 |
| John Boadu, Acting NPP General Secretary |
Honourable Kennedy Agyapong, Member of Parliament has
alleged that some people in his own party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are
plotting to kill him.
He did not disclose the names of the plotters but said
the plot was hatched at the party’s headquarters.
Speaking in a television interview in Accra, he said he
was ready “to face” the plotters.
“I fought against the NDC for eight years and I can
fight against this government too” he said.
He said only his respect for President Nana Addo Dankwa
Akufo-Addo can restrain him from destroying the plotters.
Honourable Agyapong said he has already warned the party
leaders that if they attack him, he will bring all of them down.
“I will disclose all the monies they collected from Seidn Adongo. I will expose them so badly” he said.
He alleged that some of his party leaders promised
militants of the Delta Force that they would be absorbed into the security
services.
“It is the failure to honour this promise which angered
them” he disclosed.
In what appeared to be a joke, Kennedy Agyapong said he
had told the wife of Collins Dauda, a Minister in the Mahama administration
that he will marry her if her husband died.
“The woman is so beautiful and the husband doesn’t
deserve her” he said.
He described Mr. Albert Kan-Dapaah, Minister of National
Security as a complete disaster.
According to him, Mr. Kan-Dapaah abandoned the NPP in
opposition but has resurfaced after victory and is now seeking to control
everything.
Editorial
ANNIVERSARY
This month “The Insight” will mark its 24th anniversary.
It began as the “Weekly Insight” on April 3, 1993, when
Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey launched it at the old Press Centre on the Mortuary
Road.
At the time, the newspaper did not have an office- not
even type writer and we produced the very first issue from the office of “The
Chronicle’’.
Mr. Kofi Coomson, the Editor of “The Chronicle” gave us
six realms of news print and credit for printing for two weeks and we got to
work.
Today, The Insight has become a daily and even though
its circulation has dropped significantly, it is seen as one of the very few
serious newspapers available.
At the very least, it is the only truly left-wing
newspaper still in circulation in Ghana.
On the occasion of the 24th anniversary of “The Insight”
we salute all those who made the dream come true, especially Mr Kofi Coomson,
Ato Kwamena Pratt, Abraham Ussher, Ablorh
Sowah, Ken Klevor, Kabral Blay-Amihere and others too many to mention.
We pledge that “The Insight” will continue to soldier on
until final victory.
Mangrove-Ghana worried about exploitation of farmlands
By Mildred Siabi-Mensah
A research conducted by "Mangrove-Ghana" a
Non-Governmental Organisation dedicated to Agriculture and food security in
Ghana has stressed the need for pragmatic steps to protect farm lands across
the country.
The research revealed that the excessive usage of most
fertile agricultural lands for construction and sand winning purposes was
gradually depriving farmers of their livelihood and also posed a greater threat
to food security.
Dr Daniel Adu Ankrah, Executive Director of
Mangrove-Ghana told the Ghana News Agency in an interview that if necessary
steps were not put in place, agricultural lands would continue to diminish
drastically adding, “It is gradually becoming difficult for farmers currently
to get lands to farm.”
He said, “Our survey carried out within the month of
January to April last year revealed that at least 1,000 to 2,500 acres of
fertile agricultural lands had been cleared for real estate or sand winning
purposes in Gomoa East and Awutu Senya district alone in the central region.
The Gomoa East in the Central Region according to
DrAnkrah was endowed with immense natural resources in the form of vast arable
lands suitable for food crops, fruits and vegetables, wetlands, forest,
wildlife and rivers and the sea making fishing important in the coastal
communities of Fetteh, Nyanyano and Dampase.
The Executive Director of Mangrove-Ghana said the over
exploitation of the arable land, forest, wetlands and rivers to meet the
socio-economic needs had adversely affected the fragile environment adding,
“uncontrolled sand winning, bush burning, hunting and excessive felling of trees
was fast threatening the biodiversity, thus putting the fertility of the soil
as well as wildlife at risk”.
The Executive Director of Mangrove-Ghana said the survey
also brought to the fore issues regarding land acquired through the traditional
authorities and Ghanaian middlemen which were mostly obtained through verbal
agreement without any contractual agreement, which increased land disputes in
the area.
He said the NGO under the auspices of BUSAC fund was
working to facilitate the development of a land use and compensation plan
through acceptable negotiation procedures for selling agricultural lands for
real estate and industrial usage.
The organisation, he added would embark on livelihood
diversification activities to reduce the risk of engaging in one farm
enterprise and other programmes targeted towards achieving food security as
well as encouraging good farming systems to lessen effects of climate change.
He said over the last nine years, the organisation had
been working in agriculture and livelihood sector across the entire country by
encouraging farmers to recognise and fully tap into the potentials of the
agricultural value chain for specific agricultural commodities.
GNA
Anti-Human
trafficking fight: Ghana risks losing $600m
By Mohammed Awal
The
Minister of Interior, Ambrose Derry has warned that Ghana risks losing millions
of dollars in aid if she continues to remain on the tier two watch list of
Human trafficking.
Speaking
during an interaction with the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the Ghana Police
Service, he said being ranked on the tier two human trafficking watch list
indicates failure in the fight against the menace.
“Should
Ghana be ranked for the third consecutive year on the tier two watch list,
Ghana stands to lose support by way of aid and guns to the tune of over $600
million,” warned Mr. Derry.
“But
more importantly is that,” added the Minister “Ghana would have failed to
protect its citizens, children and others from the menace of human trafficking.
We are therefore working tirelessly and remain committed to improve Ghana’s
ranking.”
According
to a TIP report issued in 2014 and 2015 by the US, Ghana is a source, transit
and destination for human trafficking and that the exploitation of Ghanaians
was more ubiquitous than the transnational trafficking of foreign nationals.
The
US thus charged Ghana to end the menace including modern day slavery and child
labour as a precondition for a US$650million grant.
Source:StarrFMonline.com
WATCH OUT! LAPTOP
BOMBS
US intelligence believes that terrorist groups,
including Daesh, are developing laptop bombs that can evade airport security
scanners. Radio Sputnik discussed the issue with Jeffrey Price, a professor of
aviation management at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.
According to the sources, cited by US media,
terrorists have gotten hold of sophisticated airport security equipment,
which can allow them to properly conceal explosive devices in large
electronic devices such as laptops.
“We are lagging behind with our scanning technology
unable to detect evolving threats. We are also behind in the “back
door” of aviation security and the employee vetting process, which is
inconsistent from one country to the next,” Jeffrey Price said.
When asked how difficult it would be to create the
so-called “laptop bombs, he said that it does take “a bit
of sophistication and some experience.”
“You’ve got
to construct a device where a small explosive device is installed
inside a laptop case, while allowing the computer to run
unhindered."
Speaking about how airport security scanners work,
Jeffrey Price said that they are going to become more and more
sophisticated.
“As for explosive detection type systems, which are
X-ray like systems taking a 360-degree picture of a device, slicing
and dicing it and examining each slice for potential explosive or
dangerous elements.”
“So there are essentially two types of security
scanning equipment out there: standard X-ray and explosive detection
systems,” professor Price added.
Having a laptop on board a plane is convenient and
gives passengers a chance to relax and entertain themselves
during flights.
However, the probability of “laptop bombs” making their
way on board could result in laptops being banned on planes,
which, in turn, would lead to the loss of passenger freedom.
When asked whether people could eventually be prevented
from having electronics on board planes, Jeffrey Price said that each
time a new threat emerges, security institutions come up with new methods
of detecting a new generation of explosive devices.
'We need a new aviation security system that will not
infringe on our freedom. I believe that in the future technology will
get more and more sophisticated and better able to identify those things,”
he added.
According to Fox 5 New York channel, the data also
shows that Daesh is among several terrorist groups plotting to put
bombs in laptops on US-bound airplanes.
Fox 5 added that previously terrorists had had some
success with such explosive devices. In particular, six passengers were
hurt in a laptop bomb explosion on a plane at an airport
in Somalia last March.
Luther King’s
Warning of America’s Spiritual Death
 |
| Martin Luther King Jnr |
By Dr. Gary G. Kohls
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Riverside Church speech was
titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” It was delivered exactly one
year before his April 4, 1968 assassination in Memphis. In the speech,
King declared, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on
military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual
death.”
The people who heard that speech recognized it as one of
the most powerful speeches ever given articulating the immorality of the
Vietnam War and its destructive impact on social progress in the United States.
In explaining his decision to follow his conscience and speak out against U.S.
militarism, King said:
“I knew that America would never invest the necessary
funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like
Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic
destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an
enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”
But King went farther, diagnosing the broader disease of
militarism and violence that was endangering the soul of the United States.
King said,
“I could never
again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos
without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world today — my own government.”
Poisoning America’s
Soul
King knew very well that the disease of violence was
killing off more than social progress in America. Violence was sickening the
nation’s soul as well. He added,
“If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the
autopsy must read ‘Vietnam’.”
King urged his fellow citizens to take up the causes of
the world’s oppressed, rather than taking the side of the oppressors. He
said:
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side
of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of
values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a
‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and
property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets
of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
“We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In
this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too
late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing
bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. We still have a choice
today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past
indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace and justice
throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors.
“If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the
long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power
without compassion, might without morality and strength without sight.”
King pointed to an alternate path into the future:
“Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter
but beautiful struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God,
and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are
too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard?”
Signing His Own
Death Warrant
By denouncing so forcefully the war crimes that the U.S.
military was committing daily in the killing fields of Vietnam, some of King’s
followers understood that he had just signed his own death warrant. But
King, being a person of conscience, was compelled to express his deep sense of
moral outrage over the horrific maiming, suffering and dying of millions of
innocent Vietnamese civilians in that unjust war that afflicted mostly unarmed
women and children and that was going to leave behind lethal poisons in the
soil, water and unborn babies that would last for generations.
He knew that non-combatants are always the major victims
of modern warfare, especially wars that indiscriminately used highly lethal weapons
that rained down from the air, especially the U.S. Air Force’s favorite weapon,
napalm — the flaming, jellied gasoline that burned the flesh off of whatever
part of the burning adult or child it splashed onto.
King also connected the racist acts (of American
soldiers joyfully killing dispensable non-white “gooks” and “slants” — often
shooting at “anything that moves”) on the battlefields of Southeast Asia to the
oppression, impoverishment, imprisoning and lynching of dispensable, deprived
non-white “niggers” in America.
King saw the connections between the violence of racism
and the violence of poverty. He saw that the withholding of economic and
educational opportunities came from the fear of “the other” and the perceived
need to protect the white culture’s wealth and privilege with violence if
necessary.
King knew, too, that fortunes are made in every war, and
the war in Vietnam was no exception. In his speeches, he talked about that
unwelcome reality that the ruling class preferred not be discussed. That
meant his well-attended Riverside Church speech threatened not only the
powerful interests already arrayed against his civil rights struggle but also
the interests of the war profiteers and the national security establishment.
War is Good Business
The longer the Vietnam War lasted, the more the weapons
manufacturers thrived. With their huge profits, there was a strong incentive
for these financial elites to continue the carnage. And therefore the Wall
Street war profiteers financed, out of their ill-gotten gains, battalions of
industry lobbyists and pro-military propagandists who descended upon
Washington, DC, and the Pentagon to claim even more tax dollars for weapons
research, development and manufacture.
Nick Ut’s famous photo of terrified South Vietnamese
children fleeing from a napalm attack on the village of Trang Bang in 1972. The
girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, has ripped off her burning clothes.
With that funding secured, armies of desperate
jobs-seekers were hired to work in thousands of weapons factories that were
strategically placed in congressional districts almost everywhere, with weapons
research grants likewise being awarded to virtually every university in the
nation. Thus, weapons-manufacturing and R&D soon became vitally important
for almost every legislator’s home district economy as well as for the
household budgets of millions of American voters who indirectly benefited from
the U.S. military’s killing, maiming, displacement, starvation and suffering of
non-white people in war zones.
King’s anti-war stance was based on his Christianity and
on the ethics and life of Jesus, but it was also based on his standing as a
revered international peace and justice icon. Those factors made him a
dangerous threat to the military/industrial/congressional/security complex.
The powerful forces that were working hard to discredit
King had already infiltrated the civil rights movement. Their efforts,
cunningly led by the proto-fascist and racist J. Edgar Hoover and his
obedient FBI, accelerated after the Riverside speech. The FBI ramped up the
smear campaigns against King. Eventually he was “neutralized” with a bullet to
the head. [The case for believing that King’s murder was not simply the
act of lone gunman James Earl Ray is laid out in many studies, including
attorney William F. Pepper’s An Act of State: The Execution of Martin
Luther King.]
King’s Prophetic
Vision
Now, five decades after his anti-war speech (which was
widely kept from the public), it is clear how prophetic King’s observations were.
America is indeed losing its soul. Violence, racism, militarism and economic
oppression are still American epidemics.
Both upper- and middle-class investors of get-rich-quick
schemes in America have succumbed to predatory lenders, cannibalistic corporate
mergers and acquisitions, psychopathic multinational corporate schemers,
corrupt crony capitalists, and the rapist/exploiters of the land and water by
extractive industries all schemes that will eventually burst as part of
predictable economic bubbles.
Those busted bubbles regularly wipe out investors
(except for the large, deep-pocketed “insiders” who, usually being forewarned,
will have sold their holdings just in time, before the publicly revealed
“bust”), leaving the taxpayers to bail out the financial messes that were
created by the so-called “invisible hand of the market” but are really caused
by the cunning work of corporate gamblers.
King was trying to warn us not just about the oncoming
epidemic of violence toward victims at home but also about the tens of millions
of people around the world who were and are still being victimized by U.S.
military misadventures. King was also warning us about the multinational
corporate war profiteers whose interests are facilitated and protected by the U.S.
military whether they are operating in Asia, Latin America, Africa or the
Middle East.
The Pentagon budget averages well over $700 billion per
year, including wars that are often illegal and unconstitutional. That amounts
to $2 billion per day with no visible return on investment, except for the
military contractors, the oil industries and Wall Street financiers.
Vast sums also are needed to address the physical and
mental health costs needed for the palliative care for the permanently maimed
and psychologically-traumatized veterans. Hundreds of millions of dollars more
are spent paying down the interest payments on past military debts.
All those potentially bankrupting costs represent money
that will never be available for programs of social uplift like combating
racism, poverty and hunger, or paying for affordable housing/healthcare,
universal education or meaningful job creation. Can anyone else hear a demonic
laugh reverberating down Wall Street?
King was warning America about its oncoming spiritual
death if it didn’t convert itself away from military violence. But most
observers of the U.S. see America still worshipping at the altars of the Gods
of War and Greed. Our children may be doomed.
The vast majority of American Christian churches (whether
fundamentalist, conservative, moderate or liberal, with very few exceptions)
have failed King’s vision, despite the lip service they sometimes give to King
on MLK Day. Churches whose members were brought up on the Myth of American
Exceptionalism (and the myth of being “God’s chosen people”) consistently
refuse to take a stand against the satanic nature of war.
Past the Point of No
Return?
If America is to avert future financial and military
catastrophes, King’s central warnings about the “triple evils” of militarism,
racism and economic oppression must be heeded. That means a retreat from
worldwide network of budget-busting military bases. And, if America wants to
shed the justified label of “Rogue Nation,” the covert killing operations of
its secret black ops mercenary military units all around the world must be
stopped, as should the infamous extrajudicial assassinations by America’s
unmanned drones.
If King’s 50-year-old warning continues to be ignored,
America’s future is bleak. The future holds the dark seeds of economic chaos,
hyperinflation, unendurable poverty, increasing racial/minority hostility,
worsening malnutrition, armed rebellion, street fighting, and perhaps,
ultimately, institution of a reactionary totalitarian/surveillance police state
in order to control citizen protests and quell rebellions.
In 1967, many Americans considered King hopeful vision
for a better future as irrational idealism. He was told that the task was too
great, the obstacles were too imposing, and there was no will for even the
churches to reverse their age-old, conservative pseudo-patriotism and society’s
institutional racism. I suspect that many of the churches that called King a
communist and therefore ignored him back then wish that they could turn back
the clock and give King’s (and Jesus’s) path a try.
King finished his speech with these challenges:
“War is not the answer. We still have a choice today;
nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision
to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace and justice throughout the
developing world a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall
surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved
for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality and
strength without sight.”
And he had these sobering words for the churches that
are immersed in a polytheistic culture (the worship of multiple gods, including
the gods of war and mammon) and thus are tempted to quietly ally themselves
with those gods rather than the God of Love that King was devoted to:
“I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama,
Mississippi and all the other southern states. I have looked at her beautiful
churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the
impressive outlay of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over
again I have found myself asking: ‘What kind of people worship here? Who is
their God?’”
Today, the task is even tougher, the obstacles much more
imposing, but the path that King outlined remains.
Dr. Gary G. Kohls is a retired physician who writes
about peace, justice, militarism, mental health and religious issues.
Trump = Obama = Bush
= Clinton, On Four Core Issues
By Washington's Blog
On a superficial level, Trump and Bush couldn’t
be more different from Clinton and Obama. Indeed, pollsters say
that many people voted for Trump because they wanted change …
Just like they voted for Obama because he promised “hope and change” from
Bush-era policies.
But beneath the surface, Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton
are all very similar on 4 core issues.
More War
Bush intentionally lied us
into the Iraq war … a war which had no relation with
U.S. security or defense.
Clinton and Obama intentionally
lied us into various “humanitarian wars” … which
had nothing to do with our security or defense.
And the same idiots who lied us into the Iraq war are
now trying to lie us into a cold (or maybe even hot) war with Russia.
And what about Trump?
He campaigned on peace and non-interventionism …
We’re going to war in the South China Sea … no doubt
So it doesn’t look like peace is going to break out any
time soon.
And sadly, top experts say the geopolitical policies
pursued by Trump – which are very similar to those pursued by Obama, Bush and
Clinton – will lead to more terrorism.
Lap Dogs for Wall Street … Making the Rich Richer
Obama, Bush and Clinton all pushed economic policies
which made the rich richer, and the poor poorer.
Bush and Obama bailed out the big banks, threw
fistfuls of money at the banksters, and otherwise rewarded Wall Street and
penalized Main Street.
Clinton repealed the
Depression-era law which separated regular deposit banking and speculation
(Glass-Steagall), allowed the
giant banks to grow into mega-banks, and acted as a cheerleader for unregulated derivatives. And
Clinton – like Bush and Obama – decided that white collar financial fraud didn’t exist, or at
least shouldn’t be
prosecuted.
What’s the effect of these policies?
Rick Baum notes, using
official U.S. governments statistics, that inequality steadily increased under
all 3 presidents:
What about Trump?
He’s appointed the same old bankster
cronies. Nothing will change. (And unfortunately, it’s not too early to
criticize a new president.)
Spying On Americans
The NSA’s mass surveillance on Americans started
by 1999 or earlier …
under the Clinton administration.
3 months before 9/11, the head of the NSA admitted that
the NSA was collecting so much information from spying that it was drowning in too much data.
It’s gotten to the point that the government is spying on virtually all of our
electronic communications and transactions.
And Trump?
Given that he’s called for whistleblowers
like Snowden and Assange to be executed for treason,
and quickly implemented gag orders as
soon as he took office, he is almost certain to continue the expansion of mass
surveillance on the American people.
In other words, a president who severely punishes anyone
trying to reveal the extent of spying on Americans probably has no intention of
reigning it in.
Supporting Dictators
Who Support Terrorism
Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest
sponsor of radical Islamic terrorists. The Saudis
have backed ISIS and
many other brutal terrorist groups. And the most pro-ISIS tweets
allegedly come from Saudi Arabia.
According to sworn declarations from a 9/11 Commissioner
and the Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry Into 9/11, the Saudi
government backed the 9/11 hijackers (see section
VII for details). And declassified documents only amplify those connections. And the new Saudi
king has ties to
Al Qaeda, Bin Laden and Islamic terrorism.
Saudi Arabia is the hotbed of the most radical Muslim
terrorists in the world: the Salafis (both ISIS and Al Qaeda are Salafis).
And the Saudis – with U.S. support – back the
radical “madrassas” in which Islamic radicalism was spread.
And yet the U.S. has been supporting the Saudis
militarily, with NSA intelligence and
in every other way possible through the Clinton, Bush and Obama
administrations.
Trump?
He’s selling them massive amounts of
arms, keeping them off of the list of restricted
countries for immigration, and supporting Saudi war crimes in Yemen.
It appears that the voters have been played … again.
Postscript: If you think that the presidents are
more different than we’re giving them credit for, then you must conclude that
they have been overridden by other forces. In that case, you may wish to
consider whether the Deep State and big banks have
more power than democratically-elected officials.
A Nation of the
Walking Dead
By Chris Hedges
Opioids and experiences that simulate the deadening
effects of narcotics are mechanisms to keep us submissive and depoliticized.
Desperate citizens in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel “Brave New World” ingested the
pleasure drug soma to check out of reality. Our own versions of soma allow tens
of millions of Americans to retreat daily into addictive mousetraps that
generate a self-induced autism.
The United States consumes 80 percent of
opioids used worldwide, and more than 33,000 died in this country in 2015 from
opioid overdoses.
There are 300 million prescriptions written and $24
billion spent annually in the U.S. for painkillers. Americans supplement this
mostly legal addiction with over $100 billion a year in illicit marijuana,
cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. And nearly 14 million U.S. adults, one in
every 13, regularly abuse alcohol.
But these monetary figures are far less than what we
spend on gambling. Americans in 2013 lost $119 billion
gambling, with an additional $70 billion—or $300 for every adult
in the country—spent on lottery tickets.
Federal and state governments, reliant on tax revenues
from legal gambling and on lottery ticket sales, will do nothing to halt the
expansion of the industry or the economic and psychological toll it exacts on
those in financial distress. State-run lottery games had sales of $73.9
billion in 2015, according to the North American
Association of State and Provincial Lotteries. This revenue is vital to budgets
beset by declining incomes, deindustrialization and austerity.
“State lotteries provided more revenue than state
corporate-income taxes in 11 of the 43 states where they were legal, including
Delaware, Rhode Island, and South Dakota,” Derek Thompson wrote in The
Atlantic. “The poorest third of households buy half of all lotto
tickets,” he noted.
Gambling is a stealth tax on poor people hoping to beat
the nearly impossible odds. Governmental income from gambling is an effort to
make up for the taxes the rich and corporations no longer pay.
Slot machines and other electronic gambling devices are
engineered to draw us into an Alice-in-Wonderland rabbit hole. They, like our
personal computers and hand-held devices, cater to the longing to flee from the
oppressive world of dead-end jobs, crippling debt and social stagnation and a
dysfunctional political system. We become rats in a Skinner box,
frantically pulling levers until we are addicted and finally entranced by our
compulsion to achieve fleeting, intermittent and adrenaline-driven rewards.
Much like what happens to people using slot machines, the pigeons or rats
in Skinner’s experiments that did not
know when they would get a reward, or how much they would get, became the most
heavily addicted to operating the levers or pedals. Indeed, Skinner used slot
machines as a metaphor for his experiments.
The engineers of America’s gambling industry are as
skillful at forming addiction as the country’s top five opioid producers—Purdue
Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, Insys Therapeutics, Mylan and Depomed. There are
460 commercial casinos, 486 tribal casinos, 350 card rooms, 55 racetracks
and hundreds of
thousands of gaming devices, many located in convenience stores,
gas stations, bars, airports and even supermarkets.
The rush of anticipation, available in 20-second bursts,
over hours, days, weeks and months creates an addictive psychological “zone”
that the industry calls “continuous gaming productivity.” Heart rates and blood
pressure rise. Time, space, the value of money and human relationships
hypnotically dissolve. A state of extreme social isolation occurs.
Gambling addicts, like many addicts, are often driven to
crime, bankruptcy and eventual imprisonment. Many lose everything—their
marriages, their families, their jobs, their emotional health and sometimes
their lives. Gambling addicts have the highest rate of suicide attempts among
addicts of any kind—1 in 5, or 20 percent—according to the National Council on
Problem Gambling.
Donald Trump is in large part a product of gambling
culture. His career has not been about making products but about selling
intangible and fleeting experiences. He preys on the desperate by offering them
escapist fantasies. This world is about glitter, noise and
hype—Trump called the Trump Taj Mahal, his now-closed casino, “the eighth
wonder of the world.” The more money you spent, the greater your “value,” the
more you were pampered, given free hotel rooms and gifts, handed passes to
special “clubs” with lavish buffets. Scantily clad hostesses hovered around you
serving complimentary drinks. If you spent big, you were invited to exclusive
parties attended by supermodels and famous athletes. Decorated chips—some featuring
a photo of Donald Trump—turned cash into a species of Monopoly money. But in
the end, when you were broke, when there was no more money in your bank account
and your credit cards were maxed out, you were thrown back, in even greater
financial distress, into the dreary universe you tried to obliterate.
Roger Caillois, the French sociologist, wrote that the
pathologies of a culture are captured in the games the culture venerates. Old
forms of gambling such as blackjack and poker allowed the gambler to take
risks, make decisions and even, in his or her mind, achieve a kind of
individualism or heroism at the gambling table. They provided a way, it can be
argued, to assert an alternative identity for a brief moment. But the newer
form, machine gambling, is an erasure of the self. Slot machines, which produce
85 percent of the profits at casinos, are, as the sociologist Henry
Lesieur wrote, an “addiction delivery device.” They are “electronic
morphine,” “the crack cocaine of gambling.” They are not about risk or about
making decisions, but about creating somnambulism, putting a player into a
trancelike state that can last for hours. It is a pathway, as sociologist Natasha Dow Schüll points
out, to becoming the walking dead. This yearning for a state of non-being is
what Sigmund Freud called “the death instinct.” It is the
overpowering drive by a depressed and traumatized person to seek pleasure in a
self-destructive activity that ultimately kills the organism.
“It is not the chance of winning to which they become
addicted,” Schüll writes in “Addiction by Design: Machine
Gambling in Las Vegas,” “rather, what addicts them is the world-dissolving
state of subjective suspension and affective calm they derive from machine
play.”
Gamblers are closely tracked by the casino industry. The
length of time gamblers spend on machines increases the profits for the casino.
The science of keeping people in front of slot machines—called “time on device”
within the industry—has led to the creation of ergonomic consoles, the
appealing, warm screens on slot machines, seductive video graphics and
surround-sound acoustics.
The industry also invests heavily in surveillance.
Gamblers carry player or loyalty cards. They insert these cards into the slot
machines when they play. These cards, linked to a central database, are used by
the industry to build profiles of gamblers. The value and frequency of bets are
captured, along with wins and losses. The industry knows when the players take
breaks, where and what they eat in the casinos, what they drink and what hotel
rooms they select. Slowly the traits and the habits of the gambler,
triangulated with demographic data, are pieced together to allow the industry
to build a personal profile. With the profile, the casino determines at what
point a player will accumulate too many losses and too much pain and is about
to walk away from a machine. A few moments before that pain level is reached, a
hostess will magically appear with a free drink, a voucher for a meal or
tickets to a show. Casinos can also use profiles to project how much a player
will spend gambling during his or her lifetime.
The industry was the human laboratory for refinements
now incorporated into the security and surveillance organs of the state.
“Many surveillance and marketing innovations first used
in casinos were only later adapted to other domains,” Schüll writes, “including
airports, financial trading floors, consumer shopping malls, insurance
agencies, banks, and government programs like Homeland Security.”
“They have an algorithm that senses your pain points,
your sweet spots,” Schüll told me. “The zone is a term that I kept hearing over
and over again as I went to gamblers’ anonymous meetings and spoke to gambling
addicts. This really describes a state of flow where time, space, monetary
value and other people fall away. You might say a state of flow, or the zone,
sounds very different from the thrills and suspense of gambling. But what the
casinos have hit upon is that [they] actually make more money when [they]
design a flow space into these machines. People don’t even know that they’re
losing. They just sit there. Again, it’s time on machines.”
“When you look at contemporary slot machines, they don’t
operate on volatility,” she continued. “One designer of the mathematics and
algorithm of these games said we want an algorithm that makes you feel like you
are reclining on a couch. The curves, architecture and the softly pixelated
lights, they want you to sit back and go with the flow. I just couldn’t make
sense of that for the longest time in my research. Gamblers would say, ‘It’s so
weird, but sometimes when I win a big jackpot I feel angry and frustrated.’
What they’re playing for is not to win, but to stay in the zone. Winning
disrupts that because suddenly the machine is frozen, it’s not letting you keep
going. What are you going to do with that winning anyway? You’re just going to
feed it back into the machines. This is more about mood modulation. Affect
modulation. Using technologies to dampen anxieties and exit the world. We don’t
just see it in Las Vegas. We see it in the subways every morning. The rise of
all of these screen-based technologies and the little games that we’ve all
become so absorbed in. What gamblers articulate is a desire to really lose a
sense of self. They lose time, space, money value, and a sense of being in the
world. What is that about? What does that say? How do we diagnose that?”
“It’s the flip side to the incredible pressure, which is
experienced as a burden, to self-manage, to make choices, to always be
maximizing as you’re living life in this entrepreneurial mode,” she said. “We
talk about this as the subjective side of the neoliberal agenda, where pressure
is put on individuals to regulate themselves. In this case, they are regulating
themselves, but they are regulating themselves away from that. This really is a
mode of escape. It’s not action gambling. This is escape gambling. You can see
it on their faces. The consequences and ethics are distasteful. It’s predatory.
It’s predation on a type of escape where people are driven to exit the world.
They’re not trying to win. The casinos are trying to win. They are trying to
make revenue. They’re kind of in a partnership with the gamblers, but it’s a
very asymmetrical partnership. The gamblers don’t want to win. They want to
just keep going. Some people have likened gamblers to factory workers who are
alienated by the machine. I don’t see it that way. This is more about machines
designed to synchronize with what you want—in this case escape—and [to] profit
from that.”
Trump understands this longing for escape and the art of
creating an updated version of P.T. Barnum’s “Grand Traveling Museum,
Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome.” Trump used his skills as a con artist to
pull in hundreds of millions of dollars and then to achieve the presidency.
“People have called it a mode of ludo-capitalism,” Schüll said. “In
a way, you can connect that to the ludo-politics that we see. Pleasure. To get
what you want. What you want is to escape into a flow, to be taken away. We see
this in the political domain a lot—in the rallies, in the surging of feelings,
the distraction. If you look at the way a casino is designed, and you remember
that Trump is a designer of many casinos, including his non-casino properties,
they follow the same design logic of disorientation and trying to sweep people
away from themselves, away from rationality, away from a position where they
have clear lines of sight and can act as decision-making subjects. You see that
on the floors of casinos, you see that in political rhetoric today.”
The corporate state will expand our access to a variety
of opioids and numbing situations to temporarily alleviate our stress,
financial dislocations, depression and anxiety. Aided by state and local
governments, it will build new pleasure palaces. It will lure millions into its
glittering and seductive Venus’ flytraps. It will make sure we have tempting
retreats within easy reach to achieve a death-in-life experience. Much of the
society will be put to sleep. Those who refuse to become zombies, who rise up to
resist, who seek at all costs to remain distinct individuals, will be silenced
with the corporate state’s cruder tool for submission: force.
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