Las complicidades de Álvaro Uribe y Felipe Calderón

Gilberto López y Rivas
La Jornada


Los crímenes de Estado de Álvaro Uribe siguen causando víctimas, con la complicidad de quien ocupa ilegítimamente el Poder Ejecutivo en México, Felipe Calderón. Las amenazas de extradición a Ecuador de Lucía Morett Álvarez y la detención ilegal del sociólogo colombiano Miguel Ángel Beltrán Villegas cuando realizaba trámites migratorios, y su expulsión inmediata a Colombia, son dos sucesos más que lamentar de la cadena que se inicia con la acción militar del gobierno colombiano en territorio ecuatoriano el primero de marzo de 2008, en la que fueron asesinados, además de Raúl Reyes y sus compañeros de armas, cuatro estudiantes mexicanos.

Álvaro Uribe se responsabilizó públicamente de este hecho violatorio del marco jurídico internacional y el que rige los actos de guerra y el derecho humanitario, sin que hasta la fecha se le finquen cargos por este y los innumerables crímenes de lesa humanidad cometidos contra el pueblo de Colombia, como los denunciados en esta columna sobre los cientos de ejecuciones extrajudiciales, mal llamadas "falsos positivos" (La Jornada, 21 de marzo de 2009).

Paradójicamente, Lucía Morett, herida gravemente en ese bombardeo, es inculpada en un juicio de extradición por Wirmar Gonzabay Pérez, agente fiscal del distrito Sucumbíos, y Orellana, del Ministerio Público de Ecuador (fallecido en una zona de tolerancia de Lago Agrio, víctima de un paro cardiaco), por el delito contra la seguridad del Estado, sin que hasta la fecha se conozcan acusaciones y trámites judiciales similares en contra de los militares colombianos y su comandante en jefe, Álvaro Uribe, quienes son los delincuentes confesos de la incursión en territorio ecuatoriano. El juez local de la provincia –asimismo– dictó una orden de llamamiento a juicio en contra de Lucía. La larga mano de Uribe llega al aparato judicial ecuatoriano, tan sospechosamente sesgado que responsabiliza a las víctimas y no a los victimarios; pero también llega a México, cuyo gobierno no ha condenado el homicidio de esos jóvenes estudiantes que desarmados y sin uniforme se encontraban en el campamento, y cuyo presidente se dispone a visitar Colombia para ser recibido como un héroe de "la lucha contra el terrorismo".

Los padres de esos estudiantes afirman en carta a Felipe Calderón, fechada el primero de marzo de este año: “Múltiples ataques e infundios se han manejado para desprestigiar a nuestros hijos asesinados y a Lucía como testigo, pretendiendo con ello desviar la responsabilidad que los asesinos tienen por los delitos cometidos. Categóricamente reiteramos, nuestros hijos ingresaron y transitaron legalmente por Ecuador. Su visita como civiles en un campamento de las FARC no constituía ningún delito. Eran jóvenes entusiastas, interesados en conocer los procesos sociales latinoamericanos. Su derecho a realizar investigaciones académicas in situ fue reivindicado por autoridades, profesores, trabajadores y estudiantes de la UNAM”. Se destaca en este documento la negativa de Patricia Espinosa y el titular del Ejecutivo federal a recibir a los padres, no obstante la gravedad de lo sucedido y los diversos documentos enviados sobre la masacre de Sucumbíos. Se señalan la falta de una defensa efectiva para los mexicanos víctimas de delitos en el extranjero y el nulo interés del gobierno de Calderón para que los culpables materiales e intelectuales de los homicidios de mexicanos sean juzgados. También se hace un enérgico extrañamiento a que la investigación de las autoridades mexicanas se ha centrado en los jóvenes y sus acciones, y no en la incursión extraterritorial colombiana. Se denuncian el carácter persecutorio del interrogatorio de la Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) a Lucía Morett y los dos procesos penales abiertos contra ella y otros ciudadanos sin pruebas ni fundamentos. Sobre todo, se demanda que el gobierno mexicano no otorgue la extradición de Lucía Morett, con base en el artículo 3 del tratado de extradición entre el gobierno de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos y el gobierno de la República de Ecuador, que es muy claro en negar dicho acto "si existen razones fundadas para considerar que una solicitud de extradición ha sido formulada con el propósito de perseguir o castigar a una persona por motivos de su raza, religión, nacionalidad, creencias políticas o cualquier otro tipo de discriminación prohibida por la legislación interna de cada una de las partes, así como por los tratados internacionales vigentes para ambas partes". Lucía es perseguida por sus creencias políticas en favor de la solidaridad entre los pueblos de México y Colombia y en defensa de los derechos humanos de los colombianos violentados gravemente por Álvaro Uribe Vélez.

Convenientemente, los aparatos de inteligencia colombianos "encontraron" en la ya legendaria computadora de Reyes todo un expediente contra Miguel Ángel Beltrán Villegas, maniobra que con precisión el editorial de nuestro periódico del 24 de mayo califica de "montaje elaborado por la administración uribista". Ahora se tratará de relacionar a este "peligroso terrorista" con Lucía Morett y con otros mexicanos y extranjeros de la supuesta red internacional de la guerrilla colombiana, "académicos, intelectuales y activistas que han manifestado desde nuestro país posturas críticas hacia el gobierno uribista y que podrían, por tanto, estar incorporados en la lista negra" de Bogotá (Ibid.).

Apoyo a Lucía Morett y a la negativa de su extradición; a los padres de los estudiantes masacrados en Ecuador. Indignación por la obsecuente complicidad de Felipe Calderón y su gobierno con Uribe Vélez en la detención y expulsión de nuestro colega Beltrán Villegas, a quien envío un saludo solidario. Alto a las agresiones a la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Fuente: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/05/29/index.php?section=opinion&article=024a1pol

Sri Lankan government prepares broad attack on democratic rights
By S. Jayanth
30 May 2009

Having declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lankan authorities are intensifying their attacks on fundamental democratic rights. The government has flatly ruled out any lifting of the country’s state of emergency and the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which allows security forces to continue their arbitrary detention without trial of “LTTE suspects”.

The continued persecution of Tamil civilians, political opponents and the media gives the lie to the Sri Lankan-sponsored resolution passed in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) this week that whitewashed the Colombo government’s war crimes and abuses of basic rights. The resolution welcomed “the continued commitment of Sri Lanka to the promotion and protection of all human rights”.

The UNHRC resolution ignored the fact that nearly 300,000 Tamil refugees have been herded into detention centres, guarded by troops and not permitted to leave. It also turned a blind eye to the record over the past three years of murders and “disappearances” by pro-government death squads and the torture of detainees. The World Socialist Web Site warned yesterday (see “UN body covers up Sri Lankan government’s war crimes”) that the resolution would only encourage the government and military to make further inroads into the legal and democratic rights of working people.

Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva declared that the state of emergency and PTA would remain in force for “some months” as the security forces continued to conduct “mopping up operations, clearing operations”. He added: “We’ll have to arrest some more persons who had aided and abetted the LTTE.”

The emergency laws give sweeping powers to the army and police to make arbitrary arrests and detain people indefinitely without charge or trial. The president can declare any strike or industrial action illegal by proclaiming the workplace as an essential service. He can block class actions against the government and state bureaucracy, and censor the media. The PTA extends the powers of detention without charge and can be used to convict detainees solely on the basis of their confessions, in some cases extracted by torture.

De Silva told parliament that 9,100 persons had “surrendered” to the security forces in the detention camps. Even the limited reports filtering out from these centres paint an entirely different picture. Hundreds of people, particularly young men and women, are being dragged away by the security forces working with military intelligence, para-militaries and hooded informers. While the minister claimed 7,500 would be “rehabilitated,” their fate, along with the remaining 1,600 detainees, is in the hands of the security forces, which operate with impunity.

Over the past three years, thousands of people, mainly Tamils, have been detained under the emergency regulations and PTA. Many have been held for months, even years, without trial. Sunday Times columnist J.S. Tissanayagam, for instance, is still in detention after he was arrested in March 2007 along with the owners of E-quality Printing Press, V. Jesiharan and his wife V. Valarmathi.

Far from “ensuring no discrimination against ethnic minorities” as the UNHRC resolution declared, the security forces treat all Tamils as potential “terrorists”. The arrests are part of a broader campaign of harassment and intimidation that includes police sweeps, house raids and constant identity checks at roadblocks and on the streets. The 26-year civil war was a direct product of decades of official anti-Tamil discrimination that was exploited by successive Colombo governments to divide working people and shore up their own rule.

The opposition United National Party (UNP), which called for the end of the state of emergency this week, did not press the issue after the government ministers condemned the move as “very untimely”. UNP leaders have enthusiastically joined in the jingoistic “victory” celebrations.

The UNP was responsible for launching the war in 1983 and employed the same anti-democratic methods when it conducted military operations.

The army and police intend to step up their vendetta against anyone critical of the war, particularly in the media. In an interview with the state-owned ITN television channel on Monday, army commander General Sarath Fonseka branded journalists who have supported basic democratic rights as LTTE supporters and declared that the government planned to take action against them. They would not be allowed to leave the country, he added.

Fonseka alleged that “certain security analysts and other media experts, who were often demonstrating at Lipton Circus [in Colombo] for press freedom, have been constantly on the LTTE’s payroll to the tune of hundreds of thousand of rupees a month”. He accused them of “obstructing the legitimate activities of the army” and declared they “should be prosecuted for treason”.

On Thursday, Inspector General of Police (IGP) Jayantha Wickremeratne told ITN that the police had identified some of the “Sinhalese journalists” on the LTTE’s payroll. He claimed many of them had been connected with international organisations and had been always clamouring for media freedom. He accused them of “misreporting at the behest of the LTTE” that the army was shelling civilians while the LTTE was shooting at the fleeing civilians in order to “prosecute Sri Lankan leaders for war crimes”.

Wickremeratne declared that the “police know more details of this treason [but] I do not like to reveal all of them since it might obstruct further investigations”. These threats to prosecute journalists for treason are more broadly aimed at “international organisations” that in recent weeks have, at least in a limited way, exposed the government lies surrounding the army’s killing of Tamil civilians as it closed in on the last pocket of LTTE resistance.

The government, the military and Sinhala chauvinist groups have been bitterly hostile to the efforts of the European powers to instigate an investigation into war crimes in Sri Lanka—a move that was blocked in the UNHRC on Wednesday. On the same day, hundreds of Sinhala extremists gathered outside the Canadian High Commission, pelted it with stones, hoisted an LTTE flag and spray painted “LTTE headquarters in Colombo” on its wall.

Canada, along with the European powers, had backed the call for a war crimes inquiry, not out of any concern for human rights in Sri Lanka, but to advance Western economic and strategic interests in Colombo. However, the communal vitriol hurled at the Canadian High Commission is part of a broader campaign aimed at stamping out any criticism of the government and the army, and silencing any exposure of their crimes.

These efforts are not limited to small groups of Sinhala extremists. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, a South African of Indian descent, became the target of communal innuendo in the Colombo press, implying she was an LTTE sympathiser when she mildly criticised the government’s record. In her address to the UNHRC calling for an inquiry, Pillay declared: “There are strong reasons to believe that both sides [the army and the LTTE] grossly disregarded the fundamental principle of the inviolability of civilians.”

The extent of the Sri Lankan government’s crimes is still coming to light. Previously leaked UN reports estimated that at least 7,000 civilians had been killed in the war zone in the period from January 20 to May 7. Thousands more died in the final days of fighting. A report this week in the London-based Times, based on UN sources, has created an uproar in Colombo ruling circles by putting the figure at more than 20,000.

The decision by the security forces to target journalists for “treason” is an indication that a broad offensive is being prepared against human rights bodies and non-government organisations, which are often accused in Colombo of being “terrorist sympathisers”. Arrest and prosecution will not be the only methods used. Government critic Lasantha Wickrematunge, editor of the Sunday Leader, was gunned down in broad daylight in January on his way to work. As in numerous other cases involving pro-government death squads, the police have made no arrests.

More broadly, the government is maintaining the police-state apparatus built up in the course of the war out of fear of rising social and political discontent. After 26 years of devastating civil war, most ordinary Sri Lankans are not joining in the victory clamour that the political and media establishment are attempting to whip up. As President Mahinda Rajapakse attempts to impose the economic burdens of the war and deepening global crisis on the working class, there will inevitably be resistance. The government is keeping the state of emergency in place to deal with the new “traitors”—protesting workers, farmers and students seeking to defend their living standards and basic rights.

To USA And Israel?

Doublespeak on North Korea
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

"Obama Calls on World to ‘Stand Up To’ North Korea” read the headline. The United States, Obama said, was determined to protect “the peace and security of the world.”

Shades of doublespeak, doublethink, 1984.

North Korea is a small place. China alone could snuff it out in a few minutes. Yet, the president of the US thinks that nothing less than the entire world is a match for North Korea.

We are witnessing the Washington gangsters construct yet another threat like Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, John Walker Lindh, Hamdi, Padilla, Sami Al-Arian, Hamas, Mahkmoud Ahmadinejad, and the hapless detainees demonized by the US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as “the 700 most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth,” who were tortured for six years at Gitmo only to be quietly released. Just another mistake, sorry.

The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the financial banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing into its coffers.

The Homeland Security lobby is dependent on endless threats to convince Americans that they must forego civil liberty in order to be safe and secure.

The real question is who is going to stand up to the American and Israeli governments?

Who is going to protect Americans’ and Israelis’ civil liberties, especially those of Israeli dissenters and Israel’s Arab citizens?

Who is going to protect Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Lebanese, Iranians, and Syrians from Americans and Israelis?

Not Obama, and not the right-wing brownshirts that today rule Israel.

Obama’s notion that it takes the entire world to stand up to N. Korea is mind-boggling, but this mind-boggling idea pales in comparison to Obama’s guarantee that America will protect “the peace and security of the world.”

Is this the same America that bombed Serbia, including Chinese diplomatic offices and civilian passenger trains, and pried Kosovo loose from Serbia and gave it to a gang of Muslin drug lords, lending them NATO troops to protect their operation?

Is this the same America that is responsible for approximately one million dead Iraqis, leaving orphans and widows everywhere and making refugees out of one-firth of the Iraqi population?

Is this the same America that blocked the rest of the world from condemning Israel for its murderous attack on Lebanese civilians in 2006 and on Gazans most recently, the same America that has covered up for Israel’s theft of Palestine over the past 60 years, a theft that has produced four million Palestinian refugees driven by Israeli violence and terror from their homes and villages?

Is this the same America that is conducting military exercises in former constituent parts of Russia and ringing Russia with missile bases?

Is this the same America that has bombed Afghanistan into rubble with massive civilian casualties?

Is this the same America that has started a horrific new war in Pakistan, a war that in its first few days has produced one million refugees?

“The peace and security of the world”? Whose world?

On his return from his consultation with Obama in Washington, the brownshirted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that it was Israel’s responsibility to “eliminate” the “nuclear threat” from Iran.

What nuclear threat? The US intelligence agencies are unanimous in their conclusion that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program since 2003. The inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency report that there is no sign of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

Who is Iran bombing? How many refugees is Iran sending fleeing for their lives?

Who is North Korea bombing?

The two great murderous, refugee-producing countries are the US and Israel. Between them, they have murdered and dislocated millions of people who were a threat to no one.

No countries on earth rival the US and Israel for barbaric murderous violence.

But Obama gives assurances that the US will protect “the peace and security of the world.” And the brownshirt Netanyahu assures the world that Israel will save it from the “Iranian threat.”

Where is the media?

Why aren’t people laughing their heads off?

Five founders of the Holy Land Foundation, once the USA's largest Muslim charity, have received prison terms of up to sixty-five years on charges of supporting the Palestinian group Hamas. The five were never accused of supporting violence and were convicted for funding charities that aided needy Palestinians. The government’s case relied on Israeli intelligence as well as disputed documents and electronic surveillance gathered by the FBI over a span of fifteen years.

US Doctors’ association calls for Moratorium on GMO Foods
by F. William Engdahl

In a just-released position paper on GMO foods, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) states that ‘GM foods pose a serious health risk’ and calls for a moratorium on GMO foods. Citing several animal studies, the AAEM concludes ‘there is more than a casual association between GMO foods and adverse health effects’ and that ‘GM foods pose a serious health risk in the areas of toxicology, allergy and immune function, reproductive health, and metabolic, physiologic and genetic health.’ The report is a devastating blow to the multibillion dollar international agribusiness industry, most especially to Monsanto Corporation, the world’s leading purveyor of GMO seeds and related herbicides.

In a press release dated May 19, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, which describes itself as ‘an international association of physicians and other professionals dedicated to addressing the clinical aspects of environmental health,’ called immediately for the following emergency measures to be taken regarding human consumption of GMO foods:

* A moratorium on GMO food; implementation of immediate long term safety testing and labelling of GMO food.

* Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community and the public to avoid GMO foods.

* Physicians to consider the role of GMO foods in their patients’ disease processes.

* More independent long term scientific studies to begin gathering data to investigate the role of GMO foods on human health.

The AAEM chairperson, Dr Amy Dean notes that ‘Multiple animal studies have shown that GM foods cause damage to various organ systems in the body. With this mounting evidence, it is imperative to have a moratorium on GM foods for the safety of our patients’ and the public’s health.’ The President of the AAEM, Dr Jennifer Armstrong stressed that ‘Physicians are probably seeing the effects in their patients, but need to know how to ask the right questions. The most common foods in North America which are consumed that are GMO are corn, soy, canola, and cottonseed oil.’ The AAEM’s position paper on Genetically Modified foods can be found at http:aaemonline.org.

The paper further states that Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) technology ‘abrogates natural reproductive processes, selection occurs at the single cell level, the procedure is highly mutagenic and routinely breeches genera barriers, and the technique has only been used commercially for 10 years.’

The AAEM paper further states, ‘several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food consumption including infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, insulin regulation, cell signalling, and protein formation, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system.’

They add, ‘There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation as defined by Hill’s Criteria in the areas of strength of association, consistency, specificity, biological gradient, and biological plausibility. The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies.’

GMO is toxic

The AAEM paper should give grounds for official rethinking of the current quasi laissez faire regulatory stance to GMO in which the solemn word of the GMO seed companies such as Monsanto is regarded as scientifically valid proof of safety. The AAEM study is worth citing in detail in this regard:

‘Specificity of the association of GM foods and specific disease processes is also supported. Multiple animal studies show significant immune dysregulation, including upregulation of cytokines associated with asthma, allergy, and inflammation. Animal studies also show altered structure and function of the liver, including altered lipid and carbohydrate metabolism as well as cellular changes that could lead to accelerated aging and possibly lead to the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Changes in the kidney, pancreas and spleen have also been documented. A recent 2008 study links GM corn with infertility, showing a significant decrease in offspring over time and significantly lower litter weight in mice fed GM corn. This study also found that over 400 genes were found to be expressed differently in the mice fed GM corn. These are genes known to control protein synthesis and modification, cell signalling, cholesterol synthesis, and insulin regulation. Studies also show intestinal damage in animals fed GM foods, including proliferative cell growth and disruption of the intestinal immune system. ‘

The AAEM study also reviewed the biotechnology industry claims that GMO foods can feed the world through production of higher crop yields. It cited contrary evidence that the opposite appeared to be true, namely that over time GMO harvest yields were lower than conventional yields and required over time, more not less, highly toxic herbicidal chemicals such as glyphosate. The report noted, ‘The several thousand field trials over the last 20 years for genes aimed at increasing operational or intrinsic yield (of crops) indicate a significant undertaking. Yet none of these field trials have resulted in increased yield in commercialized major food/feed crops, with the exception of Bt corn.’ However, the slight yield gain for Bt corn they report was ‘largely due to traditional breeding improvements,’ and not to GMO.

They conclude that because GMO foods ‘pose a serious health risk in the areas of toxicology, allergy and immune function, reproductive health, and metabolic, physiologic and genetic health and are without benefit, the AAEM believes that it is imperative to adopt the precautionary principle, which is one of the main regulatory tools of the European Union environmental and health policy and serves as a foundation for several international agreements. The most commonly used definition is from the 1992 Rio Declaration that states: ‘In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.’

Under intense public pressure, the German Minister of Agriculture recently issued a prohibition of planting for Monsanto MON810 GMO corn. Unfortunately, two weeks later she permitted planting of GMO potato seeds. Amflora, a genetically modified potato manufactured by chemicals giant BASF (a joint venture GMO partner of Monsanto), was declared by the German Ministry as posing ‘no danger for human health or the environment,’ The Ministry cited ‘in-depth examination’ and talks with scientific and economic experts as basis for the reckless decision.

The publication of the sensational critique of GMO by the American Academy of Environmental Medicine has been greeted with stone silence by most major US media and international press.

GMO politics

As I describe in great detail in my book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, GMO was released on the general public in the early 1990’s in the USA under an executive decision by then President George Herbert Walker Bush, reportedly following closed door meetings with leading Monsanto executives. President Bush mandated that there should be no special health and safety tests done by any US Government agency before releasing GMO for food consumption. It came to be known as the Doctrine of Substantial Equivalence.

The US Government, on urging of Monsanto and the GMO lobby, further decided that labelling of a food product as ‘GMO free’ should be prohibited, using the vaguely formulated and entirely unscientific ‘doctrine’ proclaimed by President Bush in 1992, namely that GMO plants and non-GMO or ordinary plants were ‘substantially equivalent’ and hence needed no special testing before being released to the public.

That Substantial Equivalence Doctrine, despite the fact that it directly contradicts the demand of the GMO companies for exclusive patent rights to their GMO seeds as being ‘unique’ and different from ordinary seeds, enabled Monsanto, Dow Chemicals, DuPont and other GMO patent holders to proliferate their products with no control. Most Americans naively believe that the Government Food and Drug Administration and US Department of Agriculture are there to make certain industrial food products are confirmed fully safe for human and for animal consumption before licensing.

That de facto prohibition on labelling GMO foods has meant that most Americans have no idea how much of their daily diet from store-bought Corn Flakes to soybeans to corn and additives in every food on the supermarket shelf contained GMO contamination.

Coincident with the mass introduction of GMO into the human and animal diet in the United States beginning the end of the 1990’s, there have been reported epidemic levels of allergic outbreaks in humans, strange diseases and numerous other health issues. The fact it is forbidden by Federal law to label GMO products means most health professionals are not even aware there might be any connection to a GMO diet for millions of Americans. The US population, since the 1992 ruling of President Bush—a ruling reaffirmed by presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and now by Barack Obama and his pro-GMO Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack—has been in effect treated as human guinea pigs in mass experimentation for substances never independently proven in long-term (ten years or longer) studies to be safe.

It remains to be seen if the scientific critique of the AAEM is given the attention it warrants.

North Korea's Second Nuclear Test
By MANUEL GARCIA, Jr.

The US Geological Survey detected a 4.7 magnitude seismic event at 00:54 GMT on the 25th of May at Hwaderi, near Kilju City in North Harnkyung province in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK = "North Korea") at 10 km (6 miles) below the surface. The nature of the seismic signals indicated this to be the second nuclear test carried out by the DPRK, and the yield of the device was between 10 kT and 20 kT (kT = kilo-tons of TNT explosive power, 1 kT = 4.184 x 10-to-12th-power Joules). The Hiroshima bomb was 13 kT, and the Nagasaki bomb was 21 kT. The DPRK also conducted three short-range missile tests on the same day, a few hours after their nuclear detonation.

The last paragraph summarizes the publicly available facts about the DPRK's nuclear test #2 (see notes 1 and 2 for news accounts). Commentary on the meaning of this test was actually written three years ago, on the occasion of the DPRK's nuclear test #1 of 9 October 2006 (see notes 3 and 4).

My commentary of 2006 still applies because neither the policy goals of the United States and Security Council Nuclear Powers, nor the fears of the DPRK leadership have changed since 2006. In the simplest terms, world capitalism under the direction of the United States wants the North Koreans to dismantle their DPRK state and to integrate their economy and workforce into that of an expanded Republic of Korea (South Korea) in a manner similar to the dissolution of the East German communist state (Democratic Republic of Germany, 7 October 1949 to 3 October 1990). The foreign policy of the DPRK, of which its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs are a part, is aimed at combatting the existential threat to the DPRK governing elite.

First, let us consider some of the physical aspects of DPRK test #2.

A yield up to 20 kT is clearly a "success" and indicates the verification of one design of an implosion system (discounting the possibility of a gun-type assembly as in the Hiroshima bomb). I presume, but do not know, that this bomb is an experimental device that is neither compact and light-weight enough, nor ruggedized enough to fit within the payload mass and space limitations of a slim missile body, and to withstand the forces of acceleration required of a ballistic missile nuclear warhead. Any program aimed at that goal will require another test (in perhaps three years?) of a militarized packaging of the "pit" (nuclear core and its surrounding blanket of high explosives) tested today.

The amazingly deep burial at 10 km will probably assure full containment of radioactivity from the DPRK test. US underground tests were often 0.3 km to 0.5 km down. Because of the rapid attenuation of the high frequency parts of an electrical signal with its travel distance along a cable, the US nuclear program engineered its underground tests with the minimum burial depth necessary to assure containment, so as to have the highest fidelity possible for the detection and recording systems relaying and storing experimental data from sensors near the device. Optimizing the burial depth for signal fidelity required a sophisticated arrangement of plugs and backfill to seal the emplacement shaft or tunnel. I wonder if the DPRK test program is satisfied with simple low-fidelity data (the simplest being the sensation of an artificial earthquake), or if they have an underground alcove with high-fidelity recording equipment in a cavern near the detonation point. It may be that the DPRK wished to avoid snooping by US intelligence satellites, so it buried the entire test operation. It is also possible to partially decouple the force of a buried explosion from the surrounding earth by placing the bomb in the center of a larger cavity; this will transmit a weaker seismic signal, and could spoof seismic measurements of yield by foreign powers.

Clearly, the DPRK nuclear program scientists evaluated the data from their test of October 2006, made new calculations, undoubtedly built new assemblies for hydrodynamic testing (perfecting the dynamics of the heavy-metal implosion driven by chemical high explosives), and settled on a design that produced sizable yield. It is equally clear that their nuclear materials program was able to produce sufficient weapons-grade fissile material for at least one new device since 2006 (perhaps 10 kg), and probably several times that amount.

All in all, it is evident they are now a full-fledged member of the nuclear weapons club. The most honest reaction the Security Council of the UN, and the leading world powers could offer would be: "congratulations!"

Now, let us speculate on the political fallout.

The DPRK has made the clearest possible statement that the best defense against domination by superior powers is nuclear weaponry. The greater care with which the U.S. and Security Council Nuclear Powers approach the DPRK confirms this argument. When observing the situations of Palestine, Iraq and Iran, most of the rest of the world would concede the validity of the argument.

The policy of the U.S. is to encourage other nations to abide by the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty -- and renounce nuclear weapons -- while exempting itself from it; essentially "disarm that we may more easily rule." The DPRK posture is a rejection of the US policy, and a pointed example of rebellion calling out to the rest of the world.

Another aspect of the DPRK's nuclear weapons politics is to put its near neighbors on notice not to think of colonizing it. This message is particularly aimed at South Korea, seen as an extension of US capitalism, and to Japan. There are still Koreans living who remember being brutally enslaved by Imperial Japan, which forcibly annexed Korea during 1910 to 1945. Even more Koreans remember the 1950-1953 war between China and the U.S., on their peninsula. The casualties of that war, for the US-led anti-communist forces, were 474,000; the combined casualties for the communist Chinese and North Korean forces were between 1.19 million and 1.58 million; and the total number of Korean civilians killed or wounded is estimated at 2 million (5).

Today, Japan fustigates that it may have to build its own nuclear weapons (within one year!) to counter those of the DPRK, and South Korea issued similar statements to assuage domestic concerns about the nuclear developments in the North. There is little reason to fear aggression by the DPRK. While it may soon be true that it could launch a few nuclear warheads into South Korea, Japan and toward US bases and fleets in the Pacific, such attacks would ensure the swift destruction of the DPRK elite by retaliatory actions of the most modern military forces on this planet. Nuclear weapons would not be needed for this; waves of GPS-guided missile strikes with conventional high explosive warheads, followed by similarly guided airborne bombing would eradicate the DPRK nomenklatura and its entire military infrastructure. Also, it is very likely that missiles launched by North Korea would be immediately detected by US and allied nations' radars and satellites, and countered by anti-missile missiles (today's equivalent to the flak thrown up in WW2). Such defenses are more likely to be effective against long-range missiles since there is more time to react. The DPRK leadership knows from its own history that US-led military action has no regard for Korean loss-of-life, so they are fully aware that their nuclear arsenal is only a stratagem strictly limited to diplomatic gamesmanship short of actual war.

So, what does the DPRK leadership hope to gain by brandishing nuclear arms? The DPRK leadership's deepest desire is that of all elites everywhere: a long-term guarantee of its privileged position within the undisturbed extent of its domain. The DPRK wants to interact with the rest of the world in a way that sustains the physical and economic existence of their state but without introducing any ideas or social forces that weaken the control of the DPRK leadership, and the fealty of the population to that leadership. Clearly, the present DPRK regime is skeptical it can follow the Chinese example of introducing a state-directed form of capitalism while maintaining ideological control and sufficient popular obedience, so it is resistant to allowing the population wider exposure to foreign influences. The DPRK nuclear arsenal is the equivalent of a 10 foot (3.3 m) high wall topped with glass shards surrounding an estate with Pit Bulls and Doberman Pinschers running loose. It is a shield built with pride and motivated by fear.

Unfortunately, urging the DPRK leadership to engage in nuclear disarmament is equivalent to urging it to dissolve; the nature of their brittle power structure could not withstand the corrosive effects of the psychological, cultural and economic forces within world capitalism. They know this, hence the obsessive defensiveness. The most humane policy toward the DPRK would be to leave it alone. Over the long term, if it is neither harassed nor provoked, it will slowly relax many of its fears. Once the apprehensions of the DPRK are reasonably lowered because it is no longer being pressured and hurried to fit into a foreign capitalist agenda, then it is likely the society of the DPRK will evolve into greater harmony with the world consensus on many issues. Such a policy would be one of respecting the integrity of another society, and of non-interference. It is definitely not the policy with the highest expected return on investment (ROI), nor the earliest expected payoff, but it is the policy with the least likelihood of harming the Korean people and their neighbors. One has to imagine the possibility of arriving at nuclear disarmament as the inevitable consequence of the disuse of nuclear weapons: they are no longer maintained and rust away because their owners have moved on to other activities.

Internationally, patient respect will ultimately soften the fearful pride of an otherwise unaggressive state. The real solution to nuclear proliferation is the expansion of social and economic justice within our own nations, because nuclear arms are primarily a symptom of economic class warfare coupled with racism. Let the people of North Korea deal with their economic elite, and let us reform ours; and in that way we can eliminate the nuclear weapons squeezed out of the world's popular collective labor by our various ambitious and parasitic ruling classes.

Call it what you will (anarchism, radicalism, community, etc.), another world is possible - another world where the people themselves are not restrained from the power to control their own lives; a world where communities can work together through communication and cooperation; a world where wealth does not come from the poverty of others, or where power comes from injustice and the oppression of others; a world where not everything has to be split up and sold; a world where we are not pit against eachother in mutually antagonistic roles of dominance and competition; a world where greed and violence are no longer subsidized by governments and rewarded with positions of power; a world where society's governmental and economic institutions are no longer split from one another and delegated to a ruling few. This is not chaos, this is not a pandemic of crime - the dominant social order today, the capitalist-state model, is chaos and violence. This social order is not sustainable; it is not sustainable for the integrity of the human spirit, for the interaction which is necessary in our communities, or for life on this planet at all.

As anarchists, as humans, we must observe and consider the systems of oppression and the privilege which we may experience through such systems. These can include race, gender, class, sexual preference, age, ability and country of origin, for examples. This is not to say that white, middle-class, heterosexual, able-bodied males should not be anarchists. Nor should anyone feel guilty or ashamed of the ways in which they experience privilege or oppression. Only by recognizing and actively confronting these systems of hierarchy can we plant the seeds of a new world based on horizontal power and reciprocity.

We must work in true solidarity with others in struggle. "If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." Charity without building a meaningful relationship and recognizing the links between eachother's struggles perpetuates the cycles of oppression. We must reach across the walls and barriers to work together in breaking through what keeps us apart. We can only truly break down these barriers by working together on both sides. Towards collective liberation for all.

Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues

May 26, 2009

I met with a friend today for coffee...I have already warned that friend about 10000 times, that if she wants to bring anyone along - she should inform me in advance and not leave me with a fait accompli.

Well, she did not. So here I was face to face with a Westerner, my "friend" who if she persists in her ways, will be written off as no friend, and myself.

The subject of Iraqi refugees came up and naturally the subject branched out to the main source of all ills and evils - the Occupation. And naturally, Layla is not terribly diplomatic when it comes to the occupation and destruction of her country.

Why should I be polite and diplomatic about it ? And what is there to be polite and diplomatic about ?

I did not insult the woman or anything, but she did receive a (strong) piece of my mind and she did not like it too much...

She was expecting me to go on a self pity party, so she could extend her "empathy" to me and hence alleviate whatever was gnawing at her, presuming anything was gnawing at her. But more importantly, her expectations were derived from that typical Western monster -- that of feeling superior, important and indispensable, thus allowing her to assume her role of the "white" savior, helping those "poor, poor Iraqi people"...

All the while, sidestepping or more accurately, evading the crux of the matter, namely the root cause of all Evil that has assailed Iraq -- the Anglo-American Occupation and the not so-covert Iranian occupation.

She remarked in her typical snide way, that I was too "bitter" (for her taste, I suppose) and that "anger will not resolve anything."
And I replied to her in those exact terms -- " we are left with nothing but our Anger."

I suppose she was expecting me to be apologetic to her, or feel guilty for "flying off the handle"...

Tough luck Madame, neither you nor anyone else who holds a similar position/attitude as yours vis à vis the occupation and destruction of my country will receive anything else but...my anger.

For God's sake, can anyone explain to me what is so radically wrong, so fundamentally warped with the Western mind ???

What is the matter with you people - don't you have any sense ???

What if I (I as in some nation), on bogus charges, brought in over 650'000 armed men, bombed the shit out of you, destroyed your homes, your infrastructures, your state, your army, your civil institutions, partitioned your country, build walls around your neighborhoods, unleashed the most deadly militias against you, used DU and Napalm, displaced thousands of you and turned them homeless, maimed thousands of you, killed thousands of you, turned thousands of your kids and women into orphans and widows, raped and tortured your women and men and sodomized your kids, destroyed your monuments, looted your history, burned your libraries, changed your school textbooks, urinated in your churches, insulted you with the most denigrating epithets, pillaged your homes and your treasury, burned your fields, arrested your families, detained thousands of you, brought in missionaries to convert you to Islam...and more....all in your own country, on your own turf --- what the fuck would you do ?

Come on, ask yourselves this question, what would you do ?

The least, the minimum, the bare minimum is that you will get angry...

But the way your minds function, your screwed up, sick minds function, is that in those putrid heads of yours, we are not even allowed our anger...

Not only are we not allowed our anger, but we need to demonstrate gratitude, a forever gratitude that you have "visited" us...the way you did.

After all in your minds, it is not called an armed invasion and occupation...you call it an "unfortunate mistake", "an unnecessary war" at best, and preach to me and us that we should forgive, while you're still there, physically there "visiting" us and while you persist in the lie...
And in those sick, sick, minds of yours, you justify it all with "we are here to help."

Do you know why you do that ? I will tell you why. It is because you have this amazing propensity to LIE TO YOURSELVES...you are in fact the PEOPLE OF THE LIE.

And that is the plain and simple Truth.

by Tom Hodgkinson
The Guardian

Facebook has 59 million users - and 2 million new ones join each week. But you won't catch Tom Hodgkinson volunteering his personal information - not now that he knows the politics of the people behind the social networking site.

The US intelligence community's enthusiasm for hi-tech innovation after 9/11 and the creation of In-Q-Tel, its venture capital fund, in 1999 were anachronistically linked in the article below. Since 9/11 happened in 2001 it could not have led to the setting up of In-Q-Tel two years earlier.

I despise Facebook. This enormously successful American business describes itself as "a social utility that connects you with the people around you". But hang on. Why on God's earth would I need a computer to connect with the people around me? Why should my relationships be mediated through the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in California? What was wrong with the pub?

And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn't it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk? A friend of mine recently told me that he had spent a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk. What a gloomy image. Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations.

Facebook appeals to a kind of vanity and self-importance in us, too. If I put up a flattering picture of myself with a list of my favourite things, I can construct an artificial representation of who I am in order to get sex or approval. ("I like Facebook," said another friend. "I got a shag out of it.") It also encourages a disturbing competitivness around friendship: it seems that with friends today, quality counts for nothing and quantity is king. The more friends you have, the better you are. You are "popular", in the sense much loved in American high schools. Witness the cover line on Dennis Publishing's new Facebook magazine: "How To Double Your Friends List."

It seems, though, that I am very much alone in my hostility. At the time of writing Facebook claims 59 million active users, including 7 million in the UK, Facebook's third-biggest customer after the US and Canada. That's 59 million suckers, all of whom have volunteered their ID card information and consumer preferences to an American business they know nothing about. Right now, 2 million new people join each week. At the present rate of growth, Facebook will have more than 200 million active users by this time next year. And I would predict that, if anything, its rate of growth will accelerate over the coming months. As its spokesman Chris Hughes says: "It's embedded itself to an extent where it's hard to get rid of."

All of the above would have been enough to make me reject Facebook for ever. But there are more reasons to hate it. Many more.

Facebook is a well-funded project, and the people behind the funding, a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, have a clearly thought out ideology that they are hoping to spread around the world. Facebook is one manifestation of this ideology. Like PayPal before it, it is a social experiment, an expression of a particular kind of neoconservative libertarianism. On Facebook, you can be free to be who you want to be, as long as you don't mind being bombarded by adverts for the world's biggest brands. As with PayPal, national boundaries are a thing of the past.

Although the project was initially conceived by media cover star Mark Zuckerberg, the real face behind Facebook is the 40-year-old Silicon Valley venture capitalist and futurist philosopher Peter Thiel. There are only three board members on Facebook, and they are Thiel, Zuckerberg and a third investor called Jim Breyer from a venture capital firm called Accel Partners (more on him later). Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook when Harvard students Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskowitz went to meet him in San Francisco in June 2004, soon after they had launched the site. Thiel now reportedly owns 7% of Facebook, which, at Facebook's current valuation of $15bn, would be worth more than $1bn. There is much debate on who exactly were the original co-founders of Facebook, but whoever they were, Zuckerberg is the only one left on the board, although Hughes and Moskowitz still work for the company.

Thiel is widely regarded in Silicon Valley and in the US venture capital scene as a libertarian genius. He is the co-founder and CEO of the virtual banking system PayPal, which he sold to Ebay for $1.5bn, taking $55m for himself. He also runs a £3bn hedge fund called Clarium Capital Management and a venture capital fund called Founders Fund. Bloomberg Markets magazine recently called him "one of the most successful hedge fund managers in the country". He has made money by betting on rising oil prices and by correctly predicting that the dollar would weaken. He and his absurdly wealthy Silicon Valley mates have recently been labelled "The PayPal Mafia" by Fortune magazine, whose reporter also observed that Thiel has a uniformed butler and a $500,000 McLaren supercar. Thiel is also a chess master and intensely competitive. He has been known to sweep the chessmen off the table in a fury when losing. And he does not apologise for this hyper-competitveness, saying: "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser."

But Thiel is more than just a clever and avaricious capitalist. He is a futurist philosopher and neocon activist. A philosophy graduate from Stanford, in 1998 he co-wrote a book called The Diversity Myth, which is a detailed attack on liberalism and the multiculturalist ideology that dominated Stanford. He claimed that the "multiculture" led to a lessening of individual freedoms. While a student at Stanford, Thiel founded a rightwing journal, still up and running, called The Stanford Review - motto: Fiat Lux ("Let there be light"). Thiel is a member of TheVanguard.Org, an internet-based neoconservative pressure group that was set up to attack MoveOn.org, a liberal pressure group that works on the web. Thiel calls himself "way libertarian".

TheVanguard is run by one Rod D Martin, a philosopher-capitalist whom Thiel greatly admires. On the site, Thiel says: "Rod is one of our nation's leading minds in the creation of new and needed ideas for public policy. He possesses a more complete understanding of America than most executives have of their own businesses."

This little taster from their website will give you an idea of their vision for the world: "TheVanguard.Org is an online community of Americans who believe in conservative values, the free market and limited government as the best means to bring hope and ever-increasing opportunity to everyone, especially the poorest among us." Their aim is to promote policies that will "reshape America and the globe". TheVanguard describes its politics as "Reaganite/Thatcherite". The chairman's message says: "Today we'll teach MoveOn [the liberal website], Hillary and the leftwing media some lessons they never imagined."

So, Thiel's politics are not in doubt. What about his philosophy? I listened to a podcast of an address Thiel gave about his ideas for the future. His philosophy, briefly, is this: since the 17th century, certain enlightened thinkers have been taking the world away from the old-fashioned nature-bound life, and here he quotes Thomas Hobbes' famous characterisation of life as "nasty, brutish and short", and towards a new virtual world where we have conquered nature. Value now exists in imaginary things. Thiel says that PayPal was motivated by this belief: that you can find value not in real manufactured objects, but in the relations between human beings. PayPal was a way of moving money around the world with no restriction. Bloomberg Markets puts it like this: "For Thiel, PayPal was all about freedom: it would enable people to skirt currency controls and move money around the globe."

Clearly, Facebook is another uber-capitalist experiment: can you make money out of friendship? Can you create communities free of national boundaries - and then sell Coca-Cola to them? Facebook is profoundly uncreative. It makes nothing at all. It simply mediates in relationships that were happening anyway.

Thiel's philosophical mentor is one René Girard of Stanford University, proponent of a theory of human behaviour called mimetic desire. Girard reckons that people are essentially sheep-like and will copy one another without much reflection. The theory would also seem to be proved correct in the case of Thiel's virtual worlds: the desired object is irrelevant; all you need to know is that human beings will tend to move in flocks. Hence financial bubbles. Hence the enormous popularity of Facebook. Girard is a regular at Thiel's intellectual soirees. What you don't hear about in Thiel's philosophy, by the way, are old-fashioned real-world concepts such as art, beauty, love, pleasure and truth.

The internet is immensely appealing to neocons such as Thiel because it promises a certain sort of freedom in human relations and in business, freedom from pesky national laws, national boundaries and suchlike. The internet opens up a world of free trade and laissez-faire expansion. Thiel also seems to approve of offshore tax havens, and claims that 40% of the world's wealth resides in places such as Vanuatu, the Cayman Islands, Monaco and Barbados. I think it's fair to say that Thiel, like Rupert Murdoch, is against tax. He also likes the globalisation of digital culture because it makes the banking overlords hard to attack: "You can't have a workers' revolution to take over a bank if the bank is in Vanuatu," he says.

If life in the past was nasty, brutish and short, then in the future Thiel wants to make it much longer, and to this end he has also invested in a firm that is exploring life-extension technologies. He has pledged £3.5m to a Cambridge-based gerontologist called Aubrey de Grey, who is searching for the key to immortality. Thiel is also on the board of advisers of something called the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. From its fantastical website, the following: "The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. There are several technologies ... heading in this direction ... Artificial Intelligence ... direct brain-computer interfaces ... genetic engineering ... different technologies which, if they reached a threshold level of sophistication, would enable the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence."

So by his own admission, Thiel is trying to destroy the real world, which he also calls "nature", and install a virtual world in its place, and it is in this context that we must view the rise of Facebook. Facebook is a deliberate experiment in global manipulation, and Thiel is a bright young thing in the neoconservative pantheon, with a penchant for far-out techno-utopian fantasies. Not someone I want to help get any richer.

The third board member of Facebook is Jim Breyer. He is a partner in the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who put $12.7m into Facebook in April 2005. On the board of such US giants as Wal-Mart and Marvel Entertainment, he is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Now these are the people who are really making things happen in America, because they invest in the new young talent, the Zuckerbergs and the like. Facebook's most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock's senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What's In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA. After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which "identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions".

The US defence department and the CIA love technology because it makes spying easier. "We need to find new ways to deter new adversaries," defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in 2003. "We need to make the leap into the information age, which is the critical foundation of our transformation efforts." In-Q-Tel's first chairman was Gilman Louie, who served on the board of the NVCA with Breyer. Another key figure in the In-Q-Tel team is Anita K Jones, former director of defence research and engineering for the US department of defence, and - with Breyer - board member of BBN Technologies. When she left the US department of defence, Senator Chuck Robb paid her the following tribute: "She brought the technology and operational military communities together to design detailed plans to sustain US dominance on the battlefield into the next century."

Now even if you don't buy the idea that Facebook is some kind of extension of the American imperialist programme crossed with a massive information-gathering tool, there is no way of denying that as a business, it is pure mega-genius. Some net nerds have suggsted that its $15bn valuation is excessive, but I would argue that if anything that is too modest. Its scale really is dizzying, and the potential for growth is virtually limitless. "We want everyone to be able to use Facebook," says the impersonal voice of Big Brother on the website. I'll bet they do. It is Facebook's enormous potential that led Microsoft to buy 1.6% for $240m. A recent rumour says that Asian investor Lee Ka-Shing, said to be the ninth richest man in the world, has bought 0.4% of Facebook for $60m.

The creators of the site need do very little bar fiddle with the programme. In the main, they simply sit back and watch as millions of Facebook addicts voluntarily upload their ID details, photographs and lists of their favourite consumer objects. Once in receipt of this vast database of human beings, Facebook then simply has to sell the information back to advertisers, or, as Zuckerberg puts it in a recent blog post, "to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web". And indeed, this is precisely what's happening. On November 6 last year, Facebook announced that 12 global brands had climbed on board. They included Coca-Cola, Blockbuster, Verizon, Sony Pictures and Condé Nast. All trained in marketing bullshit of the highest order, their representatives made excited comments along the following lines:

"With Facebook Ads, our brands can become a part of the way users communicate and interact on Facebook," said Carol Kruse, vice president, global interactive marketing, the Coca-Cola Company.

"We view this as an innovative way to cultivate relationships with millions of Facebook users by enabling them to interact with Blockbuster in convenient, relevant and entertaining ways," said Jim Keyes, Blockbuster chairman and CEO. "This is beyond creating advertising impressions. This is about Blockbuster participating in the community of the consumer so that, in return, consumers feel motivated to share the benefits of our brand with their friends."

"Share" is Facebookspeak for "advertise". Sign up to Facebook and you become a free walking, talking advert for Blockbuster or Coke, extolling the virtues of these brands to your friends. We are seeing the commodification of human relationships, the extraction of capitalistic value from friendships.

Now, by comparision with Facebook, newspapers, for example, begin to look hopelessly outdated as a business model. A newspaper sells advertising space to businesses looking to sell stuff to their readers. But the system is far less sophisticated than Facebook for two reasons. One is that newspapers have to put up with the irksome expense of paying journalists to provide the content. Facebook gets its content for free. The other is that Facebook can target advertising with far greater precision than a newspaper. Admit on Facebook that your favourite film is This Is Spinal Tap, and when a Spinal Tap-esque movie comes out, you can be sure that they'll be sending ads your way.

It's true that Facebook recently got into hot water with its Beacon advertising programme. Users were notified that one of their friends had made a purchase at certain online shops; 46,000 users felt that this level of advertising was intrusive, and signed a petition called "Facebook! Stop invading my privacy!" to say so. Zuckerberg apologised on his company blog. He has written that they have now changed the system from "opt-out" to "opt-in". But I suspect that this little rebellion about being so ruthlessly commodified will soon be forgotten: after all, there was a national outcry by the civil liberties movement when the idea of a police force was mooted in the UK in the mid 19th century.

Futhermore, have you Facebook users ever actually read the privacy policy? It tells you that you don't have much privacy. Facebook pretends to be about freedom, but isn't it really more like an ideologically motivated virtual totalitarian regime with a population that will very soon exceed the UK's? Thiel and the rest have created their own country, a country of consumers.

Now, you may, like Thiel and the other new masters of the cyberverse, find this social experiment tremendously exciting. Here at last is the Enlightenment state longed for since the Puritans of the 17th century sailed away to North America, a world where everyone is free to express themselves as they please, according to who is watching. National boundaries are a thing of the past and everyone cavorts together in freewheeling virtual space. Nature has been conquered through man's boundless ingenuity. Yes, and you may decide to send genius investor Thiel all your money, and certainly you'll be waiting impatiently for the public flotation of the unstoppable Facebook.

Or you might reflect that you don't really want to be part of this heavily-funded programme to create an arid global virtual republic, where your own self and your relationships with your friends are converted into commodites on sale to giant global brands. You may decide that you don't want to be part of this takeover bid for the world.

For my own part, I am going to retreat from the whole thing, remain as unplugged as possible, and spend the time I save by not going on Facebook doing something useful, such as reading books. Why would I want to waste my time on Facebook when I still haven't read Keats' Endymion? And when there are seeds to be sown in my own back yard? I don't want to retreat from nature, I want to reconnect with it. Damn air-conditioning! And if I want to connect with the people around me, I will revert to an old piece of technology. It's free, it's easy and it delivers a uniquely individual experience in sharing information: it's called talking.

Facebook's privacy policy

Just for fun, try substituting the words 'Big Brother' whenever you read the word 'Facebook'

1 We will advertise at you

"When you use Facebook, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, add applications, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalised features."

2 You can't delete anything

"When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information."

3 Anyone can glance at your intimate confessions

"... we cannot and do not guarantee that user content you post on the site will not be viewed by unauthorised persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of user content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other users have copied or stored your user content."

4 Our marketing profile of you will be unbeatable

"Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (eg, photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalised experience."

5 Opting out doesn't mean opting out

"Facebook reserves the right to send you notices about your account even if you opt out of all voluntary email notifications."

6 The CIA may look at the stuff when they feel like it

"By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States ... We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Facebook service or using the Facebook name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies."