Who's next?

Not me>>>>> i'ts PJD

"Hajjar spoke of the relationship between torture and law, and agreed with Klein that the government's acceptance of torture can break down entire nations."

We can only hope so... maybe state succession will go better a second time.

Its amazing that so many of our elected official (obviously) think it's absurb that the American people will fight against abuse and oppression... they've done it before...

Of course, now that the military has a "pain-ray" capable of subduing hundreds of people at a time (and don't forget how thought-crime will be on the books as soon as it passes the Senate), that is becoming increasingly difficult...just like they wanted.

Besides, Randy Ray and Joe Bob (rednecks) will always be on their side...unless the government takes their guns away...Joe Bob wouldn't like that... but then they wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

Wow...those neocons got it all figured out. Think I'll get into politics and becomes someone's crony...in a few years, that'll be the only way to be influential or successful.

IMPALE BUSH AND CHENEY!

Naomi is a shining star.

"Torture is always public," she said. "In order for you to be scared, you have to know it's going on."

Some people thought that the publishing of the tasering at the Florida university was a sign we have a free and open press. How very naive!

Thank God-dess there are still luminaries who help US connect the dots to recognize the dangers of the impending big picture. Naomi is luminous in her articulated realizations.

I predicted 10 years ago that it was just a matter of time until America's domestic policy would have to go towards fascism because of one reason among many; is the U.S. hegemony around the world cannot be maintained any other way, and it was not a matter of if but when they could get away with it HERE unfortunately,this political,miasma is coming true. Read: THE END OF AMERICA BY NAOMI WOLF.

"We need to start telling stories of why terror is happening."

Because some poor scmuck was unfortunate enough to be born and then reside on a piece of real estate that some other fat cat can make a killing on.

and on and on.....

Look around we got a lot of fat cats.

Thank God for true blue yet red-blooded Americans like Naomi Klein who stand up for what's right! Klein is following in the great American tradition of our founding fathers by speaking out against tyranny and despotism. Klein represents all that is virtuous and good about being an American citizen with her stand against torture and state-sponsored terrorism. We are all truly lucky to have her as a fellow citizen of the United States.

(Yes, I know she's Canadian. To find "real" Americans who stand up for American virtues one needs to find Canadians)

Naomi concludes, "We need to start telling stories of why terror is happening."

Taking her advice, here's a more complete narrative, by Hannah Arendt, pointing to the common thread behind why wars happen 'abroad', why tyranny is happening 'at home' and why terror is happening "abroad and at home":

Hannah Arendt presciently warned, "Empire abroad (always) entails tyranny at home".

We can all see the shadow of Empire "abroad" in its oil-war(s) with Iraq and soon Iran.

But thus far we have avoided any 'shared sacrifice' or 'shared pain' as shown in the weak anti-war movement against the wars "abroad" part.

Now prepare for the "tyranny at home" part.

The first real shared pain for complacent Americans will be the complete crash of this Empire's domestic Ponzi-economy --- which has already started --- and the economic pain right here "at home", will be harder to ignore than Iraqi women and children being killed by the Empire operating in our name.

The next "tyranny at home" will be the police-state 'culling' of any dissident relatives and friends we may have had, as they are 'disappeared' to the detention centers now being built.

Then the 'tyranny at home" will come for you directly.

Maybe we should all wake-up to the seriousness of Arendt's warning about this global corporatist Empire hiding behind the facade of 'Vichy America' before they come for us .

I'm awake and moving to the streets now in the expanding anti-Empire movement --- everyone should be joining the anti-Empire movement as the movement moves beyond anti-war "abroad", and includes anti-tyranny "at home", and anti-Empire terror everywhere.

The only real 'global war on terror' is the war of all of us against Empire.

Klein was quoted, "We need to start telling stories of why terror is happening."

I'd like to know what stories she has. I know (and agree with), the reasons for terror that are familiar to most progressives:

Hegemony
Economics
Politics

But what about Religion?

Is Klein like most progressives? Does she have a blind spot when it comes to the role that Faith plays in terror?

"If we feel safe, we are banking on the racism of our government"
Exactly. The ruling class of the USA is happy to kill white people as well as brown or black. Remember that the nuclear bombs were pointed at the USSR for 50 years. And, actually, they're putting in new ones.
The Irish as well as the Chinese were worked to death on the railroads.
The US armed the Afghan muhadjdeen to kill Russian throughout the 1980s, and they armed them to kill Serbs in the 1990s. I don't feel safe being green. You shouldn't feel safe being white.

Careful there. Faith and religion are often two different things, usually also mutually exclusive of each other.

Faith inspires individuals to do many wonderful and terrible things, but religion requires the supplanting of the individual with external moral doctrine usually enforced by a threat of dire eternal punishment for those that break the code of the religion in question.

Religion is guilt, fear and the artificial creation of an us and them social and moral barrier that otherwise would not exist.

Just offering some points to ponder.

Keep the faith, hang the religion.

Last night there was a story Keith Olbermann covered on Homeland Security training firefighters and emergency care workers
on how to spot "terroristic" behaviors when, they enter an American household to inspect or in an emergency, to "seek out illegal materials be on the look out for people who express hate or discontent with the U.S. government." The criteria for becoming a domestic terrorist supect - Suspicious behaviors such as anger and discontent with this administration".

Watch video: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&vid=d6f8a766-6e49-441b-8c53-4c20db0461ab

And here is another video of an American being tortured by "tasering" - just 2 hours ago for holding up traffic for 10 minutes in Florida. The more this is done by officials to ordinary Americans, the better the chances that people will become afraid to protest or stand up for their rights.

That is the goal of torture isn't it? To make people afraid and to control them.

I will not post the link you can find it on MSNBC. I do not wish to participate in the propagation of desensitvity to torture.

It is personally upsetting to me that we even are discussing "torture" - and while we discuss the ethics and morality of torture, people have already been and continue to be tortured. At the same time, "we the People" are being manipulated to become desensitized to public torture via "tasering". The only time people seem toget upset or follow the story now is when someone dies from being electrocuded. Otherwise, silence.

In the case that just occured in traffic on the highway in Florida, all those people sat there in their cars and trucks watching this happen - would anyone dare get out of their cars and protest the police officers behaviors or the use of tasers? Not without knowing their protests would be met with their being "tasered" for interupting. I believe many of them sat there in shock. These people have all been psycchologically and emotionally impacted by what they have witnessed.

Whilst we are just talking about the implications of torture and "are we or are we not torturing", on a liberal website where people who come here already morally condone such behaviors, the government is way ahead of us and enacting the policies.

I don't have an answer to what to do. I can only prepare myself not to become afraid to stand in truth.

Peace.

Odonian, Naomi rightfully left out faith as reason for terror.

Some terrorists of all religious persuasions claim religious 'rights' to commit acts of terror aginst other humans.

No faith condones terror! In fact, I know of none. It's only individuals who commit the acts for the other reasons Naomi points out.

They attempt to clothe these acts in religious garb, but anyone with any common sense should be able to differentiate and see through the false aguments.

Hate is not part of any religion I know of. It's a human failing.

Well, Sure its bad folks but try to remember that the way we cope with all this shit is to not let it scare us... well sure its scary and Fear is how they keep us in the state of Shock!.

Now here is the trick folks cause I have been under this oppression of secrecy the National Security War machine controlling our lives... as much as they could afford...Ha Ha since 1946-47... this shit started big after Roosevelt died.

There is a million ways to-torture us into submission but our fear is always the purpose and our self defeat...
Ya gotta act with courage and strength and above all ...Humor cause the more you let the Boogie men get your mind baby,,, the more you live your own life in terror from what we read and pound away at our Internet computers and we are all connected now all over the Planet...Common Dreams is cool ,,,, and we can type away and advocate revolution and a beautiful future free from this fear they sell so please Naomi...lets not let the Nazi win by just scaring us to Death...
Love, Jim

"When people fear the government, you have tyranny, but when government fears the people, you have liberty." -Thomas Jefferson

Siouxrose November 29th, 2007 12:45 pm

"Thank God-dess there are still luminaries who help US connect the dots to recognize the dangers of the impending big picture."

I count our blessings every day that there are people like Naomi Klein who continue to keep us informed.

You all make me smile....you keep giving kudos to Naomi, but listen to all of you!!!

She is not the only example, your words alone are exactly what she is talking about.

As Americans you do this country, or rather this world proud!

You haven't given in. You all are also responsible for spreading information, love, compassion, and courage.

So, yes Naomi is doing good works, but so are you....

My kudos go to the CD crowd. What a lovely community this is.

"Torture is always public," she said, "In order for you to be scared, you have to know it's going on."

I have to revise my previously stated opinion, in a different thread, about the veracity of Ms. Klein's view. Obviously, she is one of those harmless type who seem to mean well but who do not really understand how the geopolitical world works in it's fundamental way. Harassment and intimidation are meant to be public, but torture is always meant to be private, or semi-private. And it rarely produces false information because when you cut someone's fingers off and then threaten to cut off their testicles, you can be sure that they will tell you everything exactly as they know it.

Apparently, the "tea-circles" and the "church socials" ladies have come to be educated that torture is water-boarding, but in reality that is only abuse. Torture is when the blood flows freely on the floor and the fat of the body melts. Such torture, real torture, has been taught for decades at the U.S.'s School of the Americas, although they have recently changed that infamous name.

We are on the verge of a taser epidemic, just watch a few youtube vids or read a couple of articles. And the scary part is the development of a new wave of non-lethal weapons. All to be stock piled at a police department near you.

Why is this important? Because as the economy continues to crash and the dollar looses all its value, guess what happens, people still need food. The crime rate will go up as average, everyday, poor people who can no longer acquire adequate means for survival, will attempt to survive.

Maybe we're not talking about you,… yet.

Not only does the crime rate rise, but so does political action, in the forms of protests etc. as those two social forces rise together they get treated the same because they are the same; People struggling for survival.
They are also a threat to the people who are not poor; for them the system works great, and the president, well he may have some flaws but he's a good guy and we need to protect ourselves from the terrorists.

I can see the pro wrestling, news talk pundits now: "Anti American riots broke out today looting grocery stores and stealing food and clean water before the riot gear clad heroes arrived and began to administer a variety of non lethal deterrents to the home grown terrorist activity. Over a hundred rioters were taken to the privately owned federal prison, to undergo recently approved interrogation techniques."

Its not that farfetched at all.

So holding elections is not the same as having a democracy? Who knew? And all these years I have been so proud of my country for offering me the choice between Fascist A and Fascist B in every election.

And jmacneil, before you try to analyze what Ms. Klein is trying to say it may be worth your while to read "The Shock Doctrine." You may learn something.

curmudgeon99 beautifully put and this is something that needs to be said over and over again on CD.

Naomi I love you thank you!

curmudgeon99:

I think you may be shocked to read what lurks in the pages of the 3 books of monotheism. The Koran is chock full of exhortations to kill the infidel. The old testament has stories of the chosen people slaughtering their opponents, and earning god's praise for doing so. There's no shortage of terror in the good books.

By the way, religion is a human construct, so if hate is a human failing as you posit, then certainly religion is not immune from hate.

stinger_28:

I don't find such clear distinctions between faith and religion. At essence, they both: lack reason, lack evidence. Parse the terms how you will, neither deserves being treated with kid gloves; both have often led to terror.

As I said: Faith inspires individuals to do many wonderful and terrible things.

My central problem with religion comes from two consequences of its adoption.

one: it creates an us and them social and moral barrier between people.

two: it erodes individual accountability because of this.

Faith is personal and thus the individual is still responsible for the actions they take, good or evil.

Odonian here's an answer to your post by Edward Flaherty. By the way Islmophobia is hate and I strongly suggest you cut out the hate.

Many people have been quoting the Quran out of context in an effort to show that Islam promotes violence. A recent op-ed piece by Cal Thomas is a high profile example.

This is pure nonsense. Thomas and others doing this are taking selected passages and reading them completely out of context to support whatever argument they wish to make. I can do the same thing with the Bible.

Here are some choice passages from the KJV Bible which when read in isolation makes the Bible appear to be a primer for evil:

1) In Leviticus 25:44-46, the Lord tells the Israelites it's OK to own slaves, provided they are strangers or heathens.

2) In Samuel 15:2-3, the Lord orders Saul to kill all the Amalekite men, women and infants.

3) In Exodus 15:3, the Bible tells us the Lord is a man of war.

4) In Numbers 31, the Lord tells Moses to kill all the Midianites, sparing only the virgins.

5) In Deuteronomy 13:6-16, the Lord instructs Israel to kill anyone who worships a different god or who worships the Lord differently.

6) In Mark 7:9, Jesus is critical of the Jews for not killing their disobedient children as prescribed by Old Testament law.

7) In Luke 19:22-27, Jesus orders killed anyone who refuses to be ruled by him.

Context is important, of course, and many of these seeming cruelties disappear when read as such. However, this would not stop a Christian terrorist from interpreting the Bible in a manner necessary to concoct a religious justification for unspeakable horrors, as Pope Urban II did, for example, when he preached the First Crusade in 1095 or as many American preachers did when they used Leviticus to defend slavery.

Political and religious extremists have abused Islamic, Jewish, or Christian scriptures continuously throughout history. Cal Thomas, a man who claims to be Christian, would do well to learn something of his own faith s scriptures and history before accusing Islam s Quran of promoting violence.

-- Edward Flaherty On-line since 1993 E-mail: Web site: http://members.home.net/flaherty15/index.htm

"Fear is worse than death because it holds the mind hostage" Ossie Davis

Ah, kivals, is trying to say something equal to saying something? Why would such a relatively minor event like 911 send whole societies into shock? When equating catastrophes, just how does such a minuscule loss of life extinguished in the WTC equate to the hundreds of thousands of lives extinguished in each of many South American countries, all of which mass murders were aided and abetted by the U.S.? If you are going to have a sorority type of "demonstration" against the powers that be, then have at it. We're not complaining about that innocent approach to curing society, but don't laud it as "THE" substantial contribution to a just society.

Odonian, the level of violence in early civilization times was far exceeded by non-religious organizations over depictions in the "holy" books. Go to the library and get "The Wars of the Jews" by Josephus and "The Gallic Wars" by Julius Caesar, among other classic literature, and you will read fascinating accounts of barbarity that exceed your wildest imaginations (maybe).

I also think Naomi's statement about torture needs to be public to be effective is illuminating and chilling!

As a geezer, I saw the fascist future of this country being seeded in the 60's and early 70's.

Like any other overlord/status quo behavior: greed, racism, slavery ~ it's up to us to bring it to the light and correct it.

Bambi

dcbeltway
luke 19 22-27
Is not jesus ordering killed anyone who refuses to be ruled by him.

but if your point is to miquote the bible like the koran gets misquoted, i get it.

but as a responce to misquoting the koran wouldn't it be better to correct them rather than do what they were doing.

jmacneil,

As COMarc wrote, and as I wrote earlier, read the book. Klein goes into great detail in "The Shock Doctrine" regarding how the regimes in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and elsewhere used torture to subdue the population. And she provides compelling arguments regarding the use by the Bush administration of 9/11 as cover for a wide range of radical policies. She does not buy into the claim that 9/11 was the shock, but that the Bush administration was able to amplify it sufficiently to the point it had a serious impact on the public consciousness. Klein is an expert in the area, not a novice.

Read her book. Even if you have to read a copy. Read "the Shock Doctrine". The various articles and speeches and reviews of it I see can only scratch the surface and say shorthand what she says throughly and convincingly in the book.

Sorry, I grew up as a poor white in Appalachia, then lived in the south as a hippie wearing tie-dies. So I've never bought into this notion that if you were white you were somehow privileged and immune to torture and abuse. Too many people I've known have been beaten up by cops, charged with false charges, abused in prison, etc for me to ever think that.

There's this myth that somehow every rich white SOB in a Lexus is indicative of white people everywhere. Bull! Go talk to some coal miners in Appalachia sometime. Or people are so poor and desperate for a job that being a coal miner seems like a good opportunity to them.

Its about CLASS, its not about skin color. Yes, most of the privileged and protected CLASS is white, so there's this constant refrain from people who make the mistake of thinking that somehow all whites are privileged and protected. Grow up white and outside that privileged CLASS someplace like the east Tennessee hills and its real bloody obvious that that's a myth.

The graduates of the School of the Americas are always taught to dump the bodies of their victims in very public places so everyone can see the torture and it can generate the fear they want. The victims of the death squads dumped by the side of the road everywhere from Central America to Baghdad are following this technique.

There is a different technique of 'disappearing'. It generates fear in a different way ... through the uncertainty of what's happened to a person. But even then, the act of 'disappearing' them is usually a very public act. People grabbed off a public street in broad daylight. Or a police raid into a neighborhood at night with as much noise, sirens, helicopters overhead, flashing lights as possible to make sure the word gets around about what's happening.

The general key is to keep the population under control by making them too fearful to object to the actions the rulers are taking that screw the people in order to make others rich(er).

Not likely. In Latin America they call them "desaparecidos", the disappeared, because the graduates of the School of the Americas were taught to hide them in unmarked mass graves.

Do we get cotton candy with that? Or do we just get to watch Mickey fondling Minnie?

commander_in_chimp, I do feel there are Americans and women as well that live daily as proof of their commitment to ending torture, stopping what is wrong with this admin. and ending/ preventing war.
Col. Ann Wright, Maricela Guzman, Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holthman, Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin, Desiree Al Farouk and Celeste. Celeste is also a Gold Star Family for Peace whose behind is in front of the recruitment offices at Broad and Cherry, most times alone, if you know Philly it isn't a nice place for a white woman alone at night and still want to breath the following day.
I Am Not detracting from Naomi Wolf by any means,
I am just trying to give some credit to women that do this daily and are American, the lot of us are not slackers.
12/5/2007, Supreme Court, GITMO shut down protest, inside the CCR will be presenting Al Odah v United States and Boumediene v Bush to the Court.

War=Peace Did you read what I posted? It wasn't even written by me it was written by Edward Flagherty in response to Cal Thomas, as Cal Thomas wrote an article that said the Quran preaches violence and this article was published. Flagherty argues that when you take religious quotes out of context whether its the Quran, Bible, Torah etc. you distort the meaning. So this was my whole point in posting the post and it was in response to Odonian's post about violence in the Quran. I thought this was a good example to use.

The KKK and slaveholders in the South were always Christian, and always able to find bible quotes to back their beliefs.

To me, with any religion, it starts with someone trying to say something that's usually good and useful. But then the religion becomes a power structure, and people use the religion to promote and protect their own power. So all sorts of stuff gets written later about the religion that has little or nothing to do with what the person was trying to say in the first place.

So, while I'm not a Christian, I do find there's some useful teaching in the Bible. But I tend to treat the stuff in the Gospels as being closest to what Jesus was trying to teach. And yes, some of that's been edited and such along the way by church hierarchies. So I wouldn't take it as word-for-word absolutely true, and its always subject to being taken out of context. But you can get the sense of what Jesus was trying to teach.

And from that sense I'd say no true 'Christian', as in follower of Jesus Christ, could ever torture or mistreat another person. Jesus would be washing the feet of prisoners with that water, not waterboarding them in it!

To me, the old Testament is a history of the Jewish people, and maybe there's some pearls of wisdom in there. But I've never quite understood why its even in a Christian bible as Jesus was plainly teaching something very different in his day. Whenever someone starts quoting old testament "eye-for-an-eye" type of stuff to me, to me its very plain that this is not Christian belief.

I don't know the Koran .. and I was going to write more but that phrase tells me I should just stop. :)

J MACNEIL - You ask: "Why would such a relatively minor event like 911 send whole societies into shock? "

Your very question triggered an awful realization, of the under and above curents of pervasive
_ F E A R _ that so swirl around and envelop all of us.

I now believe we are being purposely shocked often and continuously, on many levels, intentionally to weaken, separate, and demoralize us. This is simply a far ranging method of mind control, which is interleaved with countless other techniques for directing our energies anywhere ELSE but into productive, humane, and proactive enterprises.

Why would the gov't and industrial giants impose such despicable acts upon 'freedom loving' innocents? I can think of no better reasons than to control and enhance their profits and power.

Why are there several decades long recurring debates about JFK, MLK, M.X, O.City, and WTC? I now believe that the core part of the web-of-deceit is the designed creation of antipodal positions, which in themselves feed automatically in a self sustaining frenzy to generate more fear separation, and divisiveness.

The often and very selective releases of 'classified' information (like outing V. Plame) are obviously demonstrating huge flaws in the system, but perhaps the purpose is far more than mere retribution (on Wilson), and in a multileveled playing field is to make us all fear more (what might happen to us). Making public the fear, as Naomi declares of torture, makes us all the shared victims of it.

Consider that the 911 conspiracy vs. debunker - of which I have taken (both) sides, as new information has surfaced. Could we all be being purposely lead in circles with lies and distortions ALL stemming out of a common source of contradictory propaganda? This is way beyond (just) the big lie, to multiple layers of BIG lies that literally feed off of one another, all orchestrated to engender the recurring notes of FEAR.

It's just the opposite effect that advertisers use to have us associate positive feelings of connection, warmth, joy, family, life, loving, beauty and fulfilling things with their physical products.

So what about turning the techniques around to instill and associate negative feelings like separation, fear, anxiety, death, ugliness, pain, loneliness, torture and disgusting things with their illegitimate machinations to CONTROL, and DIS-EMPOWER us.

We are so tired of the LIES, but if we shed more LIGHT into where is all of this FEAR is coming from, I for one will not be surprised if BLACKWATER (and other off-the-shelf mercenary gangs) are doing this directly at the behest of our controlling corpto-fascist-govt "leaders".

They're leading us right to _ H E L L _ on Earth, and we need to re-direct them!

Namaste
__ __ __ __ We must be the change
__ __ __ __ we wish to see in the world __ Gandhi

Before trying to convince us of the impeccable credentials of someone who has only a vague idea of the reality, perhaps you should delineate just exactly what it is which convinces you. Otherwise, referring us to a book which we all know is a juvenile understanding of geopolitical reality will not induce us to read beyond what Ms. Klein has stated in her other articles, in which statements she summarized her thesis.

Lots of death squad victims were left by the side of the road in Latin America. I remember stories of tortured bodies either left hanging by their hands from trees by the side of the road, or left there with hands chopped off.

I'm sure there were some 'disappeared' in Latin America, but I don't usually associate that technique with that region. The term 'disappeared' comes from Argnetina, which is a long ways away from Latin America. Besides, which, you seem to have completely ignored by discussion of how that technique generates the same end result of fear anyways.

But what I'm really confused about is what you are even trying to argue in the first place. You seem to want to play semantics walking Dubya's line of what is and isn't torture, and you seem to want to deny some very basic points that Ms. Klein makes very clearly that the neo-con style of economics and a repressive police state go hand in hand. If you want to try to convince me that isn't true, remember I've actually read Ms. Klein's book and you've got about 400 pages of very convincing and documented facts to refute.

The really short version. The neo-con style of economics, largely promoted by graduates of the Chicago School of Economics although there are of course others, always does the following. It generally screws a majority of the people for the benefit of the few. And in a true democracy where a government of the people, by the people and for the people truly exists, they could never do this as the majority of the people are not likely to approve of being screwed over. Therefore, 'democracy' is one of the first things to go when this style of economics is implemented. And since most people in the world are not sheep who willingly go along with being screwed over (outside America anyways), an increase in police repression and torture almost always comes with this.

We've seen different variations and refinements on this. In Chile and Argentina we saw a pure military police state overthrowing democracy. In Russia and Poland we saw a facade of democracy, but rulers then making deals and decisions in the back rooms that were the opposite of what they were elected to do.

In the US, we've see a slow, steady implementation of this with a combination of a massive propaganda and entertainment campaigns provided to distract the people, along with a massive increase and militarization of the police. American police have always used torture, but any restrictions on that that have come from the 60's and 70's are under attack and being rolled back ... and more so post 9-11.

NobodaySpecial writes:

"...Its amazing that so many of our elected official (obviously) think it's absurb that the American people will fight against abuse and oppression… they've done it before…"

This is true, but the American people, the apolitical masses(and there is a vast majority) have never been as controlled in their thinking as they are now.

odonian wrote:

"Is Klein like most progressives? Does she have a blind spot when it comes to the role that Faith plays in terror?"

Religion, is not, in itself, the origin of the violence, religion servies merely as the center for orgainzation - a point of agreement and identity around which the various armed nationalist movements can orgainize.

Furthermore, the sort of actions traditionally called "terrorism", including suicide actions, have very little to do with religion. They are a consequence of the desperation that arises when ones opressor and occupier has an overwhelming advantage that renders conventional armed conflict futile. Historically, even secular armed movements have occasionally resorted to suicide tactics.

30 years ago, the Arab "terorists" were nearly all leftists, and militant Marxist pan-Arabism was their center about which they orgainzed.

So, 30 years ago, odonian would no doubt would be writing: "we have a blind spot when it comes to 'godless communism' being the source of the terror".

But, in both cases, the source of the "terror" is nationalist resistance to US imperialism.

The "terror" will end as soon as the US quits inflicting "terror" on others.

jmacneil,

The geopolitical reality is unbounded in complexity, but we all must use finite models (as with all models of the universe, sacrificing accuracy for manageability) to get a grasp of it in order to fashion useful and helpful responses. Klein offers fresh insights and a fascinating perspective at a level of detail and with documentation that is at least equal to the level typical of similar works.

She explains how the Milton Friedman model of "free markets" was forced upon the Chilean people, and then the Argentinians and Brazilians in similar fashion, using large disorienting shocks to soften resistance. She goes on to explain how similar approaches worked in Poland and Russia and elsewhere. And she elegantly ties it together to a neoliberal movement run by US corporate elites to privatize and plunder the world.

It is your loss if you do not read "The Shock Doctrine."

Have you been reading the current corporate media brainwash line that "violence is down in Iraq?"

It makes me sick.

One half a million children and other people at risk died in Iraq due to the sanctions during the Clinton years. A million and more have died as a result of the invasion and occupation and the associated violence. That's 1.5 million dead.

On 9/11/2001 3000 people died in the U.S. That means Iraq has lost as many people as 450 9/11s in the past 15 years or so due to U.S. actions. Since we have 300 million people in the U.S. and they only have 25 million in Iraq, you have to multiply by 12 to get the equivalent effect.

So Iraq has suffered about 12 x 450 or 5,400 9/11s due to U.S. foreign policy in the last 15 years. 15 x 365 = 5465 days. So we have inflicted a 9/11 worth of death on Iraq every day for the past 15 years.

Things got quiet at Auschwitz too after a while.

I would add that a theory gains credibility when it successfully predicts future events. Klein, with her theory, predicted some time ago that the Bush administration would do everything in its power to make and enforce an agreement like the one it made a couple of days ago with Maliki's government, providing US corporations with certain advantages as the US promises to protect the Maliki government from coups (such coups most likely to be attempted by Iraqis interested in real democracy).

heavyrunner - thanks for the perspective. I have trouble grasping numbers myself. And the comparison to Auschwitz is right on.

Meant Klein not Wolf, in hospital 83 yr old Mom broken hip, not an excuse just an explaination for my idiocy. Pardon

"And from that sense I'd say no true 'Christian', as in follower of Jesus Christ, could ever torture or mistreat another person. Jesus would be washing the feet of prisoners with that water, not waterboarding them in it!"

You said it all. I don't understand much of the Old Testament but that's OK because its history applies strictly to the Jewish people . I can understand every single act and statement of Jesus Christ's career to be identically emulated by every follower and for my own peace of mind,that,including the Sermon on the Mount trumps everything.