Moti Nissani, PhD
No Planet – No People

“Corporate Threat to Liberty.” DonkeyHotey

Part II of: Why does the Invisible Government Continue to Grow in Strength?

Summary: In a real democratic entity, the people themselves make all major political, legal, and judicial decisions.  The absence of real democracy provides one explanation for the growing strength of the Invisible Government—and for that Government’s successful campaigns against freedom, peace, living standards, spirituality, and the biosphere.  Revolutionaries and reformers should likewise strive to adopt real democracy in their organizations and nations. To objectively evaluate the overwhelming historical evidence and common-sense arguments in favor of real democracy, we must try to overcome cradle-to-grave propaganda against it. Cultural anthropology conclusively shows that throughout most of human existence, our ancestors lived in small, largely nomadic, hunting-and-gathering bands.  They ruled themselves, without chiefs, masters, or kings.  Their leaderless, close-knit systems prevented the disastrous ascent of psychopaths and freeloaders to positions of power.  They practiced economic egalitarianism and were remarkably happy.  Their happiness could perhaps be traced to their freedom and to a system that allowed them to live by the Golden Rule: living unselfishly under a system which rewarded unselfishness.  We next turn our attention to the literate and creative ancient Athenians, showing that, for its male citizens, democratic Athens was far better governed than either contemporary “democracies” or their totalitarian and oligarchic counterparts.  Two contemporary referenda and the system of governance of the Berlin Philharmonic forcefully show that real democracy could bear as many delicious fruits in the contemporary world as it did in ancient Athens and throughout most of human history.

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You can also listen to a radio interview (with Jeff Brown) on a similar topic here:

Moti Nissani’s Radio Sinoland Interview Part 2- 2015.7.5

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“Compared to the better known surviving monuments of ancient Athens, such as the Parthenon, the Pnyx is unspectacular. It is a small hill surrounded by parkland, with a large flat platform of eroded stone set into its side. But it is one of the most significant sites in the city, and indeed in the world. For the Pnyx was the meeting place of the world’s first democratic legislature, the Athenian ekklesia (assembly), and the flat stone is the bema or speaker’s platform.”

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Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.–Pericles of Athens

The question is, if they [America’s Controllers] would do this . . . if they would feed radioactive oatmeal to helpless children and lie to them and their parents about it for years . . . well gee, is there anything they wouldn’t do?—Melissa Dykes, 2016

“We live on a planet well able to provide a decent life for every soul on it, which is all ninety-nine of a hundred human beings ask.  Why in the world can’t we have it?”—Jack Finney

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Why is the Invisible Government steadily growing in strength?  Why are we being ruled by freeloaders and psychopaths?  How do these criminals manage to saddle us with growing income inequalities, diminishing liberties, perpetual wars, and growing threats to the very survival of humanity itself?  Among the many reasons accounting for this tragic decline, one stands out: Absence of real democracy.

Revolutionary strategists must also resolve two questions:  How can they best structure their own movement?  And: What kind of political framework should they aim for, once they relegate the Banking-Militarist Complex to the dustbin of history?  The answer to these two questions is the same: real democracy. [1]

Hence, this posting focuses on benefits of real democracy and its differences from representative democracy (its mangled stepchild).

Democracy, for the Greeks who coined the word (but not the system), meant “power to the people” or “rule of the people.”  Perhaps the best-known example of genuine democracy (but limited to the minority of male citizens) in a highly-advanced, highly-literate, polity, is Athens and her sister democracies of Ancient Greece.  There, all significant political, legal, and judicial decisions were made directly by the adult male citizens.  Democratic Athens went to war if, and only if, the majority of its citizens so voted; a man was exiled, or condemned to death, if, and only if, his fellow citizens so decreed. [2]

The USA, Britain, France—even better-governed Iceland and Switzerland—might or might not have free elections, but they are not democracies.  As a result, in the USA, even when elections are not rigged and the friends of the people are not killed, the winners, once in power, routinely defy voters’ sentiments.  Thus, for instance, most Americans did not wish go to war in 1917, were opposed to the repeated and vicious pulverization and colonization of Iraq, and have never been in favor of their country’s ongoing program of biospheric carnage.  But in a “democracy,” American style, the majority’s preferences are routinely ignored.

Eduardo Galeano whimsically captures the essence of contemporary “democracies:”

“The other day, I heard about a cook who organized a meeting of birds—chickens, geese, turkeys, peasants, and ducks.  And I heard what the cook told them.  The cook asked them with what sauce they would like to be cooked.  One of the birds, I think it was a humble chicken, said:  ‘We don’t want to be cooked in whichever way.’  And the cook explained that ‘this topic was not on the agenda.’  It seems to me interesting, that meeting, for it is a metaphor for the world.  The world is organized in such a way that we have the right to choose the sauce in which we shall be eaten.” [my translation]

Overlapping Conceptual Barriers against Genuine Democracy

Our task is not simply proving the superiority of genuine democracy over all other known political systems, but also letting go of ingrained prejudices. [3]

Barrier 1: Cradle-to-Grave Propaganda System.

Genuine democracy—along with compassion and rationality—pose the greatest threat to the enemies of the biosphere and the open society.  No wonder then that since infancy we have been inculcated against it.  We have been lied to incessantly about the virtues of the Roman republic on the one hand, and about the horrors of “mob rule” on the other hand.

Such self-interested, ideologically- and philosophically-bankrupt, propaganda campaigns often meet with great success.  For example, the oligarchs led us to revere such enemies of democracy in the Greek world as Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander the “Great.”  At the same time, the oligarchs managed to obliterate the writings and all but erase from our memories such champions of liberty and decency as Democritus and Antisthenes.

Barrier 2:  Opposition of Misguided or Bought Intellectuals

Throughout the ages, genuine democracy has been laughed at by self-serving, brilliant, oligarchs.  A historian of Ancient Greece, writing in 1900, remarks that “few sights are stranger” than the spectacle of some Athenian intellectuals and first-rate thinkers “turning their eyes from their own free country to regard with admiration the constitution of Sparta,” where a free thinker “would not have been suffered so much as to open his mouth.”

The self-serving falsification of the historical record is widespread.  Karl Popper:

“The history of the Peloponnesian war and the fall of Athens is still often told, under the influence of Thucydides’ authority, in such a way that the defeat of Athens appears as the ultimate proof of the dangerous weaknesses of the democratic system.  But this view is merely a tendentious distortion, and the well-known facts tell a very different story. The main responsibility for the lost war rests with the treacherous oligarchs who continuously conspired with Sparta. . . . The fall of Athens, and the destruction of the walls, are often presented as the final results of the great war which had started in 431 B.C.  But in this presentation lies the main distortion, for the democrats fought on.  At first only seventy strong, they prepared under the leadership of Thrasybulus and Anytus the liberation of Athens, where Critias was meanwhile killing scores of citizens; for during the eight months of his reign of terror the death-role contained nearly a greater number of Athenians than the Peloponnesians had killed during the last ten years of war.”

“But after eight months (in 403 B.C.) Critias and the Spartan garrison were attacked and defeated by the democrats who established themselves in the Piraeus, and both of Plato’s uncles lost their lives in the battle.  Their oligarchic followers continued for a time the reign of terror in the city of Athens itself, but their forces were in a state of confusion and dissolution.  Having proved themselves incapable of ruling, they were ultimately abandoned by their Spartan protectors, who concluded a treaty with the democrats.  The peace re-established the democracy in Athens.  Thus the democratic form of government had proved its superior strength under the most severe trials, and even its enemies began to think it invincible.”  [4]

Barrier 3: The Ruling Faction of America’s Revolutionaries was thoroughly Anti-Democratic

For Americans, there is still one more block on their ideological journey towards genuine democracy.  Some founding fathers came close to being genuine democrats, but the winning faction falsely (and self-servingly) equated democracy with mob rule.

Citizens of the USA are taught to admire the revolutionary founders of their republic.  Americans are not, however, often reminded how averse some of these founders were to the Bill of Rights, how they betrayed their countrymen by establishing the Rothschild-controlled First Bank of the United States, how they brutally suppressed popular uprisings, how the money lenders were already exerting influence at the Constitutional Convention, [5] and how close their country came, during the Adams, Lincoln, Wilson, or Obama presidencies, to establishing a dictatorship.  These betrayals have been glossed over by the official record, so Americans find it hard to believe that their brilliant, idealistic–and wealthy–founding fathers chose a second-best political system for their contemporaries and descendants.

The Evidence from Anthropology

Marvin Harris’ “Life without Chiefs” shows that the current economic/political system—a system characterized by have and have-nots, rulers and ruled—is a historical aberration:

Once we are clear about the roots of human nature, for example, we can refute, once and for all, the notion that it is a biological imperative for our kind to form hierarchical groups.  An observer viewing human life shortly after cultural takeoff would easily have concluded that our species was destined to be irredeemably egalitarian except for distinctions of sex and age. That someday the world would be divided into aristocrats and commoners, masters and slaves, billionaires and homeless beggars would have seemed wholly contrary to human nature as evidenced in the affairs of every human society then on Earth.

1. The Natural State for Human Beings is Life in Nomadic Tribes or Villages

For about 98 percent of our existence as a species (and for four million years before then), our ancestors lived in small, largely nomadic hunting-and-gathering bands.

2. The Natural Political System is Real Democracy and the Absence of Rulers

To the extent that political leadership exists at all among band-and-village societies, it is exercised by individuals called headmen.  These headmen, however, lack the power to compel others to obey their orders. . . .  Among the !Kung, each band has its recognized leaders, most of whom are males. These men speak out more than others and are listened to with a bit more deference.  But they have no formal authority and can only persuade, never command.  When Lee asked the !Kung whether they had headmen—meaning powerful chiefs—they told him, “Of course we have headmen!  In fact, we are all headmen.  Each one of us is headman over himself.”

Native Americans enjoyed similar freedoms. Speaking of the Iroquois at the time, Cadwallwer Coldwell said:

They hold “such absolute notions of liberty that they allow of no kind of superiority of one over another, and banish all servitude from their territories.”

Charles Mann, in his book “1491 (Second Edition): New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus” quotes Jesuit Priest Louis Henneppin:

Native Americans were “born, live, and die in a liberty without restraint; they do not know what is meant by bridle and bit.”

They brand us [Europeans] as slaves, and call us miserable souls, whose life is not worth having.  Individual Indians “value themselves above anything that you can imagine, and this is the reason they always give for it, that one’s as much master as another, and since men are all made of the same clay there should be no distinction or superiority among them.”

Likewise,

Among the Eskimos of northern Canada there was no law except public opinion.  Although no one had authority, each person had influence according to the respect won from a community which had intimate knowledge of everybody.

3. Real Democracy Prevents the Ascent of Freeloaders and Psychopaths to Positions of Power

One of the chief characteristics of modern societies is the power of psychopaths.  Martha Stout describes the Sociopath Next Door:

Imagine – if you can – not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members.  Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fool.  Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs.  Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.  You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your coldbloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.

In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.  You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered.

How will you live your life?  What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)?  The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same.  Some people – whether they have a conscience or not – favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dullwitted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. . . .

Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all.

If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people’s hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. . . .

Crazy and frightening – and real, in about 4 percent of the population”….

Our ancestors had a fantastic system for sidelining such dangerous people.  Marvin Harris:

Inevitably there were freeloaders, individuals who consistently took more than they gave and lay back in their hammocks while others did the work.  Despite the absence of a criminal justice system, such behavior eventually was punished. . . . quarrelsome, stingy people who do not give as well as take had better watch out.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson:

It is nearly impossible, when you know how primitive society works under communistic anarchy, to conceive of anyone with the combination of indolence and strength of character which would make it possible for a healthy man to remain long a burden on the community.  Those who were useful to the community, who fitted well into the community pattern, were leaders.  It was these men who were so often wrongly identified by the careless early-civilized traveler and the usual trader as chiefs.  They were not chiefs, for they had no authority; they had nothing but influence.  People followed their advice because they believed it to be sound.  If you tried to keep more than your share you became unpopular.  If you were persistently selfish, acquisitive, and careless of the general good you gradually became too unpopular.  Realizing this, very likely you would try moving to another community and starting life there over again.  If you persisted in your ways and stayed where you were there would come a period of unanimous disapproval.  You might survive for a year or even a few years as an unwanted hanger-on; but the patience of the community might at any time find its limit, and there would be one more execution of a troublemaker.

4. Economic Egalitarianism, Civility, and Hospitality

“The absence of private possession in land and other vital resources means that a form of communism probably existed among prehistoric hunting and collecting bands and small villages.”

Stefansson describes Inuit society in the first decade of the 20th century:

The system which I watched breaking down under the combined influence of Christianity and the fur trade was on its economic side communism.  Natural resources and raw materials were owned in common, but made articles were privately owned.

Canassetego, a Mohawk, captures one difference between real and self-described democrats (as retold by Benjamin Franklin):

You know our Practice.  If a white Man in travelling thro’ our Country, enters one of our Cabins, we all treat him as I treat you; we dry him if he is wet, we warm him if he is cold, we give him Meat & Drinks that he may allay his Thirst and Hunger, and spread soft Furs for him to rest & sleep on: We demand nothing in return. But if I go into a white Man’s House at Albany, and ask for Victuals & Drink, they say, where is your Money?  And if I have none; they say, Get out you Indian Dog.

5. Overall, Hunter-Gatherers were Happier than we are

Here are two examples:

[The Copper Eskimos were] “to all appearances so much happier than any other people whom I have ever known.” On the basis of my years with the Stone Age Eskimos I feel that the chief factor in their happiness was that they were living according to the Golden Rule. It is easier to feel that you can understand than to prove that you do understand why it is man gets more happiness out of living unselfishly under a system which rewards unselfishness than from living selfishly where selfishness is rewarded. Man is more fundamentally a co-operative animal than a competitive animal. His survival as a species has been perhaps through mutual aid rather than through rugged individualism. And somehow it has been ground into us by the forces of evolution to be “instinctively” happiest over those things which in the long run yield the greatest good to the greatest number.

I wondered if all the thousands of intervening years had brought the measure of happiness to some of us that these people enjoy, for they do enjoy life every day, dancing and chanting, visiting one another, hunting when necessary.  This is their life, simple in all its elements, from the day of birth until death claims their pygmy bodies.” [6]

6. Were Freedom and the Golden Rule a Key to our Ancestors’ Happiness?

Stefansson writes:

On the basis of my years with the Stone Age Eskimos I feel that the chief factor in their happiness was that they were living according to the Golden Rule.

It is easier to feel that you can understand than to prove that you do understand why it is man gets more happiness out of living unselfishly under a system which rewards unselfishness than from living selfishly where selfishness is rewarded. Man is more fundamentally a co-operative animal than a competitive animal. His survival as a species has been perhaps through mutual aid rather than through rugged individualism. And somehow it has been ground into us by the forces of evolution to be “instinctively” happiest over those things which in the long run yield the greatest good to the greatest number.

7. How Paradise Was Lost

With agriculture and storage of food, according to Harris, eventually stratification arrived.  Gradually, real chiefs and inequality arose, leading to our present hierarchical system:  “Chiefdoms would eventually evolve into states, states into empires.”

But, one must ask: Can such a system work among literate people?  We shall now show that, among other things, a version of real democracy flourished in ancient Athens: the most creative and culturally-advanced country that has ever graced our weary planet.

Athenian Democracy

“Man’s law of nature is equality.”—Euripides

Some of the advantages of genuine democracy are immediately apparent.   Unlike contemporary western republics, in Athens, promises to the people could not be as readily broken, for the people were always in charge.  Influential Athenians (especially the oligarchic variety) were just as bribable as their contemporary western counterparts, but in a system where real power, at any given moment, resided with the citizenry, the damage was more limited.   The information system in Athens was never taken over by the oligarchs and life was simpler, so the people could more readily vote for their interests and convictions.  For the most part, Athenians breathed cleaner air, drank chemical-free water, and ploughed healthier soils for their sustenance; their schools were private (not state-run), and they exercised daily; they were thus in better mental and physical shape than contemporary Americans or Greeks. Hence, in ancient Athens, human beings came close to their truer intellectual, artistic, and civic potential.  In a partially real democracy like Athens, dissident organizations could not be readily co-opted, elections and trials could not be as readily rigged, and politically-motivated assassinations were rare.  Overall, the Athenian system served the public interest far better than American oligarchy.

The ancient Greeks recognized the link between genuine democracy and greatness.  The historian Herodotus, himself not an Athenian, clearly perceived the causal connection between freedom and excellence:

“Thus did the Athenians increase in strength.  And it is plain enough, not from this instance only, but from many everywhere, that freedom is an excellent thing since even the Athenians, who, while they continued under the rule of tyrants, were not a whit more valiant than any of their neighbors, no sooner shook off the yoke than they became decidedly the first of all. These things show that, while undergoing oppression, they let themselves be beaten, since then they worked for a master; but so soon as they got their freedom, each man was eager to do the best he could for himself.  So fared it now with the Athenians.”

Pericles, an influential Athenian before and during part of the Peloponnesian War, put it this way:

Pericles of Athens, 495 (?)-429 BC

“Our political system does not compete with institutions which are elsewhere in force. We do not copy our neighbors, but try to be an example.  Our administration favors the many instead of the few: this is why it is called a democracy. The laws afford equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, but we do not ignore the claims of excellence. When a citizen distinguishes himself, then he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as a reward of merit; and poverty is no bar. . . The freedom we enjoy extends also to ordinary life; we are not suspicious of one another, and do not feel called upon to nag our neighbor if he chooses to go his own way. . .  But this freedom does not make us lawless.  We are taught to respect the magistrates and the laws, and never to forget that we must protect the injured. And we are also taught to observe those unwritten laws whose sanction lies only in the universal feeling of what is right. . .

“Our city is thrown open to the world; we never expel a foreigner. . . We are free to live exactly as we please, and yet are always ready to face any danger. . . We love beauty without becoming extravagant, and we cultivate the intellect without lessening our resolution. . . To admit one’s poverty is no disgrace with us; but we consider it disgraceful not to make an effort to avoid it.  An Athenian citizen does not neglect public affairs when attending to his private business. . . We consider a man who takes no interest in the state not as harmless, but as useless; and although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it.  We do not look upon discussion as a stumbling block in the way of political action, but as an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. . . We believe that happiness is the fruit of freedom and freedom of valor, and we do not shrink from the danger of war. . . To sum up, I claim that Athens is the School of Hellas, and that the individual Athenian grows up to a happy versatility and to a readiness for varied emergencies—to self-reliance.”

Unlike the United States, which has always foisted oligarchic governments in its empire, the Athenians supported genuine democracies in theirs.

Athenian lawmakers understood human weaknesses, and they knew from bitter experience how bribery could undermine justice.  Obviously, it is easier to bribe, and deform a passion for justice in, a judge than a jury, and hence, all trials involved a jury of one’s peers.  The people, not paid experts, were deemed most qualified to decide judicial cases.  There was no presiding judge telling jurors that their task was to serve an abstract law (as opposed to simple justice).  Nor was there a jury-free appeal system, which often, in America, nullifies the people’s verdict.

But Athenian jurors were definitely corruptible too.  To minimize that problem, juries in important cases were randomly selected from the entire citizen body and numbered 201-501 or more (roughly 0.7%-1.7% or more of the 30,000 or so adult male citizens). [7]  Often the caseload was too heavy, and so the number of jurors for each particular trial was reduced to fifty.  Now, a rich man might try to bribe all fifty, so the legal system placed a safeguard against that eventuality: The decision as to which 50 jurors of the 500 would be assigned to any given case was often made by lottery, just before the trial began.

Steven Johnstone summarizes the Athenian judicial system: [7]

Athenians performed democracy daily in their law courts.  Without lawyers or judges, private citizens, acting as accusers and defendants, argued their own cases directly to juries composed typically of 201 to 501 jurors, who voted on a verdict without deliberation. This legal system strengthened and perpetuated democracy as Athenians understood it, for it emphasized the ideological equality of all (male) citizens. . . .  Laws against bribery, panels of several hundred jurors, and random assignment to the courts, effectively curtailed the direct influence of wealth on trials.”

The Athenians knew that power-seekers could not be trusted, so they filled many important public offices by lot.  Moreover, most office holders maintained their positions for extremely short durations.  Athens thereby bypassed, to a certain extent, a key problem in all other extant political systems: The ascendancy of freeloaders and psychopaths.

The Athenians did not give their rich people tax cuts and bailouts.  They thus avoided an ever-growing mal-distribution of wealth.  Athenians respected private property and wealth, but expected their leisure class to make greater contributions to the public, by sponsoring musical festivals or dramas (another Greek word), for example.  When the majority decided to go to war, the rich had to risk their lives too.  Moreover, in times of war, each rich man was expected to contribute one battleship to the navy of the city—that is where our word liturgy came from (public service; literally, a public building).

The contemporary decline of oligarchies like the USA or Norway can be explained in part by their system of banking and money creation.  In these nations, the bankers in charge of money creation try to fabricate the impression that the private, for-profit, central banks are under public control.  Witness for example the names they choose for their key institutions—Bank for International Settlements, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Federal Reserve, Bank of England, First Bank of the United States. In reality, these institutions are controlled by a few banking families.  The politicians, media, the bought economic profession, pretend that these privately-controlled institutions serve the public interest, but the reality is the exact opposite: The only goal of these institutions is to further enrich and empower their owners, and they accomplish these goals by impoverishing and enslaving the vast majority. These institutions do not serve a nation—they parasitize it. They are worse than the black plague, because they never go away.  Instead, they steadily, mercilessly, and incessantly devour their host.  They are, by far, public enemy number one.  This, along with the fraudulent fractional reserve system, permit the concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of the banking octopus and its military, academic, drug, death squads, industry, health, farming, mining, and “religious” tentacles. It also permits destructive and deliberate manipulations of the money supply, and the devastating boom-and-bust economic cycles which further enrich and empower a few banking families and enslave the public at large.  I wrote about this banking plague elsewhere, but for the moment let me just say this: If I were forced to choose between the current rule of bankers or the rule of the Mafia, I’d choose the Mafia, any day, any time.

The Athenians, by contrast, did not have that parasitic fifth column in their midst.  They had access to plenty of silver in their own national territory, and the state (not private interests) issued the national silver or copper currency.  The state did not accumulate debt as a matter of course, did not suffer the depredations of fractional reserve money creation, nor planned booms and busts.  The Athenians thus avoided the horrors of a bankers-dominated economic and political system.

Another salient feature of Athenian democracy involved ostracism (their word).  Athenian democrats well knew that their worst enemies were the oligarchs within their own walls. In rare cases, these traitors were brought to trial and executed.  But the Athenians did try to live up to their ideal of moderation.  Individuals who were deemed a threat to the democracy were selected by an anonymous vote of the assembly and ordered to leave the city for ten years.  They retained their citizenship and possessions but were required to remain in exile.  By law, only one person could be ostracized in any given year. As a matter of historical record, though, ostracism was rarely applied.

The remarkable political maturity, compassion, and tolerance of a free people can perhaps be best captured through two specific historical examples.

The first involves post-war reconciliation.  A contemporary legal scholar holds that the first well-documented example of a

“self-conscious transitional justice policy is provided by the classical Athenians’ response to atrocities committed during the reign of the Thirty Tyrants . . . The Athenians carefully balanced retribution and forgiveness . . . remembering and forgetting.”

Another historian comments on the same historical occurrence:

“In 404 BCE the Peloponnesian War finally came to an end, when the Athenians, starved into submission, were forced to accept Sparta’s terms of surrender.  Shortly afterwards a group of thirty conspirators, with Spartan backing (“the Thirty”), overthrew the democracy and established a narrow oligarchy.  Although the oligarchs were in power for only thirteen months, they killed more than 5 percent of the citizenry and terrorized the rest by confiscating the property of some and banishing many others.  Despite this brutality, members of the democratic resistance movement that regained control of Athens came to terms with the oligarchs and agreed to an amnesty that protected collaborators from prosecution for all but the most severe crimes.”

Does this exceptional act of amnesty (their word) and forgiveness sound like mob rule?

Another touching example of Athenian greatness, of compassion in the midst of a struggle for national and personal survival, is related by Thucydides:

“Immediately after the invasion of the Peloponnesians all Lesbos [a Greek island], except Methymna, revolted from the Athenians. . . .  However, the Athenians, distressed by the plague, and by the war that had recently broken out and was now raging, thought it a serious matter to add Lesbos with its fleet and untouched resources to the list of their enemies; and at first would not believe the charge, giving too much weight to their wish that it might not be true.   But when an embassy which they sent had failed to persuade the Mitylenians to give up the union and preparations complained of, they became alarmed, and resolved to strike the first blow.”  After a prolonged siege, the Athenians prevailed, and, at first, the assembly sent a trireme with the order to execute all the men of the rebellious island, and to enslave the women and children.  The following day the assembly reconvened, and narrowly voted to overturn the first vote, and spare the lives of most Lesbians:   “Another galley was at once sent off in haste, for fear that the first might reach Lesbos in the interval, and the city be found destroyed; the first ship having about a day and a night’s start.  Wine and barley-cakes were provided for the vessel by the Mitylenian ambassadors, and great promises made if they arrived in time; which caused the men to use such diligence upon the voyage that they took their meals of barley-cakes kneaded with oil and wine as they rowed, and only slept by turns while the others were at the oar. Luckily they met with no contrary wind, and the first ship making no haste upon so horrid an errand, while the second pressed on in the manner described, the first arrived so little before them, that Paches had only just had time to read the decree, and to prepare to execute the sentence, when the second put into port and prevented the massacre. The danger of Mitylene had indeed been great.”

Ask yourself: Have the Roman or American republics just once behaved thus? And if not, isn’t it high time that we reclaim as our own a political system capable of such wartime wisdom and compassion?

Other Key Features of Athenian Democracy were:

• Near economic self-sufficiency of the average household
• A genuine free enterprise system (largely absent in modern so-called capitalist societies)
• A less materialistic world view
• A small state
• Minimal taxation in times of peace
• Involvement of the majority in civic affairs

Athens was certainly no utopia.  Slavery was widespread and neither women, nor foreign immigrants, nor even the Athens-born descendants of these foreigners, enjoyed the full franchise. [8]

The Athenian Empire often exploited and lorded over its member states, at times brutally and cynically suppressing defections.  Influential Athenians were eminently bribable and often betrayed their city.  Athenians seemed unable to entertain the notion of a genuine union on equal terms with sister democracies (a proposal made by Isocrates, among others), and were thus, in the end, enslaved by the Macedonian dictatorship.  But Athens, I believe, still provides one starting point for the design of a free, rational, and compassionate society:

Within the body of citizens, the Athenians achieved a degree of political equality that minimized the claims of wealth to a degree unparalleled in most societies, certainly in our own.” [7]

We can adopt the basic framework of such genuine democracies as the illiterate Inuit or !Kung societies of two centuries ago, the semi-literate Iroquois, and the highly-literate Athenians, while rejecting their injustices, weaknesses, and superstitions.

Three Modern Examples of Genuine Democracy in Action

In some contemporary oligarchies, on rare occasions, the people are allowed to decide an issue directly (through a referendum), without massive rigging.  In such rare democratic outbursts, the people often vote wisely.  Here are two examples.

The Italian Demos vs. Nuclear Power

We have been warned about the menace of atomic energy right from the beginning of the nuclear age. Many years later, in 1977, for instance, Ralph Nader and John Abbot wrote:

“What technology has had the potential for both inadvertent and willful mass destruction . . . for wiping out cities and contaminating states after an accident, a natural calamity, or sabotage?  What technology has been so unnecessary, so avoidable by simple thrift or by deployment of renewable energy supplies?”

When the decision is left to the psychopaths, they of course choose short-term gains, empowerment, and raw materials for nuclear bombs, even though a nuclear power plant may consume more energy than it produces!  After them, they might think, is the deluge.  But when the people are allowed to decide, they often make the right decision, the bankers’ propaganda avalanche notwithstanding:

“Italy is a nuclear free zone since the Italian nuclear power referendum of November 1987. Following center-right parties’ victory in the 2008 election, Italy’s industry minister announced that the government scheduled the construction to start the first new Italian nuclear-powered plant by 2013. The announced project was paused in March 2011, after the Japanese earthquake, and scrapped after a referendum on 12–13 June 2011.”

The Icelandic Demos vs. the International Bankers

The global economic crisis is now in its eighth year, and, the propaganda system notwithstanding, the situation is getting steadily worse.  Real unemployment is nearing levels of the great depression while the middle class is steadily losing ground.  Given the growing misery of the American people, one would think that the USA would stop its extremely costly wars of aggression, yet the United States is spending even more on killing innocents abroad. One would think that the USA would stop producing weapons of mass destruction that could kill billions or even bring history to an end, but in fact they are building more such weapons and deliberately risking an all-out nuclear war. One would think that the USA would dismantle its extremely costly police state apparatus, but the bankers and their puppets are actually spending more money on subjugating, humiliating, incarcerating, and killing the American people.  One would think that, in such hard times, greater income equality would be attempted, but in fact the gap between rich and poor has grown by leaps and bounds from 2008 to 2016.  One would think that the DC syndicate would permit the bankruptcy of the international banks that caused the crisis to begin with, and which, moreover, according to this syndicate’s self-professed capitalist (let alone Christian) ideology, are too big to exist. But just the opposite is taking place: to prevent the deserved bankruptcy of these banks, our politicians (that is, the big bankers themselves or their pawns) have robbed the world’s people of trillions and they have, moreover, declared the robber bankers too big to jail.  Consequently, the economic hard times will continue unabated, or grow far worse, for years and years.

President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson

As of August 2016, there has been only one exception to this sad tale of gargantuan theft—Iceland. There, thanks to an inordinately courageous and decent president, the people were allowed to decide their fate, twice, despite the strenuous opposition of the international bankers.  “These were private banks,” said Iceland’s president, “and we didn’t pump money into them in order to keep them going; the state did not shoulder the responsibility of the failed private banks.”  The people voted and, consequently, Iceland is now in far better economic shape than countries such as Greece, Spain, or the USA.  In Iceland, too, some bankers actually ended up paying for their crimes, and the country has, in the wake of the crisis, moved in a more democratic direction.  The people of Iceland

“took a different path than the United States after their financial crisis and nationalized the banks, threw some the people responsible for the crash in jail, and bailed out the homeowners instead of worrying about only bailing out the banks. And now they’re coming back and their economy is growing again.”

Even the corporate press, on the rare occasions when it covers the Icelandic story, underscores the fabulous potential of genuine democracy:

“Icelanders who pelted parliament with rocks in 2009 demanding their leaders and bankers answer for the country’s economic and financial collapse are reaping the benefits of their anger. Since the end of 2008, the island’s banks have forgiven loans equivalent to 13 percent of gross domestic product, easing the debt burdens of more than a quarter of the population . . . The island’s steps to resurrect itself since 2008, when its banks defaulted on $85 billion, are proving effective.   Iceland’s economy will this year [2012] outgrow the euro area and the developed world on average . . .   The island’s households were helped by an agreement between the government and the banks, which are still partly controlled by the state, to forgive debt exceeding 110 percent of home values. On top of that, a Supreme Court ruling in June 2010 found loans indexed to foreign currencies were illegal, meaning households no longer need to cover krona losses. . . . Iceland’s $13 billion economy, which shrank 6.7 percent in 2009, grew 2.9 percent last year and will expand 2.4 percent this year and next . . . The euro area will grow 0.2 percent this year and the OECD area will expand 1.6 percent, according to November estimates. . . . Iceland’s approach to dealing with the meltdown has put the needs of its population ahead of the markets at every turn. Once it became clear back in October 2008 that the island’s banks were beyond saving, the government stepped in, ring-fenced the domestic accounts, and left international creditors in the lurch. The central bank imposed capital controls to halt the ensuing sell-off of the krona and new state-controlled banks were created from the remnants of the lenders that failed. Iceland’s special prosecutor has said it may indict as many as 90 people, while more than 200, including the former chief executives at the three biggest banks, face criminal charges. . . . That compares with the U.S., where no top bank executives have faced criminal prosecution for their roles in the subprime mortgage meltdown.”

The Berlin Philharmonic

My chief goal in writing this article is the starry-eyed dream of helping, in a small measure, to save our species from its most probable fate–perpetual wars, growing economic inequalities, totalitarianism and, within a couple of centuries at the most, extinction.  This dire future can be directly traced to scandalously criminal political mismanagement of humanity and the biosphere; hence this article focused on real democracy as the organizing principle of all future political organizations.  I must make it clear, however, that direct democracy is, in my view, the best way of organizing each and every human collective, including such things as factories, soccer teams, armies (until we abolish them), and the arts.

A Few Members of the Berlin Philharmonic

One successful example of genuine democracy outside the political arena is the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the world’s leading orchestras (see for instance, Thomas Grube’s documentary, Trip to Asia).

Let us look at what one commentator has to say about this “coolest band in the world:”

“When the Berlin Philharmonic was created in 1882, its fifty-two musicians decided to do business differently.  They wanted a democratic system that not only involved the musicians, but empowered them as well. . . .  It is the musicians who manage themselves, from scheduling concerts, to making tour arrangements, or handling delicate personnel matters. . . .  the audition process is totally inclusive. Every member of the orchestra takes part forming an audience for the auditioning candidates on the stage of the Philharmonie [the orchestra hall]. There are 128 votes and the Chief Conductor, like everyone else, has just one.  The audition tests stylistic understanding and qualities of sound and expression. Technique is a given but never used as the main criterion.  I was told by one player that he and his colleagues were looking ‘to have their souls touched by the music-making.’ . . .  Base salary is €90,000 gross for all rank and file players. Principals receive 15% extra. There is no individual negotiation of personal contracts as in the USA. Transparency and equity are seen as essential to solidarity. . . .  Besides playing in the Orchestra every musician is expected to be a soloist, perform chamber music, and contribute to the overall vision of the Orchestra. . . . The Berliners take a broad view of their responsibilities as musicians.  Besides the established concert series in the Philharmonie, the musicians are involved in community work that is remarkable for the depth of its engagement and interactivity. . . . The musicians’ work touches many, from kindergarteners to prisoners, from teachers to lifelong learners. There is no contractual obligation for the musicians to do this work.  They are paid no additional fees–just travel expenses. They do it because they understand the inherent transformative power of music and want to share that with audiences who have not previously experienced it.”

“The last time I saw the Berlin Phil I thought it was the greatest orchestra I had ever heard. I thought that the time before, too.  The performances have such energy, such commitment, such movement, indeed the musicians move physically with the music. Even their very presence on stage speaks of a different level of communication and engagement. I was very much taken by their tradition at the end of the concert of shaking hands and thanking their colleagues. . . . Their model is not the vision of any one leader.  It comes instead from a collective of musicians who are empowered to be creative with new ideas, new directions, and new challenges.”

A Philosophical Defense of Genuine Democracy

My focus in this article has been empirical.  That is, I believe that the historical record provides the best way of proving the superiority of real democracy over any other form of government.  But genuine democracy can also be defended on philosophical grounds.  Here for instance is John Stuart Mill, a 19th century scholar: [9]

“The ideally best form of government is that in which the sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last resort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the community, every citizen not only having a voice in the exercise of that ultimate sovereignty, but being, at least occasionally, called on to take an actual part in the government . . . Its superiority . . . rests upon two principles . . . The first is, that the rights and interests of every or any person are only secure from being disregarded when the person interested is himself able, and habitually disposed to stand up for them.   The second is that the general prosperity attains a great height, and is more widely diffused, in proportion to the amount and variety of the personal energies enlisted in promoting it.”

Also, real democracy, by its very nature, minimizes psychopathic interferences, anti-social behavior, and income inequalities.  It confirms its members’ views that they are masters of their own fate, and produces overall happier people than any other alternative.  Such a society is therefore more likely to enjoy greater cohesion and prosperity.

Finally, success depends on a system’s willingness to acknowledge, and learn from, its mistakes and to adopt policies that serve the public interest.  In totalitarian societies or oligarchies, policy makers can suppress evidence that they made a mistake or acted selfishly and shoot anyone who somehow finds out the truth and who proceeds to recommend the needed changes.  In republics like the USA or France, the same suppression is commonplace, albeit it is not as obvious to ordinary citizens.  In either case, unwise or selfish policies are likely to persist. In contrast, in real democracies, the truth comes out more readily and it is more likely to lead to criticism, debate, and a change of course.  Thus, real democracies enjoy a built-in corrective mechanism which assures communally-minded, wiser, more efficient, sustainable, and just policies. [10, 11]

Closing Remarks

It is no accident that, when given a choice, the Italian people rejected nuclear power, despite massive false advertising by the moneylenders.  It is no accident that, as of June 2015, the only country with any chance of escaping serfdom, Iceland, was able to do so through a referendum, despite massive false advertising by the moneylenders.  It is no accident that the Berlin Philharmonic is, perhaps, the world’s leading orchestra.  What worked so well for the Ancient Athenians, for the Iroquois Confederacy, and for most of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, is obviously working just as well for any country or organization choosing to give genuine democracy a chance.

The demonstrable superiority of real democracy to all other political systems tells us that, when given a chance, most of us are fundamentally decent and rational.  We ought to do everything we can to give ourselves that chance.

For revolutionary advocates of real democracy, the key question is:  How do we get there?  The answer is threefold.

First, our own organizations must follow a variation of the Iroquois or Athenian models of real democracy.

Second, when it comes to nations like Iceland or Switzerland (which enjoy a measure of independence from the Invisible Government’s interference in their internal affairs), the transition might be achieved peacefully.  Such a transition would involve internal educational and political campaigns, as well as tactical moves against subversion, economic blackmail, assassinations, media campaigns, and invasions.

Third, when it comes to oligarchies like Russia, China, or the USA and its many colonies (e.g., France, Japan, Saudi Arabia), where the oligarchs are too entrenched to be removed by peaceful revolution, the answer is the same as it was in the days of Thrasybulus: Violent revolution.  But, can an ordinary popular uprising succeed nowadays, given the extraordinary power of contemporary oligarchs and their expertise in co-opting, impoverishing, killing, or brainwashing the vast majority?  Tragically, the answer is: Almost certainly not.  For better or worse, eventually, a more effective way will be re-discovered.

Notes and References

1. The Orwellian term for real democracy is direct democracy.  This misleading term must be avoided because it implies that there are two legitimate variants of democracy: direct and indirect (representative).  To our ancestors, indirect democracy would be equivalent to soundless tam-tam or arrowless archery.

2. Democratic Athens practiced slavery and excluded women and Athenian-born residents of foreign extraction from the privileges of citizenship.  We can still derive many lessons from Ancient Athens, with the obvious proviso that any future real democracy will extend the full franchise of freedom and citizenship to all adult members.

3. One of the greatest tragedies of the human condition is our reluctance to let go of long-held convictions, even when presented with overwhelming evidence against them.  We know this from everyday observations of others, and also, if we are honest with ourselves, from introspection.  There is also some striking experimental evidence showing that this is so:

“Subjects were recruited to evaluate the efficacy of a self-contained instructional manual. Before they could provide the needed appraisal, they were told, they needed to acquire a first-hand experience of its content by studying it and following the instructions it provided for about four hours. At some point in the teaching process, the manual introduced a false volume formula for a sphere–a formula which led subjects to believe that spheres are 50% larger than they are. Subjects were then given an actual sphere and asked to determine its volume; first by using the formula, and then by filling the sphere with water, transferring the water to a box, and directly measuring the volume of the water in the box. The key question was: Would subjects believe the evidence of their senses and abandon their prior beliefs in the formula, the competence of the experimenter, and the legitimacy of the entire setup? Preliminary observations suggested that the task was far more difficult than expected: no subject decisively rejected the false formula or declined to use it in subsequent tasks. In later experiments various attempts were made to ease the conceptual transition called for by this experiment. In one variation all subjects held a Ph.D. degree in a natural science and were employed as research scientists and professors in two major research universities. A special section–involving measurements of a second ball–was introduced and constructed with the deliberate aim of helping these scientists break away from the false formula. In another variation, the discrepancy concerned the circumference of an ellipse, thereby ruling out the possibility that earlier results were ascribable to the difficulty of dealing with three dimensional concepts. But none of these variations substantially altered the initial results.”

We must recall this, before dismissing real democracy–or any other challenge to our conceptions.

4. After the fall of democratic Athens, the writings of the friends of democracy were deliberately destroyed—the oligarchs and Catholic Church understood well the subversive power of real democracy and the heroic appeal of men such as Thrasybulus.  The oligarchic campaign against real democracy is still very much alive, again “leading many writers to minimize the accomplishments of . . .  democracy’s strongest advocates.” (R. J. Buck, cited here).

5. Catherine Drinker Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia, 1966.

6. Paul Hoefler, Africa Speaks, 1931, p. 351.

7. Steven Johnstone, Disputes and democracy, 1999.

8. At times, it must be admitted, ordinary people justify Plato’s scorn for democracy—or H. L. Mencken’s quip that “democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.“  In Athens too, the narrow-minded, self-destructive, bigotry of the people was at times appalling.  After the restoration of real democracy, Thrasybulus deservedly became the “hero of the people.”  And yet he failed to convince his comrades to extend citizenship to all the foreigners and Athenian-born descendants of foreigners who had fought alongside them against the bloodthirsty oligarchs.  So, real democracy is far from perfect—and yet incomparably better than anything else.

9. Mill, Consideration on Representative Government, 1861.  Mill goes on to say:  “But since all can not, in a community exceeding a single small town, participate personally in any but some very minor portions of the public business, it follows that the ideal type of a perfect government must be representative.”  There are good reasons to believe that Mill, had he lived now, would revise his opinion on this point.  First, for Mill, the ideal form of government is real democracy, and representative democracy is only a second practical best.  Second, with modern technology, any country, regardless of its size, could have daily plebiscites, if it so wished.  In extremis, it could rely on polling techniques to ascertain the popular will. Third, given the utter subversion of representative governments by the money lenders, Mill would probably see that the only road to a genuine democracy is a variation of Athenian democracy.  Fourth, real democracy would involve, Mill would probably agree, massive decentralization: dividing any country into geographical units of 40,000 souls or less, and severely limiting the powers of the central government.

10. Walt Whitman might have had something like this in mind when he wrote about “the democratic wisdom underneath, like solid ground for all” (see his poem, “The Commonplace”).

11. As far as I am aware, the first clear repudiation of the myth of authoritarian efficiency, and the most powerful theoretical explanation of real democracy’s greater observable efficiency, can be found in Karl R. Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies.  Like Mill, however, Popper failed to notice the sharp differences between real and representative democracies.

Moti Nissani

is an organic farmer (in Argentina), a former university professor (in the USA), a jack of many trades, and the compiler of  “ A Revolutionary’s Toolkit.”.

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BY WOLF GORDON CLIFTON | ANIMAL PEOPLE FORUM

(Featured image: free-roaming pigs in India. Credit Kim Bartlett – Animal People, Inc.)

Last week, I took the opportunity to represent the Animal People Forum at the Humane Society of the United States’ annual Expo conference in Las Vegas. While I have very mixed feelings about the location in which it was held – a surreal hybrid of Sodom & Gomorrah, Disneyland, and Dante’s Inferno – the conference itself was excellent, with many valuable sessions and plenty of great opportunities for networking.

During the welcome session, HSUS President and CEO Wayne Pacelle gave a talk promoting his new book, The Humane Economy. He presented numerous examples of how public concern for non-human animals, and outrage over cruelty and neglect, has driven companies in various industries to reform their treatment of other species. These range from Ringling Bros. Circus agreeing to retire its performing elephants, to numerous airlines refusing to transport hunting trophies out of Africa following mass outcry over Cecil the lion’s illegal killing.

Pacelle’s thesis, further elaborated in his book, is twofold: that activists can best promote animal protection by leveraging market forces as a catalyst for change, and that companies act in their own best interests by taking consumers’ ethical demands seriously. He summarized this thesis in his talk by declaring,

“Animal protection shouldn’t be a sacrifice. It should be an opportunity.”

Pacelle’s distinctly pro-capitalist approach to animal protection will undoubtedly rankle more radical activists, who see capitalism not as a potential ally, but as an intrinsically exploitative system and one of the foremost obstacles to meaningful change for animals. While I do not myself dispute the use of economic incentives as a tactic to advance animal welfare in certain situations, such as those cited in The Humane Economy, I am nonetheless extremely wary of any approach that conflates moral principles with business pursuits. In some cases, defending animals may present economic opportunities; but in others, it may indeed require sacrifice. Either way, compassion for all sentient beings must remain our highest value and foremost priority, and be pursued regardless of the profit or cost it may bring corporate interests.

‘The Humane Economy’ by Wayne Pacelle

That said, accepting Pacelle’s thesis for the sake of argument, another important issue arises. When it comes to eating animals, Pacelle offered in his talk multiple examples of companies in the food industry working to make their practices more “humane:” pork producers agreeing to phase out gestation crates for pigs, and restaurants and grocery outlets committing to sell only eggs from “cage free” chickens. Yet he gave no mention at all to the production of high-quality alternatives to meat, eggs, and dairy – now a thriving industry whose products herald a possible end to animals’ exploitation and slaughter for food altogether. Despite being vegan himself, he didn’t even mention the words “vegetarian” or “vegan” once.

Why the omission? In his book, Pacelle actually does devote considerable attention to the creation of veg alternatives to meat, eggs, and dairy. The Humane Economy describes both plant-based substitutes, such as Beyond Meat, Gardein, and Hampton Creek’s Just Mayo, and projects like Maastricht University’s Cultured Beef, which grows animal protein directly from stem cells rather than by harming living animals. (This article will bypass the philosophical debate over whether in vitro meat is technically vegetarian or vegan, as the end result in sparing animals is effectively the same.)

There is no disputing either the profitability of such enterprises, or their massive potential to benefit animals. According to Pacelle’s book, Gardein products are now available in 22,000 stores, and in 2014 the company that produces them was bought by Pinnacle Foods for $174 million. The Humane Economy quotes Josh Balk, cofounder of Hampton Creek, as stating that if just a single line of pasta produced by Michael Foods were to switch to his company’s vegan egg replacer, it would spare 115,000 hens from miserable lives in battery cages.

From the perspective of animals raised for food, the manufacture of veg alternatives to meat, eggs, and dairy is infinitely preferable to the adoption of slightly less cruel farming standards. “Humane” certification programs may curtail some of the worst abuses, but still permit branding, castration without anesthesia, unnatural crowding, require little if any access to the outdoors, and ultimately consign animals to die – usually in the same industrial slaughterhouses as their more cruelly raised brethren. Veg foods remove animal exploitation from the equation altogether.

Conditions inside a “free range” chicken farm (photo credit: steve p2008, used under CC BY 2.0)

From an economic viewpoint, such products are also far more sustainable in the long term than are meat, dairy, or eggs produced by animals under any conditions. The United Nations has recognized emissions from animal agriculture as one of the leading causes of climate change, rivaling or exceeding all transportation combined. According to a recently leaked report commissioned by Nestlé, if meat production continues at current rates, a third of the human population will face water shortages by 2025, with “catastrophic” global consequences by 2050. Given that factory farming has prevailed due to its relative efficiency in utilizing resources of food, water, and space, adopting more “humane,” resource-intensive forms of agriculture will only hasten the catastrophe – and an end to corporate profits – unless demand for animal products is drastically reduced at the same time.

By contrast, it takes 99% less water, and produces 78-95% fewer greenhouse emissions, to produce a pound of grain protein than a pound of animal protein. Oxford University estimates that growing meat directly from stem cells would require 99% less land, 96% less water, and produce 96% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than raising and slaughtering animals for it.

That Pacelle evidently knows these facts, touching on most of them in The Humane Economy, only makes his omission of them in public talks all the more striking. In a guest appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher, he doesn’t mention vegetarianism at all, except in the context of congratulating Seaworld (!) for agreeing to offer more plant-based food options at their parks in addition to “humanely” produced meat. In an interview with Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, he even dismisses it, saying,

“Animals jammed into cages and crates cannot wait for the world to go vegan. I’m quite sure they want out of this unyielding life of privation right now, and once that question is settled, then sensible people can debate whether they should be raised for the plate at all.”

That even at HSUS’ own conference, preaching to a choir of animal protection activists with no risk of backlash for advocating a vegetarian or vegan diet, Pacelle chose to promote “humane” meat and not veg alternatives is extremely bewildering. Moreover, it entirely contradicts the logic of his own argument, that “Animal protection shouldn’t be a sacrifice. It should be an opportunity.”

On the one hand, encouraging consumers to eat “humane” meat, eggs, and dairy sacrifices the overall welfare of animals. It may prevent a few particularly egregious forms of cruelty, but leaves the overall system of brutal exploitation and killing intact, now sanitized in the public eye through the endorsement of high-profile animal welfare organizations like HSUS. (it is worth noting that S 820, which HSUS lobbied unsuccessfully to include in the 2014 Farm Bill, would have implemented larger cages for laying hens nationwide yet also prohibit further reforms in the future, preserving the egg industry in perpetuity in the name of animal welfare.) And if such a “reformed” industry is to be sustainable, it demands sacrifice on the part of the consumer as well, for it is only by drastically reducing their consumption of meat and animal products that animal agriculture can continue without causing global environmental devastation. In the long term, “humane” farming of animals is a lose-lose for everyone concerned.

Vegan cheeseburger made with Gardein’s Beefless Burger, Hampton Creek’s Just Mayo, and Field Roast’s Chao cheese slices.

On the other, vegan meat alternatives and lab-grown in vitro meat can be made without farming or slaughtering animals at all, eliminating their suffering entirely. And as their production becomes more and more advanced, such products will become indistinguishable from animal meat in taste, texture, nutrition, and even their basic biochemical structure. By choosing non-violent alternatives to meat, eggs, and dairy, consumers can continue to enjoy their favorite dishes in the same quantities as before, without exploiting animals or placing unbearable stress upon the Earth’s environment. Nothing, and no one, is sacrificed, and everyone wins – humans, animals, and the planet alike.

Admittedly, promoting meat alternatives to people used to eating slaughtered animals may be more difficult than simply offering “humane” versions of the same product. But animal protection organizations like HSUS owe it to the animals to seek the greatest good, not the path of least resistance… particularly if the short-term gains they achieve serve to perpetuate dietary choices that cause immense unnecessary suffering, and will ultimately devastate the planet and civilization with it. If Wayne Pacelle and HSUS can plug “humane” meat in the New York Times, and even sponsor tours for foodies to eat meat at humane-certified restaurants, think what the same time, energy, and resources could accomplish if used to support projects like Beyond Meat, Gardein, and Cultured Beef instead.

If we are to accept Wayne Pacelle’s capitalist approach to animal protection, the logical conclusion is clear: a “humane economy” must by definition be a veg economy. That he so adamantly seeks to evade this conclusion is mystifying and disturbing.

About the author

Born and raised within the animal rights movement, Wolf Gordon Clifton, currently serving as Executive Director of Animal People Inc, publisher of the Animal People Forum (animalpeopleforum.org) has always felt strongly connected to other creatures and concerned for their well-being. Beginning in childhood he contributed drawings of animals for publication in Animal People News, and traveled with his parents to attend conferences and visit animal projects all over the world. During high school he began writing for the newspaper and contributing in various additional ways around the Animal People office. His first solo trip overseas, to film a promotional video for the Bali Street Dog Foundation in Indonesia, led him to create the animated film Yudisthira's Dog, retelling the story of an ancient Hindu king famed for his loyalty to a street dog. It also inspired lifelong interests in animation and world religion, which he went on to study for college at Vanderbilt University. Wolf graduated in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies and minors in Film Studies and Astronomy. In 2015, he received a Master of Arts in Museology and Graduate Certificate in Astrobiology from the University of Washington. His thesis project, the online exhibit Beyond Human: Animals, Aliens, and Artificial Intelligence, brings together animal rights, astrobiology, and AI research to explore the ethics of humans' relationships with other sentient beings, and can be viewed on the Animal People Forum. His diverse training and life experiences enable him to research and write about a wide variety of animal-related issues, in a global context and across the humanities, arts, and sciences. In his spare time, he does paleontological work for the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, and writes for the community blog Neon Observatory.

=By= Andre Vltchek

Brussels and Antwerp from the International Space Station. NASAA

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]f some intelligent extraterrestrial beings were circling over our planet in their spaceship, monitoring for decades and centuries all that has been and is taking place on its surface, they would, most likely, be horrified by our brutality, and shocked by the countless contradictions, double standards and inconsistencies.

For instance, after registering the recent loss of lives in Brussels, visitors from outer space would immediately detect the enormous amount of activity all over the Belgian metropolis: police cars, the military, ambulances, and media vans. More than 30 people were killed at the airport and at the metro station, while over 200 were injured. Needless to say, the blood of innocent people was spilled.

Our visitors – the extraterrestrials – (let’s really imagine that they were here) are most likely totally ‘color blind’; they cannot make any distinction between different skin colors, different races or genders. To them, one victim in a sub-Saharan African village or in the Middle East has exactly the same ‘value’ as a casualty in Paris or Houston. To them, a wound is a wound, a body is a body, a corpse is a corpse; and a victim belonging to any ethnic or social group or geographic location is only and exclusively that – a victim.

Therefore, they were wondering: why is it that when few hundreds or few thousands of innocent people die in such places like war-torn Syria or Iraq, there are just a few ambulances detectable from above, and no cameras to record people’s suffering? Nobody seems to be shocked – why? And why are these countries ‘war-torn’ to begin with?

By then, our friends from the different galaxy would have a considerable amount of data at their disposal. Several mighty computers on board their spaceship would be analyzing and processing all the samples and information collected from our Planet.

Tens of thousands of books would be fed into the system.

What is it that one of the greatest writers of Latin America – Eduardo Galeano – wrote in his ‘Open Veins of Latin America’ several decades ago?  He penned with passion and disgust about Western rule in South America:

“You could build a silver bridge from Potosí to Madrid from what was mined here – and one back with the bones of those that died taking it out…”

In the past, 8 million people vanished in the mines of Potosi alone, so that Europe could have its high life and ‘culture’.

And Jean-Paul Sartre writes in his book ‘Colonialism and Neocolonialism’:

“You know very well that we are exploiters. You know very well that we took the gold and the metals and then the oil of the ‘new continents’ and brought them back to the old mother countries. Not without excellent results: palaces, cathedrals, industrial capitals; and then whenever crisis threatened, the colonial markets were there to cushion or deflect it. Europe, stuffed with riches, granted de jure humanity to all its inhabitants: for us, a human being means ‘accomplice’, since we have all benefited from colonial exploitation… What empty chatter: liberty, equality, fraternity, love, honour, country and who knows what else?”

Our extraterrestrial friends would be thinking and thinking, scratching their heads, fondling their thick whiskers: obviously, throughout its history, the West slaughtered nearly one billion human beings in Africa, Central and South “America”, Asia, the Middle East and Oceania. And it is still murdering millions worldwide.

Those who are not butchered by the West directly are treated worse than animals by an inserted turbo-capitalist system and by countless right-wing dictatorships cynically called ‘democracies’. Billions of people on our Planet eat shit, literally. And they don’t really live; they just exist. Their only purpose is to work hard for nothing, supporting the ‘high life’ of the Empire.

Finally, over some fluorescent power drink, at a big round conference table in the spaceship, the captain decides to address his crew: “This does not seem to me like a particularly good and honest arrangement for this or any other planet!”

All crew members raise their feelers in agreement. They have had exactly the same thoughts for several centuries (“our – human centuries” – translated to their perception of time – for several weeks).

“I would say that most of the people on their so-called Earth have absolutely legitimate reasons to feel endlessly pissed-off!” declared their chief analyst for Outer Space Political Affairs.

Others suggested that those countries that have been plundered, destroyed and terrorized by the West have the full right to defend themself, or at least to retaliate. But for some reason, they don’t.

But could blowing up a subway station or an international airport, could the killing of innocent civilians, be considered ‘legitimate retaliation’?

Everybody agrees that it cannot be, although the Empire itself has already slaughtered hundreds of millions of innocent men, women and children all over the world. But the Empire, and again, there is this absolute consensus on board the spaceship, could not be judged by any normal international or interplanetary standards, as it has been, already for centuries, behaving as a debauched genocidal maniac.

It could not be held to any standards, as it had exterminated entire nations, destroyed cultures, polluted entire Planet and imposed on almost everyone the most appalling and inhuman economic and social system imaginable. It ruined all enthusiasm, injected nihilism, indoctrinated people, and shackled everyone by fear and ignorance.

But killing the people, even those submissive, narcissist and ignorant citizens of the Empire, would still be totally wrong. There was no disagreement about that on board the spaceship.

*

But who actually killed those people in Brussels? Who killed Parisians just a few months earlier?

Was it some external enemies of the Empire that have been perpetrating these violent acts?

There was no exact data regarding this on board the flying saucer.

But the crew had collected enough information from almost all previous ‘events’ and so it began to believe that the Empire itself could have also easily done the killing.

In Europe concretely, who could overlook the terror campaign unleashed by the NATO countries during the so-called ‘Operation Gladio”? Who can forget how governments were kidnapping and murdering people, how they were blowing up entire train stations and trains, in order to point fingers at the Communists, discrediting them, blaming them for the attacks?

“Global Militarism,” map of US military presence from “The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases …” by Prof. Jules Dufour, 2007).

The Empire always felt spite, total and unconcealed, for non-white, non-Christian human beings. It never hesitated to gas, to bomb, and to burn millions, sometimes tens of millions of them, in just one go. But periodically, it also ‘sacrificed’ a few dozens or even hundreds of its own people. It was done for some ‘excellent and sacred cause’, naturally: in order for the white Christian race to maintain its control over the planet, for savage capitalism to flourish, and for dogmas about the ‘exceptionality’ of the European and North American civilization/culture to persevere.

Most of the ET’s who were now circling over our Planet were able to see clearly through the Western propaganda. They were enduring with twisted noses that entire unsavory stench coming from the Empire’s intellectual belches and farts, and they were laughing at the numerous moral pirouettes and somersaults it was displaying.

But laughter would always freeze on their lips, whenever they realized that this was not a game, that human beings are being torn to pieces, that entire villages, neighborhoods and countries have been sacrificed and destroyed.

The spaceship crew counted among them some avid readers of Umberto Eco’s Numero Zero. Disgusted with the mainstream Western propaganda media, everyone from the captain to several janitors turned to alternative media sources that, recently have begun to flourish on the Planet Earth. RT was blasted in the reading room, day and night. Others were watching TeleSUR and Press TV in their cabins.

Hardened by watching and reading opposition media, the question everyone on board was asking was: were Belgian people really sacrificed by one of those terrorist groups like Al-Qaida, al-Nusra, or maybe by ISIS?

Then the Western media reported that ISIS/Daesh had claimed responsibility for the attacks.

But in his essay published by Global Research, Michel Chossudovsky asked, “Is the ISIS Behind the Brussels Attacks? Who is Behind the ISIS?”

‘Very good question’, admitted the crew. To them, as to Professor Chossudovsky, it was clear that behind ISIS stood both Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and therefore, the West.

Then Peter Koenig, Swiss economist and thinker, published his essay, “The Brussels Attacks – Another False Flag”, where he argued, after describing the carnage in Belgium:

“…In the meantime, the Belgian government has ordered a clampdown on police and journalists reporting on the case. The public must be kept in the dark, ‘to facilitate the investigation;’ lest contradictory reports, as there usually are in false flag operations, may plant doubt in people’s minds. That must by all means be prevented. …Fear is the name of the game. People blinded and in the midst of fear – under the shock, accept any doctrine – more police protection, ‘we give you our civil rights and remaining ‘freedom’, but please take care of us.’ Military regimes will be installed at the demand of the people.”

Most likely the future US President, Donald Trump, is already enjoying swelling support from the North American public, after promising new and taller walls, more advanced spying/surveillance, more savage torture as well as advanced racial/religious profiling.

Christopher Black, a prominent international lawyer based in Toronto, added:

“A common factor in all these false flags is that no political demand is ever made by the alleged actors. A terrorist act is a political act, designed to instill fear in the public to pressure a state to do something the actors want. But in none of these recent attacks are any demands ever made nor any compelling reasons ever given for the attack. And what demands could there be since the EU has been supporting Daesh along with the US. And why would the ISIS make an attack on the EU to draw more attacks on them (supposedly)? It does not make sense from a political or military point of view. The media report that ISIS claims the attack was on Belgium for taking part in the coalition bombing but Belgium halted that months ago and as we know there were no real attacks on ISIS by the coalition.

So if not ISIS then who? Who benefits is always the question to ask. The answer may lie in the immediate response of everyone from Trump to Hollande to Cameron and the rest, that the war on ISIS must be intensified, which means a bigger war against Syria, and Iraq. So, one can see this attack as a reaction to the Syrian-Russian success in Syria against ISIS and an attempt to sabotage the Geneva Peace process. But, once again, the people are kept in the dark, huddled around their computers and TV screens waiting for the next set of lies.”

And this is what was written by Koenig’s and Black’s comrade, Andre Vltchek:

“I mentioned this recently in one of my essays about North Korea, but I have to repeat it once again, “after Brussels”: We are living in a twisted, truly perverse world, where mass murderers act as judges, and actually get away with it. The objectivity lost its meaning. Terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are now determined by only one criterion: ‘good’ is all that serves the interests of the Western Empire, ‘bad’ is what challenges its global dictatorship.”

No matter how the information about what took place in Brussels was twisted or turned, one thing was hard to dispute: directly or indirectly, the West was right behind the attacks. And not to see it would take truly incredible discipline.

Of course it was not just the events that occurred in Brussels. Looking at the whole modern human history, with just a few exceptions, the West was always behind the most horrid atrocities and aggressions.

*

The crew of the spaceship held a meeting to assess the situation on Earth.

The conclusions of this gathering were pronounced and recorded, then sent to their capital city thousands of light-years away from the Planet Earth:

“There are many objective reasons to believe why it is that the Planet Earth entered an irreversible spiral of terminal decline. It is now ruled by only a handful of perverse nations obsessed with power and consumption. For decades and centuries, these countries terrorized, murdered, even exterminated people living in all the other corners of Earth. However, they were never stopped, reprimanded and restrained. As we see from above, there is very little chance that the situation will change in foreseeable future. Just a few countries, including China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Iran and the DPRK are still insisting on their own course. They are, however, constantly intimidated, antagonized and provoked.

Furthermore, the environment of the Planet Earth is irreversibly damaged, and if there is no immediate reversal of the trend, the entire globe may become uninhabitable in the foreseeable future.

Our recommendation to the citizens of the Planet Earth: immediately occupy and disarm both Europe and North America. Then disarm their ‘client’ states and the terrorist groups they have injected into the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Impose real (direct) democracy and implement strong detox educational programs in order to reverse the long decades and centuries of consistent indoctrination and supremacist theories. For at least three generations, reduce Europe and North America to strictly agricultural societies, with no military and no heavy industry. The flow of foreign students to all Western universities should be stopped immediately, as these are not really centers of knowledge, but extremely dangerous hubs of indoctrination. Propaganda messages engraved into the mass media disinformation campaigns should be detected, exposed, publicly analyzed and ridiculed systematically.”

According to the ET’s, these were only some of the emergency steps that would have to be taken immediately, in order for the Planet Earth to survive.

But all this was said and then put on the record just for the sake of the people who inhabited other galaxies. Earth appeared to be already lost. There was very little hope that human beings would rebel against their torturers.

“No hope”, was the general consensus on board the spaceship. “The rot is too deep, too widespread. Russia, China, Latin America and few other countries could create an alliance and forge a united front against the West. But with nukes, a propaganda apparatus and technology, the West cannot be defeated. It can only collapse from within. But the people of Europe and North America are the most obedient, indoctrinated and uninformed. And they enjoy many exclusive privileges. They will never defend the Planet, only their own interests.”

The captain downed yet another fluorescent drink, grimaced and pointed finger towards the transparent floor of his flying saucer: “They fucked up no end. It all appears to be hopeless. Time to go home!”

They voted, and decided to depart. Then the captain stepped on it, and the saucer accelerated to a neck breaking speed of several light-years per second, shooting straight towards home.

Would the crew try to stop the madness they had witnessed on Earth, would they approach the rulers in London, Brussels or Washington, chances were they would end up like their counterparts in that old great Soviet SCI-FI film “The Silence of Doctor Evans”. In that film, a spaceship sent by an advanced civilization made contact with several inhabitants on Earth. But the crew was hunted down by evil imperialists who were terrified by the possibility that an advanced (naturally Communist) society would be spreading extremely dangerous and subversive ideas, reminding people of some basic principles; morality, kindness, decency and humanism.

*

And so the madness will go on. For us who have no opportunity to escape to another galaxy, the prospects are bleak; especially for those of us who by some miracle have managed to escape indoctrination.

Those who are still capable of seeing what is happening around, those who understand the insanity and brutality of the Western ruling power, are condemned to living in constant agitation, stress and outrage.

The people who are ruling over this planet may still physically fit to human form, but in reality they are beasts, mass murderers, and brigands. In fact, there are no words derogatory enough to describe them.

So what should we expect now, when even ET’s have given up on our Planet? A little entrée in a form of a right-wing coup in Ecuador, perhaps? And then a main course, like nuking of North Korea? The assassination of President al Assad? Or something really fatal, like a provoked naval confrontation with China? Or maybe something local and ‘modest’, like the bombing of few city buses in Rome or trams in Amsterdam, so even tighter surveillance will be ‘demanded’ by and ‘given’ to the people of the West? Will Europe soon be sinking boats that are carrying thousands of refugees from the very countries destroyed by the Empire? What else, really? What can we expect later this year, in April, May, and June?

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

Note to Commenters
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=By= Andre Vltchek

“Anon in Thought” by liking420. (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]hilosophers have been muzzled by the Western global regime; most of great modern philosophy concealed from the masses. What has been left of it, allowed to float on the surface is toothless, irrelevant and incomprehensible: a foolish outdated theoretical field for those few remaining intellectual snobs.

Philosophy used to be the most precious crown jewel of human intellectual achievement. It stood at the vanguard of almost all fights for a better world. Gramsci was a philosopher, and so were Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Ho-Chi-Minh, Guevara, Castro, Frantz Fanon, Senghors, Cabral, Nyerere and Lumumba, to name just a few.

To be a thinker, a philosopher, in ancient China, Japan or even in some parts of the West, was the most respected human ‘occupation’.

In all ‘normally’ developing societies, knowledge has been valued much higher than material possessions or naked power.

In ancient Greece and China, people were able to understand the majority of their philosophers. There was nothing “exclusive” in the desire to know and interpret the world. Philosophers spoke to the people, for the people.

Some still do. But that whoring and servile Western academic gang, which has locked philosophy behind the university walls, viciously sidelines such men and women.

Instead of leading people to the barricades, instead of addressing the most urgent issues our world is now facing, official philosophers are fighting amongst themselves for tenures, offering their brains and bodies to the Empire. At best, they are endlessly recycling each other, spoiling millions of pages of paper with footnotes, comparing conclusions made by Derrida and Nietzsche, hopelessly stuck at exhausted ideas of Kant and Hegel.

At worst, they are outrightly evil – making still relevant revolutionary philosophical concepts totally incomprehensible, attacking them, and even disappearing them from the face of the Earth.

“Fading Away” a self-portrait by Stuart Heath. (CC BY 2.0)

***

Only the official breed, consisting of almost exclusively white/Western ‘thought recyclers’, is now awarded the right to be called ‘philosophers’.

My friends in all corners of the world, some of the brightest people on earth, are never defined as such. The word ‘philosopher’ still carries at least some great theoretical prestige, and god forbid if those who are now fighting against Western terror, for social justice or true freedom of thought, were to be labeled as such!

But they are, of course, all great philosophers! And they don’t recycle – they go forward, advancing brilliant new concepts that can improve life on our Planet. Some have fallen, some are still alive, and some are still relatively young:

Eduardo Galeano – one of the greatest storytellers of all times, and a dedicated fighter against Western imperialism. Noam Chomsky – renowned linguist and relentless fighter against Western fascism. Pramoedya Ananta Toer – former prisoner of conscience in Suharto’s camps and the greatest novelist of Southeast Asia. John Steppling – brilliant American playwright and thinker. Christopher Black – Canadian international lawyer and fighter against illegal neo-colonialist concepts of the Empire. Peter Koenig – renowned economist and thinker. Milan Kohout, thinker and performer, fighter against European racism.

Yes – all these great thinkers; all of them, philosophers! And many more that I know and love – in Africa and Latin America and Asia especially…

For those who insist that in order to be called a philosopher, one has to be equipped with some stamp that shows that the person has passed a test and is allowed to serve the Empire, here is proof to the contrary:

Even according to the Dictionary of Modern American philosophers (online ed.). New York: Oxford University Press:

“The label of “philosopher” has been broadly applied in this Dictionary to intellectuals who have made philosophical contributions regardless of academic career or professional title. The wide scope of philosophical activity across the time-span of this Dictionary would now be classed among the various humanities and social sciences which gradually separated from philosophy over the last one hundred and fifty years. Many figures included were not academic philosophers but did work at philosophical foundations of such fields as pedagogy, rhetoric, the arts, history, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, religion, and theology.”

***

In his brilliant upcoming book Aesthetic Resistance and Dis-Interest, my friend John Steppling quotes, Hullot-Kentor:

“If art – when art is art – understands us better than we can intentionally understand ourselves, then a philosophy of art would need to comprehend what understands us. Thinking would need to become critically imminent to that object; subjectivity would become the capacity of its object, not simply its manipulation. That’s the center of Adorno’s aesthetics. It’s an idea of thought that is considerably different from the sense of contemporary “theory”, where everyone feels urged to compare Derrida with Nietzsche, the two of them with Levinas, and all of them now with Badiou, Žižek and Agamben. That kind of thinking is primarily manipulation. It’s the bureaucratic mind unconsciously flexing the form of social control it has internalized and wants to turn on others.”

Western academia is rigidly defining, which lines of thought are acceptable for philosophers to use, as well as what analyses, and what forms.

Those who refuse to comply are ‘not true philosophers’. They are dilettantes, ‘amateurs’.

And those who are not embraced by some ‘reputable’ institution are not to be taken seriously at all (especially if they are carrying Russian, Asian, African, Middle Eastern or Latino names). It is a little bit like with journalism. Unless you have an ‘important’ media outlet behind you (preferably a Western one), unless you can show that the Empire truly trusts you, your press card is worth nothing, and you would not even be allowed to board a UN or a military flight to a war zone.

Your readers, even if numbering millions, may see you as an important philosopher. But let’s be frank: unless the Empire stamps its seal of acceptance on your forehead of backside, in the West you are really nothing more than worthless shit!

***

BLURRING THE WORK OF REVOLUTIONARY PHILOSOPHERS

After all that I have witnessed and written, I am increasingly convinced that Western imperialism and neo-colonialism are the most urgent and dangerous challenges facing our Planet. Perhaps the only challenges…

I have seen 160 countries in all corners of the Globe. I have witnessed wars, conflicts, imperialist theft and indescribable brutality of white tyrants.

And so, recently, I sensed that it is time to revisit two great thinkers of the 20th Century, two determined fighters against Western imperialist fascism: Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre.

The Wretched of the Earth, and Black Skin, White Masks – two essential books by Frantz Omar Fanon, a Martinique-born Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer, and a dedicated fighter against Western colonialism. And Colonialism and Neocolonialism, a still greatly relevant book by Jean-Paul Sartre, a prominent French resistance fighter, philosopher, playwright and novelist…

I had all three books in my library and, after many years, it was time to read them again.

But my English edition of Colonialism and Neocolonialism was wrapped in dozens of pages of prefaces and introductions.  The ‘intellectual cushioning’ was too thick and at some point I lost interest, leaving the book in Japan. Then in Kerala I picked up another, this time Indian edition.

Again, some 60 pages of prefaces and introductions, pre-chewed intrusive and patronizing explanations of how I am supposed to perceive both Sartre and his interactions with Fanon, Memmi and others. And yes, it all suddenly began moving again into that pre-chewed but still indigestible “Derrida-Nietzsche” swamp.

Instead of evoking outrage and wrath, instead of inspiring me into taking concrete revolutionary action, those prefaces, back covers, introductions and comments were clearly castrating and choking the great messages of both Sartre and Fanon. They were preventing readers and fellow philosophers from getting to the core.

Then finally, when reaching the real text of Sartre, it all becomes clear – why exactly is the regime so determined to “protect” readers from the originals.

Jean Paul Sartre

It is because the core, the original, is extremely simple and powerful.  The words are relevant, and easy to understand. They are describing both old French colonialist barbarities, as the current Western neo-colonialism. God forbid someone puts two and two together!

Philosopher Sartre on China and Western fascist cultural propaganda:

“As a child, I was a victim of the picturesque: everything had been done to make the Chinese intimidating. I was told about rotten eggs… of men sawn between two planks of wood, of piping and discordant music… [The Chinese] were tiny and terrible, slipping between your fingers, attacked from behind, burst out suddenly in a ridiculous din… There was also the Chinese soul, which I was simply told was inscrutable. ‘Orientals, you see…’ The Negroes did not worry me; I had been taught that they were good dogs. With them, we were still among mammals. But the Asians frightened me…”

Sartre on Western colonialism and racism:

“Racism is inscribed in the events themselves, in the institutions, in the nature of the exchange and the production. The political and social statuses reinforce one another: since the natives are sub-human, the Declaration of Human Rights does not apply to them; conversely, since they have no rights, they are abandoned without protection to the inhuman forces of nature, to the ‘iron laws’ of economics…”

And Sartre goes further:

“Western humanism and rights discourse had worked by excluding a majority of the world’s population from the category of humans.”

I address the same issues and so is Chomsky. But the Empire does not want people to know that Sartre, Memmi and Fanon spoke ‘the same language’ as we do, already more than half a century ago!

Albert Memmi:

“Conservatism engenders the selection of mediocre people. How can this elite of usurpers, conscious of their mediocrity, justify their privileges? Only one way: diminish the colonized in order to exult themselves, deny the status of human beings to the natives, and deprive them of basic rights…”

Sartre on Western ignorance:

“It is not cynicism, it is not hatred that is demoralizing us: no, it is only the state of false ignorance in which we are made to live and which we ourselves contribute to maintaining…”

The way the West ‘educates’ the world, Sartre again:

“The European elite set about fabricating a native elite; they selected adolescents, marked on their foreheads, with a branding iron, the principles of Western culture, stuffed into their mouths verbal gags, grand turgid words which stuck to their teeth; after a brief stay in the mother country, they were sent back, interfered with…”

***

It is actually easy to learn how to recycle the thoughts of others, how to compare them and at the end, how to compile footnotes. It takes time, it is boring, tedious and generally useless, but not really too difficult.

On the other hand, it is difficult to create brand new concepts, to revolutionize the way our societies, and our world are arranged. If our brains recycle too much and try to create too little, they get lazy and sclerotic – chronically sclerotic.

Intellectual servility is a degenerative disease.

Western art has deteriorated to ugly psychedelic beats, to excessively bright colors and infantile geometric drawings, to cartoons and nightmarish and violent films as well as “fiction”. It is all very convenient – with all that noise, one cannot hear anymore the screams of the victims, one cannot understand loneliness, and comprehend emptiness.

In bookstores, all over the world, poetry and philosophy sections are shrinking or outright disappearing.

Now what? Is it going to be Althusser (mostly not even real Althusser, but a recycled and abbreviated one), or Lévi-Strauss or Derrida, each wrapped in endless litanies of academic talk?

No! Comrades, philosophers, not that! Down with the sclerotic, whoring academia and their interpretation of philosophy!

Down with the assassins of Philosophy!

Philosophy is supposed to be the intellectual vanguard. It is synonymous with revolution, humanism, and rebellion.

Those who are thinking about and fighting for a much better world, using their brains as weapons, are true philosophers.

Those who are collecting dust and tenures in some profit-oriented institutions of higher ‘learning’ are definitely not, even if they have hundreds of diplomas and stamps all over their walls and foreheads!

They do not create and do not lead. They do not even teach! They are muzzling knowledge. To quote Fanon: “Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you want them to understand.” But “they” don’t want people to understand; they really don’t…

And one more thing: the great thoughts of Fanon and Sartre, of Gramsci and Mao, Guevara and Galeano should be gently washed, undusted and exhibited again, free of all those choking ‘analyses’ and comparisons compiled by toxic pro-establishment thinkers.

There is nothing to add to the writing of maverick revolutionary philosophers. Hands off their work! Let them speak! Editions without prefaces and introductions, please! The greatest works of philosophy were written with heart, blood and passion! No interpretation is needed. Even a child can understand.

Contributing Editor Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com

We apologize for this inconvenience.

Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

=By= CounterPunch Radio Interviews Andre Vltchek

De Typemachine Festival (Creative Commons)

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n this episode of CounterPunch Radio, our Contributing Editor and Roaming Correspondent Extraordinaire for the Left, Andre Vltchek, engages in brief discussion of his new book, Exposing Lies of Empire, in which he puts a truly human face on the imperialism of the Untied States. He then enters into a broader and deeper commentary on a variety of issues from the intellectual milieu of contemporary “thinkers,” to the role of art and philosophy in revolution. He argues that there is a tremendous gap as many in the intelligentsia seem to actively avoid the artistic side of expression; the literature of art, poetry, and fiction.

Here is one short quote to whet your appetite.

“As a philosopher I want to divorce philosophy from the university, universities, from academia. I think philosophy belongs to the barricades now. It belongs to the slums. The same thing with fiction. We are living long decades when fiction and films both feature and documentary lost passion. They lost ideology. And I really think people need ideology; they need passion; they need to also dream. A lot of, in the west, a lot of non-fiction writers activists, a lot of left wing thinkers, they actually don’t read fiction. Even some of my friends (I’d better not say) but even some greatest names in left wing intellectual milieu, they don’t touch a book of poetry; they don’t a book of fiction; yet some of the greatest cries for revolution in Latin America and Russia, but also in China, are written in poetry.”

The interview goes on to discuss the view of the actions of empire from the perspective of the global south, and the activism of people around the globe.

Contributing Editor Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com

We apologize for this inconvenience.

Nauseated by the
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Had enough of their lies, escapism,
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