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°02.02.27.we | narrative and propaganda
Yesterday I was reminded of my earlier rant on the power of narrative in propaganda. I was listening to an NPR show on America's Image Abroad which discussed the dissolution of the Office of Strategic Influence: "if this office was meant to manipulate information, is it being closed because it was exposed, or because its mission was mangled." A caller drew a parallel with the previous incident of PSYOPS personnel working as interns at CNN and NPR. Dick Gordon, the host, was unaware of that incident. That's unfortunate. However, it is frightening that no one on the show mentioned that this same very thing, a propaganda organ of disinformation being discovered and dissolved, happened under the Reagan administration:
In the 1980s, officers from the 4th Army PSYOPS group staffed the National Security Council's Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), a shadowy government propaganda agency that planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration's Central America policies.
A senior US official described OPD as a "vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory." (Miami Herald, 7/19/87) An investigation by the congressional General Accounting Office found that OPD had engaged in "prohibited, covert propaganda activities," and the office was soon shut down as a result of the Iran-Contra investigations. But the 4th PSYOPS group still operates. — Why Were Government Propaganda Experts Working On News At CNN? Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
I was aware of it because I had just read about it in the zine Imagine: A Journal of Anarchism. And then I began to think about this zine, Project Censored, and Chomsky. Chomsky often states that the reams of facts he uses are public knowledge: he quotes from the New York Times, Washington Post, and government reports. However, Americans receive his analysis with incredulity — those Americans that know of him. He uses the same facts everyone else has access to, buried back on page 12, but places them in a particular order that no one else will. He tells a story that the major media refuses to acknowledge, even if built from the factual fragments that they otherwise allude to as their badge of honor and integrity.
"Facts" are merely the building blocks of narrative; it's the power of the story that ultimately sways the mind. This is why individuals living in the same world, exposed to the same realities can have such differing views. Fact: the US has toppled democratic governments in South America. Story 1: The US a lone bastion of freedom making the world safe for democracy and prosperity. Story 2: The US is a renegade state abusing its power under hypocritical sloganeering for the benefit of its corporate masters.
As an aside, after I lauded PBS CrisC lent me The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting. In it David Barsamian skewers PBS and NPR for failing to satisfy their obligations of accurate, informative, and substantive reporting. In this small book he documents many instances of both NPR and PBS refusing to air important persons and productions because of their reliance upon Congress and now corporate underwriting. And if you want to understand what a sham corporate underwriting can be, listen to this story on the "World Business Review" from last week's On the Media.
°02.02.23.sa | that joke's not funny anymore: rape and hiv
The ever present joke, even in prime-time sitcoms, about going to jail and being Leroy's "bitch" never really appealed to me. And now I find it disgusting. It stopped being funny when I first read "Hooking Up: Protective Pairing for Punks." A pragmatic guideline that recommends approaches for the male rape victim: it's better to service a single man than to be bloodied, killed, or gang-raped and infected with HIV. When I read this I thought, "shit, this could happen to me and people I care for." This is one of the reasons I'm sometimes more afraid of the government than the street thug: if I get mugged at least that's one incident and I hand over my wallet. That's certainly more welcome than years of institutionalized rape. And, if the movies are to believed, no one in authority gives a damn; certainly not law enforcement who condone and use it as a torturous threat and cruel and unusual punishment.
Of course, what's the likelihood of a white male professional, like me, being thrown in jail? Who can say? While I don't use recreational drugs, I know many folks who have, be that back in college, present colleagues, even famous executives and academics. The capricious threat of the "Drug War" is a danger to someone you know and care about. (After all, according to our absurd President they are aiding terrorists.) And while I'm safe on that front, I can imagine being arrested during a civil action (i.e., protest). Friends and members of my family have participated in large protests, such as those at The School of the Americas, America's own "terrorist training camp". If jailed, do they deserve this end? Would Jesus, Ghandi, Mandela, or King? They all spent time in prison. I don't see sitcom jokes about female rape in prison; why is it any more funny when it's our sons and brothers? Even if it's not likely to happen to you, and you have no sons nor brothers, it doesn't make it funny. And it certainly doesn't make it right.
... Rodney Hulin, Jr. was sixteen years-old when he was caught setting a dumpster on fire, convicted of arson, and sent to an adult prison. In the first year of his sentence, he was transferred to the Clemens Unit in Bazoria County, Texas. Within a week, he was raped. Although his 5'2" and 125 pound frame made him an easy target for abuse, he was repeatedly denied help from officials. His father told Human Rights Watch about his son's experience: "For the next several months, my son was repeatedly beaten by the older inmates, forced to perform oral sex, robbed and beaten again. Each time, his requests for protection were denied by the warden...On the night of January 26, 1996 - seventy-five days after my son entered Clemens - Rodney attempted suicide. He could no longer stand living in continual terror. It was too much for him. He laid in a coma for the next four months until he died."
The organization Stop Prisoner Rape is committed to ending sexual violence against men, women and youth in all forms of detention. (You can make a donation at helping.org.)
SPR (originally "People Organized To Stop Rape Of Imprisoned Persons") was founded about 1979 by a black prisoner, Russell D. Smith, who had been raped by both prisoners and guards since childhood in reformatories. He disappeared in the early 80s and in 1984 Tom Cahill, a survivor himself, took over the organization till he could no longer tolerate the daily reminders of this government-sanctioned barbarism. In 1994, Cahill turned over SPR to Stephen Dondaldson, another survivor. Donaldson died of AIDS contracted by prisoner rape in 1996... Don Collins, another survivor, then took over the group but had to resign for ill health in 1998 when Cahill resumed leadership.
SPR is a national, donor-supported, tax-exempt, non-profit human rights organization. Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR) is a small non-profit organization dedicated to combating the rape of male and female prisoners and to helping survivors of jailhouse rape. Once a male prisoner is raped, he is stigmatized and marked as a victim for repeated sexual assault for as long as he remains locked up. Most victims are young, small, and non-violent, unable to defend themselves against ruthless exploitation. Full of rage and without the opportunity to receive psychological treatment for Rape Trauma Syndrome, these men and boys will usually return to the community far more violent and antisocial than before they were raped. Some of them will perpetuate the vicious cycle by becoming rapists themselves in a misguided attempt to "regain their manhood" in the same manner in which they believe it was "lost."
This excerpt would've concluded this entry had I not also just watched a documentary, by Jamila Paksima, on another horrible link between rape and HIV in South Africa. There's a pervasive "Myth" that recommends sex with a pure virgin as a cure to HIV. The result is that younger females are being raped, often by those they know well, including family members. This past year, a number of prominent cases of infant rape inflamed the public, but the problem persists. The government has taken some action to discourage the rapes. However, this is also the country where 20% of the citizens are HIV positive, yet President Mbeki does not believe HIV causes AIDS. State hospitals are legally forbidden from distributing life saving antiretroviral drugs that can reduce instances of HIV infection if administered within 72 hours transmission. For example:
One recent example involved the eviction of the Greater Nelspruit Rape Intervention Project — a rape crisis center that supplied the drugs to those who might have been exposed to the virus through sexual violence — from two Nelspruit public hospitals. The project began operating out of vacant offices in the two hospitals 18 months ago, supplying victims of sexual assault with counseling, antibiotics to treat STDs, emergency contraception and, in cases where HIV was suspected, anti-retroviral drugs that may cut HIV transmission rates if taken immediately after exposure. When local authorities learned that GRIP was supplying the antiretrovirals, they quickly moved to evict the group from the hospitals, saying in eviction papers filed in court, "It is at this stage not the policy of the government to supply (antiretro-virals) and it causes problems for the department to try and explain to ordinary people ... the reason why it is not supplied while (the two hospitals that house the project) do supply those medicines."
What do these two stories have in common? Rape, HIV, and the perpetuity of ignorance and desperation.
°02.02.20.we | ethics explained
I sometimes get questions about the — admittedly — arbitrary distinction I make between morals and ethics. The way I try to explain this is via a metaphor.
I believe a person is acting morally when their actions are consistent with their assumptions about life. Much personal and social conflict results from an ignorance or conflict of one's own beliefs. Plato was correct in acknowledging the importance of examining one's life. Even when people have a good sense of themselves and their priorities, they lack the rigor to implement the logical extension of those assumptions. For instance, I believe animals are exploited in the production of dairy products and that belief demands that I reduce my use of animal products to a greater extent than I have. My failure to do so is an immoral act.
Note the subjectivity in this philosophy: one can merely alter one's assumptions about life to suit one's lifestyle. If one's assumptions are acted upon consistently, I consider the person moral. However, maintaining such self-serving assumptions can be very difficult if not sociopathic, and "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Additionally, I give greater respect to people that acknowledge their faults and look for ways to improve. If one is willing to address flaws by inconveniencing one's lifestyle instead of one's assumptions, I consider the person ethical. I admit that rationality, integrity, individuality, and compassion are my own personally subjective assumptions that influence many of the principles below — they are my axioms. If you do not share them you still may be a "moral" person, but one I might not care to know.
Consider a person who is quite deluded and feels that the world will end tonight. Those folks with their soul still trapped in their bodies at that time will not be able to ascend into some heavenly existence. Consequently, he goes about chopping off heads with his Highlander sword (bought on the home shopping network for $199) so as to liberate their souls; he think's he's doing them a favor. He might even be acting rationally in so far as he is acting consistently on his beliefs of service to others. This does not mean I would not defend myself, nor attempt to stop him, nor advocate that his assumptions should be adopted by the rest of society. But, to the degree to which we project shame and guilt onto those that we consider "immoral", I'm doing no such thing. This concept is not that far from the idea of culpability, the sentencing of children and pleas of insanity — regardless of how abused these may be in our present system. I can not apply social pressure and guilt to convince him that what he is doing is wrong. I can talk to him about his assumptions but that conversation is not really facilitated by calling him immoral or evil. (If I do convince him, he might then feel horribly guilty with respect to his previously consistent actions being inconsistent with his new ones.) However, if you have a politician who makes much hay of some issue like "family values" and it turns out he's a gambling, lying, cheating SOB, I can call him immoral!
I'm also sometimes asked about what happens when my principles conflict? I do my best. We should try to be clear about our assumptions and be consistent in how we act upon them. If we have different assumptions, we can identify and discuss them. And if we can expect consistency on anothers' part there's some reason for to think that discussion might be useful. However, these principles are not a mathematical proof. Life and our behavior are the result of conflicting, embattled, fuzzy, emergent phenomena: genes and memes. One can qualify every ethical principle with, "when not unduly conflicting with the other principles of this code." The ethic/morality concept is in many ways descriptive (to explain our bio-evolutionary impulses and sociability) and prescriptive (memetic transmission). All of these principles are weighted variables affecting our behavior. The principles in my ethical code are at least not intrinsically contradictory and hang together well as a memeplex.
°02.02.19.tu | veggie do, and veggie don't
Two recommendations from The City: Caravan of
Dreams is highly recommended (thanks Ian!); House of
Vegetarian is definitely not. It's the difference between a
small menu of fantastic meals prepared by folks who love food and a menu with
hundreds of options made of the cheapest materials (i.e., empty wontons,
eggrolls of greesy cabbage only) for hapless veggie tourists in Chinatown. I
also, finally, found a MegaMagz toy
kit!
°02.02.05.tu | "i choose"
Last week Patrick Buchanan wrote about the "The sad suicide of Admiral Nimitz":
... But Chester W. Nimitz Jr., achieved another kind of fame on Jan. 2. In a suicide pact with his 89-year-old wife, the 86-year-old hero ended his life with an overdose of sleeping pills.
Having lost 30 pounds from a stomach disorder, suffering from congestive heart failure and in constant back pain, the admiral had been determined to dictate the hour of his death. His wife, who suffered from osteoporosis so severe her bones were breaking, had gone blind. She had no desire to live without her husband.
So, as the devoted couple had spent their lives together, they decided to end their lives together. The admiral's final order read: "Our decision was made over a considerable period of time and was not carried out in acute desperation. Nor is it the expression of a mental illness. We have consciously, rationally, deliberately and of our own free will taken measures to end our lives today because of the physical limitations on our quality of life placed upon us by age, failing vision, osteoporosis, back and painful orthopedic problems."
According to The New York Times obituary, "The Nimitzes did not believe in any afterlife or God, and embraced no religion. But one of Mr. Nimitz's three surviving sisters, Mary Aquinas, 70, is a Catholic nun. ... Sister Mary said that she could not condone her brother's decision to end his life, but that she felt sympathetic. 'If you cannot see any value to suffering for yourself or others,' she said, 'Then maybe it does make sense to end your life.' ...
The admiral's suicide is a moral tragedy. As a war hero who carried a great name, Chester W. Nimitz Jr. was a man whom it is natural to admire and emulate. Yet, many of those who read of how he ended his life will conclude that this is the course of dignity and honor for brave men. Many will take the final step the admiral took - not out of calculation, but depression, loneliness, despair and fear.
Unfortunately, we are headed for a world where the admiral's way will be considered not only reasonable, but commendable.
While the last sentiment is an expression of sardonic gloom for Buchanan, the careful exercise of one's individual right to govern one's own life — as opposed to Buchanan's blunt religious dogma and slippery slope of forced euthanasia — is commendable.
°02.02.01.fr | "i refuse"
Last Friday the following petition appeared as a paid ad in Ha'aretz as signed by 54 Israeli soldiers and officers. (You wouldn't know it from the American media, but there is a peace movement in Israel; however, these are not even pacifists but warriors.) The petition is hotly debated in Israel, widely discussed in international media, and one can hope it might even make an appearance in the US media:
We, reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who were raised upon the principles of Zionism, sacrifice and giving to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel, who have always served in the front lines, and who were the first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, in order to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.
We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people.
We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.
We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories, destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country.
We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF?s human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society.
We, who know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.
We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements. We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.
We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel?s defense. The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose ? and we shall take no part in them.
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