Narcocapitalism

poppy1Afghanistan is often referred to as the “Heartland” in world history, the center of the “Great Game,” a colossal struggle between the British and Russian empires up until World War I. A mere glance at the map easily shows its importance, as a trade route with borders on or near China, Pakistan, India, the old Soviet republics (the ‘stans’), and leading to the Indian Ocean south and north to Russia herself. By 1979 The Soviet Union dominated the region. US power had been in decline for decades. So the decision by US planners (while Jimmy Carter happened to be president) to lure the Soviets into an Afghan trap is perhaps a pivot point in the survival of the US military empire, the only thing that has allowed survival of the US as an economic power.

So pity the poor schmucks who happen to live there. Making a living in arid soil is difficult, but tribes had perfected techniques over the eons, moving cattle and sheep from low to high pasture, and growing trees that tapped and preserved deep moisture in the soils. The US/Soviet proxy war of the 1980’s destroyed that economy. After the US succeeded, much to the delight of Zbigniew Brzezinski, both countries abandoned the region, leaving it to flail in the wind. (Zbig, easily diagnosed as a classic sociopath, delights in destruction but is short on know-how about regional development and human resources.) Without regard to anything else, the decision in 1979 to lure the Soviets into the trap devastated a fragile economy, and the lone surviving cash crop that Afghans could use for survival became opium.

central_asia_bigIn the wake of that war, both Afghanistan and Pakistan were essentially narco-states, with Afghanistan having none of the formal structure of government to gain formal recognition as a state in the world system. Its devastated economy left it as nothing more than a battleground for various drug and war lords. It was into that failed system that Pakistani intelligence, known as ISI (fostered and deeply infiltrated by the CIA), promoted the Taliban. While demonized in the US propaganda system, the Taliban were nothing more than the survivors and inheritors of a tragedy. However, to gain acceptance on the world stage, the regime cracked down on opium production, so that by 2001 the harvests had dwindled to nearly scratch.

The US had long wished for military dominance of the region, wanting to put bases on the southern perimeter of the new Russian Federations in the ‘stans. The false flag attack by the US on itself on 9/11 was used as justification for a bombing attack on Afghanistan, centered around Kabul. (Prior to 9/11, the Taliban had been warned that their territory was needed for a gas pipeline from the Caspian Basin, and were told that they would be given either a carpet of gold or be buried under a carpet of bombs.) The Taliban, which had lost most of its internal support due to its repressive policy on opium production, easily collapsed, and Afghanistan was again a battleground among competing factions for geopolitical maneuvering.

2013, the twelfth year after the US bombing attack and occupation of Afghanistan, saw the country produce a record crop of opium, historically significant. Observers wonder about this remarkable resurgence in production despite the presence of US troops. I don’t wonder about that at all. In the post-war era, drugs and the CIA and the US military have gone hand-in-hand around the world, from the Golden Triangle of Thailand, Laos and Burma, to the fields of Colombia and Mexico, to Afghanistan. Wherever there is US presence, there is a surge in drug production and trafficking.

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The cash flow from opium and coca fields is an important component in many wars and armed insurgencies. The CIA usually allies itself with the cartels that produce the drugs as a matter of necessity, something that ought to be cause for wonder (why are we always allied with the bad guys?). But CIA itself is not in the drug business. It is simply that arm of capitalism that fosters war and overthrow of governments that Wall Street and London do not like. Alliance with the drug business is a necessity to achieve their end. As we saw with the Taliban, even as that regime was working diligently to end opium production in Afghanistan, CIA was working to undo the Taliban. Drugs were not an issue.

So what have we learned?

  • The great powers do not care about regional people or economies.
  • The great powers do not care about drugs or the devastation of lives and economies they render.
  • While we know where the opium and coca fields are, the path of the crops to the labs to convert them to heroin and cocaine are shrouded in mystery.
  • The money that derives from those labs are an even greater mystery. I would bet that no one on Wall Street or in London has a clue where it goes.*

Let’s be frank. A large part of the problem with opium and coca is prohibition, which increases the value of the crops and spawns criminal networks. Eradication of fields in one place merely moves them to another. Even as the US wages a two-faced battle on drugs (one to eradicate, one to foster their growth), the drug business is built on demand. The only viable option for curtailment of growth, distribution and cash flow is by lessening demand, i.e. … treatment. The problem will never go away, and a certain percentage of the population will always be drawn to addiction. We can only minimize that.

What we probably should not do is to support drug dealers, war lords, cartels, banks, and narco-states like Pakistan and Colombia to advance capitalism. That’s actually kind of cynical, ya know?
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*This is sarcasm. I always forget to tell people when I do that, leading to confusion.

Murder, plain and simple (Bernard Goldberg, listen up)

Bernie Goldberg used his position as a sports analyst on Bryant Gumbel’s Real Sports last week to announce that the Russians had shot down Malaysian Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014. Goldberg had no evidence to support his view. Why he felt the need to interject it into a panel discussions on sports injuries is unknown, but prior to doing so, you can see his eyes darting to off-screen sources – he seems nervous. His use of that platform to advance the theory that the Russians did it was rude, calculated, and dishonest. It begins at 5:20 in the video that follows:

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On August 8th, Ukraine, The Netherlands, Belgium and Australia signed an agreement allowing the disclosure of information regarding the investigation of July 17 the crash of MH17 only at the consent of all parties involved. In other words, built into that investigation is a conflict of interest, for it turns out that the Kiev government was responsible for the shoot down, as evidence that follows demonstrates to be highly possible, then that government, which Vladimir Putin refers to as a “putsch,” has the power to quash the release of the information.

Air-to-air cannon shots were directed at the cockpit to kill the crew. The attacking aircraft then went behind the 777 to destroy its guidance systems with an air-to-air rocket.
Air-to-air cannon shots were directed at the cockpit to kill the crew. The attacking aircraft then went behind the 777 to destroy its guidance systems with an air-to-air rocket.
The following are the conclusions of a group of experts from the Russian Union of Engineers that was gathered to analyze the loss of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014.

The expert group included retired AA officers, who had combat experience with surface-to-air missile systems, as well as pilots experienced in using air-to-air weapons. The problem was also discussed at the meeting of the Academy of Geopolitical Affairs, where many different versions were tested and discussed once again. In the course of the analysis, the experts used materials received from open sources published in mass media. The situation was also analyzed with the help of the Su-25 aircraft flight simulator.

The conclusions are detailed by Ivan A. Andrievskii, First Vice-President of the All-Russian Public Organization Russian Union of Engineers, Chairman of the Board of Engineering Company “2К”. See the entire report at Voltaire Network.

Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was conducting the flight Amsterdam-Kuala-Lumpur, on 17.07.2014, according to the tunnel set by the air traffic controllers. It is most probable that manual steering was offline and the airplane was flying in autopilot mode, performing horizontal flight following the route which was laid out on the ground and adjusted by Ukrainian air traffic controllers.

At 17.17–17.20 the Boeing 777 was in Ukrainian airspace, in Donetsk area, at the altitude of 10100m. An unidentified fighter aircraft (presumably Su-25 or MiG-29), which was previously at a lower echelon, on a head-on course in a layer of clouds, ascended rapidly, unexpectedly emerging in front of the passenger plane out of the clouds and opened fire at the control cabin (cockpit), using 30mm or smaller cannon armament. The targeting could have been performed not only by the pilot of a fighter aircraft in “free hunt” conditions (using the aircraft radar), but also by a navigation officer on the ground, using the airspace data received from ground-based radars.

The cockpit of the airliner was damaged in the result of numerous rounds hitting the aircraft fuselage. The control cabin was depressurized, which caused the instant death of the crew, due to mechanical influences and decompression. The attack was quite unexpected and lasted only a fraction of a second. Due to the surprise situation, the crew was unable to give any alarm signals intended for such situations, as the flight was following its scheduled route and the attack was unexpected for everyone.

As neither the engines, nor the hydraulic system, nor other devices crucial to the continuation of the flight, were set out of operation, the Boeing 777 continued its horizontal flight in autopilot mode (which is a standard situation), perhaps gradually losing altitude.

After that, the pilot of the unidentified fighter aircraft maneuvered and repositioned himself into the rear hemisphere of the Boeing 777. He entered an engagement course, performed the targeting using onboard target tracking equipment, and launched a R-60 or R-73 air-to-air missile (one or multiple).

As a result of the missile impact, the entire cabin was depressurized, the flight control system was incapacitated, the autopilot was switched off, the plane ceased its horizontal flight and went into a tail-spin. The created g-forces caused a mechanical disruption of the airframe at high altitude.

As indicated by the available flight recorder data, the plane fell apart in the air, but this is possible mainly in the case of vertical falling from a 10000m altitude, which can typically happen only in a case of exceeding the maximum allowed g-force. As a rule, such a tail-spin can be explained by the inability of the crew to control the airplane as a result of some emergency case in the cabin and subsequent instant depressurization of the cockpit and passenger compartment. The destruction of the airplane took place at a high altitude, which explains the fact that the wreckage of the plane was dissimilated over a territory over 15 km².

Finally,

On 17.07.2014 the armed forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic possessed neither appropriate fighter aircraft capable of engaging an air target similar to the Boeing 777, nor an airfield network, nor radar detection devices, targeting and guidance equipment.

Fighter aircraft of the Russian Federation Armed Forces did not violate the airspace of Ukraine, which is confirmed by both the Ukrainian side and by third parties performing space-based reconnaissance over the territory of Ukraine and its airspace.

Three more down

YEAREND PICTURES 2001.My ex-brother-in-law, Richard McGuire, was a retired fire fighter when on 9/11/2001 he saw that his department friends had a big job to do. Transportation to Manhattan was shut down so he got on his bicycle and rode the thirty miles from Rockville Centre, on the island, to ground zero. That’s how those guys are, tightly knit, watching each others’ backs.

Dick died in December of 2012 of cancer at age 65. 850 first responders have died of cancer since that event. That was, I swear, no ordinary fire.

The darkest hour is just before dawn?

I am not a fan of public education, and I do not think that “history” should be taught in public schools. Kids ought to explore on their own what made this place. Textbooks, by structural necessity, must tell lies.

I am not a fan of charter schools either, as it is nothing more than an opportunity for rent seekers, like DeVry and University of Phoenix, only on a smaller scale.

What’s my proposal for education? I ain’t got one. I just know that what we got is producing mindless little non-thinking robots …

Hey – wait a minute! Right under my nose, kids and parents are acting up! I am so surprised and pleased. There’s always hope.

Unimaginable unrealized human potential

We appear to reach a point in our development that I think of as “calcification,” wherein opinions harden and new information cannot penetrate consciousness. I suppose it happens to all of us, and I have either experienced it and do not know it, or am in line for the event. Nonetheless, I will operate on the assumption that at this point in my life, I can be reached and persuaded with new evidence, and that information can be assembled and reassembled to yield new and better explanations than those I currently rely on to make my world view seem coherent. The world is immense and complex, and we experience so little of it no matter how much we read and pay attention. We have to be open to new ideas!

I say this because my blog discussions yesterday, here with Swede and at 4&20 with Turner and Craig Moore, are with people ahead of me in line. All three seemed impenetrable, that is, they stand poised with baseball bats to swing at anything thrown their way that might interfere with calcified opinions of … what – 40 years in Swede and Craig’s cases? Turner, confronted with new information that did not match his existing explanations of events, got up on a high horse and said “prove it to me.” I told him to use his computer, fingers and brain to investigate for himself, to which he suggested I not be condescending.

That is probably true. I do that. If it is about changing minds, it’s a quixotic quest. My attitude is that minds cannot be changed by persuasion. Most opinions have been implanted by media, are not reasoned, and are constantly reinforced in the full spectrum of news, education and entertainment. They cannot be changed. People deviate a little from the herd, and then get pulled back in. Hardly anyone examines why they “know” things. To dislodge an implanted impression requires shock, which produces cognitive dissonance, which discomfort requires adjustment and realignment of viewpoints.

The normal reaction to shock, however, is what I call the “eye flash,” wherein a defense system put in place by education, news and entertainment deflects nonconforming information much as a baseball bat sends a ball off on a long trip. I first encountered that phenomenon with a young college student who was learning how to make movies. She wanted to do a documentary on the Armenian Holocaust, which she said was the first genocide of the 20th century. I suggested to her that perhaps the US treatment of tribes in the Philippines qualified for that honor, and I noticed an eye flicker. “Does not compute. US no do genocide. Only foreigners.” That flicker was the sign that the new information has been instantly dismissed, and was deep in the left field seats.

I have no duty to prove anything to anyone. Each of us is charged with observation and investigative duties. Over the years I’ve come to understand some things and have had to change my outlook on many, many occasions, and yet still have to wonder if anything I know is true. Here’s just a brief rundown:

  • Education as we know it does not set us free. It enslaves us.
  • Most people hate freedom. Hate it. They prefer security.
  • Democracy only sort of works, and then only if there is a high level of organization, not currently present in our country.
  • News media does not report news, but rather focuses our attention as leaders desire, on some things, away from others.
  • Climate change might be real, might be an illusion. Individuals cannot affect it.
  • Climate change should not scare us, however. We’ll survive, easily.
  • Voting occasionally matters, usually on issues close to home.
  • We’re not running out of energy. We can’t. There can be incalculable potential unlocked from the atom by cold processes, shown to us in a startling way on 9/11/01.
  • In all political systems everywhere, real power is present but silent, and attempts to control all factions. Those that it cannot control, it attempts to destroy.

I got more and better stuff. We’re all unknowingly in a Stanley Kubrick film, and he’s hinting at us, poking ever so gently, because that was all he was allowed to do without himself getting killed. You think this world is strange? Oh yes, it is. Strange and fascinating. More so that we can fathom. And yet, comprehensible.

Long day, it was. But illuminating. Swede ended it on the proper note. Confronted with a comment longer than than one short paragraph, he said “Too long. Just skimmed.” “Go fuck yourself,” I responded, wanting to shorten the message for his attention span. I think he actually read that comment.

Criminal enterprises handing out candy

I’ve been around this block a few too many times. The war is on now, thousands of innocent people are being driven from their homes, and how many wounded or killed won’t be known for some time. It is well-known in the area what is going on. The further away one gets from Syria, the more clouded the issue will become. But by the time one gets to the USA, the issue will not be clouded at all. It will be a gigantic lie. Years from now we’ll learn that our American boys flying our American toys are bombing Syrian villages and towns, and reinforcing ISIS positions in the process. The whole thing is one big goddamned lie.

The war is on now to topple the democratically elected government of Syria. It is not a perfect government, but is far more representative of its people than our own. Americans haven’t a clue what their own government is doing. The United States military now is performing its terrorist function, and while supporting terrorists, is bombing and murdering innocent civilians. Soon they will hand out pictures of soldiers giving candy to children. The US military has an abundant supply of machines and bombs, stupid and deeply indoctrinated fighting men and women, and candy.

Photos like this are not staged. No sireee ... not staged. No way.
Photos like this are not staged. No sireee … not staged. No way.
Those pictures of candy and kids – honest, that shit works. Americans eat that candy up.

Anyone who takes time to review evidence scattered about the Post-War era will find, as I have, certain oddities. The enemies of the United States generally have broad popular support. The allies of the United States, say for instance the leader of “free China,” Chiang Kai-shek, or Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, or Augusto Pinochet in Chile or our most recent friend and ally, Petro Poroshenkoturn of the Ukraine, turn out to be terrorists and often enough drug runners and thieves to boot. We generally can label them “fascists,” but that label, like “Nazis”, has lost substance, and only means “bad.”

More to the point, the people the United States supports are well-connected to large financial interests like oil companies or mining concerns, or even companies selling such trifling items as soda pop. In Syria, it is natural gas production and distribution at stake, with ExxonMobil and Aramco wanting to displace the current route of gas to Europe from Tehran to Damascus with an alternative route that benefits their own coffers.

It’s that simple sometimes.

I read a little story some time back in a book written in 1970 by Fletcher Prouty called The Secret Team. Prouty was attempting to illustrate how corrupt agents within government manipulate honest and corrupt officials alike to their own ends. The events that he described eventually mushroomed into what became known as the Bay of Pigs, an invasion meant to sucker JFK into bombing the island. The driving force behind the invasion was pissed off businessmen and mafioso who had lost casinos, sugar plantations and mines. They regarded Cuba as their island paradise.

Most of the American-connected criminal element had left Cuba and taken up residence in Miami after the revolution. In Prouty’s example a few of them were in touch with some workers at a sugar refinery in Cuba. They hatched a plan to set off bombs in that refinery and destroy it. The CIA thought it was a good idea and supported the idea, supplying the bombs.

In case you’re wondering, that is a criminal act. The U.S. was not at war with Cuba. It was simply terrorizing the place.

On the night that the terrorist act was to be committed, Cuban military officials intercepted the boat and the bombs and arrested the agents and those at the factory who supported them. Cuban security was very good because of the neighborhood block reporting system. The Cuban government not only knew about the scheme, but allowed it to develop so that they could arrest the perpetrators and get them out of their hair.

There’s a lesson here that I believed as a youth and Swede, who has not read this far, still believes, and it is this:

Cuba is not free. We are.

Where journalism is still practiced

imageimageThe American journalism profession long ago ceased functioning as a news gathering operation, and instead became, as David Barsamian labeled them in his book, “Stenographers to Power.” It’s a tough way to live, undignified, so behind the veneer of “professionalism” journalists these days actually brag about their fealty, claiming it’s a requirement of the profession. They call it “objectivity,” better described as “see nothing, know nothing.” In practice they get a quote from both sides and move on, and learn nothing, tell nothing.*

It is interesting, however, to see how real journalists function, never trusting power, burrowing on their own, uncovering lies and reporting back to us on what powerful people are doing.

They are sports journalists. If Ray Rice was a senator instead of a Raven, he’s have gotten a free pass on his elevator activities. If Roger Goodell, Commissioner of the NFL, were the head of the Nataional Endowment for Democracy, a CIA front, for example, he’d have a free pass to do whatever it is he does in the shadows without fear of reporters snooping around.

We still have some journalists in our Empire of Lies. They work in sports.
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*This led to Krugman’s famous observation that if Republicans claimed the earth was flat, journalists would report “Shape of earth: Views Differ.”
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PS: It has been suggested to me not only in the comments below, but other people I read and listen to, that there are many good and curious people in the American news media who simply know to avoid career suicide. I believe that to be true and at the same time note that whether they are voluntarily shutting off their brains or just naturally incurious, the result is the same.

Does Missoula have a neighborhood watch program?

After some 3,000 Hmong had been flown across the Mekong Vang Pao and his CIA case officer, Jerry Daniels, a fifteen-year veteran of the secret war, flew out of Long Tieng and into Thailand – an ultimately, to Missoula, Montana, Daniels’ home town, where Vang Pao paid over a half million dollars for a cattle ranch, hog farm, and two large homes. By the end of the year, more than 30,000 Hmong refugees had fled across the Mekong into Thailand, the first wave of a mass exodus that would peak at 3,000 a month by 1979. “War is difficult, peace is hell,” concluded General Vang Pao. (Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, p331)

General Vang Pao
General Vang Pao
General Vang Pao (1929-2011) was a Laotian commander of the CIA’s army of Hmong villagers during the Indochina wars of the 1960’s and 70’s, the so-called “secret war.” It was no secret in the region, of course, and that word refers to the fact that it was never publicized in the American news media. Vang Pao was regarded as ruthless and tyrannical so that even our CIA boys, themselves murders and assassins, treated him with care and caution.

But he got the job done, and that is all CIA has ever cared about.

During his tenure, the Hmong villages in the mountains of Laos were decimated, with young men impressed and usually killed in combat. When the Pathet Lao, indigenous resistance fighters, and North Vietnamese had the strength of numbers to mount an offensive, CIA tried to convince Hmong villagers to move away from their homes and to encampments. But Vang Pao by that time had soured them on any connections with Americans and their agents. They refused to leave even as food supplies were cut off. (Under CIA guidance, most villages had ceased production of rice and were exclusively growing poppy. Their food was helicoptered in (and the opium out) via CIA’s proprietary transport company, Air America.) So the U.S. did what the U.S. does so well, began to carpet bomb the Plain of Jars to force people out.

Map_Plain_of_Jars_by_Asienreisender_700pxThat is but one small chapter in a larger conflict, one that the CIA actually won. The area was pacified, resistance slaughtered or silenced, the countryside devastated. There’s a myth out there that the U.S. lost in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. Not true. They accomplished their objective, and by 1975 thought the area was brutalized and devastated enough that it could be left to slowly recover. CIA was moving on, next stop Afghanistan and the war of devastation on that country of the 1980’s, and where oddly enough, poppy fields flourished as well. (They still do, under protection of the U.S. military, in case you wonder what your boys are doing over there.)

Indochina would endure yet another 25 years of economic warfare, with sanctions not lifted until the 1990’s. Mission accomplished. The area is alive today, but will never again present a threat to U.S. power. They learned their lesson.

I read about stuff like this all the time, the real history of Indochina, along with that of Iraq and World War II, Latin America … and it is all so ugly. The leaders of our country are not at all like the citizen of this country. They are brutal monsters. All that I wrote above is just another small passage, another small part of the world devastated by exposure to democracy, American style. The only reason I write this is to detail the final chapters in the life of Vang Pao, cited at the opening above, where he moved to Missoula Montana, a wealthy man, and bought houses and cows and pigs, and lived a life he denied to his countrymen.

Playing football without helmets

I woke up this morning wanting to write about football or Star Wars trivia – anything to get away from the dreary humdrum repeated spectacle of American politics. Zbig’s words “stunningly superficial” repeat again and again in my head. As I used to say about my departed older brother, there are many ways to reason with him … none work.

There are many ways to approach Americans about lies, propaganda, the futility of party politics, the utter corruption of our society and the warmongering machine that is raining hell on the rest of the world. None work. Americans are unreachable, secure in their ignorance, and happy to be diddled and bamboozled time and again by the owners of this place. This time it is ISIS. Before it was to prevent a massacre in Libya (when they were really causing one). Before that it was those fake WMD’s, also used to justify a massacre. There was the whole of 9/11 … it’s a hugely successful franchise.

It’s so frustrating. These plays always work! It’s like the American public has no defense, can’t stop the pass, can’t stop the running game, is even clueless about how the game is played. Americans are playing football without their helmets. No wonder they always lose.

  • Did you see that? Do you believe it? A game winning touchdown called back because timeout was called!!!!!
  • A whole supposed invasion of Ukraine by Russia a big lie with zero evidence in support!!!
  • That pass knocked down in the closing seconds as the Broncos held on to beat the Chiefs!!! Close call!!!
  • The whole of ISIS easily seen to be an American-financed terrorist force being used to justify more American aggression!!!
  • The Bills are 2-0!!! That’s so good for that city, so that the owner might not pull the rug and do a midnight move to Toronto!!!
  • Airliner disappears in mid-flight over the Pacific? Just disappears? Bullshit!!!
  • Democrats and Republicans so painfully obviously using the same play book!!!
  • Too many interceptions in that Vikings game. Maybe the Pats are spying on their practice sessions. Another SpyGate!!!

So by chance, at Facebook of all places, I came across an interview with Noam Chomsky, put up at Alternet and probably in a book I have on my shelf as well. The words are tightly reasoned and illuminating, and gave me great comfort. I know only a couple of people will bother to read it, least of all Swede, who will comment anyway. But these words landed on me like a soothing warm shower after a long hike.

QUESTION: You’ve written about the way that professional ideologists and the mandarins obfuscate reality. And you have spoken — in some places you call it a “Cartesian common sense” — of the commonsense capacities of people. Indeed, you place a significant emphasis on this common sense when you reveal the ideological aspects of arguments, especially in contemporary social science. What do you mean by common sense? What does it mean in a society like ours? For example, you’ve written that within a highly competitive, fragmented society, it’s very difficult for people to become aware of what their interests are. If you are not able to participate in the political system in meaningful ways, if you are reduced to the role of a passive spectator, then what kind of knowledge do you have? How can common sense emerge in this context?

CHOMSKY: Well, let me give an example. When I’m driving, I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I’m listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it’s plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it’s at a level of superficiality that’s beyond belief.

In part, this reaction may be due to my own areas of interest, but I think it’s quite accurate, basically. And I think that this concentration on such topics as sports makes a certain degree of sense. The way the system is set up, there is virtually nothing people can do anyway, without a degree of organization that’s far beyond anything that exists now, to influence the real world. They might as well live in a fantasy world, and that’s in fact what they do. I’m sure they are using their common sense and intellectual skills, but in an area which has no meaning and probably thrives because it has no meaning, as a displacement from the serious problems which one cannot influence and affect because the power happens to lie elsewhere.

Now it seems to me that the same intellectual skill and capacity for understanding and for accumulating evidence and gaining information and thinking through problems could be used — would be used — under different systems of governance which involve popular participation in important decision-making, in areas that really matter to human life.

There are questions that are hard. There are areas where you need specialized knowledge. I’m not suggesting a kind of anti-intellectualism. But the point is that many things can be understood quite well without a very far-reaching, specialized knowledge. And in fact even a specialized knowledge in these areas is not beyond the reach of people who happen to be interested.

(My emPHASis)