PWP: Ponderings worth Pondering

Technology, Rhetoric, Capital Extremes

Excerpts with minor edits from Curtin, Rushkoff, Greenwald

E

dward Curtin is a writer, frequent contributor to Global Research-Ca; a professor of sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

 Screened in Bubble of Noise

“Language has become debased beyond recognition” in the New York Times, Harvard, New Yorker, Martha’s Vineyard, Washington Post, Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, boardrooms of the ruling corporations, all corporate media, etc., world.

“In this [Orwellian] ‘Party’ world, the demonization, degradation, and killing of others is an abstraction; their lives are spectral” [shadowy, ghostlike]. 

Language its origin “the tongue,” “the tongue a bell tolling out its meaning”; springing from the body “is body language.”But “when language becomes abstract and devoid of blood, it becomes etiolated [bleached, altered in natural development, deprived of natural vigor] and unable to convey the truth that is the mystical body of the world. It becomes a viper’s tongue, dividing the ‘good’ people from the ‘bad’ so the good can eliminate the bad who have become abstractions.” 

“T

he United States is a pornographic society.… a commodified consciousness, where everyone and everything is part of a prostitution ring in the deepest sense of pornography’s meaning—for sale, bought”; and “consumed by getting, spending, and selling.  …

“People [have] become consumers of the unreal; direct experience is discouraged.  The natural world becomes an object to be conquered and used.  …Streaming life from Netflix or Facebook becomes life the movie.”

The mediated reality of screen society “distances people from fundamental reality. It promotes that reality through its screen fantasies.”

Almost dejectedly, Curtin asks,

Can we escape the forces of propaganda and mind control that run so very deep into American life? [Curtin]

D

ouglas Rushkoff  is a writer, documentarian, and lecturer whose work focuses on human autonomy in a digital age.

Extractors, Exploiters sans Ethics

The most devastating impact of “pedal-to-the-metal digital capitalism” falls “on the environment and global poor.

“The manufacture of some … computers and Smartphone[s] still uses networks of slave labor.…

[T]he mining of rare earth metals and disposal of … highly digital technologies destroys human habitats, replacing them with toxic waste dumps, which are then picked over by peasant children and their families, who sell usable materials back to the manufacturers.”

While the eyes may be covered “with VR goggles” and many may have immersed themselves “in an alternate reality,” the “‘out of sight, out of mind’ externalization of poverty and poison does not away.”

Check Extremes

“There’s nothing wrong with madly optimistic appraisals of how technology might benefit human society but the current drive for a post-human utopia”— “a quest to transcend all that is human: the body, interdependence, compassion, vulnerability, and complexity—is something else.” And “the longer we ignore the social, economic, and environmental repercussions, the more of a problem they become …,” resulting in

…even more withdrawal, more isolationism and apocalyptic fantasy — and more desperately concocted technologies and business plans. The cycle feeds itself.

“…We can become the individual consumers and profiles that our devices and platforms want us to be, or we can remember that the truly evolved human doesn’t go it alone.

Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together. [Rushkoff]

G

lenn Greenwald is an author, journalist, constitutional lawyer, and co-founding editor of “The Intercept” responding to hysteria and nay-saying surrounding the Russian-US Helsinki Summit

  

By all means Meet and Talk 

We deal with regimes all the time that are incredibly repressive. The United States government is often repressive.

We destroyed Iraq.

We set up a worldwide torture regime.

We still have a prison in Guantánamo where people have been imprisoned for 17 years on an island with no trial.

We have to deal with other countries that violate human rights.

Our own government engages in human rights abuses.

And the notion that “dialogue with other countries” legitimizes abuse of human rights “is the kind of rhetoric that the right used for seven decades to delegitimize attempts to reach peaceful negotiations with the Soviet Union.”

It goes without saying that the US must “fortify” its “computer systems” and institute “cyberdefenses.” But Americans must stop looking at the world through the prism of the US presidential election of 2016; and

look at it through The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock, now at two minutes before midnight, the worst rating since 1953 for the threat to humanity, largely because of the threat of nuclear weapons, along with climate change, that is in the hands of these two countries.

Let us “move away from the rhetoric that says it is treasonous or dangerous for us to meet and talk and have dialogue.” Let us “hope for more and more and more dialogue between Russia and the United States.”

Beyond hysterics

“We need to start asking questions” about whether institutions long held sacred (e.g., the WTO, EU, IMF, NATO) “are actually ones that are serving” the interests of countries, the US included.

“… Until we figure out how to solve the root causes that have given rise to ‘Trumpism’ and to [other] extremism …”; and confront the reality “that these institutions (e.g., the WTO, EU, IMF, NATO) are destroying the economic future of tens of millions and hundreds of millions of people in order to benefit the rich— we’re going to have more Trumps ….”

This is the “issue that is most being ignored” in all the hysterical post-Helsinki “rhetoric.” [Greenwald]

Ponderings worth Pondering!

Sources

Global Research. “The Prophecy of Orwell’s 1984. Totalitarian Control and the Entertainment Culture that Takes Over -The Sexual Passion of Orwell's Winston Smith” Edward Curtin July 20, 2018

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prophecy-of-orwells-1984-totalitarian-control-and-the-entertainment-culture-that-takes-over/5647955

Medium. “Survival of the Richest: The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind” Douglas Rushkoff, July 5, 2018 https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1

Democracy Now! “Debate: Is Trump-Putin Summit a ‘Danger to America’ or Crucial Diplomacy between Nuclear Powers?” Glenn Greenwald July 16, 2018, https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/16/debate_is_trump_putin_summit_a_danger

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Appearance of ROK DPRK Peace amidst Hostilities calls for End-of-War Declaration

“Ceasefire can never mean the termination of war and it cannot guarantee peace. 

“This is a serious lesson taught by history.  

“The ceasefire that has lasted unprecedentedly long in history is like a time bomb set, threatening peace and security in the Korean peninsula, region and the rest of the world.” [Korean Central News Agency]

Koreas 1950 – 2018

1950

August 12, 1950 the Air Force of the United States “dropped 625 tons of bombs on North Korea” and in two weeks “the daily tonnage had increased to some 800 tons.”

The Korean split was a US/USSR Cold War scheme. In an escalating conflict between the two Koreas, instead of assisting by mediating the conflict, the Soviet Union and China backed the North and the United States backed the South, providing some 90% of the military personnel. Technically, the UN forces of 21 nations backed the ROK.

Armistice and North South fight for unification 1951 – 1958 –

The president of the Republic of Korea (ROK, South Korea), Syngman Rhee opposed peace talks and supported an “independent and unified country,” a position opposed by the United Nations Command but later accepted by the National Assembly of South Korea.

1953

The Korean Armistice Agreement though designed to end hostilities was not an end to war. The document signed on July 27, 1953, by U.S. Army Lieutenant General William Harrison, Jr. representing the United Nations Command (UNC), North Korean General Nam Il representing the Korean People’s Army (KPA), and the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) was reportedly designed to

“…ensure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea”—“until a final peaceful settlement is achieved.”

1958 US Unilateral Breach

Though the Armistice Agreement had mandated that “neither side introduce new weapons into Korea, other than piece-for-piece replacement of equipment,” the United States, unilaterally, and despite concerns of UN allies, violated the Armistice Agreement by, provocatively, deploying atomic bombs.

In January 1958, the United States deployed “nuclear armed Honest John missiles and 280mm atomic cannons to South Korea”; and later that same year deployed “atomic demolition munitions and nuclear armed Matador cruise missiles with the range to reach China and the Soviet Union.”

1998 - 2008 Attempt at Rapprochement Obstructed

South Korean President Kim Dae-jung proposed the “Sunshine Policy” aimed at softening “North Korea’s attitude toward South Korea.” Under the policy, “North-South cooperative business developments began” and South Korean citizens traveled between the two countries until 2008.

The first conference in the post-Korean War period came in 2000. South Korea’s Kim Dae-jung and North Korea’s Kim Jong-il met at a summit meeting and in mid June of that year completed a five-point agreement:

to settle the problem of independent reunification,

to promote peaceful reunification,

to solve humanitarian problems such as the issue of separated families,

to encourage cooperation and exchange in their economy, and

to have a dialogue between the North and South.

However, the new administration in Washington discouraged rapprochement and insulted the Koreans smearing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as part of an “axis of evil.” North Korea responded by renouncing the nonproliferation treaty, kicking out UN inspectors, and restarting its nuclear program. Causing further cooling in North-South relations was a short naval skirmish in 2002 over disputed fishing territory that left six South Korean naval soldiers dead.  

Nevertheless progress  

2000 North-South Joint Declaration signed by the Republic of Korea President Kim Dae-jung and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Chairman, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il declared

The South and the North have agreed to resolve the question of reunification independently and through the joint efforts of the Korean people, who are the masters of the country.

For the achievement of reunification, we have agreed that there is a common element in the South’s concept of a confederation and the North’s formula for a loose form of federation. The South and the North agreed to promote reunification in that direction.

The South and the North have agreed to promptly resolve humanitarian issues such as exchange visits by separated family members and relatives on the occasion of the August 15 National Liberation Day and the question of unswerving Communists serving prison sentences in the South.

The South and the North have agreed to consolidate mutual trust by promoting balanced development of the national economy through economic cooperation and by stimulating cooperation and exchanges in civic, cultural, sports, health, environmental and all other fields.

The South and the North have agreed to hold a dialogue between relevant authorities in the near future to implement the above agreements expeditiously.”

2005 Truth and Reconciliation

Established December 1, 2005, the South Korean Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, a governmental body, “investigated numerous atrocities committed by various government agencies during Japan’s occupation of Korea, the Korean War, and the authoritarian governments that ruled afterwards”; and estimated “that tens of thousands of people were executed in the summer of 1950”

Among the victims discovered were “political prisoners, civilians killed by US forces, and civilians who had allegedly collaborated with communist North Korea or local communist groups.

Sanctions Warfare, Blowback

More than 50 years after the U.S. breach of the Korean Armistice, repeated war games provocations, and the imposition of “a new wave” sanctions aggression, the North Korean president declared the 1953 Armistice “invalid”; and on March 13, 2013, affirmed that North Korea had “ended the 1953 Armistice,” declaring the DPRK unrestrained “‘by the North-South declaration on non-aggression.’”

At the end of March that year

North Korea stated that it entered a ‘state of war’ with South Korea and declared that ‘The long-standing situation of the Korean peninsula being neither at peace nor at war is finally over.’”

2016 Proposal to End War

North Korea reportedly approached the United States about conducting formal peace talks to formally end the war.

North Korean and United States “agreed to secret peace talks” but “rejected” the terms of a peace treaty that would include “nuclear disarmament.”

2018 North-South talks

North Korea and South Korea on reportedly agreed on April 27 “to talks to end the ongoing 65-year conflict” and committed to completing “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

Because of the continued Republic of Korea (ROK)-United States military drills, the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (PDRK) on May 15, 2018, cancelled a high-level meeting.”

This week’s News Reporting

“South Koreans are now increasingly calling for adopting a declaration on the end of war in this year that marks the 65th anniversary of the Korean armistice. The People for Achieving Peace and Unification, the headquarters of the movement for conclusion of peace agreement and other civil society organizations of all social strata held demonstrations, rallies and press conferences to urge the US to work for the adoption of the declaration, saying the US demands the unilateral denuclearization of north Korea and it should also fulfill its responsibility to establish a permanent peace mechanism.…” 

Republic of Korea “Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha also has spoken to “the need to hold a north-south meeting—or a tripartite meeting involving the United States—in order to declare the end of war this year.”

Sources

Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)

“Declaration of Termination of War Is First Process for Peace: KCNA Commentary” July 25, 2018 | Source: DPRK Today (English) | https://kcnawatch.co/newstream/1532509238-983185363/declaration-of-termination-of-war-is-first-process-for-peace-kcna-commentary/

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_15th_North%E2%80%93South_Joint_Declaration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission_(South_Korea)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Policy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_15th_North%E2%80%93South_Joint_Declaration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Armistice_Agreement

Korean Central News Agency

“South Koreans demand declaration of war termination” by Song Jong Ho PT July 24, 2018 https://kcnawatch.co/newstream/1532426452-357035003/south-koreans-demand-declaration-of-war-termination/

Foreign Minister of South Korea Kang Kyung-wha is the first woman nominated for and appointed to the position. Kyung-wha is also “the first Korean woman to hold a high-level position in the United Nations.” She “joined the South Korean delegation for the third Inter-Korean Summit in Panmunjom becoming the first foreign minister to participate in such summit.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_Kyung-wha

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Prime Export: Exceptionalism, Exclusionary “Democracy”

Dr. Saied Reza Ameli’s Democracy in Question; American Exceptionalism, Eurocentrism and Otherisation of Muslim inspired by Supreme Leader’s message to European and American Youth

C

ontent of Islamic Revolution Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s two letters one to the young; the other a condolence … particularly Parisians who had suffered terrorist attacks by ‘ISIL’ (or ‘Daesh’) in November of 2015

Highlighting Europe and the United States’ domination-seeking, hegemonic approaches toward others, particularly Muslims, and

Attempting to connect and redefine the  intellectual  aspects  of  the  struggle to  build  relationships  with  the West and with the rest of the world  in  an attempt to prevent more war  and the humiliation and oppression attendant to hostile military actions.

A

meli’s final chapter of American Exceptionalism, Eurocentrism and Otherisation of Muslims, one reviewer observed as setting out “different intercultural relations and policies regarding social minorities to help correct current intercultural relations in the Islamic and Western world.”

The reviewer called the work “a major scholarly contribution;

a tour de force

a must read for those interested in building a new and better world; a  refreshed  humanity and a fairer civilization beyond the present destructive exploitation and domination of Western interests and polities.” 

O

n July 26, 2018, PressTV’s “New Chapter” spoke with Dr. Saied Reza Ameli noting in the program promo that his book American Exceptionalism, Eurocentrism and Otherisation of Muslims

examines the major myths that have distorted views amongst non-Muslims of the practices and beliefs of the faithful”; and

brings forward suggestions on how followers of different divine religions can peacefully cohabit our planet.”

Saied Reza Ameli a biographical note 

 

Founder of the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran, Dr. Saied Reza Ameli is professor of communications and vice president of Planning and Information technologies at the University of Tehran.

P

rofessor Ameli is a prolific researcher and writer whose works in English include 

The British Media and Muslim Representation: The Ideology of Demonisation (2007); Reflections on Palestine, Universality of Liberation Theology: one is Equal to all are Equal to One (2009); A Critical Approach to The United States’ Virtual Colonialism: Internet Domination Policy, Tehran, Islamic World Peace Forum and Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran (2011); Getting the Message: The Recurrence of Hate Crimes in the UK, London (2011); Bibliographical Discourse Analysis The Western Academic Perspective on Islam, Muslims and Islamic Countries (1949-2009), 4 volume of books, London, IHRC (Islamic Human Rights Commission) (2012); France and the hated society: Muslim Experiences, Saied R. Ameli, Arzu Merali, Ehsan shahghasemi, IHRC (Islamic Human Rights Commission) (2012); Once Upon a Hatred: Anti- Muslim Experiences in the USA, Saied Reza Ameli, Ebrahim Mohseni Ahooei, and Arzu Merali, London, IHRC(Islamic Human Rights Commission) (2013)

He took baccalaureate and graduate credentials at the University of Tehran (BA social sciences); University College of Dublin (MA sociology of communications); Royal Holloway University of London (PhD sociology of communications).

P

rofessor Ameli’s “Democracy in question – the persecution of the believers and the imprisonment of faith”

Democracy from the Greek demos and kratos

In another place, Professor Ameli presents critical insight into “democracy” and particularly the Western subterfuge or selective rendering of “democracy” and the consequences of a false agenda

Why the Western agenda of world democratization, he asks, when the West itself was not democratized in the sense of voting rights until well after the mid 20th century (if even now).

“Only at the turn of the 20th century did [Western societies] begin to open the discussion on democracy.” Approaching World War I, only “Finland, Norway, Australia and New Zealand” allowed women the right to vote. Swiss women “did not get the vote until 1974.” Democratic changes or substantive attention began occurring in earnest in the 1970s and 1980s.   

But the meaning of democracy is obscure, selective, or its importance feigned.

False “Betterment of Society” mantra

The “commonly held perception that democratization is providing a better position for society, which [Western] powers want to share from their goodness [emphasis added] with the aim of initiating the betterment of human society globally” is an intentionally false claim.  

“We cannot observe this utilitarianism or international philanthropy anywhere in the world,” Dr. Ameli explains.

I

s the motive and objective “democracy,” or something else?

Six hundred million Muslims live democratic countries, he observes; yet Western powers “blame and accuse” them “for not practicing democracy.” Despite political reality, Muslims “are condemned as undemocratic.”

Though he is not a critic of democracy per se, he says “we need to ascertain what is behind this concept of democracy and what consequences [effects] its hidden implications have on the type of democracy that they [Western powers] want to impose upon us.”

A

merican style exported democracy or democracy by force he sees as “an ideology” as is Americanism. As manifest in Western thought and practice, “there is no acceptance of the rest of the world”; instead

the rest of the world is deemed meaningless and what is of importance is “American interests alone.

This is part of American exclusivism, which entails rejection of those who are not in the camp of America.”

Modernity in, tradition out; Old out, New in

Americans “have contempt for the past, tradition, and anything old (including old people),” Ameli writes. 

Thus “Islam, its civilization, and its institutions are condemned and rejected on the pretext that any order based on a Divine law revealed fourteen hundred years ago could not possibly be valid and relevant to modern life.”

Saied Reza Ameli summarizes the Western project as “the hidden face of democracy.” There is in the view of many, he says, “a hidden ideology behind American democracy, concealed in a feigned [manufactured, artificial] image.”

T

hose who would be wise or even credible on the world stage would do well to hear, to listen, respectfully; to study well (and study war no more); to see the world and themselves honestly and more clearly; to humbly correct a wrong course.

 

Sources

Saied Reza Ameli is professor of Communications and North American Studies, Dean of Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran. His writings cover various aspects of Islam, Muslim studies, globalization, global media, the Internet, intercultural and strategic studies.

New Chapter program on PressTV

American Exceptionalism, Eurocentrism and Otherisation of Muslims July 26, 2018 https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/07/26/569313/American-Exceptionalism-Eurocentrism-and-Otherisation-of-Muslims-

Saied Reza Ameli, University of Tehran American Exceptionalism, Eurocentrism and Otherisation of Muslim. November 2017 Amirkabir publisher

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322526160_American_Exceptionalism_Eurocentrism_and_Otherisation_of_Muslim%27

Saied Reza Ameli. Crescent. Democracy in Question: the persecution of the believers and the imprisonment of faith. Jumada' al-Ula' 01, 1424 https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articles/democracy-in-question-the-persecution-of-the-believers-and-the-imprisonment-of-faith

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saied_Reza_Ameli

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