Surviving Capitalism (Not) : ISIS 101 - What's really terrifying about this threat

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

ISIS 101 - What's really terrifying about this threat

Click here to access article by John Chuckman from Uncommon Thought Journal.

To save you time, the answer to the question implied in the title is this which he discloses in the concluding paragraph:

The truly terrifying aspect of ISIS and other forces fighting with it in Syria is that the United States and Israel have approved and supported such wanton destruction in so beautiful and formerly-peaceful a place as Syria. Millions of lives destroyed and countless historic places damaged as though they were all nothing more than a few pieces moved on a geopolitical chessboard. I think it fair to describe that as the work of psychopaths.

Of course, what is really valuable in this piece is Chuckman's devastating attack on the Empire's story broadcast 24/7 from their corporate media about ISIS. (Although I am very critical of the lack of links to documentation.) Only a complete idiot or a person who goes about their daily lives passively consuming information from corporate media and concerned only about their lives and that of their family and friends would believe such fairy tales. But it is the creation of the latter type of citizen that is the secret of the Empire's success. It is one of their key strategies in pursuing their criminal aims.

Remember a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln? "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Well, the capitalist directors of the Empire have discovered a more accurate variation of this theme. They firmly believe that it is sufficient to fool most of the people all of the time. And the evidence so far suggests that they are right.

However there are caveats to this principle: you must keep your hoi polloi reasonably well taken care of in their daily lives or else you must scare the hell out of them with messages about terrorists, criminals, and perverts lurking everywhere to harm them so that they will look to the directors' authorities for protection and guidance. They obviously have chosen the latter option. Equipped with their corporate media megaphones, the directors don't concern themselves with the work of independent journalists, analysts, and bloggers who expose their fairy tales in the micro-media of alternative websites. That way they also enjoy the added bonus of proclaiming that they permit free speech.