story857

"The free market doesn't exist. There is no such thing. All markets are constructed."--UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff

"To declare that the end justifies the means -- to declare that the government may commit crimes -- would bring terrible retribution."--Justice Louis D. Brandeis

"We need to find a way to get malice into the criminal code and provide severe penalties for it."--Social Activist Sheila Steele

I introduced Maturana’s natural concept of languaging at the very beginning of my writing in Ensign and defined it as the co-ordination of our behaviour and of our language with the intent to get along together. Now with the saga of the war against Iraq and the ascent of the Bush Dynasty we have to have one Bush’s investigative commission after another, not to co-ordinate our behaviour and find the truth, but to cover it up.

This unrelented despicable behaviour to governance has been mushrooming mostly in the last 30 years with the selling of American democracy through the American Free Market.

The American Free Market has been exported all over the world and political scientists George W. Downs and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita note in their recent study that out of 35 U.S. military interventions to export democracy around the world, only one democracy was created and that happened in Colombia! Now I wonder if we have to laugh at American foreign policy, or are these political scientists the real joke, or maybe the silliness is what American scientism stands for.

We live in a precarious social condition. I shake my head as I hear that President Bush is extending his sympathies to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the last terrorist attack in Moscow while at the same time their two countries play a dangerous geopolitical game to control the Caspian oil. I am quite confident that there wouldn’t be as much terrorism if the most powerful countries would play international co-operation and peace rather than geopolitics. Now I just question the peaceful posture of the United States as they continue to export the Free Market and have some 1,000 military bases dispersed all over the world with some 370,000 troops stationed on these bases.

We have already found out that greed is the major motivation of the gospel of the Free Market and therefore it becomes consequential that the Free Market is not compatible with democracy. I have also labeled the Free Market as a big lie in the past. In this respect, UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff has written on the newspeak of conservatives and has explicitly stated that these conservatives have invented, or framed a new language. He says:

"They have the metaphorical notion of a free market even in their child-rearing system. It's not just an economic theory; it's a moral theory."

This reminds me of the time when I heard the principal of an elementary school who was so proud of his school which he felt was more advanced than others because they were teaching their children the value of playing in the stock market. Professor Lakoff affirms:

"the free market doesn't exist. There is no such thing. All markets are constructed. Think of the stock exchange. It has rules."

By the way, I am against any form of framing our language.

Yesterday, I read some updating stories on the "Scandal of the Century" where a policeman, a prosecutor and a social worker were found maliciously guilty of falsely charging the Klassen family of horrible sexual abuse against their foster children. I was impressed by social activist Sheila Steele’s statement that

"we need to find a way to get malice into the criminal code and provide severe penalties for it."

This is a great inspiring statement and I hope it will be a matter of an ongoing debate for changing our justice system, especially so when for the last 15 years we have experienced in Canada the judicial trend to exclude malice and punitive damages from civil litigation while at the same time promoting the capping of court’s awards through nofault legislation (Tort reform).

References

Pertinent articles published in Ensign

deSantis, Mario The Aftermath of September 11: Languaging versus Media Brainwashing October 26, 2001 Ensign,

Downs, George W. and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita Gun-Barrel Democracy Has Failed Time and Again (PDF) February 4, 2004 Los Angeles Times,

Hodgson, Martin Oil inflames Colombia's civil war: Bush seeks $98 million to help Bogotá battle guerrilla pipeline saboteurs (PDF) March 5, 2002 The Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0305/p06s01-woam.html

Helmer, John Russian oil beats Bush to market (PDF) February 6, 2004 Asia Times, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FB06Ag01.html

GlobalSecurity.org Where are the Legions? [SPQR]: Global Deployments of US Forces http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/global-deployments.htm

Powell, Bonnie Azab Framing the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics October 27, 2003 UC Berkeley NewsCenter, http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml

Steele, Sheila Beginning the ride down the road to solvency: Richard Klassen February 6, 2004 http://www.injusticebusters.com

Saskatchewan Coalition Against No Fault Insurance http://www.againstnofault.ca/aboutus.html

Johnson, Dave Lowering the Bar: The conservative movement well-funded attacks on trial lawyers November 19, 2003 Mediatransparency.org, http://www.mediatransparency.org/stories/tort.html