Being reflective; personally taking stock of a situation, or issue, seems to be antonymic to the nature of most people who prefer that matters be handled by leaders of groups they belong to.  Whether the issue is government, war, crime, drug-addiction, or most anything else, they are quick to pass the buck, determining that it really isn’t up to them to take stock… with that 50’s mentality that “father knows best.”  And as a year comes to an end, instead of personally taking stock and weighing what is happening to their nation, Americans’ choice is to keep the mind relaxed and let the President tell them in January’s State of the Union speech “how things really are.”  Let the lies and b-s roll!

My background as a business counselor compels me to help close this 2007 calendar year with a socio-economic and political statement of “profit and loss;” its bottom line soon to be incorporated into a balance sheet that will give us a snapshot of what we, the stockholders of the Empire, hold as equity entering 2008.

Before we look at the revenue and expense components of America’s P&L, we should take a look at that bottom line, which to no one’s surprise appears as the blood-spilling continuation of embarrassing failures for the seventh straight year, courtesy of the most incompetent management team ever to run the Empire.  Our nation has been piling up losses during this time in such a spendthrift and indurate way to the point all retained success built into the balance sheet throughout the years has been now wiped out, and the losses are already eating away into our investment, our until now untouched legacy of democratic capital.  Bush has succeeded not only in mismanaging the nation’s affairs but he is recklessly leading us into un-chaptered political bankruptcy… sure to happen by the time a new same-old-face president is inaugurated in January 2009.

Few years as this 2007 have brought the United States so little in political and socio-economic revenue, either foreign or domestic.  In the domestic front there was little the government would provide via judicial determinations by the tilted-right Supreme Court (evidenced by the partial abortion and a half dozen other rulings); or needed legislation from Congress; or any constructive leadership by the White House and its appendage, the Pentagon.  Although both houses of Congress were controlled by the lesser-evil party, they could not muster the votes to overrule a veto-happy Bush, whether on issues of war or even providing healthcare for the nation’s children.  It would be difficult to come up with just one significant thing that could be construed as something of value for the nation as a whole coming from any of the three branches of government.

As far as revenue from foreign policy investments, which have been mostly made in the currency of war and threats to other nations, one could hardly expect positive returns.  There was a lower count of dead Americans in Iraq – the only ones we care to count – attributed to the military surge, and little else.  One cannot think of any dividends from foreign sources that could add economic, military, social, or political value to the P&L.  Even in the area of global warming, we antagonized the entire world, losing at year’s end the support of the other Kyoto non-signer, Australia.  A final tally of foreign and domestic accomplishments (revenues) yields nothing but a big fat zero.

Ah!  But if our successes were few or inexistent, our failures can be measured in grand scale, both internationally and domestically.  Our expenses reached levels we would expect from a teenager at the mall having a credit car with “no limit” stamped on all four corners.  Monetarily, our insatiable borrowing, not only from the savings of people in other countries but from our own future generations, reached a level not only difficult to understand mathematically, but impossible to accept morally.  And our dysfunctional, make-believe, consumption-driven economy has brought the nation to the edge of the precipice, with overvalued assets in both real estate and stock market to a figure now approaching the nation’s entire annual GDP of over US$13 trillion.

Little needs to be said about our overseas failures, not just in the Middle East, where we have erred miserably in an unjustified and chimeric pseudo-protection of Israel, but everywhere else as well.  After seven years of trying, Bush finally succeeded in making Russia once again a potential enemy of the US, instead of a friend and partner in seeking harmony for the world.  And the tally of potential enemies, and disappointed friends, grows as nations in both Africa and Latin America no longer see a mutuality of interests between the United States and themselves.

One could easily conclude that the US government is not only coldhearted towards the peoples of the world, but cares little about its own citizenry, its interest being solely in self-perpetuating its power, and the financial welfare of a select-few who control the lion’s share of wealth and power, in America and elsewhere where capitalism flourishes.

This exiting 2007 was for me one more session for Bush et al to chisel at the shrinking equity that Americans have in America; a year in which a mendacious government continued  whittling away on those unalienable rights of man, stated in our Constitution as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For years we have observed how social and political events have taken place in this nation clearly pushing it towards the path of fascism, American fascism; real fascism, but rooted in this United States; a fascism different from Hitler’s, or Mussolini’s or even Franco’s, but fascism nonetheless. These days, our own NS-Frauenschaft provides the nation with fascist whores who trot with impunity up and down Main Street, anywhere in this land of ours, dressed in vibrant, patriotic red-white-and-blue colors; dollar-stars in their eyes; silver crosses as pendants; and, yes, unabashedly toting bibles.  Our Lady Liberty has now been replaced by replicas of a fascist libertine; a libertine venerated as the immaculate virgin-mother of corporate, military and evangelical America.

Yet, with such clarity provided by this year’s socio-economic and political statement, Americans remain undeterred, meekly consenting to everything the government puts on their plates, eating their soylent green as if it were the greatest gourmet delicacy.

© 2007 Ben Tanosborn

www.tanosborn.com

Tags: congress, democracy, economics, empire, Global, government, history, imperialism
Categories: Commentary, Global, Economics, government, Congress, Empire, History, Imperialism
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Meanings of human ‘intelligence,’ new discoveries are important in 21st century
An Article by:
Steve Hammons

Originally Published on:
December 20, 2007
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=46675

It seems helpful for us to continue expanding the meaning of “intelligence” in the 21st century and recognize that the word intelligence has many meanings, including new meanings.

For example, in my two novels, MISSION INTO LIGHT and the sequel LIGHT’S HAND, the San Diego-based joint-service “Joint Reconnaissance Study Group” intelligence team and their friends conduct research on mysterious topics that have captured the interest of millions of people worldwide.

Readers join the research team of ten women and men in the exploration of strange and unknown phenomena, and of themselves.

I have said it before and I will say it again: Right now, the human race needs all the intelligence we can get our hands on — intelligence in the broadest meaning of that word.

The dedicated members of the “JRSG” intel team conduct investigations into current and future human evolution, deep-memory DNA theories, anomalous cognition (ESP) and remote viewing, near-death experiences, Navy dolphin projects, past and future Earth geological disasters, UFOs, crop circles, and Native American culture and legends.

They travel from San Diego to the Arizona Sonoran Desert, Sedona, Arizona, the “Four Corners” area, Durango, Colorado, in the southern Rockies, New Mexico and Oahu, Hawaii.

The researchers try to put together pieces of a strange cosmic puzzle. They conduct urgent operations to understand emerging intelligence affecting the United States, the human race and planet Earth.

Sudden, seemingly miraculous events surprise even the most open-minded and hopeful members of the group.

Or maybe these events and processes are just natural. Maybe Nature, Earth and the Great Spirit are revealing phenomena the human race is finally ready to understand.

TEAM MISSION

The Joint Reconnaissance Study Group is given a mission that is described as follows:

Mission Identification:

The Joint Reconnaissance Study Group (JRSG) is a research entity designed to utilize the resources of the Department of Defense and national intelligence services in the missions to be defined by the Congress of the United States, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the President of the United States.

JRSG personnel will endeavor to investigate intelligence-related matters deemed relevant to the national security of the United States of America.

Areas to be explored by JRSG will be regarded as TOP SECRET / SCI, using the compartmented code word BOONE. Need-to-know protocol will be in force. Study groups within JRSG will be compartmented to the degree necessary.

Cross-fertilization of data and intelligence will be at the discretion of study group team members and the commanding officer of JRSG. Research and investigative findings will be compiled and interpreted by the senior officers on each team and submitted to the JRSG CO for communication to higher command authorities.

Group Structure and Personnel:

JRSG teams will be structured as follows to enhance cross-service, and cross-agency cooperation and communication. Initial organization of study teams include three, three-person groups. The JRSG CO, Colonel Thomas O’Brien, U.S. Air Force, will have direct command and full discretionary command and control.

- Team One: Commander Daniel Wells, U.S. Navy; Lieutenant Commander James Etienne, U.S. Navy; Captain Amy Mella, U.S. Air Force

- Team Two: Colonel Edward Thompson, U.S. Army; Captain William MacNeil, U.S. Army; Michael Green

- Team Three: Colonel Gene Voss, U.S. Marine Corps; Major Karen Valdez, U.S. Air Force; Jennifer Thorsen

Areas of Research:

JRSG teams will conduct broad-based, yet narrowly focused research and investigations into areas as identified and directed by the JRSG CO. These areas will include, but will not be limited to, the following general categories:

1) Unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Alleged abductions of humans by same. Reported technology and method of operations.

2) Extra-sensory perception (ESP). Alleged perception of information available to human beings through means other than the five senses.

3) Near-death experience (NDE). Alleged contacts with Heavenly persons and afterlife-type phenomena reported by persons experiencing clinical death.

4) Research in sub-atomic and quantum physics and how these fields may affect or illuminate the above areas.

5) DNA and other genetics studies and how these fields may affect or illuminate the above areas.

6) Native American culture and history and how it may affect or illuminate the above areas.

7) Cross-theoretical/cross-cultural religious and philosophical studies and how they may affect or illuminate the above areas.
Methods and Goals:

JRSG personnel will conduct field interviews and other information and intelligence gathering tasks as directed by the JRSG CO. JRSG teams will pursue intelligence and reconnaissance based on their investigative discretion and initiative.

Senior officers Commander Daniel Wells, Colonel Edward Thompson, and Colonel Gene Voss will report directly to the JRSG CO. JRSG CO Colonel Thomas O’Brien will report directly to the National Security Council, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the President of the United States.
JRSG teams will endeavor to conduct reconnaissance on the seven general areas of study and maintain security of the intelligence collected. The JRSG will be granted the full cooperation of all military commands and civilian governmental agencies. Reports will be channeled from JRSG field teams to the JRSG CO on an as needed basis at the discretion of senior team officers.

UNCONVENTIONAL GROUP

In MISSION INTO LIGHT, what starts out as a phone call and job offer to forty-something Arizonan Mike Green quickly evolves into a mystifying adventure into the unknown.

Mike is recruited into a quasi-scientific Defense Department research team based in San Diego. He starts his job with the Joint Reconnaissance Study Group on San Diego’s Point Loma peninsula. Ten women and men comprise the JRSG. Several loyal allies, and deadly opponents, soon emerge.

The JRSG and its friends search for information on unusual national security-related issues and mysteries. They look into crop circles, dolphin intelligence, deep DNA memory theories, UFOs, ESP, modern physics, near-death experiences, so-called “Earth changes” and “pole shift” concepts, and Native American culture and legends.

Connections between these areas are discovered as well as links to the past and the future of Earth and the human race. The women and men of the research group explore ancient questions and modern discoveries crucial to the evolution and survival of humanity.

They face experiences that are scientific, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. The group uncovers dangerous threats to their investigation, to the United States, Earth, and human civilization.

Mike feels he’s getting in over his head at times. Even with the support and fellowship of the research group and friends, he faces extreme circumstances alone.

In the midst of dangers and challenges, there is romantic heat between him and Amy Mella, one of the group’s dolphin researchers.

This is also a story of relationships between women and men, military and civilian, the intelligence community and the average American. It is an exploration of phenomena and mysteries that now rightly hold the interest and attention of millions of people worldwide.

The story climaxes in a hidden canyon on the Navajo Nation in far northeastern Arizona. In a kiva, one of the large sunken stone circles of the ancient Anasazi people, many VIPs attend a special field conference. Sudden discoveries, dangers, and the experience of the strange unknown shock those present.

The characters in MISSION INTO LIGHT follow paths of discovery and knowledge to find new understanding of their nation, the human species, and the hoped-for breakthrough that will change the world.

FRIENDS AND DISCOVERIES

In MISSION INTO LIGHT, members of the JRSG, their friends and associates work together and carefully share information about research areas related to their missions.

For example, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, JRSG members Mike Green and Army Special Forces Captain Bill MacNeil interview Dr. Brenda Carruthers, associate professor of anthropology, New Mexico State University, about unconventional research topics.

Another interesting development is when former U.S. Marine and World War II Navajo Code Talker Joe Bear has a vision during a sweat lodge with fellow former Code Talkers near his home on the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona.

On an operation in the Sedona area, in the Red Rock-Secret Mountain Wilderness Area, Mike has a near-death experience and enters into an apparent DNA deep-memory phenomena. He learns about connections between UFOs, extraterrestrials and Native Americans in the era before European conquest of the ancient Cherokee homeland in the Smokey Mountain region. He also learns about pending unconventional developments.

Later, JRSG member Air Force Captain Amy Mella has a vivid dream about a huge catastrophe on Earth, possibly geological in nature. She and Mike meet with fellow JRSG member Navy Commander Dan Wells to discuss Wells’ knowledge about theories of Earth geological changes, including crustal displacement and crustal pole shift theories.

Also in the novel, based on the real-life 1997 “Phoenix Lights” event that made national headlines, multiple witnesses in Arizona and the metro Phoenix area see a large triangle or boomerang-shaped craft drift silently over the city, going from northwest to southeast, one evening.

And in the final chapter, at a special seminar of sorts in an ancient kiva, at the bottom of a hidden canyon near the Monument Valley area, dozens of guests and VIPs witness, and experience, a strange anti-gravity phenomenon. As this unfolds other unusual and urgent developments at the top of the canyon include the appearance of a triangular-shaped craft that plays a key role in the final climax.

THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES

In this sequel, LIGHT’S HAND, readers continue on a thought-provoking metaphysical adventure with the top secret Joint Reconnaissance Study Group.

This small Defense Department research team continues their intelligence investigation of unusual phenomena.

Other strange phenomena emerge and challenge the researchers, who travel from their San Diego base to the Four Corners area, Durango, Colorado, and Flagstaff, Arizona, as well as the Arizona Sonoran Desert.

The main characters, Mike and Amy, are deployed to the Navajo Nation in northeast Arizona after the National Security Agency reports a strange signal coming from deep space. The message is in Morse code, and in the World War Two Navajo Code Talker code.

In the midst of urgent developments in and around the Four Corners area, Mike and Amy explore the depths of their love relationship and learn more about each other. About their passion, and compassion.

The dedicated researchers put together pieces of a cosmic puzzle just in the nick of time. Because strange and mysterious developments are underway. A sudden increase in crop circles, requests for safe houses on higher ground, and an ancient Cherokee legend are parts of this puzzle.

A breakthrough occurs when a strange event and process kicks the researchers into high gear, and the group acts as a rapid response team to the site of a possible miracle.

MORE INTEL AND RECON

As the second novel begins, two National Security Agency officials visit WWII Marine Code Talker veteran Joe Bear at his home on the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona. They ask him to interpret signals the NSA has picked up coming from deep space. The signals are in Morse Code and World War II Marine Corps Navajo Code Talker code.

From New Mexico, Mike, Amy and CIA analyst Jennifer Thorsen interview Dr. Ben Westman, former Army intelligence major and anthropology professor at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, about unconventional research topics.

Meanwhile, back in San Diego, Air Force Colonel Tom O’Brien, commanding officer of the Joint Reconnaissance Study Group, returns from top secret briefings and meetings back east. He contemplates the implications of what he has learned and how these things fit into the mission of his group.

Up in the Four Corners, Mike, Amy and Jennifer leave Durango for Flagstaff, Arizona where they visit a book-signing at a local bookstore by a Cherokee author and story-teller.

He tells a story strikingly similar to the vision Mike was given by his grandparents during a near-death experience in MISSION INTO LIGHT. In that experience, Mike seemed to go back in time, and into his own ancient DNA of his Cherokee ancestry to a strange incident.

Mike, Amy and Jennifer conduct a field interview with the author to obtain more information.

Then, many developments begin to converge including increased global appearance of crop circles, detection of undersea fault activity by Navy dolphins and other matters.

Members of the Joint Reconnaissance Study Group continue their operations and prepare for a possible significant event to occur as part of, yet distinct from, a steady process they have become aware of.

Suddenly, in the early morning hours on the north side of Phoenix, Arizona, a strange light slowly and gently emerges. Public safety personnel and the JRSG members respond to the scene … and find that something very significant is occurring, something that changes the world.

Tags: education, government, history, military, war
Categories: Commentary, government, Education, War, History, military
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An Article by:

Ben Tanosborn
If you are part of a noble lineage, or so consider yourself, you can be hot-blooded, cold-blooded … or both things at the same time.  For the rest of us who are often told that we travel on this earth on borrowed time, put on this earth to give added shine to the star of the blue-blooded, we are also allowed to be hot-blooded or cold-blooded, but only to a point; what is unquestionably forbidden is to rub elbows with the blue-blooded.

Mr. Chávez… can we ask you where you left your manners?  The King of Spain can say “shut-up” to anyone that royally pleases him, but that doesn’t mean you can rub elbows with him, or for you to dare put him at the level of Bolivia’s “Indian” Morales.  The throne has always been placed higher so that we can all see the monarch, even if “pygmies.”  Well, let’s put aside our sarcasm and go on!

The truth is that it’s about time that we hang our cojones between our legs (males, that is!) instead of putting them in storage, replacing them for manners that are irrelevant, and which in this 21st century are archaic if not absurd.  Royalty has reached the end of that rope we call obsolescence and, truth be said, the memories are not very pleasant.  The Spanish people, in their variety of Iberian nations, already said what had to be said back in April 1931, when they gave King Alfonso XIII a hand in packing for good his royal luggage.  It was Franco who returned Spain to the monarchy with his drafted succession law put into a referendum of dubious validity in 1947, giving it a tone of fidelity and putting Franco as regent, regency that would add another 28 years to his dictatorship.

And, as truth would have it, Don Juan Carlos I, even if one of the Bourbon dynasty, for those who firmly believe that the monarchy is a political aberration these days, the Spanish sovereign is just Franco’s heir.  Although there are those who credit the king with helping maintain peace and democracy in Spain, be it true or not, it is something that is likely being way overplayed.  Let’s give Spaniards proper credit for both their humanity and intelligence.  Spain needs only to respect, and symbolically bow to, its constitution, and nothing or no one else.

But let’s get to the crux of the matter: what President Chávez said that dazzled the king so much, and by annexed-diplomacy, José Luis Zapatero, who governs in his name.  Chávez is by temperament warm and passionate, a Latin hot-blood in politics and, I would suspect in other things; it is his nature… something which bothers a lot of people, and that includes every politician in the US for telling it like it is; but that’s his privilege, a privilege he has earned.  That has been the case with Fidel Castro, and others in history, who have swam against the current to try to save their peoples from drowning.

Perhaps many will say that Chávez had no right to call the former Spanish president, José María Aznar, a fascist.  The word fascist is super-loaded, and it’s true that all too often we overuse it in our lexicon; but let’s be somewhat indulgent; if people like Bush, Blair and Aznar gave us a Mussolini-dosage in the Azores, opening up the terror gates and giving true reasons for vengeance, are not fascist, can anyone else be baptized a fascist?  If the King of Spain, as head of state, elected or not, is allowed to participate in political matters of those sister nations of Spain in America, those Latin-American heads of state can say whatever pleases them, if they are truly brethren.  Aznar is just a poor wannabe that never quite made it, one who cannot claim the respect that he sent to hell as he embarrassingly licked George W. Bush’s boots.

By Royal Respect, the last word always belonged to the King of Clubs.  And if you are playing poker and are going “all-in” with your pot, you’d better know what you are doing.  At the end of the day, in this Ibero-American summit for 2007, the president and elected representative of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela had the winning hand.  And if Don Juan Carlos still believes he has the winning hand, I truly think that he needs to make amends with the Venezuelan head of state, gaining a lot of followers as a result… putting aside, once and for all, that crown of his.
Ben Tanosborn
www.tanosborn.com

Tags: democracy, economics, foreign policy, globalization, history, imperialism
Categories: Commentary, Economics, Democracy, Foreign Policy, History, Imperialism
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 Introduction to American Radicalized Sociopolitical Movements in Informationalism and the Network Society

a working paper by

Russell Cole

After becoming versed in this typically neglected aspect to the American story [Populism and the People’s Party], I became fixated on the truly unique poignancy it deserved in any narration of American sociopolitical history; one characterized, in most every other instance, as a historical rendering that has obfuscated class; economic inequality; as well as stratifications extant within sociopolitical institutions; all of which can be conceptualized – although they rarely happen to be – along patrician and plebeian dimensions. This stratification has persisted for so long and it has had such a profound influence upon the cultural codes circulating through American social formations that it has gone unmarked in the preponderance of American discourse.

It should not be understated the impact that implicit sociocultural traditions have upon the surface reality, the veneer of American politics. As Tocqueville pointed to, Americans rarely voiced radicalized sentiments toward their sociopolitical institutions and their operations. In fact, as he considered, American democracy – in the form it assumed – might not be possible without such willing obedience among the population of America.

The deferential posture that Americans have been conditioned to assume in relation to civil and political institutions reinforces this lack of discursive treatment of a society divided along elitist and commoner lines. American history, by and large, has been accounted for under the pre-determinacy of Whiggishness, discounting enduring quasi-caste distinctions as if they are temporal aberrations, epiphenomena to an underlying narrative that ultimately tells of America’s advancement toward an increasingly democratic condition. There are, of course, notable exceptions to American Whig renditions of history, such as The People’s History of the United States. However, another treatment of these issues is by no means a contribution to an already saturated field of political sociological inquiry.

Coming to Terms with Populism

As both a result of my new interest in an organization that called itself the Populist Party of America as well as a family history - although fairly distant at this point in time - that included political participation in populism - I began researching the history of this movement, which presented itself in its fullest embodiment in the form of the People’s Party. After becoming versed in populism, I was awe struck at what appeared to be an under treated anomaly when in taken in the purview of the overall course of American sociopolitical history: a narrative that persistently omits accounts of sociopolitical and economic inequality; a lack of criticality that contributes to a facade of civic egalitarianism originally manifested in what has become the persisting mythology of Jeffersonian republicanism. This false ideology configures a conceptualization of American political relations, which neglects to recognize the influences had upon political opportunity by the material conditions belonging to the economy.

The Jefferson’s early articulation of Libertarianism exclaimed the virtues of the citizen agriculturalist; a body collectively composed of citizens who stood side by side one another in lateral sociopolitical uniformity. Thus economic class was left unconceived in the Jeffersonian account of American sociopolitical relations, and, needless to say, such an account failed to address the impact that economic inequalities, or class, had upon the feasibility of each citizen coequally affecting the public policies of the American state[4].

Populism – as it was incepted in economic affairs of the Midwestern and Southern farmer in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century – was an emergent pattern of economically directed intellectualism, which – through processes of its development – came to identify itself as a political movement with a more prodigious agenda than mere economic reform. Furthermore, it was a consequence of organic intellectual social processes. By that, populism culminated largely out of social mechanisms that existed independently from the institutional guard belonging to the Academe and other vested interests. Of course, populism was affected by Marxism, and, on occasion, in some of its expressions, it appeared proto-Marxist. However, the populist critiques of the economy and, in particular, the finance and monetary systems proved to be not only original and penetrating, but, additionally, they ultimately served as the precipitants of economic reforms that had lasting legacies.

For instance, the contemporary conceptualization of the free-market is heavily indebted to the populist movement in America. It was through populism that legislative fixtures intended to promote free-market competition, such as anti-trust and anti-monopolistic statutes, came to regulate the practices of capitalist interests. Indeed, we can go so far as to say that it was through populism that the modern conception of the free-market came about. Even more, it was due to its emphasis upon a competitive market[5] that the Democratic Party was amenable to the infusion of the populist ideology into its platform, which would come to mark its public disposition throughout the first half of the Twentieth Century. I realize that many students of American political history would delineate among the Populist era: the period when Bryan was the leading figure; and the Progressive era – associated with Wilson, as well as, the New Deal, which, of course, was the domestic policy of FDR. No matter, as John Gerring has demonstrated through a careful content analysis of American Party rhetoric, the consistencies among the three proposed eras out-weighed the significance of the differences demonstrable in the three proposed historical periods of Democratic Party ideology.

Many discount the ethical accomplishments of the People’s Party, which was the first to embrace multiple racial identities; the first to include women in its organizations, prior even to Women’s suffrage; and the first to demand in a recognizable voice the democratization of various political institutions that had been, till then, the decision-making province of political elites. Recourse to the denial of populism as an event that demonstrated advanced ethical and moral sensibilities on the part of its conceivers, promoters, and adherents is typically sought through citing aspects of the multi-faceted social critique leveled by populism, with the intended result of identifying internal inconsistencies in the populist ideology.

For instance, one of the more prevalent criticisms of populism is that it reflected a racial tolerance while, concurrently, possessing a nativist agenda. However, this criticism speaks more of the lack of analytical faculties by those who make such a claim as it points to the lack of sophistication in the populist social critique formed in reflection of the American gilded age. I am always dumbfounded each and every time I find myself explaining to detractors of populism that there is no a priori analytical relationship between nativism and racism. Although there might be empirical relationships between the two conditions, where nativists tend also to be racists, this has nothing to do with the People’s Party, per se. America was already a multi-racial society prior to populism’s emergence, and the nativist policies taken up in the advocacies of the People’s Party were not latent with racial discrimination. Objecting to undesirable immigration is not necessarily predicated upon race. Instead, as in the case of the People’s Party, it was based upon the impact that particular elements of any society might bring about if permitted to migrate to the United States.

Additionally, and this should be apparent to anyone who has expended any efforts, at all, when attempting to come to terms with American immigration – despite the conventional wisdom, belonging to American economics – which we are persistently instructed to embrace and believe – immigration does not proportionally benefit all sectors of the economy. One such group that certainly does not experience positive outcomes resulting from immigration consists of those who dwell in the middle and lower tiers of the labor market. Immigration both diminishes the value of labor in every sector of the economy to which its skills happen to apply, as well as, posing obstructions to the successful formation of cooperative institutions, either constituting organized labor, or qualifying as the financial cooperatives, such as credit unions, that leverage the monetary resources of those who are excluded from the many implicit trusts that dominate the financial industries controlled by organized-capitalism.

Indeed, the recent revelations concerning the use of Visas for the import of labor to be employed in the technology sectors of the economy reinforces the conclusion that immigration is not advantageous for labor. Despite the conventional wisdom, as it turns out, the overwhelming preponderance of Information Technology workers who are allowed entry into the United States are in the lower strata of the technocratic hierarchy comprised of Information Technology laborers. Therefore, America is not taking in the best and the brightest; rather, corporate America is merely increasing productivity by importing cheap labor that is only qualified to work in the most entry level of positions in an organization’s IT infrastructure. This – topped with the fact that wage stagnation, in recent history, has been an enduring feature of the employment market for the middle and working classes – indicates that immigration is only beneficial for those who dwell in the higher socio-economic tiers of American social relations; the ownership classes belonging to corporate America.

Another ill conceived critique of populism consists of instances where commentators remark upon the internal inconsistency of populism’s anti-statism along with many of its ‘socialist’ sentiments. It is true that populism called for the nationalization of the railroading industry as well as the banking industry. However, unlike what nearly amounts to ideological absolutism on the part of contemporary Libertarians, the populists were not constrained when devising possible solutions for social problems by a conviction that all instances of government should be curtailed, even in scenarios where the absence of government intervention appears to create a more undesirable social condition. Additionally, populism and its instances of economic cooperatives is more an expression of anarchistic sensibilities than anything approaching socialism. Certainly, no one can credibly contend that organic cooperatives intended to extricate the American farmer from his social positioning that amounted to serfdom was motivated out of an affinity of statist institutions. Indeed, it was only until such endeavors proved to be ineffective against the trusts that had been established by organized-capitalism that the populist movement became politicized.

This is not to say that populism – especially when taken up by the Democratic Party – did not come to reflect a pro-statist position on the majority of matters qualifying as issues of public concern. Nevertheless, this ideological posture on the part of Democratic populists was perceived as a necessity in order to guard against the publicly harmful excesses of what came to be called “predator elites” in the economy. To paraphrase The Great Commoner; also known as William Jennings Bryan:

Men are the creation of God. Corporations are the creation of man, and what man creates man can destroy.

In respect to this – which can be identified with less ambiguity as the regulatory measures needed to quell the popularly harmful greed of the corporation – that the adoption of a pro-statist approach toward public policy reveals its real character: Government was a device of necessity, and the pro-statism of the Democratic populists should not be conflated – in its interpretation - with the authoritarianism embodied by the Whig-Republicans and their mercantilist conception of political and economic social relationships.

Finally, what more that can be said about populism arises from an inference that is generated from mechanisms that are alien to the processes of scholarly research, but deserves mentioning, nonetheless. The populist movement seemed to stimulate the activation of ethical dispositions belonging to the social characters of those who would come to be participate in this movement. Individuals, whose ideologies had been immured in white supremacist backdrops, eventually identified with African-Americans, as social agents with whom they suffered the exploitations engendered by common same social conditions. In fact, there are accounts of former slave owners coming to advance the causes of African-Americans by serving as chairs to African-American farmer alliances.

Therefore, rather than specifically addressing fabricated shortcomings of the People’s Party, it is more worthwhile for a student of political sociology to treat the aspects belonging to this movement that set it apart from nearly all other facets of the American experience. Specifically, what strikes the attention of the epistemic agent – who is not predisposed to dismiss the accomplishments of the various farmer alliances and the People’s Party, which they came to establish – is the fact that these dissolute, degraded, and politically inexperienced agrarians could come to mount the most redoubtable third-party insurgence to the duopoly embedded in partisan politics in the whole of American history.

Families in the Midwest and South – who dwelled in a social condition where observances of women and children afoot in bare feet was commonplace – arose from a state of sociopolitical ignorance to one of penetrating insight and criticism upon American social relations. Even more, the political ideology developed by populists was emergent, composed from intellectual processes that were organic. Additionally, the populists were faced – when developing this intellectual formation – with constructing their own social institutions through which their knowledge could be manufactured as well as disseminated. Journals needed to be published and circulated. Travelling lecturers had to be trained and financially supported. Financial schemes had to be creatively fostered a deployed in an attempt to coerce other economic agencies into bargaining directly with the farmer alliances, so that the trust under which the crop-lean system[6] was actualized and enacted could be overcome. Finally, populism transcended sectionalisms – which were the by-products of superficial material conflicts in American society, such as white supremacy and its opposition to African-American interests – in order for African-Americans as well as Southern Whites to attend the same gatherings and applaud enthusiastically as the political orator explained racism as an instrument used by Southern elites to deflect the attention of the farmers from their real adversaries, whom Blacks and Whites commonly faced.

The Contemporary Significance of Populism

Recently, I had listened to a service given by a Unitarian Church in New York, which commemorated the outing of the Pentagon Papers. At this service, I became audience to descriptions of the subversive inner-workings of activists responsible for the publication of these documents, which were entered into the Congressional Record by Gravel, and, finally, published in book form by a Unitarian publishing syndicate. I was struck by words that were spoken in reference to Gravel that remarked upon an aspect to American culture where Americans are taught – from the time they assume comfort upon a parent’s lap – to, “avoid looking silly,” or foolish; to avoid orating that which strays beyond the comfortable parameters of orthodoxy. According to the wisdom embedded in this shared stock of social knowledge, not adhering to such standards would render the speaker as suspect to aspersions labeling him or her as a crackpot or a voice from the margins of society to be dismissed, because he or she conveys sentiments that are outside of the recognizable: the familiar domestic environment qualifying as the mainstream.[i]

In contrast to the insightful words spoken of Gravel and his current candidacy for the Democratic Nomination, in recent weeks, I have also heard a speech given by Bill Clinton during the memorial for Arthur Schlesinger. Clinton’s - in remarks that can only be interpreted as self-congratulatory - lauded Lincoln, who had also given oratory at the theater where the service was being held, for attempting to reach out to the, “Great American center,” prior to the collapse of the Nation into civil war. According to Clinton, Lincoln’s initial attempt to avoid confrontation, by remaining amenable to slavery as long as it did not extend into new territories and states, demonstrated an understanding of the great American center and how it allows for progress to be made during intervals belonging to a larger cyclical pattern; where the mushy middle of American politics would slightly tip its balance toward the Left or toward the Right. During instances where the Left was favored, small, incremental steps of progress could be made. However, it required a savvy leader who could continue to appeal to the middle, in order to coax the Country in the right direction without inciting a backlash by introducing proposals that were too radical, which would entail too abrupt a departure from the trails that had already been worn into easily transverse paths.

What are we to make out of these two contrasting stylizations of political existentiality? It is in respect to this question - more than anything else - that has led me to firmly believe that populism has a role to play in the development of the sociology of democracy. My understandings of populism are primarily derived from the historian, Goodwyn, who possessed the uncommon tenacity for summarizing the necessary antecedents for an authentically democratic insurgency to unfold: First, a group must obtain the institutional autonomy needed to formulate a conceptualization of sociopolitical mechanisms operative in a political structure, which foments in contradistinction, and in to varying extent, opposition to the preemptive orders of knowledge and the sociopolitical institutions that are arranged under the cloak of legitimacy derived from these hegemonic discourses. However, as Goodwyn wisely points out, such a development - an alternative episteme - is not, in and of itself, sufficient for democratic insurgency. In America in particular, there is a long untreated - yet, all too pervasive - posture of deference habitually assumed by commoners in relations to the established institutional guards of sociopolitical power. Without a shaking off of the deference toward institutions of the old guard encumbering the shoulders of those - who have long been conditioned to internalize the identity of plebiscite - the provision of an alternative interpretation of the Human Condition - currently embodied in the way things stand - would fail to incite the mobilizing of masses.

According to this parsimonious and elegant rendering of the necessary conditions for a democratic insurgency to take root, Goodwyn goes on in his minor masterpiece, A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt, to catalog the events that culminated in the establishment of the People’s Party. The process that resulted in the type of psychic characteristics necessary for democratic insurgency was a slow incremental process, involving quite a few setbacks and failures on the part of the various farming alliances as they initially endeavored to extricate their members from the crop lien system, which basically amounted to a trust comprised of financial interests along with manufacturing - both of which maintained credit as well as distributional relationships with local town agents, who dealt directly with the farmers. These relationships that were established and protected by the these interests precluded the farmers from entering into the necessary financing arrangements for them to bypass the insufferable arrangements imposed upon them by the local town agents, who extorted as much as possible from the farmers each time the farmer was forced to obtain credit for the oncoming year.

It is in these considerations that Web 2.0 assumes significance. The democratization of representational spaces in civil society fosters both the intellectual autonomy necessary to form alternative sociopolitical interpretations as well as the political self-respect necessary to abandon to the deferential posture assumed in relation to the institutions of the old guard.

[1] The Green Party has associations with other Green Parties that exist in other states around the globe. However, these relationships are loosely defined and often more symbolic than anything else.

[2] The Populist Party of America is a micro-party that was incepted 2002, and is based in Las Angeles. At this point in time – with some exceptions – it is a virtual community that is radicalized. The exceptions consist of activism – involving activities such as the distribution of literature – that has taken place in the Las Angeles area.

[3] Grounded Theory is the approach that is typically assumed by sociologists who perform ethnography

[4] As Charles Goodwyn has pointed out, the Jeffersonian ideology was a major obstacle to the political radicalization of the populist movement.

[5] Free-trade was a staple of the Democratic ideology during the period when it opposed the mercantilist protectionism of the Whig-Republicans.

[6] The crop-lean system was enacted by the trust of economic relationships assumed by financial firms, manufacturers, and local town agents, who extorted farmers for as great as a share of the yearly productions of agricultural commodities by withholding credit that was necessary for the farmer to procure the manufactured supplies that were a requisite for planting and harvesting in the oncoming season.

[i] The Pentagon Papers Then and Now: Unitarian Universalists Confronting Government Secrecy

http://www.uua.org/events/generalassembly/2007/presentations/30971.shtml; UUA

Tags: constitution, corporations, democracy, direct democracy, economics, education, Farmers, government, history, labor, legislation, politics, populist party, self governance, Social Change, society, sociology, third parties
Categories: Commentary, Economics, Society, Populist Party, Democracy, constitution, government, Education, self-governance, Politics, Third Parties, Legislation, Labor, Farmers, Corporations, Direct Democracy, Social Change, Sociology, History
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Rep. Ron Paul has taking the most unfortunate stance in response to the legislation under consideration, which would extend Federal Hate Crime statutes to instances of hate motivated crimes that are perpetrated against gays and cross-gendered. Reverting to the less intellectually endowed Republican rhetoric - deviating from his more interesting and, often, more reasonable Libertarian slant - he contends that provisioning Federal authority for purposes ensuring the Constitutional Liberties of these historically persecuted groups - in fact - discriminates against those who wish
to discriminate - to extremes where crimes are committed - against these vulnerable identities in our society. Additionally, in the tradition of Liberalism, he contends that laws can only reference individuated agents in society; a monadic conception of of the composite of agents and agencies constituting humanity; a premise upon which Liberal juridical-politico discourse is built.

Link to Paul’s letter:

http://www.populistamerica.com/unconstitutional_legislation_threatens_freedoms

Nevertheless, Liberal individualism conceals the effects of hegemonies, that enforce their own cultural dispositions upon other subcultures as behaviorally demonstrable requisites for participating in the institutions embedded in the social fabric. The form of individualism promoted by Liberalism is not the natural, appropriate state of humanity; rather, it is the product of an historically situated cultural condition that has been naturalized into the ontology by the members of the preemptive discourse in American society, who, in turn, identify those who fail to conform as social deviants, who are the justified targets of the bigotry; the hatred; the exclusion; and, worse, the objects of attack that are committed persistently in order to reinforce the alienated and inferior status of these marginalized groups.

The consideration that makes this legislation so abundantly necessary stems from the failure of states and municipalities to protect these social identities, so they - the sexual minorities who are perceived as deviant - can exercise the freedoms enjoyed by all other members of society.

Nevertheless, I do not want to appear callous toward the plight of bigots who are afraid of losing their privileges to practice bigotry against the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in society. However, we must consider from historical insight the following: If not for Federal intervention, the schools in the South appeared to possess little chance of entering into a state of desegregation. The crucial matter that justifies this legislation revolves around the necessity of expanding the Federal Government’s jurisdiction, allowing for Federal law enforcement to intercede where states and municipalities
turn tail. Remember, in order for Southern schools to abandon the institutional arrangements of Jim Crow South, Eisenhower was compelled to use the Air Force.

The simple fact of the matter is we are not all treated with the same dignity and expectations of negative rights, as if we were only individuals; not latent with any group identifications, such as African American or gay. Consequently, to bring closure to this rather parsimonious analysis, we are left with the task of determining what assumes greater saliency: The rights of bigots to practice their hate against the vulnerable? Or, the rights of minorities to enjoy a life free from fright, humiliation, and negations of social and personal respect?

I, for one, am partial to the latter.

Russell Cole

Tags: bill of rights, constitution, government, history, legislation, society
Categories: Society, constitution, bill of rights, government, Legislation, History
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Anyone who has had the opportunity to watch the leader of the Catholic League, William Donohue, knows that we are not contending with an intellectual heavy weight when attempting to parse through his ramblings in order to understand the actual logic supporting the his constant accusations of anti-Catholicism. Although I should mention that I was absolutely shocked to find that this individual obtained a PHD in Sociology from the NYU; this is a fact that I am going to look into further in order to resolve my persistent skepticism over its accuracy. Nevertheless, I am going to - for the moment - treat this character as though he is capable of producing polemics that possess some degree of logical reasoning concealed somewhere inside their inflaming rhetoric.

In order to select from a gluttony of ill conceived accusations of anti-Catholicism expressed by William Donohue, I shall concentrate on the latest development in a career of erecting straw men in order to champion the interests of the most uninformed and certainly the least intellectually inclined dominator among the Religious Right in American society.

The bloggers made remarks concerning specific policies enacted by individuals who assume positions in the Church. Therefore, as far as I can detect, the two bloggers in question were casting disparaging remarks toward the policies enacted by men - and, of course, only men - assuming positions within the Church - not the actual belief system and associated practices of Catholicism.

I would suspect that Catholicism acknowledges some distinction between those who assume positions in its hierarchy of offices and the Church, itself, which I thought would be considered a transcendental structure, according to its significance within the Worldview of Catholicism. In short, and I suspect I am correct in my conclusion, the Church holds an ontological status; thus It exists apart from the particular individuals who find themselves holding office in its organization Schema. In support of this assertion, I need only make reference to the - extremely dubiously translated - account in Ancient Greek of Jesus proclaiming, as he held a rock, something to the effect that this was his Church, which - parenthetically - can also be translated into something approximating, I am this rock, which would entail a different understanding of Christianity, entirely, because Jesus would be indicating that the Divine is not transcendental, but something that in worldly and can be communed with in a state absent of any intermediating devices, such as the Catholic Church and its hierarchy in which men - and only men - hold office.

Therefore, if, indeed, remarks directed against Church Officials are to be considered an expression of intolerance toward Catholicism, itself, then such a conclusion would, in fact, express that there is no distinction to be drawn between Catholicism and the men who occupy positions in its institutional structure.

John Paul introduced a lexicon into the Church’s vocabulary that had been lacking throughout the extent - up till then - of the Church’s history: the word, apologize. By actually articulating an apology for the Church in reaction to periods in the Church’s history when it acted in modalities that appeared less than divine, John Paul was essentially conceding that the actions of the those who hold power in the Church are subject to the fallibility resulting from the finite knowledge of man as well as the dark natures that lurk within the motivations that compel men to action.

Consequently, from the preceding analysis, I would have to conclude that William Donohue is suspect to accusations of worshiping false idols, which happen to be men themselves; certainly not the transcendental God to which he incredulously swears devotion.

As a final note to this letter, I should provide the following advice: Beware of false idols; especially those who are men, who, nevertheless, possess the arrogance to collapse any distinction between themselves and the God they purport to represent.

Russell Cole

Tags: Global, history, human development, politics, society, sociology
Categories: Commentary, Global, Society, Politics, Sociology, History
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Episteme 2.0

A study in the sociology of mass media and the sociology of social movements; both directed upon the emerging venue of mass communications, referenced as the World Wide Web, explor­ing the transformation of sociopolitical possibilities engendered by the proliferation of a represen­tational space that is largely free from institutional gate-keeping devices and a means of publicity that is easily accessible and obtainable by a vastly greater proportion of the population

Forward to Episteme 2.0

Abstract

The forward of the document will outline the scope of the study - including the relationships of the research to preexisting literature, also devoted to the subjects referenced in the content matter herein. In short, the executive summary will serve as a type of abstract. However, since the doc­ument object, abstract, is typically not included in the contents of manuscripts that purport to be more than articles, the deployment of the artifice, forward, is more appropriate in this context; a document object that entails many of the same significations; however, it allows for greater flexi­bility when it comes to the duration and specificity of the content.

Scope and Objectives

This document expresses an assessment of the prospects for the Human Condition in the emerging epoch termed by Castells as the Network Society. The study is not a foray into futurism; nor, does the document constitute a relapse into the absolutism¹ of historicism, and the ideological dogma that it inspires. The document and its flow of contents explores a field of diverse possibilities that are hypothesized to exist and reside in the current social configuration - which, of course, is a material and ideological formation that has connections to the past; a pro­cess that currently instantiates a field of potential trajectories that, presumably, can be actualize through the way we orient and posture ourselves in the present in order to react and contend with the contingencies arising from our historical situated-ness; thus shaping the unfolding of the future in the most informed and equipped manner, according to the aesthetics² most desirable.

More germane to the interests of this paper, however, are the unconventional tactics employed - to certain extents - by the movement in order to actualize some of the conditions defined by its teleology. The formation of collectivities in response to the inaccessibility of capital - a circum­stance attributed to the Gold Standard³ of currency evaluation, which had consequences for farmers, preventing them access to necessary sources insurance against the risks involved in the production of agricultural commodities. Specifically, the inclusion of this historical narrative contributes to a theme that appears to be emerging in the sociology of social movements, which has taken a detour from the stock of knowledge - comprising its long established conventional wisdom, which presumed the success of social movements to be the consequent of antecedents including the networking resources though which the movement could affect the decision-making of elites responsible for the formation and administration of public policy - in order to come to terms with developments in Latin America. Although the abandonment of the macro-oriented pol­icy strategies characterizing the neoliberal ideology of global consortium, such as the World Monetary Fund, in pursuit of local, organic initiatives certainly is a recognizable factor operative in the dynamics culminating into the mass electoral mobilization, which lead to the usurpations of legitimate sociolopolitical power by populist socialist movements in Latin America, the ability of the successful social movements to opportunize off of the Social Capital produced by activism conducted at the local level - identically - cannot be ignored⁴. The social movements - and this might be considered an attribute belonging to the connotative definition expressed in the sociological analytics of social movements - of course, were not social formations with the degrees of institutionalization needed to qualify them as organizations - in the sociological sense of the word - although they certainly did and continue to possess a form of organization - rather, the associations⁵ among agents contributing to these movements constitute - if anything - instances of networking, which, in these instances, transcended nation-states and their geo­graphical parameters.