WATCH: Economic Media: For the Decolonization of Money [Jonathan Beller]

Goethe-Institut San Francisco

Published November 10, 2021

 

Neil Doloricon: “Economic Summit”

“If money is the primary medium of value transfer in 2021, why and more importantly, how is it extractive? As a set of protocols, does monetary media conform to the violent logics of race, gender, nation and class that have been detected and, of late, so vigorously critiqued in other media? In short, in what ways are existing money forms biased? Moreover, can it be said that the biases in the calculus of the financial system have articulated and indeed fused with biases in our representational and computational media? This talk understands “convergence”, the convergence of representational, computational and financial media in and as “the digital” in precisely these terms. It shows how monetary media, by inscribing code on bodies, is a force of ongoing colonization under racial capitalism, and points towards possibilities for its decolonization and communization through art, ecology, activism, protest, organizing, and crypto-economic design.” [This event was part of the festival, Revisions: Decoding Technological Bias.]

 

[Jonathan Beller is Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and co-founder of the Graduate Program in Media Studies at Pratt Institute. His books include The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle (Dartmouth UP, 2006); Acquiring Eyes: Philippine Visuality, Nationalist Struggle, and the World-Media System (Ateneo de Manila UP, 2006); The Message is Murder: Substrates of Computational Capital (Pluto Press, 2017) and The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism (Duke UP, 2021). He is a member of the Social Text editorial collective.]

WATCH: Professor Ellen Meiksins Wood: The Imperial Paradox: Ideologies of Empire [2008]

Published April 11, 2013

“This Globalisation Lecture entitled “The Imperial Paradox: Ideologies of Empire” was given by Professor Ellen Meiksins Wood, Professor Emerita of Political Science at York University (Toronto, Canada) on 29 October 2008 at SOAS, University of London.

Professor Ellen Meiksins Wood is the author of many major books on the history of political thought and the history of capitalism. Her most recent works include: Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (2008); Empire of Capital (2005); and The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (2002)” [Source]

 

 

[“Ellen Meiksins Wood was born in New York City in 1942. Her parents were Latvian Jews and active Bundists, who had left their home in dramatic circumstances in the late 1930s. After her parents’ divorce and the end of the war, she went to Germany with her mother, who, on assignment from the Jewish Labor Committee in New York, was working with displaced persons. Her earliest experiences were thus coloured by both the leftist commitments of her family and the Left’s response to the tragedies wrought by fascism and the war.”][Source: A Political Marxist: Ellen Meiksins Wood, 1942-2016]

A SYSTEM ON LIFE SUPPORT

Forgive Us Our Debts

 

[Giorgio Agamben is a philosopher and writer. His work is translated and commented all over the world. With the Homo sacer project he marked a turning point in contemporary political thought. Among his works published by Quodlibet: Italian categories. Studies in poetics and literature (2021), Where are we? The epidemic as politics (2020), Intellect of love (with Jean-Baptiste Brenet, 2020), Homo sacer. Unabridged Edition (2018), What is Philosophy? (2016), Taste (2015), Idea of ??prose (new augmented edition, 2002-2013, 2020), The man without content (1994, 2013),Bartleby, the formula of creation (with Gilles Deleuze, 1993, 2012). For Quodlibet he curates the Ardilut series.]

‘Our Defeats’ Review: A striking Post-Mortem of the Revolutionary Dream

Far Out Magazine

September 8, 2021

By Swapnil Dhruv Bose

 

“I realized after the shooting, and some discussions with them, that it was the first time they had discussed politics.”

— filmmaker Jean-Gabriel Périot [Source]

French filmmaker Jean-Gabriel Périot, who received international acclaim for his 2015 documentary A German Youth, is back with another fascinating work called Our Defeats. Featuring a group of high school film students from the Lycée Romain Rolland in Ivry-sur-Seine who work as cast and crew, Our Defeats is a comparative study between the charged sociopolitical climate of France in the late 1960s and the prevailing attitude of modern students.

More than anything else, Our Defeats is an intellectual exercise in political thought which constantly refers to the revolutionary works of auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker and Alain Tanner among others. As a part of the film’s explorations, Périot makes the students recreate pivotal scenes from the vastly influential French political masterpieces from that period before asking them about trade unions, capitalism and the revolution.

In an interview, Périot explained that he wants his films to challenge the audience. “For me, cinema is first of all a place to feel,” the filmmaker said. “I like music for the same reason. But cinema is also, at least for me, as audience or filmmaker, a place to think. I do not like films where everything is clear, obvious or underlined, [whether we] talk about fictions or documentaries. I like films with contradictions, lacks, and questions.”

The powerful scenes that are enacted by the students are immediately deconstructed by the follow-up questions posed by Périot. A student quotes Chairman Mao with deadly conviction, preaching to us that “a revolution is not a dinner party… A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” However, he falters and hesitates when he is asked about his own opinions regarding capitalism and the revolution that has been indefinitely deferred.

This becomes a recurring theme, with many students voicing their disapproval of police brutality and societal oppression but not being able to appropriately address questions about the subjective definitions of abstract topics like politics in general as well as objective descriptions of important things like trade unions. As a result of the restrictive curriculum of the Ideological State Apparatus that is the school, we are confronted with the brutal reality. The people in power systematically and silently quashed the revolution before it ever began by not providing proper education to the next generation.The greatest achievement of Our Defeatsis that Périot does not pass his judgement. As a documentarian, his job is to chronicle the condition and that’s exactly what he does. The outcome is stiflingly tragic, a harrowing analysis of young school students whose vocabularies are being stripped off ideas like communism and workers’ rights. Périot starts a dialogue between the past and the present by confronting the future of the revolution that has been laid to rest by youthful cynicism, censorship and the bourgeois constructs of modernity.

 

[Swapnil is a Kolkata-based columnist who specialises in film history, global cinema and media studies. He is deeply interested in the dynamic frameworks of contemporary media culture and their impact on sociopolitical structures.]

 

 

Elena Lopèz Riera, Visions du Réel, 2019: “Jean-Gabriel Périot asked students of a Parisian high school to participate in an experiment on the militant filmmaking of May 68. These students will constitute the film’s technical crew and they will also be its actors, performative bodies through which the subject of politics today will be articulated. They will re-enact legendary scenes from the films of Tanner, the Groupe Medvedkine or Godard. But in the voice of these young people, the instructions of May 68 resonate poorly with regard to the contemporary world, noting that in terms of political wording there are still more doubts than certainties. What is the working class? What is capitalism? What is a trade union? Through these questions addressed to the high school students, Périot tackles a new generation, without judgement, in an attempt to answer the essential question of the film: have we failed? Thus, some of the concepts that have marked the history of 20th century ideologies, such as communism, fascism or class consciousness, are called into question by a youth that claims the right to their own voice. A film about the urgency of reformulating political debate.” [Source]

 

 

Also showing at Mubi, A German Youth. SYNOPSIS: “Germany, late 60s. The post-war generation revolts against their parents, disillusioned by anti-communist capitalism and a state in which they see fascist tendencies. This film follows the rise of The Red Army Faction, revolutionary terrorist group founded by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. OUR TAKE: “A film that opens with Godard and closes with Fassbinder can only have a combative soul. Bravely refusing audio narration, Périot’s collage of stunning archival footage from post-war Germany’s political unrest is a superb, enthralling meditation on radicalization that is of utmost relevance today.”

 

Parasite Empire Unravelled

January 10, 2022

By Hiroyuki Hamada

 

Struggle for Emancipation, David Alfaro Siqueiros, 1961

So before Covid, a local school where one of my kids used to attend had prominent race issues. Namely, teachers were being accused of being blind to obvious racist incidences against black students. The normalized notion of racism was so rampant that the school was forced to embrace some sort of deprogramming sessions by a parent-led committee on the issue.  However, this committee itself was ultimately deemed rather racist in its own way by the school’s black alumni group. To me, at the end, it became rather obvious that the whole momentum was part of a corporate political campaign for the Democratic Party establishment.  The same people who raised their fists and said “Black Lives Matter” turned out to be the supporters of Joe Biden who has bragged that he was the architect of crime bills and The Patriot Act—the very root of the school to prison pipeline, the racist, colonial “war on terror,” the prison industrial complex and so on.  Is irony completely dead as “reality” continues to be stretched to fit the ruling class interests? In the end, I felt so dirty and violated to be a part of that committee’s activities.

Fast forward to the Black-Lives-Matter-only-if-you-are-vaccinated era, and this school is voluntarily implementing a strict mandatory vaccine policy with few exemptions.  My son doesn’t like to gossip and he never really talks behind anyone’s back. But the other day, he said that the whole school is basically bullying the few kids that have not received the experimental injections.  He was particularly upset about his Black friend being given a hard time, after being subjected to the blatant racism previously.

There are some harsh numbers regarding race related matters and the Covid “vaccines”.  In NYC, where Covid “vaccine” mandates are effectively shutting people out from indoor activities, roughly half the Black people have chosen not to receive the experimental injections. How can anyone justify segregating half the Black people from indoor activities? What is that?  And what is wrong with businesses that, without a mandate, voluntarily exclude unvaccinated people from entering their premises when statistical risk factors for getting the illness in question range from obesity to old age to having chronic conditions.  To be clear, the efficacy of the Covid injections are being debated by scientists and doctors vigorously, along with their safety issues. Yet, there are business owners who are calling themselves “community leaders” for being medical cheer leaders for big pharma, proud of being brownnosed social climbers at the expense of those who make their own medical choices.  And if we take the whole US,  40% of small Black-owned businesses have been wiped out.  This whole virus event is a giant urban renewal push disguised as war on virus—don’t they realize what people have gone through with war on crime, war on drugs and so on?

The cozy Covid life for privileged, resourced people who can work from home or afford not to work is propped up in many ways at the expense of many who are suffering under the economic restructuring process for the oligarchy  An unprecedented wealth transfer from the already exploited population to extremely rich and powerful people has been ongoing for the past two years, while the kind of neoliberal restructuring they’ve been dreaming about has been implemented in the name of saving lives.

It’s really demoralizing to really understand that the mechanism of exploitation and subjugation is rather simple.  The power of the wealthy oligarchs is so huge that they own everything.  They own the media.  They own the politics.  They own the governments. They own the scientists.  They own the military.

And the same people who own everything tell us that we have to respect the separation of powers, we have to rely on “representative democracy,” and we have to obey the legal system which is ultimately ruled by Supreme Court judges who are appointed by, well, the same people who own everything. Needless to say, the whole thing is made to divide us and consecrate the rich and powerful as priests of capitalism, because they own everything and all powers are designed to concentrate in their hands, while  the people are effectively deprived of all power.

In the US, the power of the people is represented by two corrupt corporate political parties.  I mean, they don’t really represent people, but they pretend that they do.  The situation is so obvious and blatant that it is tedious to even mention, but the reality is that this mechanism of two corporate entities engaging in ritualistic battles within a strictly curated capitalist framework has been so effective in staging the appearance of “democracy” that it is hard to discuss the social dynamics in the US without it.  No matter what ideological leaning one has as an American, the larger than life theater of historical myths, dramas, glories of wars, nationalistic emotions and the reverence of the American flag are likely to be a part of the internalized authority which builds its footings in the minds and the bodies of those who are born on this land.  Today, many of the rich and powerful are associated with the Democratric Party—for example, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, Bill Gates, and so on. This is strange because it is the Republican Party that is supposed to represent business interests. Recent numbers also indicate the trend:   “Some recent US figures on the distribution of income by party: 65 percent of taxpayer households that earn more than $500,000 per year are now in Democratic districts; 74 percent of the households in Republican districts earn less than $100,000 per year. Add to this what we knew already, namely that the 10 richest congressional districts in the country all have Democratic representatives in Congress.”

Anyway, it really doesn’t matter because when people play politics—meaning you cheer for one of the corrupt political parties—you are not supposed to talk about how money controls social institutions and how our values, beliefs and norms are determined by the interests of the ruling class, and how the economic caste order effectively enforces capitalist imperatives to perpetuate the reign of money and violence.

Believe it or not, today, this sort of understanding is labeled as “conspiracy.”  Right, you are a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nut case if you happen to call out corporate crimes, their criminal conspiracies and so on and so forth.   How obvious can it get? Rich people dominate corporate politics with the good old righteousness of exceptionalism, and a colonial attitude with the kinder, gentler face of liberal politics, and it is perfectly OK to call a simple Marxist analysis of exploitation a “conspiracy.”

The tendency to obscure the mechanism of capitalism is mirrored exactly among many of those who oppose the overwhelming push for Covid lockdowns, Covid “vaccine” mandates and so on. For many of those who stand on the other side of the virus event, the entire mobilization is described as a “communist takeover.” That’s right.  All those diehard capitalists who have been conspiring to perpetuate their interests through World Economic Forum, IMF, World Bank and so on are communists now. How convenient?  You can’t have capitalism without opportunism.

But the whole thing makes perfect sense. Both ends of the capitalist spectrum, fascists and social democrats, have always struggled to perpetuate capitalist hegemony together. At the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to perpetuate the capitalist caste hierarchy and their righteous positions within it.  One step with the left leg goes forward as the right leg moves forward to balance the momentum of the imperial hegemony — just as the hopelessly corrupt Hilary Clinton gives birth to a Donald Trump Presidency, which, in turn, gives the Democratic Party a reason to exist.  Left, right, left, right, the empire moves forward as it gently shifts its weight left to right.  As they march the imperial-scape together, they sing derogatory smears against any revolutionary momentum.  Both sides are free to argue and fight as long as they adhere to the imperial imperatives of capitalism.  The corporate media ensure that the narratives are told to fit this dynamic.  Those who do not belong to the dynamics are portrayed as “others”–fringe extremists to be demonized from multiple angles.

How does the empire gain its mythical aura of authority?  Easy. They play a good old protection racket scheme against unsuspecting “good people.”  For example, they tell people that terrorists are coming, while “secretly” funding the killers in ways which are not so secret to the people. People get the idea: “Oh I see. we have to pay the protection fee. Otherwise, we get fucked up.” Or, for example, they tell people that plague is coming, and force people to get injected with special medicines.  If the people refuse, their jobs are taken away, their families are split apart, you can’t eat at a restaurant and so on. They can effectively turn everyone into a dangerous element with an infection until proven “healthy” by the designated means of the authority.  There goes the presumption of innocence along with informed consent out of the door.

This is a big deal. There is a huge reason why an authority must prove someone guilty without a reasonable doubt.  Otherwise, people can be arbitrarily accused of committing any crime and then punished for it.  And without informed consent, people can be forced to drink Cool Aid just because they are told to do so. Moreover, as soon as the feudal overloads deal with the life and death of the people, they effectively consecrate themself as gods.  A politician would claim that Covid “vaccines” are sent by God.  Cultural figures would start accusing those who refuse the medication of “defying the law of nature,” defying “science” and so on, effectively turning Bill Gates and the rest of the snake oil salesmen into gods of our times.

So now it seems that even this pretend “democracy” is being taken away by the acceptance of decrees under an “emergency” just like any other fascist take-over.

Colonizing humanity and nature

The Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, California, Marianne North,1875

How is it even possible though?  The capitalist assaults come in stages. First, it attacks to destabilize, infiltrate and tear communities apart.  It destroys the fabric of communities and turns vital institutions useless.  It cultivates the ground on which the invaders can turn themselves into the new providers of artificial social relations, resources and facts. Then the colonizers embark on domesticating people with their own beliefs, norms and values to exploit them and subjugate them.

Social institutions are taken over by capital. As they lose their functions for the people, they are further bought and sold by the oligarchs to transform themselves into machines for the ruling class interests. In every step of the process, people are mobilized to destroy and reassemble their own institutions only to be domesticated by the resulting fake institution for the ruling class. Corporate NGOs, corporate think tanks, paid academics, paid scientists, corporate politicians are always ready to help in this regard.  This is how education has been taken away from the people.  This is how healthcare has been taken away.  This is how politics has been taken away.

The people’s institutions are intentionally deprived of resources so that they must rely on the rich and powerful to function.  Then, privatizing and corporatizing transform the institutions into entities for profit, indoctrination and domestication. The more you struggle financially, the more you are likely to be trapped in a cycle of exploitation—an ironic reality imposed by the capitalist hierarchy in which those who could gain the most by overthrowing the establishment are pressured the most to obey the capitalist imperatives. Meanwhile those with privileged positions are conditioned to protect the status quo.  Hierarchies of ideas, ideologies, religions, and people are formed.  The caste system built by all elements permeates the empire—what’s good for the empire naturally floats as the opposing elements sink systemically and structurally. People are forced to compete in serving the interests of the oligarchs regardless of the ultimate consequences to them.

This is how people are indoctrinated to hate the system that gives power to the people—socialism, and are forced to crave the system that strangles them—capitalism.  Here is a brief summary of how socialism is actively demonized in our society:

1. Point out results of imperial assaults against socialist countries and claim socialism doesn’t work.Examples:Give them economic sanctions, then call the countries “economic disasters”.Send death squads to destabilize their countries, then call the enemies of the western hegemony “strong man,” “dictator,” “butcher” and so on.Attempt to overthrow the government by massive propaganda campaigns, then call them oppressive.

   2. Claim that no ideology, country or government is perfect, in order to ignore the injustice and inhumanity systematically and structurally imposed on the entire capitalist hegemony and beyond by the western ruling class.

   Examples:

   Claim that socialism and capitalism are the same when they are not historically and in practice.  Capitalism is a system guided by forces of accumulated wealth and power. It manifests as imperialism at the global scale. Historically, socialism has emerged to counter imperial exploitation and subjugation.  Socialist countries have been vehemently assaulted by organized forces of imperialism.  The equation totally dismisses these obvious historical dynamics, while also obscuring the very nature and mechanism of capitalism itself.  This position is often expressed with the use of the word totalitarianism.  Although the term has been largely normalized in the western cultural sphere, historically, this term has been used by reactionary forces to equate fascism (which operates within the framework of capitalism) and socialist countries with the intention of demonizing socialist countries.

Claim that all violence must stop as the capitalist hegemony targets a socialist country, knowing that the imperial hegemony can topple the socialist country by many means if the country stops engaging in self-defense.

Demonize political leaders who defy the western hegemony saying that although the West is atrocious the dictators aren’t worth saving anyway.

3. Utilize an emotional personal anecdote in demonizing “socialism” in its entirety, totally ignoring its inner workings to forward the interests of the people, imperial dynamics and so on.  Reactionary voices of those who betray their countries of origin in seeking to secure positions within the empire are often promoted by the capitalist media.

Examples:

“My grand dad was killed by communists.”

“My family members were imprisoned by a socialist regime.”

“So and so is killing its own people.  I know because I’m from there and you are not.”

4. Simply rely on propaganda lies concocted by capitalist social institutions.

Examples:

Just mock, ridicule and demonize socialists.  The notion is fully normalized so there is no need to explain. The burden of proof is on those who defy the notion.

Engage in 1, 2 and 3 using the propaganda lies.

Where is this giant monster swinging right to left, guided by the selfish motives of the ruling class, going?  Is it going to put us all in a digital prison as it continues to digitalize, financialize, and transhumanize, colonizing humanity and nature?  Is it going to declare a war against China?  These are very significant concerns but it is unlikely that they will be on the table for all of us to examine anytime soon.  Our thoughts and ideas are constantly, systemically and structurally beaten into shapes by layers of capitalist institutions over and over so that they fit into the capitalist framework. Then the momentums of pros and cons are safely exchanged within the imperial framework at the expense of the people who struggle to secure their livelihood within it.

When we are beaten by the capitalists, we are put against each other.  As we fight back, we are forced to attack our fellow community members as our institutions are further colonized as I described above. In the corporate political theater billions of dollars are spent in picking between hardened corporatist Joe Biden, and “reality TV show star” Donald Trump, but we cannot embrace the political institution which can truly function as our own—such a drastic shift is firmly demonized, again, as “socialism,” “communism,” Marxism and so on.

Look at how doctors and nurses are forced to be complicit in the ongoing virus event. They are forced to limit treatment options.  Effective early treatments such as Ivermectin or HCQ, which have saved countless lives in other countries, are being ridiculed as snake oil, because as long as there are effective treatments for the virus, the experimental gene therapy drugs can’t have emergency use status.  All this goes on as Covid “vaccine” deaths are blatantly covered up in the US and in other Western countries. The health professionals are forced to put people on deadly ventilators, deadly remdisivir, and deadly sedatives—the real reason why there are so many deaths in the US, along with the fact that obesity is a hidden killer in patients with seasonal respiratory illness.  The more they try to protect their positions within the institution, the more they compromise the whole institution. Doctors, scientists and the rest of the healthcare professionals who wish to protect the institution by speaking the truth about the virus and experimental injections are censored, harassed and fired for doing so, while those who obey are forced to be complicit in failing their patients with profit-oriented protocols.

This is what the system does when it’s driven by and for the oligarchs.

Their exploitive schemes create crises on many fronts—environmental crisis, health crisis, housing crisis, economic crisis, psychiatric crisis, you name it.  The ruling class officially designates a chosen crisis to impose prepackaged corporate “solutions” for more profits, more power grab and readjustment of the capitalist trajectory.  In the process, they destroy vital social institutions and reassemble them for domestication.  Nothing else matters other than the chosen crisis and the associated corporate schemes. Other crises deepen as the capitalist trajectory is recalibrated and the capitalist hierarchy is readjusted. They will not run out of crises as long as they exploit and subjugate.  Crises are not predicaments for those who can buy their way out of anything, they are opportunities for them.  And they have nothing to lose in the process.  We are forced to do their work of destroying our own institutions.  We are forced to do their work of turning them into our cages.  They can buy most of anything, and if they can’t, they destroy it, then they can simply buy and sell any remaining elements, repackage them as something else and sell them back to the people.

See how it works?

As we further lose our connections to ourselves, to each other, to our community and nature, we are freely subjected to propaganda and indoctrination through ruling class sanctioned entities. Psychology has been applied to adjust individuals to the hardships of capitalist behavioral conditioning. Sociology has been applied to shape collective behaviors within the capitalist framework. Economics has been applied to justify the capitalist domination. Politics has been applied to ritualize the normalization of the feudal hierarchy. Now, we see science being applied to shift the trajectory of exploitation and subjugation.

Our behaviors are largely based on establishment supplied social relations, facts, culture, and so on.  We don’t generally act because we perceive actual events in our lives.  Most of us go through our lives on auto-pilot mode within the structurally sanctioned capitalist framework.  The Covid event clearly shows this aspect of our lives.  People wear masks, social distance and follow lockdown measures when clearly stipulated; however, at the personal level, most of us do not act like there is a deadly plague out there.  The masks, very possibly contaminated with the “deadly virus” are thrown away everywhere without being treated as biohazard materials.  People wear masks only to enter a restaurant, then take them off to eat with strangers stuck in an enclosed space. As soon as we are born into our society, we learn to perceive the capitalist framework as our guiding principle over our actual perceptions.  This makes us extremely vulnerable to top-down mobilization, as we see with the virus event.  As soon as we are systemically and structurally forced into following instructions, then facts, our perceptions, and experts’ opinions become totally irrelevant before the decrees coming out of the establishment. The process of colonization of humanity and nature has been ongoing for generations, deeply affecting how we are, and it is accelerating.

The Perpetual Renewal of the Revolutionary Struggle, Diego Rivera, 1926 – 1927

Being deprived of our actual perceptions based on material reality, and the subsequent manufacturing of our perceptions based on the imperatives of the ruling class interests contributes to acute divisions among dissidents as well.  The urgency of capitalist oppressions together with marginalization of ideological positions has often cornered those who voice their concerns into prescribing “solutions” based on their own condition, regardless of the consequences to others.  This often happens over class lines, or against those who are victims of imperial violence.  The classic example was seen during the imperial war against Syria.  Many anti-war dissidents had taken a position in support of the US military intervention of Syria to varying degrees due to the western demonization of the Syrian government, western propaganda that glorified the US backed terrorists as victims of Syrian violence and etc.  (Those who stand with enemies of the empire are strongly urged to amend their anti-imperial positions. This urging comes from across the spectrum; for instance, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges and others who are considered “dissidents” adamantly demonized leaders of targeted countries and repeated official propaganda narratives justifying the toleration of violence against those countries–By the way, both Chomsky and Hedges also hold starkly discriminatory opinions against unvaccinated people, echoing their strong condemnations of the middle eastern leaders.)

This has resulted in acceptance of the US military attacks and the US support for violent opposition groups inside Syria.  Those American people who insisted on saving the children of Syria by bombing Syria and by supporting brutal terrorists, who would behead children, failed to see the great sacrifice paid by the majority of Syrian people, who were in support of their government and their military.  Activist communities were split into pieces, while the momentum greatly exacerbated the US led war against the Syrian government.   The situation began to turn as independent journalists—Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett and others—started to report from Syria on the actual situation—in which the majority of the Syrian people have approved the determined government policy against the west backed terrorists and the US colonial policies which had strangled Syrian people on many grounds.

The war on virus, which has directly targeted our entire society, as well as the global dynamics, has presented itself as a great divider among us.  Our alienated perceptions have effectively prevented our ability to understand the course of action taken by others.  The excruciating hardship of those who wear masks 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, or more, to keep their jobs, or the anger and bitterness of those who were forced to be vaccinated against their will to remain employed,  or the predicaments faced by those who chose to be fired for their medical choice, are not shared by those who do not share the circumstances and perspectives.  The virus event kept people away from each other, prevented freedom of speech, and prevented freedom of assembly while deeply dividing people on many grounds.  It is appalling that US media outlets actually told their audience to cut their ties to friends and family members who are not vaccinated.  Anger, frustration, fear and hatred have been boiling in our communities.

Sadly, the situation is not any better among those who oppose the draconian virus measures. For example, some people see anyone who complies with a government mandate as an enemy, even if non compliance would have meant a total loss of livelihood.  I’ve seen a sad instance in which a bar owner, who courageously spoke against the government “vaccine” mandate for his customers, was mocked and ridiculed for complying with the strict mandate, though not doing so could have resulted in loss of his business.  This sort of atmosphere effectively prevents constructive community actions.  It prevents natural growth of genuine social relations among the people based on creativity and practical means.  The real struggle involves real observations of facts and spontaneous reactions to associated events. Ultimately, it cannot be prescribed by those who stand outside of the particular circumstance.  Without the existence of a genuine institution for the people to coordinate overall strategies and educate people about the mechanism of exploitation, this sort of arbitrary behavior of purging would emerge only to exacerbate alienation and division among those who should be united to counter the ruling class assaults. What Lenin said in last century still stands on this regard. It also cultivates a defeatist attitude to embrace martyrdom as the only plausible goal of resistance.

The establishment understands this mechanism very well.  That is why organized efforts of socialists, communists, and Marxists have been vehemently attacked by the US empire.  As long as we stand with the establishment in demonizing any potential to build revolutionary momentum, we are bound to stay within the framework of the exploitation. Our goal is to change the exploitive system to the one that benefits our mutual well-beings.  We are not the enemies of each other.  On this point, we have a lot to learn from the Syrian government, which has been allowing reconciliation between those who took weapons against the people and those who lost their family members by the violence.

Anti-Chinese sentiment

I have already written briefly about China and the virus event here, and here.  This topic continues to be crucial because China continues to present itself as the biggest obstacle to the western capitalist hegemony.  Although China is fully integrated in the global market economy, it continues to resist western domination of its social fabric through western neoliberalization and financialization.  This makes total sense if we understand the very reason why China opened itself to the market economy—it has done so to put its economic activities under the guidance of the Communist Party of China.  It allows China to grow economically in providing for its people while preventing western propaganda infiltration, development of western guided blackmarket, and western capitalist restructuring of Chinese social structure.

That is why we are flooded with anti-Chinese rhetoric today.

All western wars are ultimately imperial in nature.  War on virus is not an exception. Those who operate within the capitalist framework— including those who claim to resist the lockdowns and the experimental Covid injections—express their disdain toward the imperial enemy as a gesture to express their allegiance to the empire even when they must oppose their feudal overlords.

Historically, the western capitalist mobilizations—war on poverty, war on drugs, war on terror and so on—that reshape and perpetuate its structural integrity occur in tandem with imperial dynamics. The slogans and talking points have always included anti-communist/anti-socialist elements.

The war on drugs was about destruction of minority communities as much as about destruction of Latin American movements to defy the US hegemony.  The war on terror ended up destroying the middle eastern countries which have cooperated with the US hegemony to varying degrees.  The US simply does not tolerate an alternative system that demonstrates the viability of social relations outside of the imperial framework. Millions have perished.  One out of hundred people became refugees. Countries were destroyed. The momentum of war on terror exacerbated institutionalized racism and structural violence within the US as well, ultimately depriving people of legal rights through the National Defense Authorization Act, the Patriot Act, installation of the surveillance state, militarization of police and etc.

China has experienced capitalist onslaughts of colonialism, colonial wars, chemical/biological attacks, proxy wars, propaganda campaigns, regime change operations, trade embargoes, trade sanctions, economic war and more even before it embarked on the path of socialism with its revolution.

China has seen it all.

There is a reason why we keep hearing “China is complicit,” “the Chinese system is coming,” and “China is violating human rights” over and over. Because the war on virus follows the same rule.  It restructures our society to perpetuate the oligarchy, and the momentum of exploitation and subjugation parallels the imperial violence against targeted countries.  This is why hundreds of military bases are surrounding China, while multiple propaganda projects are being carried out—Hong Kong, Tibet, Uyghur, continued lies about Tiananmen Square, outright deceptions stating China has killed millions of its own people.

As long as the movement of resistance being built in the west stays within the framework of imperial exploitation and subjugation, ultimately, it will serve the empire very effectively.  The oscillation between fascism and social democracy applies within imperial dynamics as well.  For example, within the imperial framework, Nazi Germany was cultivated by the US industries to assault USSR, its failure to do so then became a justification for the US to construct its imperial hegemony.  Famously, Nazi scientists and even some political figures were absorbed into the US empire (see operation paper clip).  The current atmosphere emerging is not new or any more deadly than the imperial essence itself.  This dynamic is crucial to understand.  Failure to do so would allow another oscillation within the empire which could perpetuate the empire.  On the surface, China seems to be a part of the momentum generally referred to as the “Great Reset.”  However, meanwhile, the western allies in the pacific are also arming themself to encircle China militarily.  China is under tremendous pressure to accept western led financialization and neoliberalization of their social structure.  The situation greatly echoes how USSR and its allies were subjected to containment and encirclement.  China seems to recognize the dynamics very well as I explain shortly.

Or, down the road, the fascist “Great Reset” might grow into a modern day economic Nazi to give a legitimacy to its counterpart within the western hegemony just like how the US achieved its imperial status after the WW2.  The history could certainly rhyme.  Such a possibility can’t be ruled out, but who wants to become another Nazi to be destroyed by the empire?  All players understand these dynamics,  The US won’t allow its own allies to threaten its own interests, while some allies are very eager to please the empire by playing their role in enforcing imperial imperatives—see how draconian measures in pushing big pharma vaccines, along with digitalization, financialization and the rest of the 4th Industrial Revolution, are forcefully forwarded in Australia, Canada and so on.

Perhaps the role of Israel in the imperial dynamics should be pointed out here to illustrate the dynamics.  The violence which has been inflicted by the Israeli regime against neighboring countries and beyond serves the war-based US economy while punishing those who defy the imperial hegemony. Israel plays a violent guard dog for the empire under US protection, takes on the blame for it and sustains itself in this imperial relationship. Israel has been faithfully playing its role in the war on virus by relentlessly vaccinating its people while introducing various associated measures as well.  Again, understanding the war on virus requires understanding imperial dynamics.

Meanwhile, China clearly understands its position within the imperial dynamics.  China is not about to impose on itself a deadly neoliberal restructuring such as the USSR suffered as it was being demolished. China is not about to accept colonial war on its soil in any form including biological attacks, proxy war or economic war.  If China sees its economic sphere as a part of its socialism with Chinese characteristics, it stands to reason that China would have to confront the waves of the western socio-political-economic restructuring associated with the virus event appropriately.

It’s none of western business if China decides to prepare itself for potential western biological attacks with any measures it deems necessary considering that the US owns the biggest pile of WMDs along with hundreds of bio weapon facilities across the globe, along with the history of actually using such weapons during the Korean War and on other occasions.

It’s none of western business if China develops its own Covid vaccines and virus measures in order to protect its financial sovereignty against western waves of Covid related neoliberal restructuring and financialization.

It’s none of western business if China ends up succeeding in all of the above and turning the occasion into an opportunity to strengthen its economic viability, scientific progress and international presence with the overwhelming approval of its people.

Parasites devouring paralyzed hosts

Night of the Rich, Diego Rivera, 1928

Twisting around fear and putting people against each other in consecrating the unconditional authority of corporate entities over families torn apart, communities destroyed, and individuals rendered hopeless and hateful is not anything nature meant for us humans.

We are looking at parasites devouring paralyzed hosts.  This is the very essence of an inhumane social formation called capitalism described precisely by Karl Marx. It is revealing that the formation is called “communism” even by those who claim to “resist”.

Again, the colonized institutions ultimately act as cages for capitalism. They work together to recalibrate the caste system.

Over and over we’ve been deceived.  We are mobilized to play ritual battles on political theaters. We are mobilized to play “activism” on social theaters.  We are mobilized to play good citizens on cultural theaters. We are mobilized to fight “others” on colonial theaters of war.  As long as we run around within the framework of the oligarchs, we just shift the blame among ourselves and we keep fine tuning the very feudal hierarchy that traps us as expendable beings.

The wealth and power hoarded by the parasitic minority never belong to them. They are blessings of nature and humanity belonging to the harmony among us. Those oligarchs have only one thing—they are astronomically richer than the rest. They monopolize what belongs to us all in order to domesticate humanity and nature. But life can’t be contained by their primitive cage.  So they have been modifying life to fit within the narrowly defined framework of their own kingdom. We became dumber, we are less brave, we are more cynical and hypocritical.  None of it is acceptable from any angle from which we look at it. The current social formation is extremely destructive to our species. If we fail to grasp the situation, gene therapy drugs, psychotropic drugs, behavioral conditioning and so on will be fully used to exacerbate the situation, commodifying our minds and bodies as our lives are more and more digitized and financialized.  If we become the products to be consumed, we are subjected to planned obsolescence, reduced quality, reduced diversity and so on just like any other items around us.  They spread their tentacles in taking over social institutions.  They freely attenuate and amplify the roles of institutions in orchestrating the material reality to suit their interests.  Again, they paralyze people with illusions, lies, deceptions, drugs, carrot and stick and eat us alive.  We do not deserve this parasitic social formation.

We need a system which firmly ensures that the material reality reflects a harmony of man and nature.  For one thing, the ridiculous rituals of corporate politics, corporate slogans for health, and so on have no place in getting us out of this feudalism of money and violence.  How can we all step back a little and take a look at what is really going on, calling out the parasites for what they are?  How can we recognize that the same colonizers who destroyed countries across the globe have embarked on psychological asymmetrical urban warfare against us? We are told that we are all in this together only to find ourselves shooting each other. We are told to flatten the curve only to see our communities flattened to be swallowed by corporate entities. How can we build our communities with social relations based on our needs?  How can we build social institutions which can help us build a social formation that serves us all.

The parasites devour the hosts because they do not have the ability to engage in the creative process of life. They must lie and deceive to imprison the subject population so that the captive beings are forced to construct the kingdom for the parasites. Parasites are not the all-seeing gods which they present themselves to be.  In order to survive and embrace the blessings of the universe as one of the species on our planet, we must recognize this destructive state of being and somehow move beyond it.

We are hardly the only ones screaming.  We are a fraction of a huge momentum of humanity continuing to make a point about our species’ obvious predicaments. The following words came from George L. Jackson shortly before he was murdered in California’s San Quentin Prison (I thank John Steppling for mentioning the quote recently):

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”

George L. Jackson

Like Fred Hampton said, “you can kill the revolutionary but you can’t kill the Revolution.

 

[Hiroyuki Hamada is an artist. He has exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe and is represented by Lori Bookstein Fine Art. He has been awarded various residencies including those at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Edward F. Albee Foundation/William Flanagan Memorial Creative Person’s Center, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the MacDowell Colony. In 1998 Hamada was the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, and in 2009 he was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He lives and works in New York.]

Revolt of the Essential Workers

Tablet

October 25, 2021

By Alex Gutentag

 

New York City municipal workers protest outside the Gracie Mansion Conservancy against the coming COVID-19 vaccine mandate for city workers, Oct. 28, 2021, in New York.

 

How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

NPR

September 11, 2020

By Laura Sullivan

 

[Laura Sullivan is an NPR News investigative correspondent whose work has cast a light on some of the country’s most significant issues. Sullivan is one of NPR’s most decorated journalists, with three Peabody Awards and two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Batons. She joined NPR in 2004 as a correspondent on the National Desk, covering crime and punishment issues. She joined NPR’s investigations unit in 2010. Her investigative reports air regularly on All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Full bio]

 

 

 

Further reading:

Face Masks: A Danger to Our Planet, Our Children & Ourselves

 

We Are Many. The Oppressors Are Not.

August 3, 2021

By Hiroyuki Hamada

 

Kadhim Hayder (1932-1985), title unknown, Iraq

 

I remember chatting with a man from Iraq in 2016.  He was driving a taxi in Germany.  I wrote about him in one of my essays [1]:

“Last month, I was chatting with an Iraqi taxi driver in Berlin. My 12 year old son and I took a cab from the Museum for Contemporary Art to our hotel. I couldn’t help but ask the cab driver why he ended up in Berlin. He said it was something to do with the availability of the visa. He stressed that he had to leave because he didn’t like Islam. He said Muslims were killing each other.

 

I felt very slightly sad because he sounded like he had to say that to prove that he wasn’t a “terrorist”. I told him that it was the US that supported Saddam when it was convenient. Then, the US flipped, changing its policy, as doing so became more convenient. I asked him, Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS, same old story, no?

 

Then he said something unexpected. He said it was a “people’s revolution”. “We stood against Saddam”.  He was referring to the first gulf war in 1991. He went on to describe how it didn’t go as people wished, and it brought about the devastating trade embargo, more war, ISIS and so on.  His voice was passionate.  I felt the anger and frustration against war and imperialism that I also feel myself, in his voice.”

The imperial war against countries that defy the US hegemonic imperatives involves a few steps.  The target population is deprived of their basic necessities by economic embargo, trade sanctions, travel restrictions and demonization of its leader.  The society is destabilized by the lack of resources and economic activities.  The opposing forces in the country are generously funded by the empire to build a momentum against the defying “regime” in the name of “revolution,” “democracy,” “freedom” and etc. The communities are divided.  The institutions are compromised to serve capital, adding more confusions and predicaments to the population.

Quite often this is sufficient enough to silence those who defy such interventions and it results in an overthrow of the existing order.  The society is transformed to suit the colonial policies concocted by western industries, which result in resource extraction, privatization, financialization, exploitation of cheap labor, construction of US military bases and so on.

Quite a few middle eastern countries have defied such interventions resulting in proxy wars and western military interventions.

That was the war on terror which continues to this day as the US forces are freely employed against the world according to its “war on terror legal framework,” while its measures are still in place as restrictions against our legal rights as well as restrictions at airports and so on.

Many of us raised our voices against the obvious crime of invading other countries, colonizing them and subjugating them.  To my surprise there were people who objected to our assertion saying that if we didn’t invade them, they would have invaded us, they were “terrorists,” and so on.

Enormous profits were generated by this huge public project, war, at the expense of the people in the war torn countries as well as oppressed people in some of the richest countries of the world. No one was held accountable for deaths and destruction.  The war to save people from terrorists was a huge capitalist project to expand the power and wealth of hardened criminals who call themselves politicians, philanthropists, businessmen, intellectuals, patriots, academics, and so on.

Clockwork eyes by Mick Ryan

The underlining mentality of neocolonial violence is based on prejudice against the peoples of the targeted countries.  Those peoples, who reside within countries governed by “leaders” who have sworn to obey imperial policies, are subjected to tighter measures of exploitation and subjugation in order to serve the interests of the imperial institutions. The predicaments of the subject population—poverty, social unrest, and corruption, which stem from the economic subjugation, justify the mental superiority among westerners, falsely proving the inferiority of the “barbaric” population which must be “assisted” by westerners.  If the leader of a colonized country attempts to amend the unfair situation by implementing policies that serve that country’s own people, the western authority would mobilize policies to remove such an element.  The policies are firmly backed by the prejudice amongst the imperial population.  Simple slogans and key words such as “he is killing his own people,” “save the children,” “regime,” “dictatorship” and “genocide” can trigger the colonial mentality as well as the white savior mentality in the imperial population.

“In the cage there is food. Not much, but there is food. Outside are only great stretches of freedom. Nicanor Parra Bird Nightmare by Mick Ryan”

Fast forward to 2021–the era of war on virus. We are experiencing a massive wealth transfer to the rich and powerful, which can be best described by Jeff Bezos thanking his workers and customers for his rocket ride. [2] The cynical exploitative violence inflicted against workers is found in all sectors across the country, creating destruction of small community businesses, massive homelessness, suicide surge, spike in drug related deaths.  Lockdown measures are wreaking havoc in vital social relations, which must now be reorganized.

The virus event has turned the dwindling healthcare system into mask wearing, social distancing and getting injected with extremely lucrative experimental genetic modification drugs—which are surrounded by  unprecedented numbers of injuries and deaths, far surpassing all combined prior vaccine injury and death reports to the CDC reporting system VAERS.  The lockdown measures and profit oriented measures against the virus further narrowed the capacity of the general healthcare system, resolution in huge numbers of patients without vital care for their urgent conditions. Destroying the healthcare system for the sake of saving lives is only an aspect of the current mobilization.  The education system, which has been under attack for generations by corporate forces, has received a blank check to fire faculties, turn classes into online tutorials, and pursue a new mission to create obedient workers for the Forth Industrial Revolution.  The financial institution has accelerated its herding of the population into the digital realm where people are conditioned, commodified, and exploited as data.  In every industry, a massive restructuring process for profit is occurring in the name of Covid measures.

Now, I understand that respiratory illnesses can be very dangerous.  If you look up articles from pre-Covid time, you find desperate calls from healthcare professionals screaming about the risk of flu epidemics due to the lack of facilities and resources. This has become reality after Covid, as massive death tolls have resulted from nursing home lockdowns.  Profit oriented treatment options have been promoted while effective options were restricted, resulting in yet even more deaths and hospitalizations.  But statistically, all these deaths in the US had not exceeded the range of year to year variation in death rate.  This crucial fact has been observed in various countries.  The Covid situation, if anything, is very much a man-made event. It can not be described as a deadly pandemic comparable to the bubonic plague. This should shatter virus event narratives propped up by “cases“ concocted by unreliable PCR tests—its inaccuracy has been highly criticized by many scientists—including the inventor of the PCR test himself–due to its arbitrary results depending on the degree of amplification in search of the targeted DNA fragments. [3][4]

The above observation is strictly based on the opinions of numerous healthcare professionals, doctors, and scientists across the globe. At the very least, it must be recognized that there are significant disagreements within the field of science on every aspect of Covid-19, its treatments, and lockdown measures. [5][6]

However, none of those are examined in a serious manner by the establishment.  In fact there are many instances of healthcare professionals being disciplined for reporting cases of vaccine injury, speaking against the treatment policies, and questioning the prevalent assumptions regarding the virus.  Healthcare professionals are actively forced to play along with the official Covid narrative.

For the general public the mixed emotions over the contradictions have turned to frustration, and the frustration has turned anger as if we are stuck in a pressure cooker made with official narratives and structural impediments of lockdowns and forced vaccine injection.  The heat and pressure have broken down the social fabric as our daily routines are dictated by “new normal.”

So many things have happened since last year.  But somehow things don’t seem to fit in right places in our heads.

We mark our sense of time and space with traditional events, daily routines and our common knowledge.  When we lose those, we are left with a series of elements and dynamics without those markers.

But alternate markers have been provided by those who have deprived us of the markers.  Our lives are marked with lockdowns, masks and social distancing–the “new normal”.

Now we mark our lives with it.

We are told that there is a deadly disease out there and the only solution is to vaccinate.  Our life and death are determined by one of the largest corporate entities, the medical industrial complex.

Just as the war on terror was described as a “crusade”—legitimizing the twisted religious and cultural superiority of the colonizers, disguising white man’s burden as humanitarian obligation —  the war on virus crowns “science” as its guiding force.  However, needless to say, the credibility of the “science” is proportional to the accompanying might of wealth and power—just as the facts of war are bought and sold as “journalism”. Propaganda lies fill the air as those who oppose are marked as “others” who  deserve to be castigated as being outside of the protection of the gated community.

This way of framing—the medical industrial complex—is useful in understanding the dynamics within the capitalist hegemony.  However, such an entity is also a part of the media industrial complex, non profit industrial complex, political industrial complex, and of course military industrial complex.  In short, our lives are dictated by multiple dynamic forces of oligarchs, orchestrating a “reality” which firmly manifests as a capitalist framework—a cage to condition our lives based on its imperatives.

Patrice Letarnec’s Human Zoo project

As the current virus mobilization reframes our society, obliterating existing values, norms and beliefs, the corporate institutions and their owners are consecrated as absolute beings which determine our life and death. This is why decrees legitimated by the “emergency”  are acceptable political means now.  This is why large corporations have gained enormous wealth.  This is why our lives are herded into the digital realm where we are commodified, conditioned to be exploited, and truncated to be stripped of the mystery of life and the unknown.

But where do the anger and frustration go?

The US establishment is well aware of the boiling anger and frustration over the situation.  The momentum of anger is cultivated and it is being shaped to put the people against each other—an old corporate duopoly trick, which has grown steadily as a dynamic tool of social engineering in the US.  The ghosts of the Civil War still determine the means of enslavement, while allowing the ruling class to preside over the theater of “democracy,” “freedom” and “humanity”—a manufactured “reality.”  Individualism, self-determination and a sense of freedom based on the sacrifices of many oppressed people are a privilege only allowed to people with economic security.  This is a part of the reason why the resistance against the Covid lockdown measures encompasses a reactionary element.  In particular, erroneously defining the trajectory as “socialism” or “communism”.  This ironic twist, the capitalist oppression being blamed on the enemy of capitalists, once again reveals the mechanism of the imperial duopoly as well as the expansion of the exploitative violence against a formerly economically secure segment of the population, which will require tighter measures of draconian restrictions.

It is not a coincidence that the red states have embraced the opposing positions while the blue states firmly adhere to the official narratives on vaccines and lockdown measures.  The subject populations are allowed to choose the mode of enslavement, but the slight differences in the choice are big enough to activate colonial hatred toward each other.  The unresolved historical pain, emotion and grudge have found urgent expression against “enemies” among us.  A fight between teeth baring wolves and cunning foxes, as Malcolm X would call it, channels the anger and frustration safely within the capitalist framework.  The media, politicians and major institutions carefully instigate conflicts among the people by demonizing opponents over vaccines and lockdown measures, while protecting “pandemic” narratives one way or the other.

Some people might think that things must get worse before it gets better. Things can certainly get worse but it looks like it only means more fragmentation of communities and destabilization of institutions, which allows further erosion of people’s interests by the capitalist domination along with justifications for its draconian measures.  This probably gives a comfortable feeling for those privileged ones in gated communities. This also accompanies the exacerbation of fascist momentum, which always justifies the forces of western imperial hegemony—remember how the Trump phenomenon pushed neoliberal policies, which are embraced by the both corporate parties, while justifying anything else to oppose Donald Trump, who was largely perceived as an obvious caricature of the narcissistic failing empire?  The US capitalism moves forward while oscillating left and right within the acceptable spectrum of imperialism.

In short, everything is under control according to those who destroyed the middle eastern countries.  The only difference is that now the target is us. We are under attack.  Some of us are demonized by the establishment to play the role of scapegoats.  Some of us are praised as heroes saving lives and sacrificing themselves. Our communities are being destroyed to be further consumed by the colonizers of humanity and nature.

Crying tree – Ontario, Canada, 2021

The war on virus is meant as a crucial background of destabilization and fear which helps extract huge amount of public spending in the name of saving lives, saving environment and saving people’s livelihoods—which are all under attack by the savagery of the very capitalist domination.   Since the war on virus is largely targeting the public money, we are bombarded with an unprecedented amount of wholesale propaganda narratives, as if we are thrown into the process of corporate electoral process—we are supposed to vote yes to those lucrative capitalist fixes for the capitalist problems by going along with the narratives.  Public outcries against the policies are safely consumed among the populations as people are forced to fight among themselves.  Moreover, the war on virus is meant to be a perpetual war.  Inconceivable “mistakes” will be made, victories would be declared here and there, facts will be revealed when convenient, while much of the facts are distorted to prop up the pretense of this vast protection racket scheme by the oligarchs.  One step forward, and one step backward, our lives swirl within the torturous theater of the “medical crisis,” but the real solution is never to be found within it.  The empire can not lose the war but the empire has no intention of winning the war either, for the winning can destroy the domesticated momentum of the in-fighting among the people, as well as an assortment of “activism” backed by the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, which effectively drives capitalist agendas in the name of “our democracy”.  After all, we are many.  The oppressors are not.  The mechanism of the domestication must be kept in place to tame the masses within the feudal hierarchy of money and violence.  Meanwhile, fear, doubt and real threat against our livelihood in the form of economic strangulation continue to force us to swallow the protection racket deal with the criminal enterprise.

Ultimately, the trajectory points to a complete domestication of our species through management of all means of production, its products, and the distribution system.  As the peoples become products themselves with biotech procedures, the social relations within the digital realm seamlessly merge with the fabricated reality, virtually cementing the feudal hierarchy of the absolute power.

As we operate within social media outlets, as we present our identities within their frameworks, and as we are injected with genetic modification  drugs to modify our physical response to the natural world, we have already stepped into a dangerous stage which might very well spell the end of our species as we know it.

The Arsenal, 1928, Diego Rivera

What could Iraqis do as they suffered the deadly embargo and invasions?  The question is ours now.  Unfortunately, many of those who stood with the empire are still insisting on fighting the imperial war as we have become the targets of the war, demonizing our community members as enemies, repeating slogans and talking points to justify the imperial restructuring, as our communities fall apart to be devoured by the colonizers.  It is no coincidence that those who oppose the current mobilization are accused of being racists, conspiracy theorists, or fascist worshipers—just as not agreeing with bombing brown people would be accused of letting brown children die by the hand of a “dictator.”

Our real enemy is not the “antivaxxers,” or the gullible people swallowing the corporate propaganda.  The real enemy is the imperial oligarchs who are shaping our society in order to continue their ways of exploitation and subjugation.  They are shaping the capitalist cage to squeeze the last remnants of our imagination and our connection to humanity and nature.  How can we defy the colonization of humanity and nature?  How can we be a part of the resistance against the criminal pyramid scheme which is bound to implode with its destructive nature?  How can we build our ways to be in harmony with ourselves, with each other and with nature?  We are a part of the countless people who have held the dream of such a harmony.  We stand strong with them in solidarity.  We are many. The oppressors are not.

 

[1] Hiroyuki Hamada, How Do We Dream the Dream of Peace Together? September 23, 2016

[2] Lauren Elizabeth, Jeff Bezos Made Some Revealing Comments After His Trip into Space. July 20, 2021

[3] Apoorva Mandavilli Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be.  August 29, 2020

[4] International Consortium of Scientists External peer review of the RTPCR test to detect SARS-CoV-2 reveals 10 major scientific flaws at the molecular and methodological level: consequences for false positive results.  November 27, 2020

[5] Off Guardian 12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic March 24, 2020

[6] Dr. Mike Yeadon Bitchute MICHAEL YEADON – HELA INTERVJUN – [SVENSK UNDERTEXT] June 8, 2021

 

[Hiroyuki Hamada is an artist. He has exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe and is represented by Lori Bookstein Fine Art. He has been awarded various residencies including those at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Edward F. Albee Foundation/William Flanagan Memorial Creative Person’s Center, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the MacDowell Colony. In 1998 Hamada was the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, and in 2009 he was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He lives and works in New York.]

Assetization – Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism

“How the asset—anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism”