The Isocracy Network

The events of September 11th, 2001, can be called the 'impetus' for the pair of wars we have today only by closing our eyes to the realities of the last hundred, even last few thousand years. To try and untangle the muddle would almost certainly leave out enough events to be insulting to one side or the other. The attacks in New York were claimed by their perpetrators as a response to American imperialism and interference in the Middle East, in the form of support for the Israeli state against the Palestinians. American imperialism and interference, in turn, is a response to the Middle East's stranglehold on the world's oil reserves and its willingness to cover for the crimes of Islamic extremists in Israel and elsewhere. The back and forth could be traced all the way to the sacking of Jerusalem, or even the prophet Muhammad's conquering trail through the Arabian penninsula.

The point is that at some point, you have to take an event on its face. A political actor must accept that he is the perpetrator of his own actions, especially when what he undertakes is in the name of those who are long dead and far beyond having their actions 'redeemed.' The attacks on September 11th constitute such a point. It was a raise of the ante, a deliberate act of cruelty intended to change the nature of the game, and it did. It made clear that there were forces that were willing to reach around the globe, to carve 'You are not safe' upon the great American Experiment, and to involve deliberately an American population that, for the most part, long since relinquished control over its political and military machine. Whatever can be said of how much it awakened the population, it has changed the way politicians interact, the way states interact, and the way people interact.

Americans have a love of liberty. They're raised with it from cradle to grave, and only a few - immigrants, brave journalists, long-deployed soldiers, and refugees - know what it is not to have guaranteed basic rights like the ability to speak your mind in public, to demand redress of grievance from the government, to defend yourself against unwarranted government intrusion. There is a general feeling, poo-poohed by liberal intellectuals as 'cultural relativism', that American freedoms should be the way the entire world works. There is a feeling that the guarantees in the American Bill of Rights and the United States Constitution are somehow correct, that they form some cornerstone of personal and political authenticity. To export these freedoms to others seems worth the price to many people, so long as the moral intentions are clear and open.

Humans all over the world possess a similar character; no human being, not even one of the leadership caste, can truly prosper in a totalitarian famine-state. Similarly, a life spent in lawless jungle villages, constantly fleeing in terror from roving squads of murderous thugs, losing precious material objects or even family members along the way, has little to recommend it. This is especially true when compared to the very real chance of a life of material wealth, intellectual and cultural indulgence, and personal freedom of movement, assembly, and expression. When we see other human beings in such situations, we are moved. An individual have almost no power to affect even a democratic country's decisions, aside from a single vote in elections that are increasingly meaningless. But when the country mobilizes for a war to root out a man whose stated goal is to rid the world of 'America' (and breathe deep of that particular statement: Here we have a man born of Saudi royalty, whose organization and its sibling organizations have consciously increased the violence in their home territories, whose religious beliefs include the intellectual and social stunting of half the world's population, and whose law stems from a barbaric and Iron-age belief in mob rule and retaliation, calling for the destruction of the only state to guarantee freedom from precisely such things in its foundational documentation) and expands it to include ousting a tyrant whose means of subjugation has included roving political death-squads, deliberate starvation, and crimes against humanity limited only by the lack of larger-scale technology, what's not to like? What human being, especially a morally interested American, would not be in favor of liberation?

As the tenth year of the US-led invasion by the UN-endorsed International Security Assistance Force [1] occupation approaches, debate has began over the continued role of the coalition troops in that country, with increasing concern that the war is unwinnable, the coalition supported government is incurably corrupt and the armed forces of official Afghani government would be incapable of maintenance of any sense of law and order without foreign support [2]. The Taleban, partially religious extremists, partially local partisans, are believed to be winning the ground war and the support of the local population. Despite this honestly bleak assessment the situation, conservative politicians are comitted [3] to a failed policy of military occupation, with at least the nominal claim that they are denying Islamicist terrorists a safe haven for operations, and with the admitted policy of supporting international alliances; almost fifty states have currently committed troops to ISAF, total casulties are at least 100,000 [4], and billions of dollars pledged in aid.

Despite this the existential circumstances in Afghanistan remain dire; the average life expectancy is less than 45 years. Only 28% of the population is literate. GDP per capita is $1,000 USD, with 35% unemployment and an equivalent number living below the poverty line. Tellingly these are not dramatic improvements from 1990 or 2000, and in some cases the metrics are worse (47, 46 years life expectancy, 12 and 31% literacy, GDP per capita $200 and $800, 8% estimated unemployment in 1995) [4]. In 2010 Terrorist attacks, those who systematically use violence against non-combatants for political ends, increased in 2010 (to 7,400 attacks between January and September), among an increasing illegal trade in narcotics, elections with an enormous degree of fraud [6], the retention of the death penalty, arbitrary detention and torture, and serious abuses of basic human rights especially toward women.

With the monthly military cost of $6.7 billion from the US budget alone [7], the continuing defense of a lackey government in Kabul, which faces deep resentment among the Pashtun tribal loyalists, cannot be considered a sustainable proposition. It seems that many recognise this, but few are able to offer truly viable alternatives. The occupation forces have recently spoken about alliances with the Taleban (apparently overstated [8]) and NGOs are asked to seek permission from the same in order to carry out their work [9].

Opponents of the occupation and the Islamic republican government and the fundamentalists of the Taliban, such is common in leftist and libertarian circles, must present this opposition with a viable alternative. Few have genuinely considered a principled and practical position that places human rights and national self-determination with an understanding of the context. The first step in this process is the conversion of the existing military strategy to defeat the Taleban/Al-Qaeda to an economic one. Religious fundamentalism struggles to survive in places of economic prosperity, US-style evangelicism notwithstanding. Unwelcome military occupation generates resentment; providers of infrastructure are more often welcomed. Literacy, health-care, housing, sanitation - all of these are desparately needed by the people in Afghanistan. Improving their lives is the priority, of far greater importance than abstract geostrategic concerns.

by Nairi Porter (image by Ariel Payopay)

Here is a question. Who or what is the dictator's best friend? The ignorance of the public, the mediocrity of the social institutions, or the weak economy?

Diamonds. Usually we see them shining in small boxes behind protected glass screens. Or on the necks and fingers of the Hollywood celebrities. Maybe that is why Naomi Campbell couldn't realise the true significance of the dirty gems in that box which two strange looking men gave her in 1997. Now she is testifying in the Hague where the international Tribunal for war crimes is investigating the atrocities in Sierra Leone which also involved the former Liberian president Charles Taylor. Naomi still remembers that dinner with the president 13 years ago in Cape Town. It was organised by Nelson Mandela who was president of South Africa at the time. The investigators suspect that the diamonds she received as a gift from the fascinated Taylor were "blood diamonds". Now this gift could expose the role of Taylor in smuggling weapons for the rebels in Sierra Leone during the horrific civil war in the 90's.

In her testimony, Naomi Campbell explains that she didn't know anything about any "blood diamonds" and she knew nothing of the genocide in Sierra Leone and she wasn't sure if the gift really came from Charles Taylor whom by the way she had never met before, although she kind of "suspected" it was the case.

Yes, probably no-one in the world of glamour and fashion has heard a thing about the so called blood diamonds. The celebrities probably do not even suspect that some of the gems of the "clean, sparkling, in a box" type which they are used to possess, may sometimes originate in muddy African mines and are extracted by people with the statute of semi-slaves. Neither do they contemplate about the blood, sweat and tears which used to be and most probably are still shed in this dirty trade with these beautiful pieces of carbon. And occasionally they need some star dust to be spilled around and some uproar to erupt in order to cast some light on the matter and to be reminded about the inconvenient facts surrounding the diamonds, and about the ugly conflicts on the poorest continent in the world which they are intertwined with.

Here is why they are called "blood diamonds". In the 80's and 90's, a portion of the diamonds of Africa were used to finance brutal conflicts in places like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, Cote d'Ivoire, Congo and Zaire. These clamours were marked by mass murder, rape and mutilations. During that period nearly 4% of the mined diamonds in the world were stained with blood. Today the estimates claim this has dropped to 1%.

Hannah Arendt is considered one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century and, it must be stated, a profoundly influential contributor to the social and political theory of the Isocracy network. Two of her major works include The Origins of Totalitarianism, a sociological study of the Stalinist terror and Nazi genocide, and On Revolution, which combined political science with history, both highly important for an isocratic perspective. Arendt is difficult to position in a traditional political sense; she is a supporter of constitutionalism and the rule of law, yet she also disparaged representative democracy in favour of high levels of deliberative participatory democracy and the revolutionary spirit. Both anarchistic in her love of political pluralism, political involvement, and direct democracy she also emphasised the fundamental roles of government in establishing lasting institutions and laws as the free agreements of behaviour between members of the polis.

The Human Condition, reviewed here in summary form, emphasised the vita activa and distinguished between three fundamental activity; labor, work and action, distinguishing the "human condition" from "human nature", the latter existing within human beings, the former between. The vita activa, or active life, is necessarily distinguished by what has been more popular in the western philosophical tradition which concentrated on vita contemplativa (contemplative life). Famously Arendt refused to describe herself as a philosopher precisely because of the historical attachment of that discipline to contemplativa; Arendt (to use the Platonic philosophical language which she targets) attended to the world temporary 'appearances', rather than the world of eternal 'forms'. For her, life was to be lived with others in the practical tasks of common activity i.e., praxis.

The Collapse of Complex Societies (1st paperback ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tainter aims to provide a theory as to why most complex societies so far have not just faded away but abruptly collapsed, short of the current world-wide one, there we don't know yet. But he fails. He repeats the phrase "diminishing marginal returns on complexity" a lot but it sounds like something he overheard someone in the economics department saying (which he is not from, he's an archaeologist) and now just repeats it. Just repeating it doesn't make it true.

However in the course of building his case for his theory, he's providing a lot of detail about societies past & current that you can use to come up with your own theory. Now here is mine: Complexity requires a lot of communication and, short of the Internet, communication is expensive, so they start building hierarchies. A society's political/social/economic hierarchy is simply a communication hierarchy the same way we build our star-shaped networks, hierarchical DNS etc. Any more decentralized communication structure requires redundancy and that was too expensive in the old times and may or may not be too expensive in our time, time will tell.

An-Nakbah

For over half a century the conflict between Israel and Palestine, the centre of the world's three Abrahamic monotheisms, has raged. Space is not sufficient here of course to detail the main events of this conflict, except in title alone: The British Mandate in Palestine and the Balfour Declaration, the Arab revolts of the 1930s, the declaration of the State of Israel (with scant regard of local opinion) and the subsequent war in the late 1940s, raids and counter-raids in the 1950s, the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1967 Six Day War, the 1973 Yom Kipper War, the 1982 Lebanon War, the First and Second Intifada, the 2006 Lebanon War, and the Gaza War of 2008-2009. With over 100,000 casulties since 1945 and with economists estimating that the opportunity cost of the various conflicts representating trillions of dollars [1].

The dead are many, the costs are high and the divisions are deep. David Hacohen, a supposedly left-wing member of the Israeli Knesset for six terms once described Arabs as "... they are not human beings, they are not people". At the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the first secretary-general of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, announced: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades" [2]. These are just illustrative examples of how deep the hatred has often reached; there are plenty of others and from equally senior positions.

Peace efforts have only had a modicum of success. The two United Nations Security Concil Resolutions, 242 and 338, have provided a temporary cessation of hostilities, but have not been unable to unravel the continuing damage, let alone implement, the original UN General Assembly Resolution 181 for the partition of Palestine. Resolution 242 called for Israel to give up the occupied territories and the resolution passed was passed 15 to 0. It has not, of course, ever been implemented. Indeed the opposite has been the case; there are now 0.5 million Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jersualem, turning the region into a "pastrimi" [3] of harshly discriminatory settlement policy, of restricted movements, of concrete and iron 'separation barriers' - of kibosh ha'adama - "conquest of the land". The 1993 Oslo Accords fared somewhat better - they allowed for the formation of the Palestinian National Authority, providing the 'right' for Palestinians to police their own imprisonment.

Born of desperation and hopelessness some Palestinians fight back against this systematic, grinding humiliation with the predictable tools of people in such a situation; the use of violence against non-combatants for political ends, better known as terrorism. A tragic shortlist can easily be rattled off - the 1972 Munich Olymipics massacre, the 1974 Ma'alot massacre, the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, the 1989 Tel Aviv-Jerusalem bus attack, the 1993 Mehola Junction bombing, the 2003 Maxim restaurant suicide bombing, the 2008 Mercaz HaRav massacre, along with thousands of Qassam and similar rockets being launched indiscriminately into civilian areas. All, it must be grimly accounted, with relatively few fatalities and absolutely no threat to the Israeli State. But of particular note as the conflict drags on, the desparation of the Palestinian people grows, along with their acceptance of the use of violence against civilian targets and support for less flexible religous doctrine [4]. Without freedom, there is nothing left to lose.