Re-Post from FDL Seminal 7/28/09
Part 1
In Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller, Shadow of a Doubt, spunky, high school grad Teresa Wright discovers her beloved uncle is a serial killer. Wright’s subsequent efforts to protect herself and others from psychopathic Joseph Cotten are continually frustrated by the extraordinary denial of her family and her community lost in the “thrall” of the worldly, smooth-talking Uncle Charlie. Heartbroken and distraught, she must contend with her uncle’s violent agenda while being obstructed by a naive and vulnerable community of his enablers and/or soon to be victims.
Wright’s predicament of horror resonates as I witness my – our – psychopathic (proverbial) uncle – Uncle Sam, the U.S. government – perpetrate violent crime upon crime against humanity enabled by a maddening, morally mute, over-trusting, under-informed citizenry.
I can’t wrap my mind or heart around the lack of outrage and empathy among my leaders and the vast majority of my fellow citizens. The Iraq war was launched illegally. The torture program is against the law. The Geneva Convention was ratified by Congress. Habeas corpus has been in place since 1679. The atrocity of 9/11 apparently justified a “gloves off” bloodlust defiance of the legal and moral pillars of our democracy. All these years since, the mandate for constitutional and moral justice "for all" goes unheeded.
John Pilger writes in his article, Mourn on the 4th of July:
"Since 1945, by deed and by example, the US has overthrown 50 governments, including democracies, crushed some 30 liberation movements and supported tyrannies from Egypt to Guatemala (see William Blum’s histories). Bombing is apple pie. Having stacked his government with warmongers, Wall Street cronies and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, the 45th president is merely upholding tradition. The hearts and minds farce I witnessed in Vietnam is today repeated in villages in Afghanistan and, by proxy, Pakistan, which are Obama’s wars."
"In his acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, Harold Pinter noted that "everyone knew that terrible crimes had been committed by the Soviet Union in the postwar period, but "US crimes in the same period have been only superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all". It is as if "It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening . . . You have to hand it to America . . . masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.""
I want Pilger to be wrong about our history and this promising new administration. But I am learning more and more of our real “Ugly American” history. And the U.S. militarism I had thought was fueled by the Bushco neocons undeniably has escalated under Obama. Also, the Geneva Convention’s rules of engagement and the writ of habeas corpus go unrestored. In fact, serious amounts of our taxpayer dollars are now and most likely will be spent for the legal defenses of the major architects of illegal torture challenged by their alleged victims.
I was stunned to read that only 29% of the citizenry are against torture of any kind. It awes me to hear torture being justified, normalized, decriminalized by the military, citizenry, politicians, media, and those government lawyers that parsed the letter of the law, trashing its obvious spirit, minimizing the savagery of torture with euphemistic labels that are obligingly echoed by much of the corporate media. "Enhanced interrogation techniques." Monstrous methods of inflicting debilitating psychological and physical pain on victims. Techniques that along with being illegal are universally regarded as unreliable. Reliable only in generating false confessions.
I put on a black armband about two months ago. I needed to concretely register my outrage at what had been immorally and illegally done by my country’s agents. I was troubled by the slowness of this new, seemingly reasonable administration to acknowledge accountability and offer us, deceived citizens, reassurance that such atrocities would not continue and acknowledge culpability to those innocent people whose lives had been damaged and in some cases, over one hundred, literally destroyed by torture (i.e., killed from overzealous torturing).
I had hope this new government would be — well — “stand-up” — transparent — would exhibit basic and common decency. Since only a fraction of the Guantanamo detainees have proven to be legitimate suspects (in blatant contradiction to the lying talking points of our corporate media-courted ex-vice president), some official expression of regret seemed the minimum due those released after having been erroneously rendered, caged and tortured for in some cases seven interminable years. I have heard that a part of the conditions for a detainee’s release involved signing a confidentiality, denial and/or non-liability waiver. A final grand act of psychological torture, it would certainly seem.
One erroneously rendered man, Khalid El-Masri, has not been silent and has presented an outrageous tale of injustice. This from Wikipedia.
"El-Masri travelled from his home in Ulm to go on vacation in Skopje at the end of 2003. He was detained by Macedonian border officials on December 31, 2003. …. He was held in a motel in the Republic of Macedonia for over three weeks and questioned about his activities, his associates, and the mosque he attended in Ulm."
"The Macedonian authorities also contacted the local CIA station, who in turn contacted the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia."
snip
"… a "black snatch team", came to Skopje, and detained him. El-Masri alleges that they beat him, stripped him naked, drugged him, and gave him an enema. He was then dressed in a diaper and a jumpsuit, and flown to Baghdad, then immediately to "the salt pit", a covert CIA interrogation center in Afghanistan which contained prisoners from Pakistan, Tanzania, Yemen and Saudi Arabia."
snip
"El-Masri wrote in the Los Angeles Times that, while held in Afghanistan, he was beaten and repeatedly interrogated. He has also claimed that he was sodomized. He was kept in a bare, squalid cell, given only meager rations to eat and putrid water to drink. In February, CIA officers in Kabul began to suspect his passport was genuine. The passport was sent to the CIA headquarters in Langley where in March the CIA’s Office of Technical Services concluded it was indeed genuine."
"Discussion over what to do with El-Masri included secretly transporting him back to Republic of Macedonia, without informing German authorities, dumping him, and denying any claims he made. In the end they did inform the German government, without apologizing, and were able to persuade the Germans to remain silent. In March 2004 El-Masri took part in a hunger strike, demanding that his captors afford him due process or watch him die. After 27 days without eating, he forced a meeting with the prison director and a CIA officer known as "The Boss". They conceded he should not be imprisoned but refused to release him. El-Masri continued his hunger strike for 10 more days until he was force-fed and given medical attention. He had lost more than 60 pounds since his abduction in Skopje."
"In April 2004, CIA Director George Tenet learned that El-Masri was being wrongfully detained. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice learned of his detention shortly thereafter in early May and ordered his release. El-Masri was released on May 28 following a second order from Rice. They flew him out of Afghanistan and released him at night on a desolate road in Albania, without apology, or funds to return home. He claimed that at the time he believed his release was a ruse, and he would be executed. He was eventually intercepted by Albanian guards, who believed him to be a terrorist due to his haggard and unkempt appearance. He was subsequently reunited with his wife who had returned to her family in Lebanon, with their children, because she thought her husband had abandoned them."
There is so much appalling in this tale. But most staggering to me was that he was confirmed innocent early in March 2004. He was not released until May 28th. Torture of any of these suspects goes against the Geneva Convention and horrifies. But this officially innocent man was kept caged an additional two months while, for a significant part of that time, the Bush cabal presumably haggled over how best to minimize or cover-up their mistake. Abiding by the so-called 11th commandment, “Don’t Get Caught”. Impression management at all costs. No honor. No integrity. No EMPATHY. They had him unceremoniously dumped in a desolate location. This is what they came up with after such an insane period of callousness.
And American citizens ask innocently, “Why don’t they like us?”
This was to be a short introduction to a sober, non-ranting exploration of what I honestly consider a sociopathological lack of empathy among my fellow citizens and our administrations, past and present. There are sociological and psychological phenomena that foster the empowerment of evil in this world, and we are all susceptible to them, myself very much included. We recognize exhibitions of evil in varying degrees in individuals and ourselves on a daily continuum due to many factors, short or long term. Episodic or chronic stress, addict-/co-addict behavior, neurosis, sociopathy.
But when this evil manifests on such a collective and global level, and echoes the worst periods of the world’s history, it is a profound mystery that demands serious study by those awake enough to protest it. I want to call it “the Satanization of America”. For what I see happening, that is not hyperbolic. At this point in my concerned citizenship, I am moving beyond anger into an awe of the scope of the – well – I can only call it downright and seriously unchallenged evil.
Part 2
In Part 1, I expressed my awe at the degree of compliance of my fellow citizens and the new administration in not doing more to end the status quo of perpetual war, rampant economic injustice, the suspension of habeas corpus and the laws of the Geneva Convention.
I expressed my disappointment that more empathy was not expressed and apparently felt toward the victims of brutality of the Bush torture program. It seems little or no accountability will be demanded from the primary architects of grossly inhumane not to mention illegal activity. And, again, the majority of the American public is enabling this decision.
How can leaders, in this case George W. Bush and his administration, manifesting so little conscience, induce so many to enter their “thrall” and accept and follow illegal and inhumane orders perpetrating hideous and covert torture? My mother used to say “rank has its privilege” but not to what seems such a sociopathological degree.
Scott Peck asserts in his book, People of the Lie, that mental health is “dedication to reality at all costs.” This healthy sense of reality includes an in-touchness with one’s inner reality and a respect for the reality of others. It requires the capacity to fully think and FEEL.
This “feeling capacity” seems most vulnerable to dysfunction in our society and world, among both leaders and followers. Feelings are profoundly under-valued in society, and this feeling dysfunction is at the heart (pun intended) of all existing suffering and injustice. The status quo in America has us locked into perpetual war and there is ever-increasing economic hardship for all but a tiny percentage of the population. A patriarchal win/lose gamesmanship is at play, which the media reinforces, totally ignoring moral consideration. A paradigm shift to partnership and cooperation is the answer, but that would require decisions based on a leadership and society that seriously honors empathy and compassion. Ours does not.
Alice Miller in her book For Your Own Good maintains that unprocessed trauma in one’s childhood, that is, when children are exposed to profound degrees of non-empathy at times from adult caretakers, causes a shutting down of their feeling capacity in adult life and at times a sudden dismantling of their own will for another’s. Such trauma undoubtedly also happened to the original destructive caretakers during their childhoods and the cycle of dysfunction continued on.
Miller contends that these moments of trauma when left unprocessed and un-grieved are enough to induce one to over-identify with an aggressor and enter his or her thrall later in adulthood. Also such conditioning can induce one to project one’s negative feelings about oneself onto others as scapegoats. These people cannot handle and take mature responsibility for whatever guilt, shame, anger, frustration gets triggered within them in the present and must deflect it.
Miller writes of the abuse inflicted on Hitler as a child by his father. She views Hitler’s ruthless cruelty as leader as him identifying with his aggressor father and projecting his contempt for his (Hitler’s) weak child-self onto the Jewish people. She points out that his father was part Jewish and had tremendous shame about that which was why Hitler aimed his hatred at the Jewish people.
Miller also contends that the culture of strict, religious upbringing for children, a poisonous pedagogy she calls it, made the German population easy prey for the authoritarianism of Hitler. She writes.
"When still in diapers, the child learns to knock at the gates of love with “obedience” and unfortunately does not unlearn this thereafter."
snip
"Just as in the symbiosis of the diaper stage, there is no separation here of subject and object. … In a totalitarian state, which is a mirror of his upbringing, this citizen can also carry out any form of torture or persecution without having a guilty conscience. His “will” is completely identical with that of the government."
Miller points out that both Hitler and Stalin had enthusiastic, highly intellectual followers and she emphasizes that one’s capacity to be “enthralled” by a toxic, controlling leader is not about intelligence. It is about one’s connectedness or disconnectedness to one’s authentic feelings. One’s ability or inability to respond to a situation with one’s heart. The degree of a heart’s response-ability, so to speak.
Scott Peck takes on the horrifying dimensions of what he calls “group evil” in a chapter in People of the Lie devoted to the infamous MyLai massacre during the Vietnam War. He examines the realistic stressors on the troops that day, as well as the dangerous socio- and psychological group and leader dynamics at play that created a “perfect storm” for such atrocity.
Mylai, March 16, 1968:
"…the troops of C Company killed at least somewhere between five and six hundred of those unarmed villagers [women, children and old men]. These people were killed in a variety of ways. In some instances troops would simply stand at the door of a village hut and spray into it with rifle fire, blindly killing those inside. In other instances villagers, including children, were shot down as they attempted to run away. The most large-scale killings occurred in the particular hamlet of MyLai 4. There the first platoon of Charlie Company, under the command of Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr., herded villagers into groups of twenty to forty or more, who were then slaughtered by rifle fire, machine gun fire or grenades. It is important to remember, however, that substantial numbers of unarmed civilians also were murdered in the other hamlets of MyLai that day by the troops of other platoons under the command of other officers."
Dr. Peck poses the question of how could approximately 500 men, the majority of whom were obviously not “evil,” participate in such a monstrously evil action, either directly or in the cover-up. (Failure to report a crime is a crime.)
Apparently the killing took place all morning Peck discloses. Only one person, a helicopter pilot, witnessing the slaughter from the air, tried to stop it. He landed his chopper and attempted to reason with some of the troops. His appeals unheeded, he returned to the air and radioed headquarters. When his superior officers responded in an unconcerned way, he gave up and continued on his way.
Peck estimates that 50 participated in the direct killing. 200 were direct witnesses of it. Within a week 500 troops in that task force knew everything that had happened. But the massacre went unreported for a year, when a soldier, who had not been in the task force but had heard about the incident in an idle conversation with friends, wrote several letters to Congress about it after he had returned to civilian life.
Dr. Peck explains the extenuating circumstances the soldiers were dealing with. They were on the other side of the world in a combat zone. They had sustained casualties and injuries during the past month from the Viet Cong and suspected the villagers of hiding them. They were stressed, and tired, and hot and frightened, angry, and/or frustrated. They were anticipating conflict and surprised there were no combatants in the area. Their officers were hungry for success, a high body count.
But the soldiers were also aware of the rules of the Geneva Convention — not to kill unarmed civilians. Peck writes:
"Triggers are pulled by individuals. Orders are given and executed by individuals. In the last analysis every single human act is ultimately the result of an individual choice."
Peck speculates that though some of the soldiers probably felt guilt from their behavior, he maintains the majority of soldiers did not confess their crimes because they genuinely did not feel they had committed a crime. He asks how can a sane person commit murder and not acknowledge to himself he has murdered? How could he not carry guilt over such an act, not have a sense of responsibility?
Peck’s evaluation asserts many fascinating and troubling angles on why the soldiers acted as they did.
The first factor he cites is what he calls “specialization” in the minds of the troops as to the role they were there to play. They could, as Peck says, "pass along the moral buck to another part of the group.” Like weapons manufacturers, sellers, lobbyists, etc. who feel no personal responsibility to the consequences of violence from the weaponry. The moral decision as to the use of the weapons was not their part of the job.
Speaking of weaponry, the troops of Vietnam were supplied with the latest in dazzling new technology. Bulldozers, napalm, planes, tanks, bombs and mortars. There was a detachment from responsibility in using them Peck contends. A kind of video-game aloofness. "We don’t kill the people. Our weapons do."
Peck also cites peer-pressure, very powerful in the military. To challenge the will of the group was to invite severe reaction and scapegoating – the offending messenger (threatening to make the group recognize its acts of immorality) can inspire such group rage to get himself or herself socially ostracized and even killed. Also, groups bond by circling the wagons against an enemy out there. "The other." The Vietnamese, not just the Viet Cong, became “demonized” by the soldiers and scapegoated. Also this scapegoating was collectively projecting the "badness" the troops could not attribute to themselves to others.
Another factor Peck explains was a regressive “psychic numbing.” The mind’s ability to anesthetize itself from feelings in the face of trauma. “The horrible becomes normal.”
Also, he points out how obedience is the foundation of military discipline, making the disturbing and quotable assertion that “a follower is never a whole person.” Peck claims that most people are far more comfortable in the "follower" role, leaving the responsibility and decision making to those who step forward as leaders. When ruthless, reckless, immature, even sociopathic persons assume leadership positions, especially in an authoritarian set-up, the results can be tragic.
The officers of Charlie Company wanted a high body count, at least that was what the troops understood. Peck refers to the experiments of Milgram at Yale in 1961 which involved people being so intimidated by an authority in a white coat that they willingly inflicted what they thought were disabling electric shocks on strangers without question. 6 out of 10 of the tested humans were willing to inflict serious harm on strangers out of their conditioning to authority figures. Even that brave person during MyLai who protested the slaughter as it was happening surrendered his attempts after having gone to his immediate supervisors.
There is also a collective group ego and degree of narcissism Peck points out. The troops wanted to be successful. They had endured punishment by the enemy. The dissent against the war at home was hurting and confusing them. They were forcing a surreal, dishonest goal in their killing.
Peck refers, too, to the Washington politicians led by LBJ who were narcissistic about the war in general. Self-satisfied and intellectually lazy he asserts, who role modeled a dehumanizing perspective on the Vietnamese people. They were fighting that ever-specter of Communism, after all. Peck concludes they were exhibiting what Sen. William Fulbright called “the arrogance of power.” The politicians had their reputations invested in winning a futile war as more and more troops and Vietnamese died.
When we escalated the war in Vietnam it became an issue of our "infallibility and preserving our national honor”. The war was begun by lying. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a deliberate fraud. "LBJ obtained from Congress the authority to wage the war without Congress ever formally declaring it." Peck maintains that lying is both "a cause and a manifestation of evil."
Then there was the strong, enabling denial of the segment of the US population that over-trusted the motives of its government and military to be in Vietnam. Their collective ego also could not abide the country ever being "in the wrong.”
How much of this not-that-long-ago history resonates with the sad dynamics of our country right now. Can we cultivate our capacity for “empathy” and dedicate ourselves to reality at all costs for our own collective mental health? Can we face down and acknowledge our own crimes as a nation?
Stephen Gowanus writes:
"As to the world being a better place for the exercise of US military might, there’s the not inconsequential matter of millions dead in Indochina, thousands blasted away in Yugoslavia, and 5,000 bombed to death in Afghanistan. Ultimately, however, it depends on who you’re talking about. It surely isn’t a better place for the dead, nor those who have been permanently disabled, nor those who have subsequently suffered and died from cancers caused by the rich environmental devastation and widespread broadcast of carcinogens the exercise of US military might inevitably brings. Nor the thousands upon thousands in Iraq who have died from diphtheria, pertusis and other assorted waterborne illnesses, after the Pentagon deliberately destroyed Iraq’s water treatment facilities during the Persian Gulf War, all in defiance of the Geneva Conventions; and nor for the monsters whose births owe much to the use of teratogens, the defoliants used in Vietnam and depleted uranium used in Iraq; nor the limbless children blown to bits by bomblets from unexploded cluster bombs; and nor the American veterans who have died slow, painful deaths, from such mysterious illnesses as Gulf War syndrome, which the Pentagon poohs-poohs as a myth."
Haroon Siddiqui writes:
"America plunged Iraq into chaos, shattered the infrastructure and destroyed the society, reducing human beings to their basest instincts. They turned on each other and found safety only in family, tribe, clan and sect. Shiites and Sunnis, who had lived together for ages, ethnically cleansed each other’s neighbourhoods, which to this day remain separated by barricades, walls and checkpoints."
Scott Ritter writes:
"In one of the last patrols conducted by U.S. forces before the formal withdrawal from Baghdad, four American soldiers lost their lives. The patrol itself was wholly symbolic—a show of force and will at a time when every military reason for the patrol had ceased to exist—a tragic yet fitting analogy for the entire U.S. military presence in Iraq. No more American troops need to die, or be physically or psychologically maimed, participating in futile “last patrols” designed to salvage the reputations of politicians. There are those who will argue for sustaining the failed military misadventure in Iraq out of a misplaced sense of national pride and honor. President Obama must confront his own ego and hubris and accept the fact that in order to secure a lasting legacy as a peacemaker he will need to ride out the short-term criticism."
As Miller and Peck both discussed, projecting one’s evil outward at others, what Jung explored as dealing with a “shadow”, is reflected in this evaluation by Stephen Gowanus.
"The problem is, you can’t kill the bogeyman. Like Freddy Kruger, just when you think you can relax, he’s back. Kaddafi, the Ayatollah, Saddam, Daniel Ortega, Noriega, Milosevic. One goes, the next one comes. Osama fades away. Saddam is ushered out of the wings. Different guy, same bogeyman. And after Saddam, someone else. And then someone else. And someone else. And someone else again. Just one long string of bogeymen, Mencken’s hobgoblins.""It would be going too far to say none of the threats are real. Some are. Victims sometimes strike back, if they’re able to. But call the threats highly exaggerated, many magnified out of proportion, until they become cartoonish distortions whose existence owes everything to their capacity to terrorize, and nothing to reality."
"Going along with Washington isn’t going to get rid of bogeymen. Washington needs bogeymen as much as an addict needs regular fixes. Getting rid of the incessant terror, both the manufactured kind, and the kind that arises as a result of US foreign policy, requires a radically different approach."
We owe it to ourselves and our world to stay whole and awake as citizens. To speak truth to power. Once again, “a follower is not a whole person.” As Peck writes:
"This is why the individual is sacred. For it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost."
---------------
I doubt Americans can accept their guilt nor become disturbed enough to openly fight the forces in control. The country is lost.
Libby, this is an excellent post. "For it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost." Yes. I think a deep-rooted fear of exclusion and ostracism is one of the biggest driving forces for many, if not most, people, and it becomes very easy for a group to become stronger that way, even if its goals and motives are against all reason and decency. It takes such a huge emotional toll to be excluded. That is why it is so critical for the health of our entire nation that we realign our goals with basic human principles of decency.
The poorest part of humanity needs to be lifted out of poverty in order for the global population to stabilize, and we need to find ways to preserve the world environment--those are the biggest threats to survival of future generations.We could channel our war resources into fighting our real enemies: disease, poverty, ignorance, hatred.
I recentrly re-read A Cruel and Unusual Record by Jimmy Carter, where he says, "At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America's violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends." We need to drastically rethink our way of approaching the rest of the world. Thanks for posting this.
The poorest part of humanity needs to be lifted out of poverty in order for the global population to stabilize, and we need to find ways to preserve the world environment--those are the biggest threats to survival of future generations.We could channel our war resources into fighting our real enemies: disease, poverty, ignorance, hatred.
I recentrly re-read A Cruel and Unusual Record by Jimmy Carter, where he says, "At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America's violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends." We need to drastically rethink our way of approaching the rest of the world. Thanks for posting this.
The Soviet Union began to unravel in the 1980s culminating in the (albeit symbolic) destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. How can we expect the free market economy (and its politics) of the US not to deteriorate without the foil of the Soviet Union? There will be a new New World Order and getting there is going to be an ugly process.
I'm afraid I agree with Jan on this, sadly. Thanks for fighting the good fight, Libby.
Clay's right...I refuse to be lost Jan.
The oncoming presidential election offering either an arrogant idiot or an outright weasel mouthed scammer indicates where the nation is. Who can realistically do anything about that?
Jan, I have been overwhelmed as in heartsick with the latest horrors in Syrian, now. The war-mongering to "unbuild" yet another sovereign nation. The media doing its propaganda best to hide that Obama now has not only drones but Al Qaeda doing the killing and the terrorizing for him and the rest of the international bullies who insist on bringing "corporatized democracy" which is not democracy at all across the globe.
Hillary stridently calling out Russia and China whose vetoes sadly can't seem to save the people of Syria now being "ethnically cleansed" by the terrorists. The real freedom fighters in Syria are either long dead or have become loyal to Assad seeing as to what the external "humanitarians" intend for them (what happened to Iraq and Afghanistan), or they have fled the country.
Al Qaeda terrorists, some of the same ones from Libya, are doing the shocking and awing with weapons and money from the proxy middle people for the US and for their own selfish ends, Saudi Arabia and Qatar -- decapitations, executions, kidnappings, torture, rapes, etc., as the US and NATO and Israel and the petro-thugs of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and now Turkey with its self-interests clamor for more direct military involvement to destroy a country's political and physical infrastructure, hang the welfare, the lives, of the population. Collateral damage no longer matters at all except to bullshit their excuse for becoming more violent and military themselves.
That is what is so nauseating. Someone reminded me recently that Saudi Arabia won't allow women to drive cars. That is the government we are in bed with.
Regime change is what they want for anyone not in the cartel. Hussein in Iraq didn't want petrodollars in US currency, he's gone. Gaddafi wanted an African currency and was sharing oil revenues with the population and had cultivated a high standard of living there, he and it are gone. Syria does not bow down to the international banksters or to Israel or the US and look at the destruction and the manipulation of the UN going on now (meanwhile we appreciated Assad as we sent detainees there to be tortured and interrogated), and the lying bastards of the media who villify the Assad troops (who yes, do, commit atrocities) and this western media who pretend and even photoshop pictures for propaganda and use photos from other wars to ramp up the propaganda that the poor "rebels" are not terrorists and more and more jihadists are not pouring into the country, sunnis, to kill off the other ethnic civilians.
We are aligning with right wing governments, no recent development, and we are funding right wing fundamental extremist terrorists. Obama just made it legal that as citizens we can do it directly. As all the money for that funding drains out of the US so no social programs, but the drumbeat is that any government is bad any way. What an insane scenario.
And people who call out the evil, Manning and Assange, are enemies of the state of course. Jill Stein, Green Party Prez candidate was arrested recently for fighting against home foreclosures.
An ethical freakshow it indeed is!!! best, libby
Hillary stridently calling out Russia and China whose vetoes sadly can't seem to save the people of Syria now being "ethnically cleansed" by the terrorists. The real freedom fighters in Syria are either long dead or have become loyal to Assad seeing as to what the external "humanitarians" intend for them (what happened to Iraq and Afghanistan), or they have fled the country.
Al Qaeda terrorists, some of the same ones from Libya, are doing the shocking and awing with weapons and money from the proxy middle people for the US and for their own selfish ends, Saudi Arabia and Qatar -- decapitations, executions, kidnappings, torture, rapes, etc., as the US and NATO and Israel and the petro-thugs of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and now Turkey with its self-interests clamor for more direct military involvement to destroy a country's political and physical infrastructure, hang the welfare, the lives, of the population. Collateral damage no longer matters at all except to bullshit their excuse for becoming more violent and military themselves.
That is what is so nauseating. Someone reminded me recently that Saudi Arabia won't allow women to drive cars. That is the government we are in bed with.
Regime change is what they want for anyone not in the cartel. Hussein in Iraq didn't want petrodollars in US currency, he's gone. Gaddafi wanted an African currency and was sharing oil revenues with the population and had cultivated a high standard of living there, he and it are gone. Syria does not bow down to the international banksters or to Israel or the US and look at the destruction and the manipulation of the UN going on now (meanwhile we appreciated Assad as we sent detainees there to be tortured and interrogated), and the lying bastards of the media who villify the Assad troops (who yes, do, commit atrocities) and this western media who pretend and even photoshop pictures for propaganda and use photos from other wars to ramp up the propaganda that the poor "rebels" are not terrorists and more and more jihadists are not pouring into the country, sunnis, to kill off the other ethnic civilians.
We are aligning with right wing governments, no recent development, and we are funding right wing fundamental extremist terrorists. Obama just made it legal that as citizens we can do it directly. As all the money for that funding drains out of the US so no social programs, but the drumbeat is that any government is bad any way. What an insane scenario.
And people who call out the evil, Manning and Assange, are enemies of the state of course. Jill Stein, Green Party Prez candidate was arrested recently for fighting against home foreclosures.
An ethical freakshow it indeed is!!! best, libby
Clayball, thanks for your support and wisdom and awareness on this. Thanks for the Carter link. The world needs moral leadership.
The "responsibility to protect" R2P is being exploited in the UN to what Pepe Escobar labels "the right to plunder." We all have to follow Gandhi's advice and be the change we want to see in the world. We have to fight the enthrallment to what seems to be so obvious, institutional evil!!!
International law is gone. Constitutional law has been shredded in our own country.
People still think we are being hyperbolic declaring this.
We need "citizens without borders" to champion each other!!!
best, libby
The "responsibility to protect" R2P is being exploited in the UN to what Pepe Escobar labels "the right to plunder." We all have to follow Gandhi's advice and be the change we want to see in the world. We have to fight the enthrallment to what seems to be so obvious, institutional evil!!!
International law is gone. Constitutional law has been shredded in our own country.
People still think we are being hyperbolic declaring this.
We need "citizens without borders" to champion each other!!!
best, libby
V -- the new world order is built around the one percenters and they have ramped up the evil so that no country is safe from exploitation -- economic terrorism and economic rape, as well as stripping of basic human rights. it is one thing to be oppressed, it is another thing for those becoming more and more oppressed to pretend it is not happening and let it escalate even faster than it would with resistance or even, dare I say it, be stopped! That is the spiritual tragedy in this country. Imagine if all the money for death and destruction were used for "good"?????? best, libby
chicken maaan, I find myself unable to focus on the Olympics. The specter of yet another devastation of a country happening as we are asked to be distracted by the noble performances (for the most part) of the young people representing their countries in the Olympics. Meanwhile that generation is being betrayed by amoral leaders who are killing or enabling to be killed innocent fellow human beings. That is where the media attention should be focused!!!! And our own focus. STOP THE INSANITY!!!! best, libby xxx
tg within, the fight is so profoundly formidable. how do we rally our fellow human beings? so many of us went through the five stages of grief post Obama who seems now the anti-Martin Luther King. I call Obama the American Judas. So many of the 80 million who put him in the WH are still trying to get thru the 5 stages of grief, lost somewhere in bargaining phase as I see it, the lesser of two evils crap. Yeah, Romney would also be a nightmare, but wake up from the nightmare that is Obama, people. Peck says dedication to reality at all costs is sanity. But we have a media that has sold us out, too, and disinformation pours thru the mainstream CORPORATE media. Evil has reached even more powerful levels. But I know I need to stay spiritually awake and keep trying to find out the truth and sharing it, despite the obstacles. best, libby
Jan, when I heard Bush won a second term I felt like I had been hit hard in the gut. But would Gore or Kerry have really made any difference to the US/NATO/Israel warmachine? The matrix that seems bent on world destruction for the aggrandizement of the one percenters? It is sub-human. The 7 countries on the clipboard to be destroyed that Wesley Clark revealed back in the 90s was it? Syria's turn and it is being destroyed with the US PRETENDING it is not profoundly involved in the slaughter and Iran is being prepped for more and more and more. It is like that movie Ground Hog Day meets one of those slasher movies.
thanks for commenting again! best, libby
thanks for commenting again! best, libby
Excellent article. We ignore the "lessons" of Vietnam at our own risk (and those lessons might be different from what the politicians will tell you). I'm acquainted with Peck's work and was interested to read his take on these issues.
Rated.
Rated.
Wow! Great post.
I fear for my son who will grow up in an environment where war, torture, and exploitation are and will continue to be commonly accepted by the masses.
There have been many MyLai massacres since Vietnam that have been ignored, swept under the rug, or unreported. Even when there is punishment for such atrocities, like the kill team in Afghanistan, it amounts to a slap on the wrist for some of the darkest crimes a person could commit.
As far as Syria which you reference in your comment, I just read a really good article on info clearing house by Tony Cartalucci on the crimes that are being committed by the Free Syrian Army with the support of the US/NATO/UN. It includes a link from RT News of a summary execution by the rebels of Assad supporters. The sad thing it, it has either been ignored by western media or highly distorted and propagandized to fit their accepted narrative.
I agree with Jan Sand, the country is lost.
I fear for my son who will grow up in an environment where war, torture, and exploitation are and will continue to be commonly accepted by the masses.
There have been many MyLai massacres since Vietnam that have been ignored, swept under the rug, or unreported. Even when there is punishment for such atrocities, like the kill team in Afghanistan, it amounts to a slap on the wrist for some of the darkest crimes a person could commit.
As far as Syria which you reference in your comment, I just read a really good article on info clearing house by Tony Cartalucci on the crimes that are being committed by the Free Syrian Army with the support of the US/NATO/UN. It includes a link from RT News of a summary execution by the rebels of Assad supporters. The sad thing it, it has either been ignored by western media or highly distorted and propagandized to fit their accepted narrative.
I agree with Jan Sand, the country is lost.
I grew up living and believing in the great and wonderful illusions of the USA. The incessantly declared freedoms and opportunities since the country's birth had given me reason to delight in being an American and hopes that the rest of the world would follow in its path. It was only as I became better informed that I began to have doubts and misgivings as to what was really going on. The incessant policies of support for the powerful wealthy and domination and suppression of the workers and basic human rights declared in the country's original documents are not a novel modern phenomenon but have been a strong national agenda from the beginning. But there is power in hypocrisy and voting which was originally restricted to property owners and the wealthy spread gradually to all citizens and to women and more recently to black people and wealth was greatly loosened during Franklin Roosevelt's time under the pressure of the collapse of the whole system and it began to look as if perhaps real democracy within the country might be possible. But the greedy elite were horrified and even attempted a military coup during FDR's time which was squashed. The threat of communism and its ideals for the common man was enough of a threat to restrain the totalitarian agendas of the powerful elite to permit some of the basic ideals of the USA to maintain a foothold within the country even though foreign policy never varied in striking down free governments wherever the USA could exert power and the whole Russian communist agenda was actually a vicious horror that finally collapsed from causes internal to its system. Still, there was hope in the USA until the totalitarian greed really started to bear down under Reagan, Clinton, the Bush regimes and now under the unrestrained vicious nastinesses of Obama. There has always, in the country, a sense of hatred of government "interference" in the assumed freedoms of the country even when the poor, the sick, the unemployed, the uneducated benefited greatly from the government programs helped them greatly to survive bad times and this resentment was utilized in the propaganda of the greedy elite to eliminate many of the basic necessities and services of living in a community. The ongoing transfer of much of these basics to profit making enterprises has destroyed much that is good in the country and the elite gleefully is swindling the public out of these transfers. And what is most depressing is that a large percentage of the public refuses to acknowledge this destruction of their government. As much as they believe the government is corrupt and useless, they are still acquiescing to the current farce of electing swindlers and thugs to government office.
I have no idea how to solve this mess and am not attracted to the concept that the eventual misery will become strong enough to initiate real violence that, in the end, might bring sense to the country. History has demonstrated that violence frequently merely exchanges one set of thugs for a second set of even worse monsters. I am very depressed.
I have no idea how to solve this mess and am not attracted to the concept that the eventual misery will become strong enough to initiate real violence that, in the end, might bring sense to the country. History has demonstrated that violence frequently merely exchanges one set of thugs for a second set of even worse monsters. I am very depressed.
I attribute the loss of Americans' moral compass to the loss of community and their transformation from citizens to isolated, alienated consumers. Human beings are biologically programmed to be social animals living in community. Americans pretty much exist as isolated individuals who meet through their TVs, computers, ipods, ipads and Smartphones - in other words by buying something. Living this way, as isolated and compartmentalized individuals is a disease state, with some pretty serious consequences for society.
Jan ~
... don't be depressed, please. As a whole, Americans have suffered, paradoxically, from their own geographical isolation, and grossly overinflated idealism... confounded even more, by early and prolonged exposure to that damned televisual apparatus, slowly sucking the very soul out of their miserable realities...
...and then re-implanting a wholly unbearable triumphalism, a soul-sucked reality, that in every example, without exception, the history of empire has steadfastly negated fruition to... since man began to form collectives, plant seed, discover the id, invent the ego, & rev up the super-id/ego... simply insupportable... as Chilean economist, Max Van-Neef (among others), has for years amply demonstrated; linking for the intellectual class, what the aboriginal & indigenous peoples have always known... that the survival of the biosphere, and the practice of human economic activity, cannot be disentangled... in fact are mortally entwined, so that, now, even conservative climate skeptics/deniers the likes of Richard Muller, must go to their industry magnate financiers, and admit the nature of mans' collective culpability... in his' own hopeless predicament...
...and the double edge to this sword of Damocles, hanging over us all, is this notion of exceptionalism, a notion that Americans appear to have taken comically to heart, in every aspect and lethal detail, of its heinous conduct with the world at large. This overgrown adolescent country, that doesn't yet believe, in its own frailty, in its own mortality...
...that can't be humbled to admit its own ugliness... its demonstrable capacities for committing atrocity and deceit... is doomed to implode upon its own foundations... has already imploded morally, and wears in maudlin fashion, the dunce cap of future defeats. Pragmatism with a moral, ethical component, is a lesson learned bitterly by most of the worlds nations and peoples... but that colossal continental adolescent, refuses to grow up and share, and is bent on inflicting a lot of pain, has already inflicted pain, on the rest of the world. Past time for waving past glories, to wrap in gauzy white the mutilated limbs of this new centuries victims. It depresses me too, have to say... and to a certain extent, even as much or more... the thought of how China will behave, when we see that, for the theoretical benefit of our future furthered existence, Mother Earth herself, insists, that the Chinese give up their new found toys...
¿Oh dearest Mama Pacha,
what have you in store for us,
trapped silly souls, sightless and
flightless birds, trapped in our gilded
cells... of water, salt, and bones?
Saludos Jan & libby, Poetas ustedes ambos ~
... don't be depressed, please. As a whole, Americans have suffered, paradoxically, from their own geographical isolation, and grossly overinflated idealism... confounded even more, by early and prolonged exposure to that damned televisual apparatus, slowly sucking the very soul out of their miserable realities...
...and then re-implanting a wholly unbearable triumphalism, a soul-sucked reality, that in every example, without exception, the history of empire has steadfastly negated fruition to... since man began to form collectives, plant seed, discover the id, invent the ego, & rev up the super-id/ego... simply insupportable... as Chilean economist, Max Van-Neef (among others), has for years amply demonstrated; linking for the intellectual class, what the aboriginal & indigenous peoples have always known... that the survival of the biosphere, and the practice of human economic activity, cannot be disentangled... in fact are mortally entwined, so that, now, even conservative climate skeptics/deniers the likes of Richard Muller, must go to their industry magnate financiers, and admit the nature of mans' collective culpability... in his' own hopeless predicament...
...and the double edge to this sword of Damocles, hanging over us all, is this notion of exceptionalism, a notion that Americans appear to have taken comically to heart, in every aspect and lethal detail, of its heinous conduct with the world at large. This overgrown adolescent country, that doesn't yet believe, in its own frailty, in its own mortality...
...that can't be humbled to admit its own ugliness... its demonstrable capacities for committing atrocity and deceit... is doomed to implode upon its own foundations... has already imploded morally, and wears in maudlin fashion, the dunce cap of future defeats. Pragmatism with a moral, ethical component, is a lesson learned bitterly by most of the worlds nations and peoples... but that colossal continental adolescent, refuses to grow up and share, and is bent on inflicting a lot of pain, has already inflicted pain, on the rest of the world. Past time for waving past glories, to wrap in gauzy white the mutilated limbs of this new centuries victims. It depresses me too, have to say... and to a certain extent, even as much or more... the thought of how China will behave, when we see that, for the theoretical benefit of our future furthered existence, Mother Earth herself, insists, that the Chinese give up their new found toys...
¿Oh dearest Mama Pacha,
what have you in store for us,
trapped silly souls, sightless and
flightless birds, trapped in our gilded
cells... of water, salt, and bones?
Saludos Jan & libby, Poetas ustedes ambos ~
When you kill one bogey man they create another so they have a never ending supply of enemies du jour. This is what happens when you have a leadership that is raised in an authoritarian manner that is concerned primarily with maintaining authority at all costs and people that are complacent and don't stand up to them.
But eventually all empires must collapse under their won weight unless they reform themselves, which is where we're heading soon.
But eventually all empires must collapse under their won weight unless they reform themselves, which is where we're heading soon.
I found my self nodding my head in agreement the whole read . You say it well Libby . thanks
If I may borrow Interrobang's words ...
"This overgrown adolescent country, that doesn't yet believe, in its own frailty, in its own mortality... "
because they so clearly ... speak ... for me ...
"This overgrown adolescent country, that doesn't yet believe, in its own frailty, in its own mortality... "
because they so clearly ... speak ... for me ...
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