Activists Protest War Simulator

Peacenik thinks this is sick. Just another way to brutalize society. War is fun. Violence is fun. Killing is fun. No doubt the Canadian military is viewing the war simulator with envy. How long before one comes to a mall near you.

Society already is too violent. Too well armed. To prone to rage. Society doesn't need war simulators recruiting kids into the army. Stop the war. Stop Don Cherry promoting war on Hockey Night in Canada. Stop glorifying death and destruction. Bring the troops home now.

by Jen DiMascio

Teens "killing" at the Army Experience Center (photo: Counter-Recruitment.org)

PHILADELPHIA - Located across from an indoor skateboarding park in a Northeast Philadelphia outlet mall, the Army Experience Center includes a computer lab that showcases careers as well as the kind of interactive simulators that are irresistible to its target market: the teenage boys recruiters hope will fuel the Army of the future.

One simulator is a model Humvee in which a handful of people can pick up model M-16 rifles and play an interactive video game that simulates a real battle in Iraq or rounding up illegal immigrants who have just crossed the border from Mexico. There's also a model Apache helicopter.

Read on...

Iran Updates (VIDEO): Live-Blogging The Uprising

Peacenik thought Peacenik should post something up-to-date about the situation in Iran. Like what is happening right now. And Peacenik discovered it is hard to know what is happening right now. The New York Times stories datelined June 18 are really about what happened yesterday. Likewise some blogs seem to be behind the news curve. This analysis from Nation magazine could already be superceded by events.

Peacenik wonders if the protests will lead to regime change, or will the protests dwindle away. A revolutionary spark seems to have been ignited in Iran. Peacenik also wonders what would happen if Obama reached out to the protesters. Encouraged them. And Peacenik will continue to wonder because Peacenik is heading north into an information blackout. Peacenik hopes that when Peacenik fires up Peacenik's computer on Sunday there will be a new regime in Iran.


Iran Updates (VIDEO): Live-Blogging The Uprising

I'm liveblogging the latest Iran election fallout. Email me with any news or thoughts, scroll down for news related to the headlines on the front page.

1:56 AM ET -- Gruesome details from the Tehran University attacks emerge. The Wall Street Journal continues its stellar coverage:

At the same time, Iran's Interior Ministry ordered a probe into an attack late Sunday night on Tehran University students in a dormitory reported to have left several students dead and many more injured or arrested. Students say it was carried out by Islamic militia and police. Iran's English-language Press TV said the ministry urged Tehran's governor's office to identify those involved. Iran's influential speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, condemned the attack.

Read on...

Turning away from the onslaught of angst

punditman says...

While Punditman's trusted sidekick and blogging companion, Peacenik, was feigning survivalist within the confines of his cottage and driving across literally hundreds of yards (<<< looky there!) of flooded roads with nothing but beer and love to fuel him, Punditman was growing more depressed by the nanosecond within the confines of his own mind.

As usual, Punditman blames this state of being on the Big Media monolith. Don't get me wrong. I think we should be informed. But we are saturated with mass media these days, and yet we're in more trouble on more levels than ever before. Maybe it is because the majority of today's mass media messaging can be classified as one of the following: negative, biased, insidious or trivial.

Negative media puts the emphasis on bad news, most of which we can do very little or nothing about. An accident here, a murder there, a disaster somewhere, a war over there. As a reminder of our helplessness, this onslaught of angst arrives via TVs tuned to what I call the "bad news channels." Ticker tape tales tell of dire economic conditions, unwinnable wars, fresh international sabre-rattling, random acts of insane violence by mainly males who suddenly explode in fits of rage at age 41, 23, 59, 10...terrible mishaps by stressed out cell-phone distracted, headset-enhanced cyborgs and that great cruel equalizer, the natural calamnity. These 24-hour plasma invaders now dot our public spaces, leaving precious little area of reprieve from the planet's daily carnage. It's one flashed headline of awfulness after another.

I honestly don't know if social psychologists have begun to study the long-term effects of all this mediated mayhem on our already frail psyches, but they should be. Twenty-four hour bad news stations now serve as the fallback channel in (gasp!) pubs (the wait staff never could figure out how to program the 7,000 channel all sports satellite service). So until some geek arrives, it's the bad news channel, no volume necessary. Ditto for the banks. Like everything else they do, banks never care to ask what we want. So there you have it: two places where we don't need to catch any more negative news. Thank you very much, Mr. Banker and Mr. Publican.

Biased media is self-explanatory. It comes in the form of most everything you see or hear on the corporate media networks, from the way the economic crisis is being reported and covered up to the narrow range of allowable foreign policy debate. Switch channel in disgust. Hey, it's another another commercial for more Big Pharma dope with possible side affects worse than the original ailment. This place is nuts.

Then there is insidious media, my very own pet peeve. Insidious media, for purposes here, are those violent video games that desensitize our children. I notice they are now advertised on prime time TV. Adults can now get a little glimpse of what their sons are doing for 10 hours a day up in their bedrooms.

When Punditman was a kid watching Hockey Night in Canada, he may have seen a Tiger in your tank Esso commercial or the old "I'd like to teach the world to sing" coke commercial. Yes it was corporate propaganda as all advertising is, but compare that to today's kids who are subjected to ads for the Grand Theft Auto video game, which apparently has a few critics. Rightfully so. Could violent video games end up causing more damage to society in the long run than a thousand jihadists? No wonder our boys are adrift.

Trivial media includes celebrity gossip and anything else that has no bearing on your life but is nevertheless pushed at you 24-7 as if it really mattered. It really doesn't matter that the Leafs missed the playoffs yet again (does it?). Okay, maybe.

Quality media on the other hand, engages us because it involves actual thinking—the awake, critical, creative, insightful, inspiring and uplifting kind of cognition. But it it is harder to find because you have to first sift through all the clutter being shoved in your face. But it is there. In books; in parts of newspapers; in online or offline documentaries. Peacenik has found one such web gem, by Carolyn Baker, here. It happens to sum up much of the minutiae that has been floating around Punditman's brain these last few days.

The article deals with the "...daily now, almost hourly-rampant eruptions of violence throughout the so-called developed world" and sees it as the inevitable outcome of a collapsing empire. Punditman notes that wackjobs appear even during the so-called good economic times of "empire." Ms. Baker claims that it is the psychology of empire itself that leads to these episodic psychoses of mass violence, "a culture in which one's reason for being lies entirely outside of oneself." You work, you consume, you pay taxes. You feed the growth machine. If things go awry, it's all your fault. Actually, for many people—an inner life that allows for a modicum of reflection or perspective is simply unattainable. What's more, the isolation of modern life means that millions lack a viable social support network. Thus for some, when their organism is distressed, the default position is madness. How many more human cluster bombs must go off before we realize that something in the social fabric, in the way we organize ourselves, in the way information is mediated, is very deeply flawed?

Two years ago, Punditman had this to say about another American massacre:

Is there any correlation between the horrific events at Virginia Tech and the daily carnage unfolding in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world? There may be no direct link, but it has been shown that domestic violence does increase when nations go to war, as outlined by the landmark study, Violence and Crime in Cross-National Perspective, published in 1984 by Yale University Press. The hypothesis posits that when countries do violence to other human beings, this incites their citizens to perpetrate more violence than they would normally commit. So the phenomenon extends well beyond the returning war vet who becomes a ticking time bomb (although this is a huge problem as well).

In Collapse psychosis: navigating the madness, Ms. Baker uses civilization synonymously with empire. I quibble, slightly: what I call civilization is synonymous with society. And society always seems to muddle on through, decade to decade--almost like there is a kind of collective brain at work (Margaret Thatcher be damned!).

The good news is that after we emerged from the primordial slime, we evolved into our current apish frames and began to form civilizations around 11,000 years ago, after the last glacial epoch. No easy task! What's more, since 1970 humans have created and stored more information than in the previous 5,000 years. Granted, a lot of it is negative, biased, insidious and trivial. But at least we're a persistent bunch. With any luck, we could get through this current phase of stupidity without slipping totally into the abyss.

Enough niggling. If you are wondering how to make sense of all the mayhem, Ms. Baker's piece is highly recommended. Read it. Then go for a walk outside.

Collapse psychosis: navigating the madness

by Carolyn Baker

It's happening daily now, almost hourly-rampant eruptions of violence throughout the so-called developed world. As civilization unravels, the uncivilized behavior of humans is becoming viral, and the culture of empire is quite simply going mad as its values, assumptions, and reasons for existing are evaporating with dizzying speed. For those who are and have been collapse-aware for some time, it is important not only to make sense of the epidemic violence, but to incorporate skillful responses to it.

First, I believe we need to deeply discern what is actually happening psychologically. The current outbreaks of violence are about more than unemployment and financial stressors. Yes, job loss, bankruptcy, foreclosure, homelessness, and loss of health care are breaking people and communities in pieces. Yet something even more fundamental is seething beneath the surface--something of which these losses are symptomatic.

Underlying the chaos is the reality of civilization's dissolution. But what does that actually mean?

Read on...

When Peacenik read this story about the ambush of three policemen in Pittsburg, Peacenik began to think about violence in societal collapse. Peacenik has thought about this in the past, but it is hard to understand. It is hard to put into a framework. This article helps put societal violence into context. Will militias attack bankers in their Mcmansions? How does Peacenik prepare for societal violence? Should Peacenik worry about these things? Is this just another moral panic, that will soon subside? Peacenik doesn't know.

Coming Chaos? Maybe Not

Posted by Jason Bradford

This essay was written by Michael W. Foley (TOD user greenuprising), a former professor in the social sciences at an eastern U.S. university who I now know as a local farmer. At a recent Farmers' Market, I suggested that we needed a more empirical and scholarly discussion of the potential for social breakdown, especially violence, during energy descent. Thankfully, he agreed to write the following for The Oil Drum.

A sizable subset of what some on this site call “doomers” are convinced that the demise of the petroleum economy will bring social breakdown and a violent struggle of all against all. Some are even preparing for the chaos to come. I'm convinced we have to take end-of-affluence scenarios, including the scarier ones, seriously. But it can help everyone confront these possibilities if we try to think more intricately about how people might respond. In particular, we need to face head-on the question whether social breakdown and violence are inevitable.

The concerns I'm adddressing here are pretty U.S.-centric, though I'm drawing on examples from around the world. Images of marauding bands sacking grocery stores and small farms and of neighbors guarding their hoards with shotguns mainly come out of the American imagination, I suspect. In places like Western Europe and Latin America, with old traditions of militant social organization, acute shortages might bring people out into the streets all right, even entailing looting and such (remember the Latin American “food riots” of the 70's and 80's?), but crystallizing pretty quickly into organized efforts to get governments to respond. But I'll try to suggest some conclusions that might have broader relevance than the U.S.

Read on...

Readers know that Peacenik sometimes succumbs to the arguments of "doomers". Some readers think Peacenik himself is a doomer. This article addresses the very issue that Peacenik has contemplated and posted on. Will the future be Mad Max like, or will it be more like the Great Depression with very little violence and some social cohesion? Jason Bradford makes an interesting case. Although his arguement that historical violence was frequently stirred up by politicians playing the ethnic card doesn't give Peacenik much comfort. Consider all the kooks that just ran for President in the U.S. McCain, a major candidate for President stirred up hate and fear of Obama. Will politicians stir up trouble in a bankrupt, depression- like U.S. What about all the kooks in the Canadian parliament. Peacenik fears we are doomed.

The Mindless Menace of Violence

punditman says:

Is there any correlation between the horrific events at Virginia Tech and the daily carnage unfolding in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world? There may be no direct link, but it has been shown that domestic violence does increase when nations go to war, as outlined by the landmark study, Violence and Crime in Cross-National Perspective, published in 1984 by Yale University Press. The hypothesis posits that when countries do violence to other human beings, this incites their citizens to perpetrate more violence than they would normally commit. So the phenomenon extends well beyond the returning war vet who becomes a ticking time bomb (although this is a huge problem as well).

Add to this, the plethora of television shows thematically constructed around murder and mayhem, news footage of the daily death toll in Baghdad, even the violence in professional sports--and you have to conclude that this deadly cocktail has an insidious, demonstrable affect on social consciousness, making rage an option for some, instilling fear among the many, and desensitizing us all.

I am reminded of the words of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., himself a victim of violence, who during a time of war, spoke of the Mindless Menace of Violence in America. His words may seem obvious for his time and prescient for ours, yet they remain unheeded:

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.