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What do you think of Anonymous?
Posted on: September 5, 2012
What do you think of Anonymous?
The standoff between Britain and the State of Ecuador, which gave Julian Assange political asylum, in order not be extradited to Sweden has been making headlines around the world.
For the past two months, Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblower website Wikileaks, has been taking refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. The U.K. courts ruled to extradite him to Sweden where he faces possible sexual assault and misconduct charges.
Anonymous is a loosely affiliated international collective, composed of tech-savvy activists, which originated online on imageboards and forums.
Rebecca Hardesty posted on Aug. 22 under “What/Who is Anonymous?
Photo by Enrique Dans (http://www.flickr.com/photos/edans/)
This story has caught the attention of the public because it is more than just news: it is a drama. Assange is a controversial figure for his role in publishing classified diplomatic cables on Wikileaks (for more about “Cablegate,” see here), but he is not the only one involved in this spectacle.
Although the U.S. is not directly involved, it casts a shadow over this standoff. Assange and his supporters fear that if the UK extradited him to Sweden, it would not be long before he would be delivered to the U.S. It is feared that the US would charge Assange with espionage stemming from when his website published a trove of American secrets.
Another controversial player in this drama is the “hacktivist” group Anonymous. Anonymous has used Wikileaks to distribute information it acquired from its hacking endeavors. It has also supported the ideals of free information, freedom of expression and freedom of the press that Assange espoused.
The question people have been asking is, “who or what is Anonymous?” People have asked if members of this hacktivist group are freedom fighters, vigilantes or terrorists.
Asking about members is not the way to get at the meaning of this group. The real question is, on a metaphysical level, what is Anonymous? On a fundamental level, what kind of entity or being is Anonymous?
In its early days, Anonymous was not an identifiable Internet entity, but was a large subculture of people who posted anonymously and played “pranks” on websites, popularized memes and defined aspects of Internet culture. The creativity and outrageous content on these boards attracted the media, which described this community as brilliant and insane.
In 2008, this boundless creativity developed a more focused shape and perspective on the world. It adopted the name “Anonymous” and often used the image of a suit without a head or a Guy Fawkes mask to symbolize that it had no leader and was the embodiment of an idea.
Since then, Anonymous has become known for its strong opposition to Internet censorship, human rights violations, privacy violations, government opacity, and big corporations. It has become a recognizable presence at protests because its members wear the symbolic masks to show that they are part of this international group.
Photo by Trowbridge Estate (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaggers/)
On August 15th, I became aware that Anonymous was following, and invested in, this standoff when Britain threatened to remove the Ecuadorian embassy’s diplomatic privileges and storm the building to arrest Assange. I was up late enough to see several Anonymous groups on Facebook post urgent messages in the early hours of the 16th.
According to the posts, police officers were entering the embassy. The messages were brief and conveyed a sense of anxiety that is rare on such pages. Although separate individuals maintain the various Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, within several minutes of each other, all were calling for available “Anons” to convene at the embassy and see what was going on.
More specifically, the administrators and people online who were not in London were asking others to take pictures and transmit a live video of what was happening.
Soon enough, a protester had a “livestream” feed up and others were taking photos and uploading them to Anonymous pages. In addition, several Anons were able to coordinate a demonstration where they wore Guy Fawkes masks and held signs proclaiming, “I am Julian” as an expression of solidarity.
This was not a risk-free endeavor on the part of the protesters. Police threatened to arrest the man who was filming and they arrested at least one person outside the embassy including a legal observer who was then “released” under the condition that he stay in a designated “protest pen.” (See here)
This remarkable display of efficient collaboration, communication and willingness to act for the good of the group is a large part of what makes Anonymous so remarkable. Anonymous describes itself as a “hive mind” and this could not be a more accurate description. Just as in a hive, each member contributes to the whole and brings his or her talents, abilities, and insights that benefits the community.
Although there are people within Anonymous who have skills in planning operations and working with technology, there is no leader. Each person who participates and contributes has the liberty to take the initiative and start a project on behalf of the collective.
There is no official way to become a “member,” so it is odd to speak of those who consider themselves to be part of Anonymous as such. It is more accurate to say that Anonymous is made up of people who have connected online over shared goals, interests and ideals, and also individually identify with whatever they perceive Anonymous as. (Check out this video)
On a fundamental level, Anonymous is an actualized idea of the potential for freedom, creativity and personal responsibility. It is an idea to which individuals can, and do, attribute their actions that they believe are in-line with the sentiments of the hive mind.
One can see those who actively participate in Anonymous, or related groups, as parts of a giant brain or fragments of a self-aware collective consciousness. This loosely connected group acts on issues about which the majority of people participating on the Internet feel strongly.
Shared ideas evolve the way an individual’s thoughts evolve and this collective thought process directs the trend of Anonymous’ activity in the physical world. However, this entity does not have specific longterm goals that could potentially stifle the creative and organic way it interacts with the world.
Anonymous’ response to Britain’s threat to the Ecuadorian embassy was an example of this hive mind’s ability to focus on and respond to a specific situation in the physical world. Although the vast majority of Anonymous activity occurs online, this entity has the ability to manifest in the physical world with people acting as eyes or mouths.
The protesters who uploaded photos on the 16th potentially put themselves in harm’s way in order to serve as the eyes of the group. Perhaps one of the reasons people are willing to risk their safety is because no one told them that it was their duty to do so. Instead, it seems that this willingness originates authentically and organically within the individuals, which results in these people having a strong personal investment in their choice of actions, and therefore are willing to do more.
In these moments when someone chooses to act under the banner of Anonymous, the person not only acts for the benefit of everyone creating the hive mind; the individual surrenders his or her own personal identity and assumes that of the whole, becoming Anonymous – both one and many.
What do you think of Anonymous?
Note: Anonymous leaks are not the exclusive real of this group: Political systems adopt anonymous leaks: https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/news-leaks-or-spoonfed-official-news/
Women and Seeds for Resistance
Posted on: April 24, 2012
Women And Seeds For Resistance
FRIDAY FILE: The onslaught of transgenic food production, the advance of agribusiness driven single-crop farming, and the exploitative economic development model, are putting food sovereignty at risk.
Those supporting and reinforcing these practices, including transnational corporations, are more focused on profit than caring for food and natural resources.
![Women and Seeds for Resistance[1]](https://i0.wp.com/www.awid.org/var/ezwebin_site/storage/images/library/women-and-seeds-for-resistance-1/1563211-1-esl-ES/Women-and-Seeds-for-Resistance-1_medium.jpg "Women and Seeds for Resistance[1]")
This article is part of a series examining some of the issues and discussions related to the theme of the 2012 AWID International Forum that makes connections between women’s human rights issues and economic power. More information on the private sector and corporate power is available here.
Gabriela De Cicco wrote:
“In 2001, women from Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo (CLOC, Latin American Coordination of Peasant Organizations) met in Mexico for the 2nd Continental Assembly of Peasant Women “Peasant women sowing a millennium of life, justice and equality”.
Following this meeting, the women submitted the idea of launching a global campaign to defend autochthonous and indigenous seeds to the 3rd CLOC and La Via Campesina (LVC) Congress.
In 2002, during a Forum held in parallel to the World Food Summit, La Via Campesina and Friends of the Earth International together with other organizations launched the global campaign, initially called “Seeds as the Common Heritage of Humanity”.[3]
The Campaign is based on the multiple forms of indigenous and peasant knowledge about seeds, agriculture and biodiversity as valid in and of themselves, requiring no validation from outside sources, scientific or other. It seeks effective ways to involve and engage society as a whole, including requesting the support of technicians and scientists when the processes of biological and cultural erosion deem it necessary.
Leadership and final decision-making rests with LVC, peasant and indigenous organizations and communities. The Campaign is part of the struggle to defend, reinforce and/or recover peoples’ political, cultural, economic and food sovereignty, and its actions are framed within a broader struggle against the capitalist system and its neoliberal phase.
It is therefore also part of the search for alternative peoples’ projects and is closely linked to the defense of peasant and indigenous lands, territories and cultures.
In each country, the Campaign is conducted according to local realities, through biodiversity fares, local markets and seeds exchanges.[4]
AWID: Why did you choose seeds as the campaign?
Francisca Rodríguez (FR) said: “We were discussing food sovereignty (FS) in Mexico, and we reached the conclusion that we were doing food sovereignty in all its dimensions and while men were talking about it they were not fully taking it on. We realised that FS was going to be at risk because even if agrarian reform happened, if we did not defend the seed, the reform was going to be left to the will of transnational seed corporations. It was therefore not an emotional, heart-driven identity; it was a political decision to propose the Campaign”.
AWID: Why did the name for the Campaign change?
FR: At Rio +10, in Johannesburg 2002, the transnational seed corporation Monsanto agreed that seeds were humanity’s heritage because in that case all of us would have a right to them, including the company. We almost had a heart attack! And we questioned our strategy, so it was in our second meeting in Caaguazu, south of Paraguay. We said: “No, they are not the heritage of humanity, they are the heritage of our indigenous and peasant people, of women who created and placed them for the good of humanity.”
The key to food sovereignty is in the seed – everything begins there. There can be no food sovereignty without the seed. There can be no agrarian reform without seeds. We cannot be sovereign people if we don’t have our own seeds.
We lost everything and now we are subjected to what the food industry – that took over our seeds – wants to offer and sell to us, influencing how we eat and also how we live.
AWID: How are women involved in the Campaign?
FR: With great conviction. We say the Campaign is magic because not only does it call us but it makes us visible again; it raises our self-esteem; we feel women are finally acknowledged as having wisdom. To some extent we recovered the notion that we were the first farmers, the discoverers of seeds and we have kept taking care of them for centuries, reproducing them.
The Campaign empowers us. We are no longer mere housewives but those who take care of the vegetable garden, preserve the seed, reproduce the seed and reproduce life.
AWID: How is the Campaign contributing to women’s economic rights?
FR: It was a battle for recognition, but today they are much more visible. Nowadays, the very existence and survival of the peasant world has a woman’s strength, because many rural households are held together by women’s labour and agricultural practices.
This is why recovering and sharing our knowledge in the face of agro-ecology, not as a fad, but as indigenous and peasants’ own production systems, is integral to the campaign.
AWID: Why are you in disagreement with the notion of food security
FR: We are against it because the notion of food security, both that of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and of governments, is related to people’ ability to acquire food and not to their need to produce food or their ability to establish solidarity and horizontal relationships between peoples to guarantee the basic right to food.
We want healthy, culturally adequate food, produced by peasants themselves to be accessible to all. Food is a right, not a business. And so our claim is for governments to invest. That is where we need to have resources available, because it is their obligation and duty to guarantee people’s access to food.
Today people are not aware of what they eat and there is less access to information for most of those at the grassroots. This is why we are going to defend agro-ecology, so it does not become just another business. Urban agriculture is found at the middle classes, it is elitist, for those who can pay more for their health. We want to bring our production to people at the local markets; bring the country produce to town and get rid of the chain of intermediaries.
So that people know where their vegetables came from and who and what conditions produced them. To the extent that people in cities understand this, peasant agriculture will be saved. Agrarian reform is not a social process, it is a life process, guarding people’s right to food
AWID: Could you give us an example of a specific action that made a transnational company back down?
FR: In Chile, we demanded to be informed where the transgenic seedbeds were. By law, there can be no transgenic food production in Chile but still transgenic are all around. Monsanto argued they could not reveal it because there was a vandal organization, affiliated with La Via Campesina – that is, ANAMURI – that was ‘placing humanity’s advancements at risk’.
When the Tribunal ruled in our favour and Monsanto was forced to reveal the location of seedbeds, the company appealed but our claim against the UPOV Agreement was so strong that Monsanto withdrew the charges against us. In Paraguay, women along with the Agriculture and Plants Department went around plucking the clandestine transgenic fields of crops.
Having food sovereignty recognized as a right and the protection for our seeds included in the Constitutions of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia is a step forward. As is having food sovereignty and security laws including the issue of seeds in Uruguay, Paraguay and Nicaragua!
The notion of food sovereignty and the concern about the seed is no longer the peasants’ only; it is also a concern for environmentalists and ecologists. It is growing in the awareness of grassroots people and it will be discussed in Rio +20, it is already in international fora.
AWID: What are the future challenges?
FR: Today we need land and seeds, because the market has appropriated the seeds. Our campaign to multiply seeds is urgent. We don’t need a vegetable garden we need fields. We are willing to take risks and break the laws that recriminalize the production of peasant seeds. This means resisting State agricultural policies to build sovereignty in our fields. Food sovereignty goes beyond merely preserving the seed or securing food; it is our rights that are at stake, it is peasant survival.
It is hard work, demanding strong commitment, because it is not only about recovering the seed but also everything associated with it. And those are the values: spirituality, solidarity and camaraderie among us. Those value elements behind the Campaign allow it to be well received by the people we can relate to and can reach out to.
And because we are an organization, there is a huge demand for women to go out and talk about this. And the more we do it, the more we get committed and passionate about it. You mention the seed and I lighten up. You mention women and the same happens. Because I think the seed comes together with us, and we come together with the seed; they are seeds of freedom, seeds of autonomy, seeds of justice and seeds of dignity; seeds of resistance and we are women in resistance.
Note [1] “Seeds: Heritage of the People for the Good of Humanity” Campaign. This is the name by which it is currently known; its earlier name, as stated, was “Seeds: Humanity’s Common Heritage”.
Note [2] Belonging to ANAMURI (National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women) and to Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo (CLOC-VC, Latin American Coordination of Peasant Organizations)
Note [3] Final document, CLOC-V.C. Seed Campaign meeting, Quito, July 22-24, 2010, drafted by Francisca Ramirez. We thank FR for sharing this document with us.
Note [4] In Chile there are seed curators’ schools. The purpose of these schools is not to lose this ancient knowledge. “The curator is who watches over, who guards, who protects the seed”. In Ecuador, there are huge food sovereignty tables, held in parks.
Rebellious Spring, Murderous Winter
I didn’t yet read Arab Spring, Libyan Winter by Vijay Prashad, but Ron Jacobs did a short review.
” Arab Spring, Libyan Winter attacks the western interpretation of the transitions in Egypt and Libya and explores the actual events from a perspective that explains the players in terms of their allegiances, holdings and politics.
In Prashad’s work, the differences between the fighters on the ground and the suits on television are not only acknowledged, they are examined in terms of their meaning to the future. In discussing Egypt, Prashad describes the conflagration of Washington’s imperial needs, Tel Aviv’s paranoiac perception of its security, and the Mubarak clique’s desire to maintain power.
Prashad gives lie to the West’s claim that it was interested in democracy (a relatively simple task to be sure), explaining that in the western mindset democracy doesn’t mean democracy, it means a guarantee that the interests and holdings of capital will not be upset. The common term one hears is Stability.
Most of this book is about the battle for Libya. Prashad’s text provides the most detailed description of the events both on the ground and in the office suites. He exposes the humanitarian intervention by NATO for what it was. That is, a means for the western powers to regain unfettered access to Libyan oil and rid themselves of an at best erratic client—Muammar Qadhafi.
Unlike many on the Left, Prashad does not take sides for or against the rebellion. Instead, he explains the uprising as a popular and positive thing that was manipulated by the forces of the G7 and NATO. Simultaneously, he discusses Qaddafi’s reign as one that began with many positive changes, yet ultimately was a victim of its own excess and greed.
If there are any good guys in his narrative, it would be the masses that risked their lives to overthrow the autocracy that had Qadhafi at its helm. Their opposite would be the men on both sides of the battle whose only real interest was in keeping their bank accounts plush while serving their masters in the stock exchanges of the neoliberal world.
An interesting, and as yet not very closely examined, is the role of the Jordan, Morocco, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates.
Prashad makes note of the fact that the western capitals have said very little about the harsh repression visited on the Bahraini uprising or the Saudi intervention there. He also explores the military role played by Qatar in Libya, its current role in Syria, and the inclusion of some GCC States in a NATO adjunct. Perhaps this adjunct of NATO will be able to stand in for NATO in future operations in the Arab world, thereby creating another shadow in the workings of modern imperialism.
Despite the millions of words written about the Libyan uprising and the NATO intervention, nothing written in English has come near the truth. After reading Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, it seems that when all is said and done, Prashad’s work will come the closest”.
What I know is that France and England had prepared detailed military plans for Libya, before the uprising in Tunisia and later in Egypt. Qadhafi decided to buy his weapon systems exclusively from Russia, and France and England had little oil investment in Libya, and they wanted to have their big share of the cake…
You may read https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/federal-libya-as-i-predicted/
Ron Jacobs wrote on Libya and the Arab Spring:
“The last twenty or so months have certainly been months of insurrection. This is perhaps no truer anywhere on earth than in the Middle East and northern Africa. Exactly what the phrase “Arab Spring” means is still open for discussion.
After the protests, the sit-ins and encampments, the armed assaults and the killings, the only thing certain is that four dictatorial autocrats are no longer in power in the countries they formerly ruled. Ben Ali, Mubarak, Qaddafi, Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen. What will stand in their stead is still being debated.
When the Egyptian people began to gather in Tahrir Square in February 2011, the embers of the immolation that consumed Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi had already sparked the prairie fire that overthrew the dictatorial ruler Ben Ali. The protest in Tahrir Square was the first manifestation of that fire in Egypt but certainly not the last. 
Th fires of protest in Egypt tossed out their dictator less than two months after Mr. Ben Ali was deposed. The feat of that overthrow was not only momentous within the borders of Egypt itself: Its repercussions were felt in the halls of Arabia, Asia, Africa and the Americas.
In Washington, Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, Paris, and Rome and on Wall Street, there was plenty of catching up to do.
Neither the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency or the black ops managers of the Central Intelligence Agency predicted the end of the Mubarak regime. Indeed, it wasn’t until the bitter end that the political powers in the aforementioned capitals began to side with (and subvert) the popular uprising in the streets of Egypt.
After Mubarak’s fall, the revolutionary fire spread like flames whipped by warm Santa Ana winds. Bahrain to Libya. Yemen to Syria. London and New York. Athens and Oakland, Occupy Wall Street protests. The insurrectionist wave was in motion and nowhere was it more powerful than in the Arab world.
Nowhere was it met with more determined (and murderous) resistance from the powers that be, internally and externally. Underlying the insurrectionary tide were the economic facts of neoliberalism’s struggle to maintain its global dominance. When it became apparent that this goal could not always be accomplished by continuing to support the old regimes, the capitols of capitalism inserted their agents into the opposition and did their best to manipulate the rebellion into serving the agencies of those capitols.
For example, the IMF, World Bank and the rest of the usual suspects saw their moments in each instance and made their moves. As I write, the entire insurrectionary wave is at a stalemate between the forces of popular social justice and just another new face for western imperialism.
Naturally, very little has been written about this aspect of the revolutionary upsurge of 2011-2012 in the organs of neoliberalism. Instead, the fact of IMF arrangements with the post-Mubarak Egypt and the new Tunisia are interspersed with superficial analyses of the rebellions that would have the reader believe that it was social media that provoked them.
Even more revealing of the mainstream media’s allegiance to the imperial regime in the insurrection is its lack of coverage of the continuing popular resistance in the Pentagon’s shipyard Bahrain. Instead, we are presented with an ongoing litany of unconfirmed atrocities committed by the Syrian military and a portrayal of the resistance there as essentially untainted by its affiliation with outside governments and military.” End of quote
Note 1: Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way the Wind Blew: a History of the Weather Underground and Short Order Frame Up. Jacobs’ essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch’s collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden.
His collection of essays and other musings titled Tripping Through the American Night is now available and his new novel is The Co-Conspirator’s Tale. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press.
He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com.
Revisiting hilarious “acts of violence” in history: Divide all “facts” by a hundred
Posted on: March 9, 2012
Revisiting hilarious “acts of violence” in history: Divide all “facts” by a hundred
You read “facts” in history books about armies, one million strong, facing in battlefields. You read of warlords massacring 100,000 civilian inhabitants in cities. You read all kinds of fictitious “facts” that makes you feel disgusted of mankind specie…
You would rather watch armies of ants, each carrying a twig in his powerful mandible, and hitting another ant silly until death…
Fact One: In the middle of 1800, mankind was less than one billion. If you factor out China and India, maybe mankind was less than 300 million, barely surviving, committing genocides in colonies and at home, chopping hands in the Congo, about 5 million hands, for failing to produce the requisite quota of rubber, or harvesting thousands in India to “set examples”, or displacing entire race of “Red Indians” thousand of miles away to “settlements” so that the land can be developed…
How come thousand of years ago, any empire, however vast it was, however the power was absolute, could any empire regiment one million soldiers? It is not possible.
Fact Two: No battlefield could hold one million warriors. It is not a matter of logistics for feeding these hordes. It is not lack of enough parcels to sleep upon. It is how all that crowd find enough spots to shit! It is not feasible. Period.
It is recounted that the Arabic General Tarek bin Ziad burned all the ships after landing his troops in Spain and said: “Ahead of you is the enemy. Behind you is the vast sea. You deal with these facts…” There are not many imaginative army generals.
If I were a general, I would space-out my army half a yard away, order the soldiers to dig a small hole and pond their shit in. I would then harangue them: “Ahead of you is the enemy. Behind you is a mined-shit field. You deal with these facts, if you care to retreat…”
Fact Three: Why you see in movies Greek and Roman soldiers wearing skirts? It is not that they had no concept of pants or underwear. How can any dignified warrior engage in war, feeling less than half a man, having “dirtied” his pants before the battle even started? The soldier in skirts, legs and buttocks heavily ventilated from below, would simple spread their legs and do the little or the big ones where he stood.
It stand to reason that a couple thousand Greek or Roman soldiers would easily defeat a million-strong army of Parthians or Persians wearing pants, however loose the pants are. Ancient empires exaggerated their feats, and the sane person should divide by a hundred any number offered as “facts”
Fact Four: How long do you think any healthy and experienced soldier, fighting with swords, daggers, or something of somewhat sharp implement, body to body, at very close range, can hold his ground before taking a resting break from the “fight”?
These kind of close range fights with short hand weapons didn’t permit any experienced soldier to neutralize more than four enemies in an hour…Suppose the battle lasted 8 long hours with frequent breaks, before sundown…
I bet you most of the dead soldiers on the battlefield were slit while stooping, catching their breath, or sprawled, faking death…
I bet you most casualties slipt on their shit or the adversary shit, and the enemy also slipt and his weapon happened to be extended forward, or inward and committed suicide accidentally, collateral damage kinds…
I bet you most victims died of asphyxia, stampede style, one slipping and toppling on the other…This is not war. This is soccer game event. This is not even mass gladiators show-off ceremonies: The fighters were not that fit. Most soldiers lacked one sandal, the other sandal was lost, stuck somewhere, irremediably unretrievable…The remaing sandal was just glued, under a heap of something…
I bet you the smart General kept a sizeable reserve of soldiers to engage during “break time”…to slice the rotten, fallen tomatoes…
I bet there were countless gentleman agreement among the warriors. For example: “Hey man, I feel like going. How about you?” “Fine with me. The pressure is killing me. Let’s fake the fight. Our congested and red faces would suggest that we are archenemies…”
Fact Five: There is this story of warlord Tamelan butchering 60,000 men in the Iranian city of Isfahan. That was in 1400. How could any city at the time hold more than 100,000 men, women, and kids? Every soldier was assigned a quota to slaughter Asfahani men, every day, for an entire month… I have questions:
First: When a soldier sliced a victim and the blood drenched his military tunic…would he wipe his slippery hands on the ground and rub his sword with dirt, before moving to the next waiting victim?
Second: Did Tamerlane issued red butcher overhaul to his quota-engaged soldiers so that they save time on washing and shining their military outfit? Did they wear boots? That would be a much time-consuming endeavor to keep shining…
Three: Did the soldier have breakfast before or after the first round of slaughterhood? In any case, most breakfasts were vomited. What a waste.
It pains me to watch action movies of ancient wars, exhibiting tall, vigorous, ferocious warriors. Fact is, people were short, skinny, malnourished humanoids…They barely lived to be 30 of age. I am not talking of rotten death and eating on gums and suffering from hemorrhoids…
Those who survived the infantile phase, had already taken a severe beating before the age of twenty: They barely lived through small pox, malaria, dysentery, yellow fever…Wretched fighting wretched.
The noblemen warriors mounted horses, decked in metal outfits, holding a sword too heavy to manipulate, peacocks leading wretched men for the show in the killing fields…
Most dead were the result of infections from rusty and dented weapons: Dying the slow and painful death, abandoned on the field, devoured by vultures and wild dogs…Humanoids fighting humanoids.
This illusionist of modern man wants to invent glorious ancestors.
Who is the more violent? The archaic warrior or the modern soldier, sitting tight, thousand of miles away from the battle field, bored, playing with his balls, pressing a stupid button, launching a missile, from a drone?
Those were the good old times…
The largest and best planned scheme in history: executed by the worst cowards of all (December 22, 2008)
The USA Administrations knew for three decades that they were no longer producing any real value-added economy and the US politicians had no guts to tell the American people the hard facts; that getting back to work harder on producing stuff that people need to buy is a must. The FED, the Treasury and all the US multinational financial institutions knew the theory of Money Trade Cycle; that when the trend of inflation is continuously on the rise then the outcome is a financial crisis. The theory established that businesses and economy follow a pattern of upswings and downturns, and if the government refrains from meddling with the normal interest rates of doing business then the market economy based on real value-added economy will adjust to the changes but there was no real economy in the first place.
The FED knowingly, through political pressures, kept lowering the interest rates below the healthy level of a normal market economy which generated inflation rates that could no longer be controlled or stabilized. The FED, the Treasury and the cartel of multinational financial institutions overextended credits through traditional fiduciary media and then through new financial gimmicks (secondary and tertiary worthless paper money) to resume world financial market hegemony that could not lead but to crisis.
What you hear from the talking heads that the real problem was lack of financial monitoring and control by the Federal government and the financial institutions is pure lies; all the financial institutions knew about the real problem and the inevitable financial crash. The Bush Junior Administration, in cooperation with the financial multinationals and the Financial Times, decided unilaterally and without a UN resolution, for a pre-emptive war on Iraq. The rationale for that catastrophic decision was that the military expense will generate many folds in profit through the control of oil distribution and blackmailing the neighboring Arab rich sovereign funds of the potential threat of Iran. The Arab rich States were no fouls of that strategy but they went along as mere small oligarchic and monarchic States with no national identity.
By the summer of 2006, the US was losing the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan and its prestige was bottoming worldwide. The US needed one last gamble to iron out its image and give the illusion of a force to be reckoned with and the power to reconstruct the world. The hasty invasion of Israel of Lebanon in July 2006 was meant to claim total victory over Hezbollah and make Iran cower in order not to face direct confrontation with the US. A victory was to announce to the world that the “Greater Middle East Strategy” was successful. The July War turned out to be a total disaster and a debacle to Israel, even after extending the war for 33 days against the will of the world community.
In August 2006, the normal scheme of siphoning in the sovereign funds of the oil rich States and the small stock investors had reached a plateau. It reached a plateau because the investors realized that a crisis is in the offing and the scheme could not function normally unless the same level of increase in junk paper investment is maintained.
The US Administration and the financial multinationals realized that all is lost and it was time to decide on the timing for the financial crash. It was normal to leave the timing to the final stages of the Presidential election campaign. If the Democrat were favored by the US citizens then a psychological shock might decide them to shift to the Republican Party at Election Day.
In the meantime, oil prices were fictitiously raised to unprecedented level for two purposes: first, the highest consumers of oil such as China, Japan, and the European Union States would refrain from purchasing at such a high price and second, the US would be accumulating oil reserve for the imminent period, since the US is not paying in hard currencies but in worthless paper transactions with Saudi Arabia.
The FED, the Treasury and the cartel of multinational financial institutions purposely engineered the crisis and they triggered the timing. The timing was perfect: since no more foreign financial rescue is coming in then the financial rescue will happen under duress from all rich States. The motto was: either you caught up under duress or you will all have to suffer a global economic recession.
The code name for the precise timing of the financial crisis was: artificial oil price reaching $120 per barrel; the messenger was the multinational financial brokerage firm Lehman Brothers. All the members in the cartel of the financial multinationals received the order to activate the countdown for the Wall Street crash; they sold out their shares to invest in anything that has real value. The little people who invested their life savings in stocks paid the price.
The US consumers were enjoying low priced items imported from China and the manufacturing bases were exported overseas to benefit from cheap manpower and limited legal constraints. Trillions of dollars were injected to extend the illusion for the US citizens to resume their lavish spending on consumerism, new gas guzzling cars, stocks, and overvalued Real Estates. The world had already experienced a vivid advance taste of financial crisis in 1989 in the south-east Asian markets, Japan and Latin America. The fundamental problem was tackled by the Asian States and they worked harder to producing value-added economy. The successive US Administrations and politicians had no guts to tell the American people the hard facts, that a recession is as sure as the sun rises, and that getting back to work harder on producing what people need to buy is a must.
The world lauded the US for its timely energetic reaction of rounding up 700 billion dollars to rescue the failing commercial banks. Wrong; the package was already decided upon before the crash and the bold figure of 700 billions dollars was psychologically marketed as covering the 60% of the unsolvable Real Estates: the US people would gladly preserve its homes and pay for it. The trick is this package is a first installment and other packages are waiting in the queue pending the appropriate political conditions.
Well, financial rescue came from everywhere but this didn’t stop recession anyway. How can you stop recession when the USA is not producing any value that people are ready to purchase? The worst part is that President Obama is not willing to challenge the US citizens with the hash facts, at least not for a long time to come.
The US people has preferred the lax attitude since the Reagan Administrations; most of the US citizens wanted to believe in an illusory wealth assuming that the worldwide acceptance of the dollars as the currency of choice is more than sufficient to keeping the illusion. The hard facts are in; tackling decades of myopia and dependence on the hard work of the other people has to be grabbed by the horns. The world recession is the making of the lazy, faint hearted US people who failed, in their cockiness, to recall what made them a great nation!
My early years (Continue 7)
I don’t remember much of my first five years in Africa; maybe the trauma of my typhoid disease erased most of my early memory. Mother BREAST FED ME FOR THREE years, as she did with my brother later, and she was very protective and kept a close watch over her first-born child. I had a hard birth and the physician didn’t expect me to live more than two days; I would not breast feed and in desperation, mother forced milk into my mouth. Mother told me that I was made to spend my days on the counter top of the shop and I used to drill holes in the Nestle milk cans. I tend to corroborate Amelie Nothomb hypothesis that lack of palate sugar voluptuousness is a main factor for slow brain development. Most probably, mother didn’t indulge me with chocolate or sweet condiments; thus, I took my revenge destroying valuables or maybe to licking the sugary Nestle.
On the other front of verbal development I had a “boubou” or a very young African mute as personal friend or “body-guard”. I have a picture with Boubou sitting on his heels while I am riding a small tricycle. It is natural for babies to learn easily all languages, including sign and eye languages; I assume that I communicated well with “boubou” and we had great friendship and affection since maybe my first fully developed language was the mute related language. I can assume that verbal communication in three other languages simultaneously might have been very hard; Lebanese/Arabic, French and “Bambara” (the main language in Mali). Not that comprehending multiple languages is difficult for babies but the people are difficult to understand for the contradictory meanings they convey. Not that homonym and synonyms and all the “yms” in languages are serious obstacles to a baby’s flexible mind, but the minds and emotions of mature talking people are insurmountable barriers for clear directions. I guess that I have set the grounds for plausible sources of my verbal unintelligible adventure. I went to school at the french Brethren for only three months before I fell dangerously ill and managed to learn the multiplication tables. An African helper would take me on his bicycle to school.
Why my parents decided to leave Africa?
My parents had a very prosperous business and were very liked in Sikassou; they had to sell their business and house in 1961for cheap after the Independence of Mali from the colonial power France: Dad was too afraid to end up in prison if he were caught smuggling out his hard-earned money. They sold their properties to the White French Brethren who paid the money but my folks never received a dime. It seems one of my “uncles” who received the money on behalf of my dad invested the money for his own benefit and lost his money again.
The English language uses “uncle” to represent any older relation to the family but Arabic has special names to discriminate the sort and relative side in the relations. For example, my mother has five sisters “khalaat” and their husbands are called “3adeel” (the number 3 is used in Arabic internet to represent a special Arabic vocal close to aa); dad has five sisters “3amaat” and their husbands are “sohor”. Thus in Arabic specific names differentiate among these uncles; even the real close uncles, from the mother and father sides, have words of their own.
All of us, kids, were born in Mali and were transferred to Lebanon in order not to be exposed to the numerous tropical diseases. In actuality, we were not saved physically or emotionally or mentally from other kinds of diseases that plagued our development and we had to suffer the consequences of hard decisions that our folks were faced with.
When dad opened a shop in Lebanon then he had to close it within three years because clients would not repay their accounts. Mother used to go with her sister Therese to Downtown Beirut to shop for dad and she enjoyed that part in the business very much.
Jesus Christ: A reconstructed biography (December 16, 2008)
Dozens of testaments and biographies on Jesus of Nazareth have been written in the first century of Christianity and many unified Bibles have been adopted by several Christian sects in the first three centuries before the Council of Nicee (Turkey) in 325 decided to select four official representatives Testaments (Canonic). Many manuscripts are being excavated, discovered and translated but not yet fully published.
What we know is that Jesus had his Bar Mitzvah in Jerusalem and he sat among the priests and had a discussed with them. In between this event and his preaching adventure (over 25 years) the Church has nothing to offer but that Jesus obeyed his parents. Even the story of his birth until his Bar Mitzvah is not reliable and could be considered as one of the acceptable version.
It is said that Jesus was 33-year old when he was crucified; that is the minimum age because Jesus was older and probably close to be forty. How Jesus spent the time in between (a span of at least 20 years) and where did he live and grew to maturity? As is the custom in Judaism, boys were married at 13 and Jesus was not to be an exception but he had an outlet to tradition: Nazareth was a hotbed for the Essenien Jewish sect located in Qumran (not far from the western side of the Dead Sea).
The Essenien sect (cabala) lived in a closed community; women were not included, and the members vowed celibacy; they were vegetarians, ate together, distributed their wealth to the whole community, and each member worked according to his skills. The members wore a unique white dress code in summer and another outfit in winter. The members of this community were known to be excellent healers. This sect was also labeled the “Baptist”, the “Nazoreen” and “Ossene” (the Strong). The teachings of Buddhism had reached this community two centuries ago because King Ashoka of India had dispatched Buddhist monks to this region. It is very plausible that Jesus opted to join the Qumran community to avoid being wed. The Essenien caste had branches in Alexandria (Egypt) called Therapeutic or healers and also in Syria.
John the Baptist was Essenien. The fact that the canonic testaments reveal that John the Baptist didn’t recognize Jesus at the first sight might suggests that the two men didn’t meet in the community of Qumran at the same periods or that Jesus had left the community long time ago: Jesus was a traveler and not a community dweller. There are evidences that Jesus was a wide traveler, knew many languages and was highly versed in religions and other legal aspects of the land. It is very plausible that Jesus visited Alexandria, Syria, and even reached India; he lingered in India and Persia before returning to Syria and Galilee.
A manuscript named “Himis” was discovered in Kashmir, close to the city of Leh, which described the “Lost years of Jesus”. In that manuscript it is referred to Jesus as Issa (an Aramaic name that the Arabs adopted) who traveled to most of the Holy Cities in India and has acquired vast universal knowledge (Gnostic wisdom). The manuscript relates multitudes of pronouncements and teachings by Issa that are compatible to the canonic Bibles. Issa fled to Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Persia. It is plausible that a Christian sect in the vicinities of Kashmir wrote that narrative since many Christian sects preached eastward and even reached China. I frankly cannot see why this story should be thrown out; countless adolescents tour the world nowadays; it was even more common in those times for young people trekking to learn and attend renowned schools of religious knowledge.
Jesus knew more than three language; Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek (the language of the educated of the time) and Latin since he spoke to Roman centurions and Pontus Pilate. It is also narrated that Jesus lived for a time in Sidon (a Lebanese port) teaching in its famous law school. His mother Mary and part of her family moved to a town nearby when Jesus was a lecturer in the law school. It is no fluke incident that Jesus and Mary attended a wedding in Qana (a town close to Sidon); it is also very rational that Jesus decided to start his message after Qana when his mother removed the cover of secrecy and exposed his supernatural gifts of turning water to wine. Jesus was a high priest in the Essen sect and preached a message based in symbolism and fables and was highly spiritual and staunchly anti-Pharisee. The Jewish cabala sect is a branch of the Essen sect and is founded on the Sumerian theology and myths.
Albert Schweitzer, a theologian, physician, thinker, organ player and Nobel Peace laureate offered his version on Jesus. Schweitzer said, based on the first two Bibles of Mathew and Marc, that Jesus preached his message to the general public in the last year before his crucifixion. Six months, all in all, was the period that Jesus was accompanied by the public; the remaining months he spent them among his close disciple around Caesarea of Philippi.
In the beginning, Jesus accepted the label of a prophet among the prophets but then he reached the belief that he is the Messiah of the Jews. Thus, he sent his disciples two by two to preach the message of the end of time. Jesus was very surprised when all his disciples returned safe and sound; he expected his disciples to suffer terribly and be put to death if the “prophesy of end of time” was to be accomplished. Jesus then decided that God would accept his sacrifice and save his close disciples from atrocious deaths before the first coming of the Messiah. The version of what happened in Jerusalem and Jesus crucifixion can be followed in my article “Judas Iscariot”.
Note 1: Jesus had a large extended family; he had many brothers and sisters and his grandmother Ann married a second time and had many boys and girls. Mathew made a valiant attempt through 42 generations to link Jesus to David. If we have no records of Jesus own family then how could we go that far back in genealogy? The Christian Jews wanted a Jewish King very badly. Actually, several early Christian communities unified the New Testament into one coherent book and had eliminated Mathew’s ridiculous endeavor.
Note 2: The first Christian communities emulated the monastic and ascetic life of the Essenien sect. A few early Christian sects went beyond the ascetic of the Essenians; for example, the author Amine Maaluf, in his book on Mani, mentions a community called in Aramaic “Halle Haware” or white garment clad people; this caste did not eat meat or drink wine or leavened bread; the disciples wore white garments from top to bottom, were scared of fire (symbol of evil), and thus would eat only raw fruits and vegetables grown by the community. Outside food was prohibited and considered “female” food because women were banished from the community and the female names in the scriptures were not mentioned unless the names represented calamities and bad augurs. Travelers of this community carried with them the unleavened bread and produce of their home grown community because outside food was not pure.
Many mono physist Christian sects (Jesus is only divine) like the Jacobite and Nestourian (a name originated from the name Nazareth) had reached China before Islam (around 600 AC); they translated their Bible into Chinese and were permitted to preach their brand of religion and build churches. The Nestourians built churches all along the Silk Road and many of these edifices can still be found in Tibet, Mongolia, China, Afghanistan, and Persia. It is also believed that the Prophet Mohammad learned about Christianity from these sects that were marginalized by the official Byzantine Church.
Adonis Diaries 