business men said.
They don't need much. They wouldn't know what to do with good wages. Why, look
how they live. Why, look what they eat. And if they get funny—deport them.
And all the time the farms grew larger and the owners fewer. And there were
pitifully few farmers on the land any more. And the imported serfs were beaten and
frightened and starved until some went home again, and some grew fierce and were
killed or driven from the country. And the farms grew larger and the owners fewer.
And the crops changed. Fruit trees took the place of grain fields, and vegetables to
feed the world spread out on the bottoms:  lettuce, cauliflower, artichokes, potatoes—
stoop crops. A man may stand to use a scythe, a plow, pitchfork; but he must crawl like
a bug between the rows of lettuce, he must bend his back and pull his long bag
between the cotton rows, he must go on his knees like a penitent across a cauliflower
patch.
And it came about that owners no longer worked on their farms. They farmed on
paper; and they forgot the land, the smell, the feel of it, and remembered only that they
owned it, remembered only what they gained and lost by it. And some of the farms
grew so large that one man could not even conceive of them any more, so large that it
took batteries of bookkeepers to keep track of  interest and gain and loss; chemists to
test the soil, to replenish; straw bosses to see that the stooping men were moving along
the rows as swiftly as the material of their bodies could stand. Then such a farmer
really became a storekeeper, and kept a store. He paid the men, and sold them food,
and took the money back. And after a while he did not pay the men at all, and saved
bookkeeping. These farms gave food on credit. A man might work and feed himself
and when the work was done, might find that he owed money to the company. And the
owners not only did not work the farms any more, many of them had never seen the
farms they owned.
And then the dispossessed were drawn west—from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New
Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out.
Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry;  twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a
hundred thousand and two hundred thousand.  They streamed over the mountains,
hungry and restless—restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do—to lift, to push, to
pull, to pick, to cut—anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We
got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land.
We ain't foreign. Seven generations back Americans, and beyond that Irish, Scotch,
English, German. One of our folks in the Revolution, an' they was lots of our folks in
the Civil War—both sides. Americans.
They were hungry, and they were fierce. And they had hoped to find a home, and
they found only hatred. Okies—the owners hated them because the owners knew they
were soft and the Okies strong, that they were fed and the Okies hungry; and perhaps
the owners had heard from their grandfathers how easy it is to steal land from a soft
man if you are fierce and hungry and armed. The owners hated them. And in the
towns, the storekeepers hated them because they had no money to spend. There is no
shorter path to a storekeeper's contempt, and all his admirations are exactly opposite.
The town men, little bankers, hated Okies because there was nothing to gain from
them. They had nothing. And the laboring people hated Okies because a hungry man
must work, and if he must work, if he has to work, the wage payer automatically gives
him less for his work; and then no one can get more.
And the dispossessed, the migrants, flowed into California, two hundred and fifty
thousand, and three hundred thousand. Behind them new tractors were going on the
land and the tenants were being forced off. And new waves were on the way, new
waves of the dispossessed and the homeless, hardened, intent, and dangerous.
And while the Californians wanted many things, accumulation, social success,
amusement, luxury, and a curious banking security, the new barbarians wanted only
two things—land and food; and to them the two were one. And whereas the wants of
the Californians were nebulous and undefined, the wants of the Okies were beside the
roads, lying there to be seen and coveted: the good fields with water to be dug for, the
good green fields, earth to crumble experimentally in the hand, grass to smell, oaten
stalks to chew until the sharp sweetness was in the throat. A man might look at a
fallow field and know, and see in his mind  that his own bending back and his own
straining arms would bring the cabbages into the light, and the golden eating corn, the
turnips and carrots.
And a homeless hungry man, driving the roads with his wife beside him and his thin
children in the back seat, could look at the fallow fields which might produce food but
not profit, and that man could know how a fallow field is a sin and the unused land a
crime against the thin children. And such a man drove along the roads and knew
temptation at every field, and knew the lust to take these fields and make them grow
strength for his children and a little comfort for his wife. The temptation was before
him always. The fields goaded him, and the company ditches with good water flowing
were a goad to him.
And in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden
oranges in the dark green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man
might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low.
He drove his old car into a town. He scoured the farms for work. Where can we
sleep the night?
Well, there's Hooverville on the edge of the river. There's a whole raft of Okies
there.
He drove his old car to Hooverville. He never asked again, for there was a
Hooverville on the edge of every town.
The rag town lay close to water; and the houses were tents, and weed-thatched
enclosures, paper houses, a great junk pile. The man drove his family in and became a
citizen of Hooverville—always they were called Hooverville. The man put up his own
tent as near to water as he could get; or if he had no tent, he went to the city dump and
brought back cartons and built a house of corrugated paper. And when the rains came
the house melted and washed away. He settled in Hooverville and he scoured the
countryside for work, and the little money he had went for gasoline to look for work.
In the evening the men gathered and talked together. Squatting on their hams they
talked of the land they had seen.
There's thirty thousan' acres, out west of here. Layin' there. Jesus, what I could do
with that, with five acres of that! Why, hell, I'd have ever'thing to eat.
Notice one thing? They ain't no vegetables nor chickens nor pigs at the farms. They
raise one thing—cotton, say, or peaches, or lettuce. 'Nother place'll be all chickens.
They buy the stuff they could raise in the dooryard.
Jesus, what I could do with a couple pigs!
Well, it ain't yourn, an' it ain't gonna be yourn.
What we gonna do? The kids can't grow up this way.
In the camps the word would come whispering, There's work at Shafter. And the
cars would be loaded in the night, the highways crowded—a gold rush for work. At
Shafter the people would pile up, five times too many to do the work. A gold rush for
work. They stole away in the night, frantic for work. And along the roads lay the
temptations, the fields that could bear food.
That's owned. That ain't our'n.
Well, maybe we could get a little piece of her. Maybe—a little piece. Right down
there—a patch. Jimson weed now. Christ, I could git enough potatoes off'n that little
patch to feed my whole family!
It ain't our'n. It got to have Jimson weeds.
Now and then a man tried; crept on the land and cleared a piece, trying like a thief
to steal a little richness from the earth. Secret gardens hidden in the weeds. A package
of carrot seeds and a few turnips. Planted potato skins, crept out in the evening secretly
to hoe in the stolen earth.
Leave the weeds around the edge—then nobody can see what we're a-doin'. Leave
some weeds, big tall ones, in the middle.
Secret gardening in the evenings, and water carried in a rusty can.
And then one day a deputy sheriff: Well, what you think you're doin'?
I ain't doin' no harm.
I had my eye on you. This ain't your land. You're trespassing.
The land ain't plowed, an' I ain't hurtin' it none.
You goddamned squatters. Pretty soon you'd  think you owned it. You'd be sore as
hell. Think you owned it. Get off now.
And the little green carrot tops were kicked off and the turnip greens trampled. And
then the Jimson weed moved back in. But the cop was right. A crop raised—why, that
makes ownership. Land hoed and the carrots  eaten—a man might fight for land he's
taken food from. Get him off quick! He'll think he owns it. He might even die fighting
for the little plot among the Jimson weeds.
Did ya see his face when we kicked them turnips out? Why, he'd kill a fella soon's
he'd look at him. We got to keep these here people down or they'll take the country.
They'll take the country.
Outlanders, foreigners.
Sure, they talk the same language, but  they ain't the same.  Look how they live.
Think any of us folks'd live like that? Hell, no!
In the evening, squatting and talking. And an excited man: Whyn't twenty of us take
a piece of lan'? We got guns. Take it an' say, "Put us off if you can." Whyn't we do
that?
They'd jus' shoot us like rats.
Well, which'd you ruther be, dead or here? Under groun' or in a house all made of
gunny sacks? Which'd you ruther for your kids, dead now or dead in two years with
what they call malnutrition? Know what we et all week? Biled nettles an' fried dough!
Know where we got the flour for the dough? Swep' the floor of a boxcar.
Talking in the camps, and the deputies, fat-assed men with guns slung on fat hips,
swaggering through the camps: Give 'em somepin to think about. Got to keep 'em in
line or Christ only knows what they'll do! Why, Jesus, they're as dangerous as niggers
in the South! If they ever get together there ain't nothin' that'll stop 'em.
Quote: In Lawrenceville a deputy sheriff  evicted a squatter, and the squatter
resisted, making it necessary for the officer to use force. The eleven-year-old son of the
squatter shot and killed the deputy with a .22 rifle.
Rattlesnakes! Don't take chances with 'em, an' if they argue, shoot first. If a kid'll
kill a cop, what'll the men do? Thing is, get tougher'n they are. Treat 'em rough. Scare
'em.
What if they won't scare? What if they stand up and take it and shoot back? These
men were armed when they were children. A gun is an extension of themselves. What
if they won't scare? What if some time an army of them marches on the land as the
Lombards did in Italy, as the Germans did on Gaul and the Turks did on Byzantium?
They were land-hungry, ill-armed hordes too, and the legions could not stop them.
Slaughter and terror did not stop them. How can you frighten a man whose hunger is
not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You
can't scare him—he has known a fear beyond every other.
In Hooverville the men talking: Grampa took his lan' from the Injuns.
Now, this ain't right. We're a-talkin' here. This here you're talkin' about is stealin'. I
ain't no thief.
No? You stole a bottle of milk from a porch night before last. An' you stole some
copper wire and sold it for a piece of meat.
Yeah, but the kids was hungry.
It's stealin', though.
Know how the Fairfiel' ranch was got? I'll tell ya. It was all gov'ment lan', an' could
be took up. Ol' Fairfiel', he went into San Francisco to the bars, an' he got him three
hunderd stew bums. Them bums took up the lan'. Fairfiel' kep' 'em in food an' whisky,
an' then when they'd proved the lan', ol' Fairfiel' took it from 'em. He used to say the
lan' cost him a pint of rotgut an acre. Would you say that was stealin'?
Well, it wasn't right, but he never went to jail for it.
No, he never went to jail for it. An' the fella that put a boat in a wagon an' made his
report like it was all under water 'cause he went in a boat—he  never went to jail
neither. An' the fellas that bribed congressmen and the legislatures never went to jail
neither.
All over the State, jabbering in the Hoovervilles.
And then the raids—the swoop of armed deputies on the squatters' camps. Get out.
Department of Health orders. This camp is a menace to health.
Where we gonna go?
That's none of our business. We got orders to get you out of here. In half an hour we
set fire to the camp.
They's typhoid down the line. You want ta spread it all over?
We got orders to get you out of here. Now get! In half an hour we burn the camp.
In half an hour the smoke of paper houses, of weed-thatched huts, rising to the sky,
and the people in their cars over the highways, looking for another Hooverville.
And in Kansas and Arkansas, in Oklahoma and Texas and New Mexico, the tractors
moved in and pushed the tenants out.
Three hundred thousand in California and more coming. And in California the roads
full of frantic people running like ants to pull, to push, to lift, to work. For every
manload to lift, five pairs of arms extended to lift it; for every  stomachful of food
available, five mouths open.
And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners
with access to history, with eyes to read  history and to know the great fact: when
property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact:
when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they
need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works
only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners  ignored the three cries of
history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and
every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for
arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring
of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans
for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the
causes of revolt went on.
The tractors which throw men out of work,  the belt lines which carry loads, the
machines which produce, all were increased; and more and more families scampered
on the highways, looking for crumbs from the great holdings, lusting after the land
beside the roads. The great owners formed associations for protection and they met to
discuss ways to intimidate, to kill, to gas. And always they were in fear of a
principal—three hundred thousand—if they ever move under a leader—the end. Three
hundred thousand, hungry and miserable; if they ever know themselves, the land will
be theirs and all the gas, all the rifles in the world won't stop them. And the great
owners, who had become through their holdings both more and less than men, ran to
their destruction, and used every means that in the long run would destroy them. Every
little means, every violence, every raid  on a Hooverville, every deputy swaggering
through a ragged camp put off the day a little and cemented the inevitability of the day.
The men squatted on their hams, sharp-faced men, lean from hunger and hard from
resisting it, sullen eyes and hard jaws. And the rich land was around them.
D'ja hear about the kid in the fourth tent down?
No, I jus' come in.
Well, that kid's been a-cryin' in his sleep an' a-rollin' in his sleep. Them folks
thought he got worms. So they give him a blaster, an' he died. It was what they call
black-tongue the kid had. Comes from not gettin' good things to eat.
Poor little fella.
Yeah, but them folks can't bury him. Got to go to the county stone orchard.
Well, hell.
And hands went into pockets and little coins came out. In front of the tent a little
heap of silver grew. And the family found it there.
Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind
people won't all be poor. Pray God some day a kid can eat.
And the association of owners knew that some day the praying would stop.
And there's the end.