[PEN-L:9873] Imperialist Social Systems Engineering: Some Research Notes
Attached at some of my notes on Imperialist Social Systems Engineering and th social "sciences". These are taken from "Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War" edited by Christopher Simpson, The New Press, NY, 1998 and from his Inttroduction ( a nice overview for the unitiated) entitled Universities, Empire and the Production of Knowledge: An Introduction." by Christopher Simpson Jim C James Craven Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5/ *My Employer Has No Association With My Private/Protected Opinion* SSEsimp.doc SSEsimp.doc
[PEN-L:9870] Culpability and Praise
I am deeply suspicious of "Single Person" or "Great Leader" or "Great Despot" theories of culpability or praise for whole historical processes or even particular events. Since I first started serious examinations of historical events, when I was around 13 years old, I have believed that if any one force could be described as a "motive force" of history, or even of particular events, it would be "class struggle" as defined and carried out under concrete conditions. I was once at a rally and met a creature who told me "I am a communist." I asked him why, and he said because "communists know how to take care of Jews and I hate Jews." I recoiled, wanting to punch the piece of anti-Semitic shit out, but instead I talked with him further. It turned out he was mentally derranged and had no idea that, given his anti-Semitic hate and fantasies, which he laid at the door of his family having been impoverished after his father was 'fired by a Jew', those he had the most in common with, fascists, would probably kill him for even saying he was a "communist" and further were saying that communism was a "Jewish Conspiracy." All of this is a bit roundabout way of saying that all movements, and the policies and actions carried out by them, are made up of real people who join the movements and originate/implement their policies and actions for various, often contradictory, often self-serving, often hidden reasons. We then are stuck with anyalyzing policies not simply in terms of who carried them out, their openly stated versus hidden motives, how and against/for whom they were carried out and with what predicted/unpredicted consequences, but also under what concrete conditions, under what constraints, given what precedents, given what perceived or actual survival imperatives, given what information and certainties/uncertainties, arrayed against what forces and force capabilities/intentions etc... I have no doubt that in the Cultural Revolution in China all sorts of opportunists and individuals with hidden agenda (perhaps seeking revenge on someone who married another that the one seeking revenge had his eye on or revenge for a family dispute etc...) participated in crimes cloaking them under the banners of communism or "smashing bourgois weeds". Any such mass campaings will draw some creatures seeking to use campaigns and "sacred causes" for some nefarious puproses. But I do believe that the Cultural Revolution was made necessary, and probably did not go far enough and long enough in some terms, by the extent, capabilities and intentions of imperialist encirclement and the social systems engineering/outright warfare intentions of destroying emerging socialism in China. For any crimes and "excesses", I lay the blame on the imperialists and their repeated encirclement machinations and intentions; I do not lay the blame--or credit--for the whole Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Long March or whatever--and any crimes, mistakes or "excesses" during or flowing from them--at the feet of one person, Chairman Mao Zedong. I feel the same when I hear all the successes or failures of the Vietnamese Revolution placed on the shoulders of Ho Chi Minh or of other successful and unsuccessful revolutions laid at the feet of any one person or even small groups of persons--Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Enver Hoxha... I am furthered tempered and humbled when expressing my own opinions, by some small appreciation of the myriad and horrible sacrifices made by revolutionaries; by an appreciation of my own relative comfort and safety relative to that faced by those revolutionaries; by an appreciation of the fact that social systems engineering and imperialist machinations are specifically designed to produce destabilization and chaos and all of the self-impeaching crimes and excesses that invariably accompany societies under siege; by an appreciation of the undercertainties and lack of precedents faced by those revolutionaries under various conditions; by some appreciation of the ugly natures/capabilities of those forces against which revolutionaries were arrayed and further by some appreciation of possible horrible consequences of failure to deal effectively with the forces of reaction; by an apppreciation of the fact that no one person or even a group of persons can be aware of and effectively control all the condtions and individuals in a battle or whole movement; by some appreciation of the fact that much of the information available to me--even from "revolutionary sources" --is highly filtered and shaped by a variety of sources for a variety of motives; and by some appreciation of my own failures to match words and deeds, my own personal failings, and my own reactions/instincts toward "payback" or very serious struggle in very serious ways against reactionaries from whom I or my family or others have suffered. So when I see all this stuff, with excruciating--but "cherry-picked"--data, opinion, sources etc about what Stalin or Mao
[PEN-L:9867] Re: Weapons Tribe update
Lisa Ian Murray wrote: The biggest buyer of arms last year was Saudi Arabia, with $2.7 billion in new sales. The United Arab Emirates ranked second at $2.5 billion. Malaysia ranked third, with $2.1 billion. Gotta love that Congressional Reserach Service. Looks like they completely forgot to add up the figures for sales to Taiwan (and other countries too, judging from the looks of it). The Stockholm International Peace Research Insitute estimates Taiwan purchased 4.65 billion US$ worth of arms (and that's in 1990 dollars, couldn't find a figure for contemporary moola), dwarfing Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and any other country you can think of. For more info, check out www.sipri.se Jonathan Lassen
[PEN-L:9872] updating Sun Tzu
Contains a quick note on financial warfare; reminds one of Yuan-Li Wu's 'Economic Warfare' China Ponders New Rules of 'Unrestricted War' By John Pomfret Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, August 8, 1999; Page A1 BEIJING In 1996, colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui were in Fujian province for military exercises aimed at threatening the island of Taiwan. As Chinese M9 intermediate-range missiles splashed into waters off two main southern Taiwanese ports, the United States dispatched two aircraft carrier battle groups to the region. Like most Chinese officers, the colonels were furious at the U.S. move, seeing it as another sign of American interference in China's internal affairs. But to Qiao and Wang, the first crisis in the Taiwan Strait was also a lesson. "We realized that if China's military was to face off against the United States, we would not be sufficient," said Wang, an air force colonel in the Guangzhou military district's political department. "So we realized that China needs a new strategy to right the balance of power." Their response was to write a book called "Unrestricted War," which has become one of the hottest of a new series of military publications that haunt China's strategic planners, as well as many average citizens, with these questions: How does a relatively weak country like China stand up to a powerful nation like the United States? How should China's military modernization program be modified to ensure that China gets the biggest bang for the yuan? And how can China, which dreams of reuniting with Taiwan, ensure that the United States, which is legally bound to protect the island, thinks twice about getting militarily involved in any showdown across the Taiwan Strait? Among their sometimes creative and sometimes shocking proposals for dealing with a powerful adversary are terrorism, drug trafficking, environmental degradation and computer virus propagation. The authors include a flow chart of 24 different types of war and argue that the more complicated the combination for example, terrorism plus a media war plus a financial war the better the results. From that perspective, "Unrestricted War" marries the Chinese classic, "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, with modern military technology and economic globalization. "Unrestricted War is a war that surpasses all boundaries and restrictions," they write at one point. "It takes nonmilitary forms and military forms and creates a war on many fronts. It is the war of the future." The book is an important expression of China's feelings of powerlessness when confronted by U.S. might. By discussing terrorism and other controversial methods of waging war, the pair illustrates China's deep discomfort with a global system in which the United States seems to dictate all the rules even the rules of war. "We are a weak country," Wang said, "so do we need to fight according to your rules? No." "War has rules, but those rules are set by the West," continued the 45-year-old son of a military officer. "But if you use those rules, then weak countries have no chance. But if you use nontraditional means to fight, like those employed by financiers to bring down financial systems, then you have a chance." It is extremely rare for Chinese military officers to speak with a Western reporter. The pair agreed to do that after they were encountered accidentally during a visit to a Beijing office complex. One of their reasons for agreeing seemed to be an attempt to counter reports in the Chinese press that they were emphasizing terrorism as a way to do battle without consideration of the full range of methods they describe. Another reason they agreed to speak may be that there is a heated but hidden debate among China's strategic planners on how China's military should modernize. Some advocate a wholesale adoption of Western styles of warfare; others, such as Qiao and Wang, feel that China needs a new approach. "Take theater missile defense, for example," said Qiao, referring to the U.S. program to create an antimissile defense system in Asia. "It's obviously part of a U.S. plan to pull China into an expensive trap. We don't want China to fall into that trap because all Chinese military officers know that we don't possess the resources to compete in an arms race." Qiao and Wang's book is an important indication of the concern felt by the People's Liberation Army about its country's power, its strategic place in the world and especially its ability to counter overwhelming U.S. force. These concerns have become all the more urgent following the war against Yugoslavia and the May 7 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by NATO warplanes two events that prompted nationwide hand-wringing at China's weakness. They received a further boost during the latest crisis with Taiwan, which began July 9 when President Lee Teng-hui announced he wanted China to treat Taiwan's government as an equal. Last week the United States announced a
[PEN-L:9871] Mergers and Acquisitions in the Disinformation sector
August 8, 1999 Govt Unit To Control Flow of US News Filed at 12:17 p.m. EDT By The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Clinton administration, dismayed by the success of anti-American propaganda worldwide, is striking back with an information offensive of its own: a State Department unit that will control the flow of government news overseas, especially during crises. The new International Public Information group, or IPI, will coordinate the dissemination of news from the State Department, Pentagon and other U.S. agencies. ``What this is intended to do is organize the instruments of the federal government to be able to support the public diplomacy, military engagements and economic initiatives that we have overseas,'' said David Leavy, spokesman for the White House's National Security Council. In the recent Kosovo war, the Pentagon, State Department and White House poured out information each day but no single agency tried to assemble it so that the United States spoke with a coordinated message overseas. The group came about partly in response to the spread of unflattering or erroneous information about the United States received abroad via electronic mail, the Internet, cellular telephones and other communications advances. In many respects, the new information group is a smaller, less structured successor to the independent U.S. Information Agency, which the State Department will absorb in October. A new office of undersecretary of state for public diplomacy will run the IPI. The current USIA director, Evelyn Lieberman, has been nominated for the job. President Clinton signed a directive April 30, in the thick of the Kosovo war, that set out plans for IPI, although the White House did not formally announce the group's existence or role. An unclassified mission statement obtained by The Associated Press described IPI's role: ``Effective use of our nation's highly developed communications and information capabilities to address misinformation and incitement, mitigate inter-ethnic conflict, promote independent media organizations and the free flow of information, and support democratic participation will advance our interests and is a critical foreign policy objective,'' the document said. Joan Mower, director of Latin American and African programs for the Freedom Forum, said she worries the coordinated effort may filter information that should be broadly available to foreign reporters. ``My feeling is that the more information is out there, the better,'' she said. The IPI will hold its first formal meeting this fall, said a government official involved in the process. Clinton's directive orders officials at the Pentagon, FBI, CIA and the departments of State, Commerce and Treasury to organize the group. Regular members will be senior diplomats and others in foreign policy or national security jobs in Washington, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The rationale for IPI dates at least to the confusion and bad press surrounding U.S. intervention in Haiti in 1994-1995, but Kosovo is the best recent example of how the United States needs to fight a propaganda war in concert with military strikes, officials said. ``President (Slobodan) Milosevic has an extensive propaganda machine,'' Leavy said. ``We've worked very hard to try to counteract that propaganda machine, and make sure the people in Serbia and in Kosovo have access to their own news -- that they can make their own independent judgments.'' Anti-American sentiment ran high during the 78-day air war, even among Yugoslavs who did not support the Yugoslav president. Many Europeans also were leery of the airstrikes, seen as a U.S. enterprise, and reluctant to level hefty military power against a modern European capital. The air war that ended in June also produced one of the worst diplomatic and public relations disasters in recent memory when a U.S. plane mistakenly bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade on May 7, killing three Chinese journalists. Outraged mobs rushed the American Embassy in Beijing, trapping then-Ambassador James Sasser inside for a time. It was days before the United States could get its official apology before the Chinese people at large, and the U.S. explanation was greeted with disdain by both the Chinese government and the rock-throwing street mobs. The Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the People's Daily, called the war and the embassy bombing ``a great step in the United States' strategy to dominate the world.''
[PEN-L:9869] FW: Cdn native rights lawyer seeks asylum in Norway
-Original Message- From: John Shafer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, August 07, 1999 12:58 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Cdn native rights lawyer seeks asylum in Norway letter from Dr.Bruce Clark to his publisher McGill Queen's. More information is at http://kafka.uvic.ca/~vipirg/SISIS/Clark/main.html emails for Clark can be sent c/o [EMAIL PROTECTED] July 27, 1999 Dear * I hoped I had anticipated and answered your questions in the two "To whom it may concern" letters I dispatched to you earlier. But those letters must have talked around rather than directly to the topic, for you have responded to them by asking the series: "what are you afraid of if you return to Canada? what is it like to be in this situation? how does it feel? what does it mean to you and your wife? do you grieve for the country and the state of the justice system and what it is doing? are you worried?" I will try again. I am afraid, and Margaret shares my fear, that if I were to return to Canada I would be imprisoned in an insane asylum or a jail, killed, or driven mad by the Canadian legal establishment's extracting of its vengeance against me for what the book Justice in Paradise proves about the lawyers, judges and police as a class in Canadian society. The evidence presented in the book shows how that class, in virtue of its monopoly over the legal process, is able to do whatever it wants with absolute impunity precisely because that monopoly precludes any other person or institution from holding that class to account. Its control of the legal process places that class above the law; or, rather, makes its will the law. This fact and the fear that it engenders in Margaret and me undoubtedly will sound out of touch with reality, at least until one has read the book, for Justice in Paradise presents the evidence which defines a different reality: a reality that Margaret and I, also, were raised as Canadians to believe and trusted to be impossible, in our own country. Unfortunately if I now attempt, by answering your questions, in effect to summarize the book's full evidence I not only will not do the book justice but, worse, by a superficial treatment of the evidence only feed the initial skepticism with which our fellow Canadians will approach the book, and that may well serve them as an excuse for not bothering. Over a twenty-seven year period I have systematically, methodically and with consummate skill been isolated, demonized and professionally destroyed by the combined actions of the lawyers, judges and police. My "offence" has not been in saying what I say, but rather in being able to prove what I say-as an insider, as both a practicing lawyer and an accredited legal scholar. What I can prove, in the disciplined terms of those professions, is that modern society has a potentially fatal (albeit remediable) flaw at its heart, perhaps in its soul. Canada is, or at least structurally purports to be a "rule of law" society, administered as such by the legal establishment which controls the legal process. By definition a democratic rule of law society is one that exists on behalf of all her people equally to serve the cause of justice, for all, as the application under the rule of law of truth to affairs. The evidence presented by Justice in Paradise, however, is that the legal establishment in Canada does not serve truth, but, rather, its own interest. In Canada justice as the application of truth to affairs exists if, but only if, the truth does not conflict with the interest of the legal establishment. I learned this as young lawyer as part of the normal process through which all young lawyers go as the wet behind their ears dries. My professional duty publicly to identify this structural defect in the legal system-to become a whistle blower on my colleagues, a rank breaker, a turn coat in the gentlemen's club-was thrust upon me twenty-seven years ago when some Indians happened into my office seeking a legal remedy to uphold the existing law protecting their sovereignty as first human occupants, which law they claimed was with genocidal consequence being ignored. I researched the law with care, indeed even to the extent of obtaining a masters degree and doctorate upon this subject, and found that Indians were telling the truth. Worse, I discovered that the precise criminal modus operandi for the theft of their land and the resulting genocide of their people was, and still is, the legal establishment's intentional burying-without properly amending or repealing-the law. Most importantly, the law that has ended buried itself contains provisions which indict the burying as not only illegal but treasonably, fraudulently and genocidally so. For a society in which the legal establishment buries the law and commits crimes is not a rule of law society. The legal establishment labours under a profound conflict of interest, caught between its duty to uphold the law and the fact of its
[PEN-L:9868] Re: Re: Weapons Tribe update
Didn't you know that Taiwan is the 51st state--pace Henry-- and so doesn't count? Cheers, Ken Hanly Jonathan Lasse wrote: Lisa Ian Murray wrote: The biggest buyer of arms last year was Saudi Arabia, with $2.7 billion in new sales. The United Arab Emirates ranked second at $2.5 billion. Malaysia ranked third, with $2.1 billion. Gotta love that Congressional Reserach Service. Looks like they completely forgot to add up the figures for sales to Taiwan (and other countries too, judging from the looks of it). The Stockholm International Peace Research Insitute estimates Taiwan purchased 4.65 billion US$ worth of arms (and that's in 1990 dollars, couldn't find a figure for contemporary moola), dwarfing Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and any other country you can think of. For more info, check out www.sipri.se Jonathan Lassen
