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The Big Picture series will focus mostly on (1); the core
issues of human population growth, an evolved monetary/economic system
that demands exponential growth, and the human propensity to ignore
unpleasant truths, and (2) some of the many ideas and strategies that
show hope in dealing with the dilemma of today.
Ideologies
in Conflict
1) As seen from within USA
2) As seen from
a more holistic view
This essay was
provoked by a New York Times article titled, War
of Ideology, by David Brooks, June 25/04. The article suggests
that the summary section of the recent US 9/11 Commission made an
epoch-defining conclusion where they state:
We're not in the middle of a war on terror.
We're not facing an axis of evil.
Instead, we are in the midst of an ideological conflict.
My immediate
impulse was to agree with this completely. But it soon became apparent
that his version of ideologies in conflict is quite different from
mine. I will first present his version and then my version followed
by reasons and justification for my contrary view.
Bad VS Good Ideologies in Conflict, as seen from USA
The
Bad:
In describing
the report Brooks goes on to describe what we see as terrorism as
the outcome of an intellectual, hostile belief system that can't
be reasoned with, indicating, “We are facing a loose confederation
of people who believe in a perverted stream of Islam that that can't
be reasoned with, and can only be destroyed or utterly isolated”.
“Terrorism is just the means they use to win converts to their
cause.”
Brooks summarizes
the evil ideology with: “Our foreign policy apparatus is geared
toward relations with states: negotiating with states, confronting
states. Now we are faced with a belief system that is inimical to
the state system, and aims at theological rule and the restoration
of the caliphate.”
This enormously
simplistic view gives no hint that targeted terrorism might be a hostile
reaction, rather than an aggressive action.
The
Good:
Seeing no
apparent need to define the obvious victim, Brooks implies that
the Ideology under attack is all that is good, all that the USA
stands for, their democracy, their way of life, and everything good
they believe in. Brooks makes it clear that he believes this ideology
of good is so precious that preemptive strikes against perceive
threats are justified, as suggested by the 9/ll Committee, as he
states: “We also need to mount our own ideological counteroffensive.
The commissioners recommend that the U.S. should be much more critical
of autocratic regimes, even friendly ones, simply to demonstrate
our principles.”
This essay
will address these principles, and how they have been addressed
by USA foreign policy over the past several decades as indicated
in excerpts from [Nom Chomsky, John
Pilger and Naomi Klein], and it will
suggest that the people and the society of the good ideology
under attack are in fact comparable to an addict, with the classic
characteristics of denial, avoidance, blame to everyone else, and
to taking any and all action necessary to sustain the addictive
substance/lifestyle abuse.
I first read this article just prior to a vacation, so I hastily posted
my initial reaction on the email listserver of Gaia
Preservation Coalition, a group of people from around the world
who share bits and pieces of a holistic global view on world affairs.
Here is the original post, pretty much as it was:
A
different view – Don Chisholm
Posted (July 28/04)
Subject: Denial? avoidance? or pure blindness?
It seems to
me that the writer of this article, and the subject report of the
9/11 commission paint a picture of a nation: the writer; the commission,
and the public he writes to, totally addicted to their energy intensive
lifestyle and deep in denial in order to preserve it, totally ignoring
glaring layers of relevant information that is kept well below the
surface.
[In the comments
below, I speak of citizens of USA, while recognizing that we Canadians,
and many others, are in the same ideological boat. I’m not
USA bashing, I’m basing our ideology. In this ideology the
USA is equivalent to the Vatican, and where The World Trade Organization
(WTO) and companion International Monetary Fund (IMF) represent
branch bastions of global control.]
The article
says: > We're not in the middle of a war on terror, they
note. We're not facing an axis of evil. Instead, we are in the midst
of an ideological conflict.<
While I agree
with the text of this comment, I presume a vastly different context.
If I were the NYTimes writer (short term no doubt:-), the story
may have been written like this:
Ideology
One:
On one hand,
we have the ideology of economic growth, population growth, and
a consumerist society that enables our citizens, 5% of global human
population, to consume 20% of the global resources (common statistic),
giving our US citizens about a seven times resource throughput advantage
over the average of the rest of the world, and hundreds of times
over that of many of the poorer populations.
Our resource
intensive lifestyles have been scientifically shown to be unsustainable
because we live in a world of limited resources, and yet our leadership,
(i.e., George Bush Sr.) stated, to the effect that: “The nature
of the American lifestyle is not negotiable”. And we applaud!
Our
Most Successful Global Hoax: The financial/political advantage
of having the fiat US dollar being the global standard currency
gives us a free inflow of about $400 billion dollars per year, covering
most of the cost of our military . Our strong military is vital
to ensuring that resource rich nations will be willing to provide
the sustenance needed for our grand lifestyle. The lifestyle our
presidents promise to last forever. These nations have no justification
to protest, after all, we call it free trade and we may ever offer
them a taste of our democracy.
Ideology
Two:
Some poor
people in countries still rich in resources recognize/feel the injustice,
the flaws, and the dead end future for all people on Earth, if Ideology
One shall continue to prevail up until ecological
collapse. Today the global hoax of fiat dollars = political
power = military power, and peoples of Ideology Two have
little of this. Therefore the principal source of power for them
is humans, by the hundred of thousands, who can be programmed to
fury and even self-destruction by appropriate methods, usually under
the banner of nationalism or religion. Today it is a branch of Islam
that carries the flag for Ideology Two, as they attempt to waken
the world to the folly of Ideology One. And the leaders of Ideology
One label them terrorists and their followers/voters
believe it, because they are addicted to their lifestyle and blinded
to opposing realities.
Quasi
Ideology Three:
People of
other industrial nations sit in pusillanimous bliss, accepting growth
in Human Activity as a principal good, while the nature of evolved
economics enables their rich to get richer and their poor to get
poorer. We too, are addicted to the good life, even if scientific
wisdom points out that it is temporary. We forsake out children
for today’s good life as we turn our heads in denial –
This just cannot be!!! And then we think of other things.
Probably the
issue of human morality should enter into this picture, but the
subject is likely too subjective to be of any use.
It needs to
be stated that the absolute categories above are for simplicity, and
are not absolute in terms of numbers. For example:
1) throughout
the world thousands of people of good-will and good spirit attempt
to change the system by peaceful and cooperative means; or
2) economic
growth is not exactly proportional to Human Activity, but is a useful
measurement guideline.
Since this was
note was posted the ugly events in Beslan, Russia shocked the world
as the media gives gruesome details of a terrorist attack on a school.
A look beneath the surface suggests that the roots of the Chechen
resistance are not unlike those of Al-Qa’ida.
I wish to make
it clear that this essay does not endorse, condone, or justify terrorism.
My purpose is to point out that terrorist strikes may be looked at
metaphorically as violent volcanic eruptions in reaction to enormous
heat and pressures from beneath surface of the casual observer’s
view. Terrorism is likely one reaction to much larger and far more
ugly global political forces at play, forces that now lead global
humanity toward catastrophic collapse.
Each and every
one of us in the industrial world adds to the geopolitical pressures
beneath the surface by our very existence. And this is amplified by
our personal and collective choices. In choices about procreation;
choices about personal use of products, energy and water usage; choices
about the type of government we permit to represent us. And we permit
governments that measure success by growth in Human Activity (economic/product
throughput) while blissfully ignoring that our collective ecological
footprint ravages the Earth’s living systems.
Could it be that
when we vote for such governments we, in innocent abstraction, vote
for terrorism? Is part of these horrors partly a result of our lifestyle
choices?
It is not that
there are no good ideas, or examples of sustainable civilizations,
or negative growth monetary systems, but the overpowering hegemonic
presence of Ideology One, that we all currently embrace,
snuffs out such ideas long before they can take significant root.
In a letter
to me about 12 years ago, Alexander King, co-founder of the Club Of
Rome (COR) explained that COR had invited many global political leaders,
including Pierre Trudeau of Canada, for a conference where they explained
that the global trends appear to lead toward ecological and/or resource
collapse in the not-to-distant future. In the morning after the scientist’s
presentation, a representative of the political leaders told COR that
they believed the chilling presentation was likely true, but that
if any of them were to take action on this in their country’s
politics, they would be voted out of office before their next term.
This suggests
that it is up to we-the-people, the voters of all relatively free
countries, to wake up to cause and effect of the geopolitical hurricane
clouds that surround us, to consciously acknowledge a personal burden
of responsibility in knowing that ameliorating action and your children’s
future rests in our hands.
Neither Ideology
One nor Ideology Two reflect the goodness, the wisdom,
or the vision, or the love, that the human spirit is know to posses.
The implications of changing from growth-oriented governance are enormous.
But our Ideology One leads to ecological collapse. Bits and pieces
of a suitable sustainable story for humanity have been penned by others.
Surely we can bring these ideas together with a Big Picture overview,
and work collectively in a negative growth economy toward living within
our ecological footprint on Mother Earth.
Notes:
Gaia
Preservation Coalition is Canada’s first registered non profit
organization to conduct all business and meetings on email.
GPC Core Purpose:
TO BE A GATHERING
PLACE FOR PEOPLE WHO CONSCIOUSLY ACKNOWLEDGE THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT
AND WHO SEEK WITH OTHERS ITS RESOLUTION THROUGH THE CREATION AND EXPLORATION
OF IDEAS AND ACTIONS THAT MOVE HUMANITY TOWARD A MORE HARMONIOUS RELATIONSHIP
WITHIN GAIA. (June 20/98)
http://www.gaiapc.ca/
The Club
Of Rome is a think tank of scientists, economists, and retied
politicians. In about 1970 they wrote the book Limits to Growth,
as one the prominent early warnings about 'the probematique',
that indicated business-as-usual would likely lead to human disaster.
http://www.cacor.ca
Our
Ecological Footprint ‘92 written by Mathis Wackernagel
and William Rees (U British Columbia), illuminate a new way of measuring
Human Activity regionally, provincially nationally and globally. It
was determined that to be sustainable, the global Human Activity in
1992 would require three the ecosystems of three planet earths. Since
then, your government and mine, in addictive-like adherence to Ideology
One, has strived for exponential throughput growth. And yet we have
only one planet Earth.
www.rprogress.org
Dozens of references
could be used here, such as:
Dave Pimentel
from Cornell U at. http://www.dieoff.com/page174.htm
Association of Concerned Scientists http://www.ucsusa.org/ucs/about/index.cfm
See population graphs at http://www.dieoff.com/
Our
Most Successful Hoax
http://www.jamesrobertson.com/ne/alternativemansionhousespeech-2000.pdf
This paper by James Robertson called, The Role of Money and Finance,
was presented to the Pio Manzu International Research Center in Italy
October '03. In the section on Global Dimensions, page 12
states: The
rest of the world pays a total annual subsidy (or Tribute!) to US
of at least $400 billion a year as the main global currency. A pentagon
analyst justified this as payment to the US for keeping world order.
Others see it as means by which the richest country in the world compels
poorer ones to pay for its unsustainable consumption of natural resources.
Robertson gives various credible references to justify his numbers.
Deaths
By Ideology One
Any of the references below will suggest the magnitude of the death
and suffering in support of Ideology One as country after country
has been ravaged by either direct military intervention, or by subversive
support of internal extremist to over through governments, or by military
supported corporate adventures.
Energy
Fossil energy is currently the lifeblood of industrial nations. With
global oil near or at peak supply [ see link1,
link2], nations
are doing all in their means to secure dwindling supplies. Oil security
is the key reason for terrorism, both from Al-Qa’ida and Chechen
resistance fighters.
Naomi
Klein’s book, No Logo ’02
Here is a para:
Since the 1950s,
Shell Nigeria has extracted $30 billion worth of oil from the land
of the Ogoni people, in the Niger Delta. Oil revenue makes up 80 per-cent
of the Nigerian economy - $10 billion annually - and, of that, more
than half comes from Shell. But not only have the Ogoni people been
deprived of the profits from their rich natural resource, many still
live with-out running water or electricity, and their land and water
have been poisoned by open pipelines, oil spills and gas fires.
More from the
section in Ideology One In
Action
Matthew Yeomans
is the author of "Oil: Anatomy of an Industry".
An excerpt: What's
really behind the recent redeployment of U.S. military forces? Making
sure no one messes with American access to global energy resources.
Michel Chossudovsky
University of Ottawa
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303B.html
An excerpt from the later part of Chapter 5 of War
and Globalisation .
The war is
not only being carried out with a view to taking over Iraq's oil reserves,
it is intended to cancel the contracts of rival Russian and European
oil companies as well as exclude France, Russia and China from the
region.
Chechnya
oil riches fuel war
By Giles Whittell Source: The Times Date: January 5, 2000
This is an
old-fashioned war, for Chechen independence and Russian self-esteem,
but also a more modern one, for oil.
Chechnya's oil
production to increase considerably this year.
20-04-00 It
is planned to restore a considerable part of destroyed oil wells in
Chechnya and increase the oil production up to 70,000 tons a month,
Russian Deputy Prime Minister and representative of the Russian government
in Chechnya Nikolai Koshman told.
Monday Sept
13/04 Toronto star carried an excerpt of an editorial from The
Frontier Post, Peshawar, Pakistan, headed, Russia
chooses a dangerous course. The dangerous
course referenced is that Russia now claims the right to strike terrorists,
wherever they may be, just like the right claimed by USA. While the
recent blood bath made world headlines, little has been said about
the cumulative Chechen grief that brought about such outrageous reactions,
as the article states in part:
The Chechens feel as much pain and anger over the travails of
their loved ones as do the Russians and any other peoples. And on
that score, the Chechens have indeed heaps of personal and family
tragedies to wail over and feel angry about. The international human
rights organization, including Russia’s own, contend that the
pacification operations in Chechnya, the Russian soldiers have killed
35,000 children, leaving their aggrieved mothers to cry over their
violent demise for the rest of their lives. Another 49,000 Chechen
children have been left injured; 32,000 have lost either their father
or mother; and 6,5000 have been orphaned
Ideology
One needs more that just oil.
Very short excepts
from an interview with Nom Chomsky called, Our Good Neigbour Policy:
The
Kennedy Administration prepared the way for the 1964 military coup
in Brazil, helping to destroy Brazilian democracy, which was becoming
too independent. The US gave enthusiastic support to the coup, while
its military leaders instituted a neo-Nazi-style national security
state with torture, repression, etc. That inspired a rash of similar
developments in Argentina, Chile and all over the hemisphere, from
the mid-sixties to the eighties -- an extremely bloody period.
(I
think, legally speaking, there's a very solid case for impeaching
every American president since the Second World War. They've all
been either outright war criminals or involved in serious war crimes.)
Under
Reagan, support for near-genocide in Guatemala became positively
ecstatic. The most extreme of the Guatemalan Hitlers we've backed
there, Rios Montt, was lauded by Reagan as a man totally dedicated
to democracy. In the early 1980s, Washington's friends slaughtered
tens of thousands of Guatemalans, mostly Indians in the highlands,
with countless others tortured and raped. Large regions were decimated.
With its 100
million people and its 300-mile arc of islands containing the region’s
richest hoard of natural resources, Indonesia is the greatest prize
in South-East Asia.
Action was taken
on this tempting hoard of natural resources leading the WTO/US
puling strings that dumped Sukanro a popular elected president of
Indonesia, paving the way for Suharo to become the puppet ruler. On
the back cover of Pilger’s book is the following commentary
that indicates some of the results:
“John Pilger is one of the world’s renowned investigative
journalists and documentary film-makers. In this fully updated collection,
he reveals the secrets and illusions of modern imperialism. Beginning
with Indonesia, he shows how General Suharto’s bloody seizure
of power in the 1960s was part of a western design to impose a ‘global
economy’ on Asia. A million Indonesians died as the price for
being the World Bank’s “model pupil’. In a shocking
chapter on Iraq, he allows us to understand the true nature of West’s
war against the people of that country. And he dissects, piece by
piece, the propaganda of the ‘war on terror’ to expose
it’s Orwellian truth.”
For greater detail on the references go to
Ideology One In Action
War
of Ideology
By DAVID BROOKS
New
York Times
Published: July 24, 2004
When foreign policy wonks go to bed, they dream of being X. They dream
of writing the all-encompassing, epoch-defining essay, the way George
F. Kennan did during the cold war under the pseudonym X.
Careers have
been spent racing to be X. But in our own time, the 9/11 commission
has come closer than anybody else. After spending 360 pages describing
a widespread intelligence failure, the commissioners step back in
their report and redefine the nature of our predicament.
We're not in
the middle of a war on terror, they note. We're not facing an axis
of evil. Instead, we are in the midst of an ideological conflict.
We are facing,
the report notes, a loose confederation of people who believe in a
perverted stream of Islam that stretches from Ibn Taimaya to Sayyid
Qutb. Terrorism is just the means they use to win converts to their
cause.
It seems like
a small distinction - emphasizing ideology instead of terror - but
it makes all the difference, because if you don't define your problem
correctly, you can't contemplate a strategy for victory.
When you see
that our enemies are primarily an intellectual movement, not a terrorist
army, you see why they are in no hurry. With their extensive indoctrination
infrastructure of madrassas and mosques, they're still building strength,
laying the groundwork for decades of struggle. Their time horizon
can be totally different from our own.
As an ideological
movement rather than a national or military one, they can play by
different rules. There is no territory they must protect. They never
have to win a battle but can instead profit in the realm of public
opinion from the glorious martyrdom entailed in their defeats. We
think the struggle is fought on the ground, but they know the struggle
is really fought on satellite TV, and they are far more sophisticated
than we are in using it.
The 9/11 commission
report argues that we have to fight this war on two fronts. We have
to use intelligence, military, financial and diplomatic capacities
to fight Al Qaeda. That's where most of the media attention is focused.
But the bigger fight is with a hostile belief system that can't be
reasoned with but can only be "destroyed or utterly isolated."
The commissioners
don't say it, but the implication is clear. We've had an investigation
into our intelligence failures; we now need a commission to analyze
our intellectual failures. Simply put, the unapologetic defenders
of America often lack the expertise they need. And scholars who really
know the Islamic world are often blind to its pathologies. They are
so obsessed with the sins of the West, they are incapable of grappling
with threats to the West.
We also need
to mount our own ideological counteroffensive. The commissioners recommend
that the U.S. should be much more critical of autocratic regimes,
even friendly ones, simply to demonstrate our principles. They suggest
we set up a fund to build secondary schools across Muslim states,
and admit many more students into our own. If you are a philanthropist,
here is how you can contribute: We need to set up the sort of intellectual
mobilization we had during the cold war, with modern equivalents of
the Congress for Cultural Freedom, to give an international platform
to modernist Muslims and to introduce them to Western intellectuals.
Most of all,
we need to see that the landscape of reality is altered. In the past,
we've fought ideological movements that took control of states. Our
foreign policy apparatus is geared toward relations with states: negotiating
with states, confronting states. Now we are faced with a belief system
that is inimical to the state system, and aims at theological rule
and the restoration of the caliphate. We'll need a new set of institutions
to grapple with this reality, and a new training method to understand
people who are uninterested in national self-interest, traditionally
defined.
Last week I met
with a leading military officer stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq,
whose observations dovetailed remarkably with the 9/11 commissioners.
He said the experience of the last few years is misleading; only 10
percent of our efforts from now on will be military. The rest will
be ideological. He observed that we are in the fight against Islamic
extremism now where we were in the fight against communism in 1880.
We've got a long
struggle ahead, but at least we're beginning to understand it.
E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com
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