Afghan Prison Looks Like Another Guantanamo
NEW YORK - As the world marked the sixth anniversary of the arrival of the first orange-jumpsuit-clad prisoners at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, human rights groups are attempting to focus public and congressional scrutiny on what some are calling “the other Gitmo”.
It is a prison located on the U.S. military base at base in the ancient city of Bagram near Charikar in Parvan, Afghanistan. The detention centre was set up by the U.S. military as a temporary screening site after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban. It currently houses some 630 prisoners — close to three times as many as are still held at Guantanamo.
In 2005, following well-documented accounts of detainee deaths, torture, and “disappeared” prisoners, the U.S. undertook efforts to turn the facility over to the Afghan government. But thanks to a series of legal, bureaucratic and administrative missteps, the prison is still under U.S. military control. And a recent confidential report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has reportedly complained about the continued mistreatment of prisoners.
The ICRC report is said to cite massive overcrowding, “harsh” conditions, lack of clarity about the legal basis for detention, prisoners held “incommunicado”, in “a previously undisclosed warren of isolation cells,” and “sometimes subjected to cruel treatment in violation of the Geneva Conventions.” Some prisoners have been held without charges or lawyers for more than five years.
According to Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “Bagram appears to be just as bad, if not worse, than Guantanamo. When a prisoner is in American custody and under American control, our values are at stake and our commitment to the rule of law is tested.”
She told IPS, “The abuses cited by the Red Cross give us cause for concern that we may be failing the test. The George W. Bush administration is not content to limit its regime of illegal detention to Guantanamo, and has tried to foist it on Afghanistan.”
The problems at Bagram burst into the headlines in 2005, after the New York Times obtained a 2,000-page U.S. Army report concerning the deaths of two unarmed civilian Afghani prisoners guarded by U.S. armed forces in 2002.
U.S. military officials in Afghanistan initially said the deaths were from natural causes. Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, the commander of allied forces in Afghanistan at the time, denied then that prisoners had been chained to the ceiling or that conditions at Bagram endangered the lives of prisoners.
But after an investigation by The New York Times, the Army acknowledged that the deaths were homicides. The prisoners were chained to the ceiling and beaten, causing their deaths. Military coroners ruled that both the prisoners” deaths were homicide.
Autopsies revealed severe trauma to both prisoners’ legs, describing the trauma as comparable to being run over by a bus. Last fall, Army investigators implicated 28 soldiers and reservists and recommended that they face criminal charges, including negligent homicide.
The U.S. military has spent more than 30 million dollars to build an Afghan prison outside Kabul that meets international humane treatment standards and has trained Afghan guards.
But the number of detainees keeps growing, due to the intensifying combat in Afghanistan. One result is that there is room for only about half the prisoners the U.S. originally planned to put in the new detention center.
Efforts to transfer Bagram’s 630-plus prisoners to Afghan control have run into myriad other problems. First, there were turf battles between the different ministries of the Afghan government. Then Afghan officials rejected pressure from Washington to adopt a detention system modeled on the Bush administration’s “enemy combatant” legal framework, with military commissions such as those at Guantánamo.
The ACLU’s Shamsi says that, “While conditions at Bagram have improved, at least since the universal revulsion at the revelations of Abu Ghraib and Congress’ passage of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the tragic mistakes of the past may be in danger of repetition.”
She also raises the possibility that there may be prisoners in Afghanistan who are not “Department of Defence detainees”, as one Pentagon official has referred to them, but are instead held by the CIA or another civilian agency.
“We know that the CIA was holding “ghost prisoners” — prisoners held in secret, hidden from the Red Cross — at a secret facility called the ‘Salt Pit’ in Afghanistan,” Shamsi says. She notes that the administration has never renounced the CIA’s illegal secret detention and interrogation programme that President Bush revealed in September 2006. She adds concern that Special Operations forces may not be following Department of Defence directives on the registration of prisoners.
According to Shamsi, “It is clear that another lesson from the torture scandal seems to have been ignored: different rules for different agencies and different prisoners are an invitation to abuse.”
The situation at Bagram has been largely overshadowed by the continuing controversy surrounding Guantanamo. Just last week, a U.S. appeals court ruled that four former Guantanamo prisoners, all British citizens, have no right to sue top Pentagon officials and military officers for torture, abuse and violations of their religious rights. The four who brought the lawsuit were released from Guantanamo in 2004 after being held for more than two years. The suit sought 10 million dollars in damages and named then-Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 10 military commanders.
The men claimed they were subjected to various forms of torture, harassed as they practiced their religion and forced to shave their religious beards. In one instance, a guard threw a Koran in a toilet bucket, according to the lawsuit.
The appeals court cited a lack of jurisdiction over the lawsuit, ruled the defendants enjoyed qualified immunity for acts taken within the scope of their government jobs and held the religious right law did not apply to the detainees.
Eric Lewis, the attorney who argued the case for the detainees, vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when a court finds that torture is all in a days’ work for the secretary of defence and senior generals,” Lewis said.
Another attorney for the plaintiffs, Michael Ratner of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, expressed disappointment that the appeals court failed to hold “Rumsfeld and the chain of command accountable for torture at Guantanamo.”
Guantanamo and Bagram have been virtually ignored by candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination. One exception is former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who acknowledged that Guantanamo has become a damaging symbol for the United States and is “not in our best interests”.
President Bush has said he would like to close Guantanamo, but has taken no action to do so. In June 2007, Bush’s former Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo — not tomorrow, this afternoon,” explaining that “we have shaken the belief that the world had in America’s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open.”
And Defence Secretary Robert Gates has reportedly pushed to close the facility because he felt it had “become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantanamo would be viewed as illegitimate.”
© 2008 Inter Press Service
Wow. Imagine my surprise. The US military has another ‘grey’ torture facility in a nation they invaded and ocupied.
Shock. Horror. Dismay.
Riiiiiight.
This is now the standard ‘modus operandi’ of the US and it’s out of control military. They are behaving no better than the Nazi’s did. In fact, I would have to say the that the US is now even more evil and inhuman than the depraved government of Hitler’s Germany. The only slight difference is that we haven’t seen the deathcamps and a genocidal porgrom against a religious minority in the Homeland.
Yet.
But the Halliburton built ’secure holding faciliies’ in every state should soon take care of that.
It doesn’t matter because as long as they’re brown and muslims, they’re not really humans, and they’re all the enemy.
Galen, we are worse than the Nazis because we know better.
“President Bush has said he would like to close Guantanamo, but has taken no action to do so. President Bush has said he would like to close Guantanamo, but has taken no action to do so. President Bush has said he would like to close Guantanamo, but has taken no action to do so.”
History repeating itself.
Because there were rewards out to capture Taliban etc. in Afghanistan some people started kidnapping all sorts of random people and turning them in to the US military. In turn they recieved their cash and some innocent people were imprisoned.
The illegal occupation of Afghanistan is all about oil and natural gas pipelines that are planned to link Central Asian resources with Pakistan and India and perhaps a warm water port on the Arabian sea.
UNOCAL planned a trans-Afghan pipeline in the 90’s but the Taliban did not like their offer. And surprise, after we bomb one of the poorest nations on earth we appoint an old UNOCAL consultant, Karzai !
The use of depeleted uranium weapons on the people of Afghanistan has been determined to be a war crime according to the following tribunal which is well worth the read.
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/TOK403A.html
Depleted uranium and torture have become 21st century American exports, thanks to the war criminals in Washington and the corporate fascists who make the political puppets dance !
The EPA detention centers are nothing more than American Gulags, just as Indian Reservations are nothing more than concentration camps. What goes around comes around. It’s a circle teaching. Uncle Sam has been bought by the Corporate and Governmental elites and is strapping on his boots. Get ready for the Uncle Sam Stomp.
Just like Pakistan and Guantanamo, dcbeltway.
Cash paid for innocents used to fill empty cells in a prison built to justify the actions of the regime and demonstrate its prowess at fighting ‘the enemy’, while the country looks on in fear, believing the lies and hoping ‘the war’ will stop soon.
Prison Accomplished!
you think this is bad … take a look at this
“United States to begin Chemical Warfare operations in Afghanistan”
http://www.chycho.com/?q=Chemical_Warfare
“The United States is planing to implement a massive chemical-spraying program in Afghanistan, emulating the failed Plan Columbia program that has been in operation for the last decade in Latin American…
“The concern about the chemicals used during the spraying, which includes Monsanto’s Round-Up Ultra, are not in dispute. Even the manufacturer of the chemicals “cautions against aerial application at altitudes greater than 10 feet above crops because higher altitudes increase the risk of drift. Monsanto also warns that ‘even very small amounts of Round-Up herbicide brands may damage crops if allowed to drift into fields adjoining the target area.’”…
“As we continue to fund, with our tax dollars, the operations in Afghanistan, we should be asking ourselves if conducting chemical warfare on a civilian population and creating “Super Opium Poppy” plants is an agenda that we wish to support in the occupation of Afghanistan?”
Shackling freedom one person at a time.
Shackling freedom one ‘terrorist’ at a time. Shackling freedom one ‘non-terrorist’ at a time.
Shackling freedom one ‘enemy combatant’ at a time. Shackling freedom one ‘non-enemy combatant’ at a time.
Shackling one immigrant, one émigré, one designated enemy at a time.
Shackling freedom one non-person at a time.
Shackling freedom one color at a time.
Shackling freedom one gender at a time.
Shackling freedom one belief at a time.
Shackling freedom one city, one country, one world at a time.
Shackling minds. Shackling hearts. Shackling bodies.
Shackling thought. Shackling feeling. Shackling lives.
Shackling truth. Shackling love. Shackling hope.
Feel the fear. Feel the pain. Feel the sadness. Feel the anger.
Stop the excuses.
Stop the lies.
Stop the shackling.
Free the bodies. Free the minds. Free the hearts.
Free the thoughts. Free the feelings. Free the lives.
Free the truth. Free the love. Free the hope.
Free the world.
I have to wonder, even if Gitmo is closed, how many other gitmos there are out there now.
Quite obviously because they are being run by the same torturers.
I am glad that this issue is finally making it onto Common Dreams.
The Canadian Military doesn’t have any facility to hold prisoners so they turn them over to either the Americans or the Afghans. Under the Geneva convention, Canadians are responsible for what happens to the prisoners they turn over. Canadian MPs were worried about the treatment that the Americans would give the prisoners in Afghanistan in December 2001-January 2002 (ok, before that, but that is when it came to a head) because of the treatment prisoners kept by the Americans were getting in Guantanamo Bay:
Monday, January 28, 2002
Mr. John Bryden (Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot, Lib.): Madam Chairman, I do not think the debate was really about the quality of Canadian equipment.
I would like to ask the member opposite to react to a concern that I feel and that is that the Canadian troops have been sent to Kandahar, they will be taking prisoners and the prisoners will be turned over to the Americans. I wonder if he would give us a sense of his concerns or lack of concerns, if he will, about the fact that these prisoners will be turned over to the Americans, who will put them on Guantanamo Bay, which is outside the reach of American law and the reach of international law. It is a military base.
Tuesday, January 29, 2002
Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ): Mr. Speaker, I would like to indicate that I will be sharing my time with the member for Jonquière. …
These troops will capture prisoners and hand them over to the United States, which will enforce the law as it sees fit with respect to those prisoners, whether or not it complies with the laws of Canada or the Geneva convention. We will have no control.
Mr. Gilles Duceppe (Laurier—Sainte-Marie, BQ): Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, the Prime Minister said that if there were prisoners, Canadians, the government would take measures to ensure that Canadian and international laws were respected, that there were no prisoners and that the government would let us know when there were.
However, when the Prime Minister was making that comment on Sunday, it had been a few days since Afghans had been captured by Canadians and handed over to the Americans.
Either the Prime Minister misled the public, or else he did not know. Both possibilities are a cause for concern and unacceptable. Which one is true?
Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP): Mr. Speaker, yesterday in the House the Minister of National Defence claimed that we are not about to outsource our moral obligations in dealing with prisoners in Afghanistan. It turns out that the defence minister has known since Friday that Canada has been doing exactly that.
Now that the government cannot pretend that these questions are hypothetical, will the Prime Minister come clean and tell Canadians how many prisoners have been turned over to the Americans? When were they taken into custody? On what terms were they turned over? Is there an agreement with the Americans about the treatment of captives in Kandahar and if so will he–
—————-
We decided to stop turning over Prisoners to the Americans and to turn them over to the Afghans instead:
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Mr. Gilles Duceppe (Laurier—Sainte-Marie, BQ): Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs said that allegations of torture in Afghan prisons were nothing but Taliban propaganda. However, according to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, one third of prisoners are still being tortured. Even Foreign Affairs Canada’s departmental spokesperson admitted that she had heard the allegations of torture. I do not suppose that she is a member of the Taliban.
Given that Canadian representatives have visited Afghan prisons 11 times, will the Prime Minister release a report on these visits so we can all know what happened?
Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC): Mr. Speaker, it is the nature of the Taliban to make such allegations. We should not assume that all of these allegations are based in fact. Nevertheless, in accordance with the agreement signed with the Government of Afghanistan, whenever such allegations surface, the government investigates.
As Admiral Mullen, Chief of Military, commented as he was leaving his tour of GITMO, ” I think that this prison in Guantanamo should be closed. Then he commented, The detention center on the southern side(built to hold 10,000), should be completed soon.” WTF, whoever truly thinks H R 1955 is not going to become law raise your hand.
A fequent poster on this site, someone I am lucky to call ‘Friend’ and a true Patriot sent me links after I sent him that article and we are clearing out, cleaning up and readying sites that will hold a combined amount of 400,000!!!
Times are so unsure its caused us insecurity, mistrust, infighting, violent behaviors amongst each other. Bad times and worse on the way if we don’t start getting our arsses in gear NOW!!!
Democracy is so cool!!!
We tend to focus on individual people, practices and institutions, when this is actually a systemic problem. It’s not just Bush and Cheney, it’s most of the leadership of the executive branch, military and Congress. It’s not just waterboarding, it’s an array of techniques proscribed under the Geneva Conventions. It’s not just Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, it’s an international gulag archipelago.
The fact is that we have slid down an amoral slippery slope based on a perverse sort of act utilitarian reasoning. I was nauseated to see George W. Bush gleefully dancing arm in arm, holding a large sword, with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The sword is the same type employed by His Majesty’s government to lop of the heads of people who convert to Christianity or question Islam and the hands of thieves. Abdullah’s country punishes women for being raped, forces them to wear chadoors, denies their right to leave home without a male relative chaperone and funds madrassas around the world which teach terrorist ideologies. And here is the American president who punishes Castro with vicious and inhumane sanctions, banning even medicines and food, dancing with the world’s most absolute monarch and offering him the latest in US arms.
Since we obviously lack the moral fiber to face what we have done and are doing, hold the guilty accountable and reestablish the rule of law, why don’t we just admit that we are a nation of hypocrites and say to the world, as Thucydides reports the Athenians saying to the Melians, “The strong do what they will and the weak endure what they must”?
“we have shaken the belief that the world had in America’s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open.”
The people who built the American justice system and those willing to uphold it, and their principles, were once admired worldwide but those are all gone today. And regarding the defendants to the lawsuit, Rumsfeld, et al, they do not deserve immunity from the law after they violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution. They are trying to uphold a predatory/parasitic capitalist system which fundamentally conflicts with the spirit of the Constitution.
Which countries, besides the United States, still have the death penalty?
You know, AlexLawyer.
Because in addition to our inalienable rights, we have inalienable responsibilities, one of which is to seek justice for every human being; something the Greeks didn’t think of that makes us, America, the greatest democracy the world has known.
While it’s not surprising, it still never ceases to make me sick all the horrible things that are being done in our name. We all have blood on our hands if we are doing nothing to end the smearing of the US.
http://www.ryanhartman.wordpress.com
I Dunno…
I read Haaretz, the Guardian, and similar-here (which include only ‘dry&misleading-facts’, when supportive of the accepted Status-Quo, and only US/Israeli PoV’s), I read nearly-all the related Commentary-here (mostly stuff&nonsense, if “well-motivated”), and I also read many articles/PoV’s like: http://www.chycho.com/?q=gaza (equally ‘wrong’ regards facts-on-ground and History and ignorance of the Principals, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7693 being far-more relevant and accurate).
[What really ’should’ be read, by most, is
‘real-History’ — such as found/begun by clicking on my Name]
What, really, is SO ‘hard to understand’ about all the related History, underlying-Issues, present-Situations, or likely-Outcomes?
[And, why is so very-much obscured with so much religious&’moral’-drivel, anti&pro-’terrorist’ propaganda, and failed-insights?]
After all, the Facts, History, Economics, and Human-Nature involved in everything make ALL of the related-Histories since at-least the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ so “crystal-clear” that I am left Appalled by just how-little most people today can ’see’ and/or grasp — regards the “big-picture”, Intents&Interests, and “Quo vadis”, much less “Quo Bono”. [It ain’t Rocket-Science, people…]
The Palestinians and poor-Islamics in-general are NOT headed towards any ‘concentration camps’ or ‘destruction’ (although a Balkanization of their population is ‘handy’/efficient currently). This should be quite-and-very Obvious from the simple fact that Israeli/European-Zionists/’Realists’ [I’ll call this Powerful but mostly-Secular/minority-subgroup “Iszi’s” or just “Realists”, henceforth — PLEASE don’t continue to confuse them, these self-proclaimed ‘Ideologist-Supermen’, with all the varied ans decent/majority ‘Jews’ or ‘Westerners’ or ‘Christians’ — although Western and true/(academically)blue-blooded “neos” (of the Lib/Con variety, like Z.B.&H.K.) ARE, most-often and ‘conveniently’, Iszi’s/Realists, also] found under-800K so-called Palestinians when they Founded their so-called Homeland in British-Palestine, and today there are almost 8-million Palestinians. That’s MORE than the number of Jews/X-ians (combined) in all of modern(non-Ersatz)-Israel — so if ‘Extermination’ was the Goal of Iszi’s (who are inarguably militarily-supreme and the ‘most-ruthless’/best-Funded in the ME), then they are notably-and-remarkably ‘inefficient’ — are they not?
In Reality, the Jews of Israel have always ‘needed’ compliant and made-subservient Palestinians FAR more than they needed welcome American-aid, water-rights, or X-ian-Rationales for Existence, post-Holocaust. Modern-Israel, and the subsequent ‘miracle’ of their agriculture, industrialization, and the rapid-growth of their entire-Infrastructure and militaristic-security would have been impossible without a cheap/subjugated Labor-Pool provided by the Palestinian under-class (our fine-country, also, would never have been ‘made Great’ or achieved its own ‘Manifest-Destiny’ Mythos and stature without similar-here — slaves and near-Slaves far more populous-than, but subservient-to, a Ruling Class and Elite). There simply was no mythical ‘Palestinian-terrorism’ during most of this post-War period in Israel — until a mass-influx of cheap/skilled/Russian(arranged)-Immigration made those internal-Palestinians ‘less-valuable’ and allowed the Iszi’s to ‘regretfully’ herd-them-up into Balkanized-concentrations in the ‘won’ Gaza/WB while ridding Jerusalem of their influence/’Claim’-there, as well. The Mossad and the Knesset [a nice ‘present’, itself, from the Rothschild’s — much like their Flag] created ‘Palestinian-terrorism’ [another Present, an “oldie but a goodie”] primarily to facilitate all-of-that (and, of-course, the most-useful present-Tool for all the concomitant/shared-Interests with fellow ‘neos’/Iszi’s/Realists in the energy-fixated and Corporate-West), and Palestinians will now shortly be completely ‘contained’ — to become the future and controlled ‘poor-neighbors and populous-Suzerainty of an entirely-cleansed’ Ersatz-Israel. By henceforth pretending to ‘help’ those who All the World agrees that Israel has Harmed, this soon-to-be Industrialized while kept-poor and controlled ‘local labor-pool’ will thereafter become “Israel’s China” — only a-lot ‘closer’ — and all Threats of/for any ‘Twin-State Solution’ and other Nonsense-Ideals within Israel-proper (not ‘Ersatz’) will be Lost in History’s-Dustbin due to the ‘needful security-concerns’ following this walled-in and enforced Colonialization.
To ’simplify’[for the ‘reading-challenged’]…
“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…” is certainly Sacrosanct and Credo to these Elite and Powerful/Wealthy — who have ALWAYS directed most World-affairs — including, most-assuredly, these “Caballed-Vipers” we now knowingly call Zionists or Globalists or ‘neo-Libs/Cons’ or Realists [Iszi’s, if you will]. But, with a ‘wink’ and a ’secret hand-sign’, they always have meant these ‘Inalienable Rights’ to apply ONLY to their own tiny-Cadre and Class and extended-Family.
The VAST-majority of Americans and Israelis, native-Americans and Palestinians, whites and blacks, Jews and Gentiles (and on-and-on, ad nauseam), are in-fact the NICEST folks you could ever want to meet. [If you are Traveled or Educated/wise, then you already know-this, Yes?] Humans are Hard-working, ‘motivated’, concerned with Justice and fair-minded and Ethical — we “Are All One” (and, have always been-so). However, getting US to believe-in and ‘do’ Their dirty-work, while surrendering to Them most of our-Rights and Wealth and Sovereignty, has ALWAYS been “Job-#1″ for these Elite and Ruling-Classes — as enabled by ‘our’/Their Ideological-’leadership’.
You also well-know their Tools long-involved in this historic process — among them religion, nationalism, racism, propaganda, ’shared’-booty, fear-tactics, an ‘Imperative for Defense’ against any/all and Inferior ‘barbaric-or-evil Enemies’, etc., et al. However, even ‘Knowing those Tools and Who wields-them best’ has OBVIOUSLY never Protected us from ‘Them’ — in-fact, the more-we-Know, the easier we then are to manipulate henceforth — we all-of-us help mute any Voice of Reason by means and implementation of such Farces, and our Dissonance/Divisions can be and are thus Created between us-All.
For ‘People ARE Sheeple’, and we DO want to be Sheared … it spares us all the odious Tasks of bettering-Ourselves and/or Others, figuring anything out or self-educating ourselves, or of ‘having to actually think’, period. So, we delegate these many-others to Think for Us — and then we get seemingly ‘Appalled and Outraged’, occasionally and ineffectively, when They take-Advantage of “the People”, here or elsewhere? [It is to Laugh!]
Look … all Empires, all Nation-Builders, all Founders — everywhere and everywhen — ALL are based upon an Elite taking advantage-of and using those same and efficacious and aforementioned Tools to shear their-People and (with Luck!) ever-Others — also ad nauseam. NOTHING is new/’neo’ under the Sun, my friends…
We Farmed, then we ‘had’ to defend our immovable and invested-in nouveau-Wealth from ‘greedy-others’. That gave-rise to class-systems allowing Specialization rather than all just continually ‘grubbing for food’. Tribes then City-states followed naturally, and grew increasingly Patriarchal and ‘faith-based’ as hierarchies, and acculturated/differentiated by Choice — so Monarchy/Oligarchy was no real ’surprise’, thereafter. Following ‘Civilizations’ required portable/symbolic-Wealth and Leadership, also — and competition for-All, and increasingly, as Individuals and Nation-States have written-History ever-since.
What’s so hard to understand about Human-Nature made inverse to Population?
Zionism, since the induced/required Age of Enlightenment/’revolutionary’-Periods, has been the most visibly-utilized and efficient-Tool, ever, for a Globalist-Elite. Some purportedly ‘most-Christian’, some claiming to be ‘Other Peoples of the same-Book’ [like Ashkenazic-’Jewry’ and ‘radical’-Islamics, neither ‘true’ to their purported-’Faiths’ or Lineage]. However, the ‘real’ Elite and the Globally-Wealthy are Themselves primarily Secular — worshiping only Power&Wealth, which they’ve always-had in abundance and have hereditarily-Horded and amassed. They’ve the best-educations and pedigree’s among us for Their ‘jobs’, control nearly Everything for their-own Interests, and we LOVE them for it. We SO love and admire Them that we all but Canonize-them.
The Bilderbergers, the CFR and TLC, the Rothschild’s, the Rockefeller’s, a Bush-or-Clinton, our Popes/Rabbis/Ayatollahs, our ‘world-leaders’ and Celebrities, our philosophers/poets/artists/Thinkers, our Revolutionary and our Counter-Revolutionary Leaders … we Love them all (Actors and Resistors alike), and we always-will. They are either (and most-likely) ‘born to their Class/Fortunes’, or they are carefully-selected/vetted as the “best&brightest” among-us to enter their Rhodes-scholarships and Skull&Bones and diverse-other covert-Enterprises (like the CIA &Mossad&MI-6&ISI, or the UN, or Banks/Trading-Concerns/Corporations, or varied-Governments and Families and Ivory-Towers).
Blacks, the ‘3rd-World’, ‘Savage-Natives’ (everywhere), Indians (E-or-W, no real-difference), the ‘poor of the World’, the ’stupid’ (internally, or externally), the Palestinians/Afghans/Iraqis/Turks/Armenians of the ME, the indigenous-or-imported underclass in South America/Central America/Caribbean, the ‘hungry-and-disunited’ of Asia, the ‘trailer-trash’ and ’supported’ or rural&urban-’worker-drones’ and immigrant&naturalized-’sovereigns’ of even-America or Europe (joined, lately, by the post-War/short-lived ‘middle-income’ within, that never-really-was) — all are the favored ‘Victims’ for the rapacious-Appetites of our Elite, and enable the endless-Quest for Their Interests and well-being.
But…
Was it EVER any ‘different’?
Would we WANT it ‘any-different’, really?
We have ALWAYS traded-away the Opportunity for Plenty and Abundance and Peace for the ‘Dream’ of entering that Elite, ourselves (or of being ‘favored by it’ in rewarded-return for our Loyalty or lick-spittle subservience — the same-difference).
From the G_d-Kings of ancient Ur to the “Bush’s Brains” of Rovian-Ideologues and all the multiple Advisers and ‘Think-Tanks’ and Corporate-heads and International-Financiers and Iszi’s and Leaders and Realists serving-Them of today — have we really ever WANTED to stop being ‘Their’ Victims?
[I think ‘not’…its far too-much like ‘Work’ to start thinking for ourselves and ‘controlling our own lives’ by eliminating the Mythos they control us with, and developing our own&beneficent Ethos and Logos]