Aug 15 2008
How McCain Benefits From the Georgia-Russia Conflict
President Bush this morning announced that Russia must withdraw all its troops from Georgian territory immediately. He denounced Russia’s actions as “bullying and intimidation” and vowed to stand with Georgia. While the war between Russia and Georgia continues to escalate and the casualties continue to mount, the US media is blithely commenting on how the conflict benefits Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. One week ago today, the former Soviet state began an offensive aimed at retaking the secessionist and pro-Russian region of South Ossetia, provoking a military intervention by Russia. By Monday Russian forces were in full control of the region and were pushing into Georgia. Russian troops are now in the strategic town of Gori, with conflicting reports about whether they will withdraw or not. The conflict has sparked a war of words between Russia and the US. Washington has accused Moscow of sabotaging Georgian military infrastructure and on Wednesday announced a US military airlift of humanitarian supplies to the region.
GUESTS: Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and distinguished visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, author of more than 20 books including his latest, “The Costs of War: International Law, the UN, and World Order after Iraq.”
Robert Scheer veteran journalist, former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, contributing editor for The Nation, author of many books including his latest, “The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.” He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Truthdig. His article about Russia and Georgia can be read at truthdig.com.
Rough Transcript
Sonali Kolhatkar: You have said that the October surprise, it’s possible, has been tried in August, regarding the conflict in Russia and Georgia. Why do you say that?
Robert Scheer: Well, because I see the neoconservatives having pushed this line of confrontation with Putin’s Russia for a long time, now. They need a bogeyman, they need an enemy out there, and I think they are doing pretty much what they did with Saddam Hussein. And the unfortunate thing is that they are very influential in the McCain campaign and Randy Scheunemann, who is the chief foreign policy person in the McCain campaign, was a paid lobbyist for Georgia for four years, his firm got $800,000. The firm continues to represent Georgia. It was Scheunemann who arranged for McCain to make his trips to Georgia, too. I think he was very influential in getting this hard-line anti-Putin position going, which McCain has been riding. And I think that Georgia would not have made this adventurous move without some assurance that they would be backed by the United States and I think they showed their disappointment when they weren’t.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Do you think that John McCain himself could have given the green light?
Robert Scheer: Well, I don’t know if it’s a question of a green light and I did raise it as a question mark. I can’t prove this. It would have actually violated U.S. laws if they did that. But it just seems to me from all the statements McCain was making, when he went there and when he went to South Ossetia and so forth, were indications that the U.S. would support what I consider to be an adventurous Georgian policy, and I think the Georgians are disappointed, or the president is disappointed, that there was no backing and now he looks quite weak.
Sonali Kolhatkar: I want to play some news clips from various mainstream TV news hours talking about how this conflict actually can benefit John McCain and then I’ll come back to you as well as Richard Falk for comment.
“And it’s not just this part of the world, but Senator McCain has been to so many exotic places like Waziristan and South Ossetia, and he’s very comfortable with these issues. He knows what he thinks. He’s been in contact with the leaders involved in these places for many, many years. So it’s really sort of a perfect thing for him.”
“This is McCain’s advantage here, advantage McCain. This is right in his sweet spot in foreign policy national security. He has known the current Georgian president, Saakashvili, since 1997. He met him when he was here in this country studying. And he knows all of the players in Georgia.”
“Shuster: We are back with more of the politics fix. John Heilemann, I want to ask you about this issue with Russia and the significance with Georgia. Is it a bit of a mixed message for John McCain when he tries to say this is so important, this is grave and then you look up and there‘s President Bush at the Olympic Games hanging out with the volleyball players?
Heilemann: Yes, I think it‘s a pretty significant mixed message. I thought it was interesting earlier on the program, you have someone who is I think Frank Gaffney was accusing Barack Obama of having foreign policy that was closer to George Bush‘s than John McCain‘s. I think, look, anything that puts distance between George Bush and John McCain is, I guess, good for John McCain.”
“I think McCain benefits from this in three ways. First of all, he separates himself from President Bush, something he needs to do in general. He does have real policy differences with Bush. He has been a skeptic of Putin. It also allows him to talk tough on foreign policy, something that he, when he’s comfortable doing it, on an issue he cares about, he sounds better than he does at other times. And, then, finally, as was just said by Ed Henry, this is an issue where Americans look to McCain more than Obama, someone they trust to be president. So, I think, in general, although it’s a substantive problem for the current administration, this is good politically for John McCain.”
Sonali Kolhatkar: Some news media clips talking about how the Russia-Georgia conflict is good for John McCain. Special thanks to alternet.org for providing this. Richard Falk, you have been studying this issue very closely as well. What do you make of all of these statements?
Richard Falk: Well, I think they ought to be taken seriously in the way that Robert Scheer has suggested to you. I think one should add, though, that it also suggests this terrible vulnerability of American society to the wrong kind of security policy, because the reason it helps McCain is that he is associated with the same kind of failed foreign policy that George Bush has given the American people, and yet the American people seem overwhelmingly to trust that kind of failed leadership more than seeking a more moderate, more intelligent, diplomatically oriented leadership that Obama, I think, would provide, and one that is less oriented toward this kind of militarism that has proven such a disaster for U.S. foreign policy ever since Vietnam.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Robert Scheer, now, John McCain is certainly capitalizing very openly on this issue, making very, very strong statements about Russia. What does this conflict and McCain’s response bode for future U.S.- Russia relations? I mean this is not to be taken lightly.
Robert Scheer: Well, first of all, you know, Putin is not some communist and he is a free-market guy, he established his reputation by being a reformer in the former Leningrad and he is not going, any more than the Chinese, he is not going to play the Cold War game. He is not going to give them what they want. And in addition there are very important economic restraints on the American position now; and also on the countries around Russia. I mean, they do have their resources and they are big players there and I think the other Europeans don’t want to return to the Cold War, so it sort of goes against main trend of history now, which is to deal with economics and trade and so forth. I also think if this had happened in October, it probably would have thrown the election, but coming now…
Sonali Kolhatkar: In what direction?
Robert Scheer: …towards McCain, but I don’t think it will work now, because there is some time. And first of all I think the Georgian public will not think this is such a wonderful thing. After all they lost, and they lost by an adventurous policy by a leader who thought the U.S. would back him uncritically, and they didn’t. And to the degree that we learn more about McCain’s reliance on these neoconservatives who brought us the Iraq war. After all, his key foreign policy guy was the head of the Iraq liberation thing. He was the director of the Project for the New American Century, so it is pretty difficult to disassociate yourself from the worst of Bush and his failure in Iraq when you embrace the very people who were the architects of that policy, and if the news media would stop the aimed babbling that you just played before and actually look at the record who are these people, where is McCain getting his information, you know, what drives him, and Obama has the courage to raise any of these issues, I think he could wrap this around McCain and show him to be what he is, basically a warmonger.
Sonali Kolhatkar: And speaking of media’s failure, Richard Falk, you have said that you are astounded by the mainstream media’s failure to take proper note of the pipeline geopolitics that are involved. Can you explain for our listeners what exactly is involved and how the media has covered it if at all?
Richard Falk: Well, I think the media overlooked the whole context of the conflict in the early days. And it failed to mention the oil dimension which is really at the core of the geopolitical stakes of this conflict. And what the U.S. has been pushing for is a pipeline that goes through Georgia, which is firmly oriented towards the U.S. and the West, and avoids both Russia and Iran, which are alternate economically preferable routes for the oil pipeline. So, this whole sense that the future of energy independence depends on who controls the Caspian oil reserve – that is being played out here in a very significant geopolitical aspect of this conflict. It is not the only dimension. It’s a complex situation with a whole series of different issues that are at play, but it is one of the important ones. And you could look at American main stream media, including the New York Times, and not find a word about these aspects of the conflict in the first two or three days. Now, today for instance, there is some reporting at least on the oil dimension.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Robert Scheer, also the media doesn’t seem to have done a very good job at looking at McCain’s comments that Russia should have taken this whole matter to the UN. I believe Russia did take it to the UN.
Robert Scheer: Yes, let me just comment on what Professor Falk just said, because I think it is exactly correct. I think there are basically two ways to look at the world. One is Bush I, his father, who believed in trade, he believed in a multi-polar world, he believed in doing business there, and then you have his son, who basically was captured by these neoconservative ideologues and has a very old-fashioned, imperial view of how you protect your interests; basically conquest and having to guard the pipelines and so forth. And I think these two views are diametrically opposed. And I think that if Obama is smart, he will embrace Bush I. Bush I cut the military by 30%, or at least that was his intention, he didn’t get it done. He knew the Cold War was over. It was his father’s views that were being reflected by the second Bush when he said he looked into Putin’s eyes and could see his soul and so forth. The reality is that we have to get along with Russia, we have to get along with China, and if our President doesn’t know that, the leaders of other industrial nations will inform him of that fact. And I think that’s the modern force and I think if Obama associates with that, he will get a lot of support. I don’t think the American people want to revisit the Cold War and they certainly don’t see conquering Iraq, which was the second biggest pool of oil, and yet oil prices went up fivefold, they don’t see that as a success. And the question is whether the Democrats have the courage to advance a more enlightened view. That’s really the issue here.
Sonali Kolhatkar: And what about the UN question, also? And how the media has not even covered that and given of course the U.S.’s own reluctance, if you will, to put it mildly, to not really go to the UN when it wants to do…
Robert Scheer: I mean, of course, come on, the U.S. invaded Iraq when UN inspectors were on the ground and they invaded because UN inspectors were not finding weapons of mass destruction. There is also this enormous contradiction between bombing Serbia for [inaudible] and then McCain saying modern nations don’t invade other nations. I mean the whole thing is nuts. I mean, if the Russians are wrong in Georgia, then we were wrong in the old Yugoslavia. I mean, there is lots of things. This idiocy of the media talking about how the Russians conquered Eastern Europe, well that was done by a Georgian. Nobody even mentions that. Nobody mentions that the Russian leader, the Soviet leader who conquered, was Stalin. And there is a statue to him in Gori, there is a museum to him. The Stalin Plaza was bombed by Russian planes two days ago. So this whole ignorance of history and simplistic babbling, really, is what is going on, I think will be exposed in the days to come. That’s where I think it’s going to be. The reason I say this is because it’s still August. There is time for reassessment. And just as you had in Serbia, there is a reassessment of the hard line and we lost more than we gained, I think in Georgia, there is going to be a reassessment – wait a minute, what was the great thing here? What did we gain?
Sonali Kolhatkar: Finally, Robert Scheer, what about Barack Obama’s position on this? I mean he is being looked at as weak with respect to foreign policy. That’s been one of the major strategies from the McCain department, and of course McCain is using this conflict, as we have talked about, to appear strong. What would be the reasonable thing that Obama should be, in your opinion, saying about this conflict?
Robert Scheer: I think what he has to do is challenge this drive back to the Cold War. Just today, Poland is now going to accept a missile shield and in return we are going to guarantee Poland against any attack on the first day. What are we trying to do here? We don’t need this missile shield. Here we were talking about cooperating with Russia on controlling their nukes, I mean, better safeguards, maybe going back to the Reagan-Gorbachev promise of getting rid of these things. Instead now we are giving the Russian military a reason to demand more nuclear weapons, and better ones, and better delivery systems. And let’s not forget here that Russia has some power in terms of their military force. They have these nuclear weapons and I think this will not be lost on the rest of the world. What are you doing trying to distort the Russian experiment at this point, take their mind of peaceful development and bringing them back to being a militarized power without communism? I don’t know, what is the logic of that? So if Obama would just make this point, what are we trying to do here? Why do we want to go back to the old days, and don’t we bear any responsibility for encircling Russia here and playing to their worst tendency? I think he could be very effective if he challenged that. But that would require a great deal of political courage.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Well, on that note, I want to thank the two of you very much for joining us today.
Richard Falk: Thank you.
Robert Scheer: Thanks for having us.
Special Thanks to Claudia Greyeyes for transcribing this interview
2 Responses to “How McCain Benefits From the Georgia-Russia Conflict”
I don’t know that McCain necessarily benefits. He has tied himself to the apparently certifiable Saakashvili and just days ago was engaged in conducting a shadow foreign policy on behalf of Georgia. It gives new meaning to McCain’s slogan “Country First.”
August 10, 2008
Protecting the American Dream #55
The Story So Far (America, Cusp 20th\21st Century CE)
Human psychology came into its own as a science in 1800s. Hypnotism was of special interest to some of the workers in psychology. The relationship between the brain, the will, and the mind was their concern. (One must remember that words like mind and will had a different meaning then than they have now.) But students of consciousness found their work overshadowed by those investigating behavior.
Those who were involved with the operation of governance in America quickly saw possible uses of the discipline of studies of the human mind and of human behavior. The study of behavior became ever more centered on controlling human actions. Making people do what you want them to do can be a profitable experience.
By 1900, psychology was becoming the science of generating compliance, assuming its place in the warfare toolbox of oppressors world wide, along with the hideous weapons that the overtly physical sciences provided.
American rulers saw the utility of such studies. People could be controlled; not only their overt behavior was subject to influence, but their emotions–even their thoughts–could possibly be manipulated in a systematic and effective manner.
Among the deepest roots of the discipline of human psychology are concerns with research into the sleeping consciousness of humans. For the scientists, this interest was of practical, clinical significance, as well as being of methodological and theoretical significance for the organization of the growing data of the science.
It was decided that a semi-conscious populace was best for America. A population of virtual sleep walkers would be the easiest to manipulate for the common good. Perhaps this obsession was fueled by lurid tales of zombies and latah during a time when colonialism assiduously instilled xenophobia even among the most elite.
At about the same time, commerce had already seized on the compliance science as a tool of great value. Public relations and advertising, motivation and attitudinal control were the concerns of psychology, as far as business leaders knew.
“We can only extend our market as far as we can control its thoughts and feelings!”
Some in the scientific community tried to explain that controlling a population was not the same as controlling an individual–and psychology is mostly about the study of the individual mind and of individual behavior–but few in charge of funding research listened. When human developers and political rulers become enamored of ideas and plans that they intend to use to gain control over people, they seldom let facts get in the way of how they want things to be.
Episode
America, 21st Century
Politicians are used to dealing with their constituents on the emotional level. This has been so from time immemorial and is not a matter for stigmatizing our public servants, only for mention as a social fact. Perhaps this concern with emotions is the reason that rulers so often want to control peoples thoughts and opinions by controlling their emotions.
The twentieth-century technological speed-up came. Psychology was gathering data rapidly, always mostly with the purpose of limiting and controlling individual consciousness and behavior. Vast stores of data about sleep existed to be exploited. Sleep is the classic example of lowered awareness, after all.
Fight, flight, and fright are the emotional markers of the human sleeping consciousness–what we call dreams. Produce these emotional conditions in the individuals within a populace and you are well on the way to limiting their waking consciousness, putting them into a mode of lowered awareness that will do for most modern work and for most modern consumption, the two essential purposes of the masses. But while you leave people conscious enough to be functional, you will leave them unaware of much around them, perhaps limiting their ruminations on the nature of the plight of their status as exploited objects.
Fright is easiest to install into a person. Fear is the instinctive avoidance of pain in all animate beings; no one marches into a blazing furnace, or jumps from a precipice; every single living thing will move to avoid being crushed; some say it is fear of the stigma of cowardice that makes people heroic. Historically, among humans, we see a pattern of eliciting fear, maintaining it, and then keeping it directed at certain selected objects to attain many supposedly valuable advantages.
In the so-called “advanced” human consciousness, fear of fear of pain can be induced. Generalized anxiety is a desirable attribute for those marked for manipulation.
First, keep people afraid of the future. Make them dependent on reassurances.
Keep them afraid of losing their jobs and income.
Keep them afraid of illness–an inevitability!–because they know they can’t afford health care that is of dubious value.
Keep people afraid of non-specified foreign enemies. Cultivate xenophobia.
And never forget to keep people afraid of each other. Perpetual fear is the sine qua non of attaining stability for a ruling elite.
[You might note that these are the tactics of enemies of the People, and are not limited to domestic foes. Foreign enemies may use these tactics against the U.S. So too may a cabal of enemies foreign and domestic seek to overthrow freedom by barbarism.]
Flight is next easiest. Fleeing a nebulous or frenetic threat is a consciousness reducing process. Feeling that one is fleeing amounts to the same thing. Most economic consumption in America is based on fleeing from the sense of personal inadequacy that is instilled in individuals by mass media advertising.
There were some apparent successes in the area of flight. Conditioning people to feel that they can drive away from problems in their cars was a cinch. The entire American urban program of several decades in the twentieth century was directed at causing inner cities to degenerate into uninhabitable slums. Flight from these areas in autos was highly encouraged. End of work day commuting can be seen as ritual flight. This behavioral modality enforces reduced conscious awareness of content not directly related to the act of flight.
Fight is more difficult to induce; but if fright and flight have been instilled, fight can be installed. People are naturally peaceful. But if there are always wars, there will always be fighting. Wars can be sold as the Great Providers of Benefits; some–nay, many!!–already see military experience as a necessary start to every American life.
The fear of lacking benefits can be used to push the most passive person into the fight mode. And the miles gloriosus is a type not unknown in any modern human nation. (But the use of literary figures of speech is to be avoided, when discussing politics, or watch out for the ad hominem of pedantry!) People who fear each other are likely to fight among themselves. (But I need not venture farther into truisms.)
A semi-conscious, half-dreaming populace is easy to control. At least, you might think so. You might want people to be that way, if you had plans for them that a more fully conscious person might object to being part of.
For most human beings, tampering with a sleeping person is taboo. No sensible person interferes with a sleeping person. You would not reach to another table and spearing someone else’s pork chop or sushi with your fork in a restaurant. Messing with the sleeping is worse. Fooling covertly with a sleeping person–except perhaps by waking them gently, and then only if absolutely necessary–is a form of criminal assault that usually indicates significant underlying sociopathological tendencies, not just bad table manners.
But I was discussing the semi-conscious who believe that they are awake. It is especially easy to keep them from action that will better their own conditions. In our society, passive consumption of products has replaced individual action. We do not even walk any more, or if we do, it is because we are on vacation or participating in some avocation. One of the most natural, enjoyable, and beneficial of human behaviors, walking, has been replaced. Whether it will return is an open question.
Controlling the half-awake/half-aleep looked good on paper.
People would be conditioned to live with lowered awareness. You could use that state to install your own suggestions about what they would feel and think–in this case, almost, dream–about. Far more importantly, you could control their behavior.
Some Drawbacks to the Current Way of Doing Business
Lucid dreaming is a phenomenon of the occurrence of both the waking state of consciousness and the unconscious state of sleep simultaneously. The waking segment of the mind can control the content of dreams that the unconscious segment is only able to experience.
Some people go lucid in dreams automatically. Some do it by a conscious will, after they have noticed a spontaneous occurrence of sleeping lucidity and remembered it. Some find it hard and can only learn how to do it with considerable practice. Spontaneous lucid dreaming is most common among adolescents.
You wanted to put people to sleep.
Be careful what you want to do.
Of course there is always the possibility that some of your half-asleepers will go lucid on you, when you are controlling a great national dream. When that happens, unauthorized indviduals can control the dreams that others are seeking to instill in the populace. In the face of official xenophobia, the lucids become tolerant. Fear for material well-being turns to an enough-for-the-day attitude with the lucids. (A carefree attitude, the attitude of the old-time hippies, is the last thing you want, in production-consumption economies!) Flight–and the frustration of not being able to get away–become moot. You can change the place you’re in, while lucid. You can dream up some place better.
The first principle of lucid dreaming is the recognition that you are asleep and that a part of you can wake up and control the contents of the dream scenario. If you are being caused fear, you can easily overcome it by remembering that the threat is unreal. The conscious portion of the mind can substitute contents that are consciously chosen as substitutes for the standard fight, flight, fright fare. Experienced lucid dreamers can manipulate nightmares into ecstatic dreams.
Of course, when you are controlling a half-asleep populace, installing content into their dulled consciousnesses, if a lot of them go lucid within a narrow enough time frame, you are in for some trouble. The lucids spread the news that there is such a thing as freedom and that it is there for the taking.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“We don’t need to escape. We can control our destiny right here. We can make it better for ourselves and our children.”
“We don’t need to fight each other.”
The socially conditioned dream state of fear and flight and fight begins to die out in folks, as lucidity increases.
More and more people see the need for peace. They see the need for living, not fleeing life into the extinction of death for fear of living. The People dream things up for themselves in unique ways, whatever way suits each individual best.
Courage, peace, and love are the conscious determinants of actions, just as fright, flight, and fight are the stuff of dreaming, a condition of unconsciousness that makes everything but the illusion of action all but impossible.
Conclusion
Too many lucids in a population can ruin a damn good war plan.
Whether people will understand that the ballot box is part of the American dream or not remains to be seen. This may be the year that the youth vote decides the Executive question. The 18 to 21 group will not vote old. Could they make a difference, by voting young?
Could the young vote push Obama ahead in key states?
What role will minority candidates play? Obama will lose some votes by being too far right. But he won’t lose them to McCain. There are now several parties that deserve votes far more than the Big Two.
The big question is, can the young man Obama define himself in time? (I wish B.O. had been around in the ’60s. Anyone over 20 and under 30 had to stand up for themselves day in and day out. You had to learn to deal with people 25 to 50 years older than yourself. Many of them were aggressive and spiteful, at first. After all, America had been attacked by Ho Chi Minh, and hippies wouldn’t even cut their hair! International warfare was being interfered with openly by international peace movements. Little by little we went lucid in America, until a war was ended on behalf of the dead, on whose behalf all wars are ended. Just like hats had gone away from the American male head a few years before, shirt collars disappeared, camouflaged under new growth of peace hair. Such male tonsorial deviance indicated that you were beyond militarism.)
Come onna Obama! You gotta swim oh, or you’ gonna be a gonnah!
From ’73 (1973 for some, 1873 for others) on it became clear to even the most youthful and oblique of watchers that many wars would proceed in Mid-Asia. But once a population has gone lucid to the extent that ours did in the 1960s, it’s hard to get them back under. Even salting the air pollution with nitrous oxide had little effect for many years.
Overt warfare finally returned. Every generation in an empire gets into things in what seems to them to be a different way, just as every nightmare seems to start in a different way. This time the invasion of the United States by indefinite forces–it may be argued–called for reprisal.
Yet how much pacification can the hardy folk of Iraq withstand as mighty America deals with its heavy weight of terror? This way of business can only be continued if lucidity is avoided in the populace. The current depression of economic functions due to the war can only distract the People from the war temporarily.
It remains among the rights of the people of the United States to end wars. (See USC, Bill of Rights, amends. IX & X.)
So far, the conscious segment of America seems hardly to have been able to limit the warfare. At this point, there is no sensible argument that I can see for prosecuting the Pacification of the Mid-Asians further. We are currently moving past decimation toward a full genocide in Iraq. It’s an American nightmare. I’m composing a tune called, “War, It’s What We’re Here For, Good God, Y’All.”
Who’s set to go lucid?
I surmise that there is no hierarchical distribution of the capacity for lucidity among persons. It seems far more likely that it is a universally available ability that is inherent in every consciousness.
I think it bears repeating. Too many lucids in a population can ruin a damn good war plan. Lucids recognize that the health, education, and welfare of American children are far more important issues than the grandiose destructions of nations that has been the hallmark of all prior human empires. I don’t expect either Sen. B.O. or Sen. J.M. to understand that. You see, we have ways of conducting business in our nation…
May You Find Peace Plans