[lbo-talk] Iran? / Ancient Future

Joseph Wanzala jwanzala at hotmail.com
Sun May 1 19:03:15 PDT 2005


http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO505A.html Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran, by Michel Chossudovsky. Excellent analysis of events in the last few months which point towards an attack any time after June 1, including "exercises", travels by critical personnel, US sale of "bunker busters" to Israel,...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Apr05/Bageant0429.htm Back to the Ancient Future, by Joe Bageant. Our future may be a return to the hunter-gatherer civilization symbolized by the Olduvai Gorge archeological site in Africa. Some of this is i think a bit deranged, but this passage is right-on

---------------- Well hell then. What does keep the American people from looking around them and seeing the obvious? That the earth is a finite thing being used up at exponential rates? Answer: The Spectacle. American capitalism¹s ³media hologram.² We no longer have a country, but the artificial spectacle of one. We have a global corporation masquerading electronically, digitally, financially, and legally and every other way as a nation called the ³United States of America.² The corporation now animates most of us from within through management of the need hierarchy of goods and information. We no longer have citizens. We have consumers, ³purchase decision makers² whose most influential act in life consists of choosing a mortgage banker and an NFL team. And a car. The majority of modernized technical humans, Digitus Cathodus Americanus, cannot perceive the hologram because their self-identities were generated by it. It¹s ³reality² to them -- the only one they will know until the hologram collapses with their electrical industrial civilization.

By design or not, the hologram¹s primary effect has been to induce the illusion of a national ³value system² through hypnotic repetition of images. Thus profit-seeking enterprises are legitimized as the animating spirit of our identities as individuals and as a nation. The end result of course is the mass replication of millions of uniform ³market segmented consumer identities.² Individuality is circumscribed by brand identification. The overall aggregate of brand identification groups is interpreted to be an inherently superior race or nation (worth fighting for to expand the resource base and markets.) We no longer have lives, just lifestyles that are defined and expressed through ever expanding (and more profitable) consumption.

Net result: The legions of humanity toil to generate the trucks and tofu, munitions, missiles, newspapers, petrochemicals and pizza and millions of tons of ground up cattle sold to fire the furnace of an economic engine that has taken on a life of its own. One that must grow exponentially, devouring everything just to survive. Just to keep from collapsing. And people are taught that it is called ³human progress.²

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