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Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam
From 1961 to 1971, the U.S. military sprayed Vietnam with Agent Orange, which contained large quantities of Dioxin, in order to defoliate the trees for military objectives. Dioxin is one of the most dangerous chemicals known to man. It has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen (causes cancer) and by the American Academy of Medicine as a teratogen (causes birth defects).
Between 2.5 and 4.8 million people were exposed to Agent Orange. 1.4 billion hectares of land and forest - approximately 12 percent of the land area of Vietnam - were sprayed.
The Vietnamese who were exposed to the chemical have suffered from cancer, liver damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive capacity, and skin and nervous disorders. Children and grandchildren of those exposed have severe physical deformities, mental and physical disabilities, diseases, and shortened life spans. The forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam have been devastated and denuded. They may never grow back and if they do, it will take 50 to 200 years to regenerate. Animals that inhabited the forests and jungles have become extinct, disrupting the communities that depended on them. The rivers and underground water in some areas have also been contaminated. Erosion and desertification will change the environment, contributing to the warming of the planet and dislocation of crop and animal life.
The U.S. government and the chemical companies knew that Agent Orange, when produced rapidly at high temperatures, would contain large quantities of Dioxin. Nevertheless, the chemical companies continued to produce it in this manner. The U.S. government and the chemical companies also knew that the Bionetics Study, commissioned by the government in 1963, showed that even low levels of Dioxin produced significant deformities in unborn offspring of laboratory animals. But they suppressed that study and continued to spray Vietnam with Agent Orange. It wasn’t until the study was leaked in 1969 that the spraying of Agent Orange was discontinued.
U.S. soldiers who served in Vietnam have experienced similar illnesses. After they sued the chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto, that manufactured and sold Agent Orange to the government, the case settled out of court for $180 million which gave few plaintiffs more than a few thousand dollars each. Later the U.S. veterans won a legislative victory for compensation for exposure to Agent Orange. They receive $1.52 billion per year in benefits.
But when the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange sued the chemical companies in federal court, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein dismissed the lawsuit, concluding that Agent Orange did not constitute a poison weapon prohibited by the Hague Convention of 1907. Weinstein had reportedly told the chemical companies when they settled the U.S. veterans’ suit that their liability was over and he was making good on his promise. His dismissal was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The chemical companies admitted in their filing in the Supreme Court that the harm alleged by the victims was foreseeable although not intended. How can something that is foreseeable be unintended?
On May 15 and 16 of this year, the International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange convened in Paris and heard testimony from 27 victims, witnesses and scientific experts. Seven people from three continents served as judges of the Tribunal, which was sponsored by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL).
Testimony given by the witnesses showed the following:
Mai Giang Vu, a member of the Army of South Vietnam, carried barrels of the chemicals on his back. His two sons could not walk or function normally, their limbs gradually “curled up” and they could only crawl. They died at the ages of 23 and 25.
Pham The Minh, whose parents also served in the South Vietnamese Army, showed the Tribunal his severely deformed, crooked, skinny legs; he has great difficulty walking, as well as digestive and pulmonary diseases.
To Nga Tran is a French Vietnamese who worked as a journalist during the spraying. Her daughter weighed 6.6 pounds at the age of three months. Her skin began shredding and she could not bear to have skin contact or simple demonstrations of love. She died at 17 months, weighing 6.6 pounds. Ms. To described a woman who gave birth to a “ball” with no human form. Many children are born without brains; others make inhuman sounds.
Rosemarie Hohn Mizo is the widow of George Mizo, who served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam in 1967. He slept on contaminated ground and consumed food and drink that were also contaminated. George refused to serve after he was wounded for the third time; he was court-martialed and sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. George helped found the Friendship Village where Vietnamese victims live in a supportive environment. He died from conditions related to his exposure to Agent Orange.
Georges Doussin, co-founder of the Friendship Village, visited a dormitory where he saw 50 highly deformed “monsters,” who produced inhuman sounds. One man whose parent had been exposed to Agent Orange had four toes on each foot. Doussin said Agent Orange creates “total anarchy in evolution.”
Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, from Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), sees many children born without arms and/or legs, without heads or faces, and without a brain chamber. According to the World Health Organization, only 1 – 4 parts per trillion (PPT) of Dioxin in breast milk can cause severe deformities in fetuses and even death. But up to 1450 PPT are found in maternal milk in Vietnam.
Dr. Jeanne Stellman, who wrote the seminal article about Agent Orange in the magazine Nature, testified that “this is the largest unstudied environmental disaster in the world (except for natural disasters).”
Dr. Jean Grassman, from Brooklyn College at City University of New York, testified that Dioxin is a potent cellular disregulator which alters a variety of pathways to disrupt many systems. Children, she said, are very sensitive to Dioxin; the intrauterine or post natal exposure to Dioxin may result in altered immune, neurobehavioral, and hormonal functioning. Women pass their exposure to their children both in utero and through the excretion of Dioxin in breast milk.
Many ecosystems have been destroyed and Dioxin continues to poison Vietnam, especially in the several “hot spots.”
Chemist Dr. Pierre Vermeulin testified that it was estimated that $1 billion would be required to restore one hectare of land in Vietnam. The cost of caring for the victims, many of whom need 24-hour care, is enormous.
In 1973, President Richard Nixon promised $3.25 billion in reconstruction aid to Vietnam “without any preconditions.” That aid was never granted.
There are only 11 Friendship Villages in Vietnam; 1000 are needed to care for the child victims of Agent Orange.
Last week, the Bureau of the
IADL, meeting in Hanoi, presented President Nguyen Minh
Triet
of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam with the final decision of the
Tribunal. The judges found the
U.S. government and the
chemical companies guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ecocide
during the illegal U.S. war
of aggression in Vietnam. We recommended that the
Agent Orange Commission be established in Vietnam to assess the damages suffered by the
people and destruction of the environment, and that the U.S. government
and the chemical companies provide compensation for the damage and
destruction.
I told the President that it always struck me that even as U.S. bombs were dropping on the people of Vietnam, they always distinguished between the American government and the American people. The President responded, “We fought the forces of aggression but we always reserved our love for the people of America . . . because we knew they always supported us.”
An estimated 3 million Vietnamese people were killed in the war, which also claimed 58,000 American lives. For many other Vietnamese and U.S. veterans and their families, the war continues to take its toll.
Several treaties the United States has ratified require an effective remedy for violations of human rights. It is time to make good on Nixon’s promise and remedy the terrible wrong the U.S. government perpetrated on the people of Vietnam. Congress must pass legislation to compensate the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange as it did for the U.S. Vietnam veteran victims.
Our government must know that it cannot continue to use weapons that target and harm civilians. Indeed, the U.S. military is using depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will poison those countries for incalculable decades.
26 Comments so far
Show AllSioux Rose
And with THIS legacy, added to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. bears the hubris of inventing yet more heinous weapons. A just slightly less toxic chemical is now sprayed routinely over land in Columbia supposedly to kill the cocoa plants used for cocaine production. Ultimately this campaign will lead to a legacy of genetic damage there, too.
And how about the U.S. judge who decided Monsanto and Dow had already paid enough dues. Nice of him to make that assertion. "60 Minutes" did a story on Vietnamese people exposed to dioxim/Agent Orange about 8-10 years ago and even then there was no movement on the part of those responsible to grant even the slightest amount of money to help those they'd poisoned, now into the 2nd and 3rd generation.
ANY drug or weapon that mutates the next generation should be universally banned! How often is it that our nation is busy with trade deals with a former enemy? Meanwhile the children of those plundered during war still carry the stigmata of conflict, a wound that passes from generation to generation genetically.
And how about Monsanto, a company that got fat on the killing fields that's shown slim to no conscience about its profits of doom, despair, and destruction? Now this company, so guilty of abject depraved indifference for life (the lives of others) leads the world in genetic engineering and decides what goes into our breakfast foods? Yeah, breakfast of champions if you like to eat with the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer.
In my view Monsanto and Dow are guilty of war crimes and should have their CEOS and weapons-engineers tried at the Hague, and THAT would be kind. It will be they who experience future lifetimes caring for the mangled bodies of THEIR children.
The fact that killer chemicals can be studied, produced, and used on human beings is another example of the sick way that money is spent in the U.S.--in designs of items that are unbearable and provide lasting pain to other human beings. There is NO excuse for it any longer. The spirals of violence can never be altered until the very concepts of war and enemy are transcended. I can't think of a more opportune time given the evidence of the various and sundry detritus of war to begin that process. It means raising consciousness, starting with this land of thugs who think god and guns are a viable combination. The only saving grace in any of this is that the Buddhists of Vietnam tend to be forgiving. They see in their own pain the resolution of former karmic debts, and thus they have a supernatural grace in the face of such unspeakable misery. Their bodies call out to all those who still have consciences intact to do something to alter the folly of Mars rules, that the sins of the fathers, war, not remain perpetually delivered by, through, and upon the sons.
OH but if it saves American lives it worth it...and its is not as bad as the nazis!
The US is a death cult. They embrace violence and destruction, Given leaders of Baathist Iraq were HUNG for less why are these brave heroic US Generals that ordered this crime not in jail waiting their own trials?
Saddam Hussein was hung for ordering Chemical weapons be used which caused the death of 143 iraqis.
The Dutch Businessman who sold Saddam Hussein the chemicals used in his Chemical weapons was sentenced to 15 YEARS in prison for war crimes.
Jeevee
Why are we so incapable of learning from history? Psychopathic, except for the unutterably hideous bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by a so-called Christian country that LOVES to celebrate "Santa Claus".
The unavoidable byproduct of the nuclear power industry, depleted uranium, is routinely sprayed over many of the Arab and Muslem countries. Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan to name a few.
tradman
Has the word "genocide" really been watered down so as not to warrant mention, here?
How is this any different than Cambodia 1970s, eastern Turkey 1915, or Europe 1942-45? Not to mention many other 20th century atrocities... Amazing how whitewashed history becomes, if not assiduously investigated
The word "genocide" has disappeared from reality in order to protect those who are doing it in the Middle East.
I wonder why Marjorie Cohn didn't mention dioxin in our country. In our products and food supply. People in the U.S. and Europe are being exposed to this stuff, too. It's causing severe reproductive troubles for millions of woman and men here, as well. Chemicals are not safe. We are all suffering at the hands of the chemical companies, or, I should rightly say, the people that know these chemicals can harm or kill us, and are selling them anyway. Behind every horrible corporation are horrible people that know what they are doing, and how much damage it does, but money talks and the right thing to do gets bound and gagged and left to die. Endometriosis, ovarian cysts, ovarian fibroids and cancer, and male reproductive troubles are all caused because of chemical exposure and exposure to dioxins and other related poisonous substances. If we make a substance to kill off other creatures, such as a pesticide or herbicide, it is likely to eventually kill us too. What comes around goes around. Monsanto has been killing us slowly with their genetically engineered seeds, splicing pesticide right into the DNA of the plant, so that it is poisonous before it even sprouts. The people that own and operate Monsanto are criminals, but they hide behind the Monsanto name, and pay money out of the Monsanto Lawsuit account if they get taken to court. This is not a God we are dealing with here, they are people and these are poisonous substances that they are making and spraying on people. When I lived in Oregon, I witnessed planes flying right over people's houses spraying pesticide and herbicide on swaths of forest they wanted to clearcut, and in the process, people and their property and their watersheds got directly sprayed with whatever was in those planes. Why is this allowed to continue? Boycott chemicals, please.
Sioux Rose
REV CHARITY: I could not agree more. I see it EXACTLY the way you do! It's a crime against nature, a massive form of "ecocide" that obviously reverberates throughout the food chain landing right on us. Note, too, that in a legal climate where it takes a strong burden of proof to establish culpability, the community of chemical trespassers essentially grant each other cover. How to discern which of the many toxic substances routinely thrown into our food, soil, water, air is THE culprit? It's like asking which hired killer is responsible when a foreign community is gunned down.
And at age 61, it turns out the American Government has been criminal for several generations.
A few years ago, I visited Viet Nam. I avoided the Viet Nam war because of influence my family had. It was horrible to see the deformity of people exposed to Agent Orange. Forty years later, vast tracks of land have no foliage due to the poisoned soil. No elephants or tigers roam as they once did. Pictures of piles of children killed (murdered)by American bombs are displayed in museums. Pictures of American soldiers torturing Vietnamese and smiling when they hold severed heads of Vietnamese soldiers are also shown. Why is America such a brutal, immoral and criminal country? And, we remain so under Obama. Nothing has changed.
How can you ask why? Our country was built by slaves. After the Civil War, we brutalized Afro-Americans even more than we did their parents under slavery. We wiped out Native Americans and practiced cultural genocide on their children. That's the kind of country we are.
I have had my fill of these kinds of articles and information. I am feeling so negative at this point that I am almost clinically depressed! My kids say: "Don't read about that stuff mom." "It's better not to know what's going on cause we can't do anything anyway!" And I say: "Knowledge is a good thing." "We all need to have knowledge of what is going on." "I have written letters to the editor, gone on protest marches, participated in candlelight vigils, called Washington and made comments to my Senators, etc. Nothing changes. Nothing is accomplished....at all!!! "They" don't care about us."
MONSANTO IS EVIL. CORPORATIONS ARE EVIL. THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IS EVIL. OUR OWN GOVERNMENT IS EVIL. But, why write about these things, on and on and on without very thoughtful actions or solutions proposed at the end of them. People need to have hope...to feel useful, effective, successful in changing our world for the better! We can rant, rave, harp, be agitated, but if we don't have an outlet, it eats us up inside!
I may stop reading Common Dreams. I post.....no feedback or follow-thru. I feel like my words just fall into a deep pit. I agonize over the state of our world, my country, but life just goes on everyday as tho nothing is wrong. People write opinions....great! But, what for? So, we have our opinions stated, read, acknowledged....yet nothing changes. This is insanity. I'm tired of opinions. Unless opinions are backed up by action....they are empty! Here it is: WE NEED TO TAKE OVER OUR GOVERNMENT....ELIMINATE THE POWER THAT LARGE CORPORATIONS HAVE. DISBAND OUR MILITARY. KILL THE MIC. FORM A PEACE PACT WITH THE WORLD. MAKE GLOBAL WARMING OUR NUMBER ONE CHALLENGE AND PRIORITY. IF THERE IS NOTHING TO GAIN, POWER IS USELESS....WAR IS UNNECESSARY. If we don't do these things, Mother Nature will make sure "what goes around comes around."
Innana, I share your frustration and confusion about what I personally can do. On a small personal level, at least I can contribute to some fund or group that will help people who have been made sick by the actions of our government and businesses. Does anyone out there have some experience with such groups? It's a small thing, but it's better than nothing.
Dear Inanna—
Please know how many of us out here feel precisely as you do. I wish I could comfort you and tell you not to be discouraged, lose heart, and sink into angst and cynicism. What I can think to say is that each person who sees the world and our country as you do, is an asset in human terms, and a note of sanity which must be in merely existing an antibody to the viruses you mention. We only control ourselves ultimately. I'm thankful for each small and disregarded person like you, who continues to hold to the truth by their own lights, despite opposition and silence.
you may do more than you imagine
from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your years of effort and concern
egon fawlkner,
nonperson
Sioux Rose
INNANA: I know how you feel. I have friends who refuse to read CD because they say it's "too negative." That advice appears to be the product of a phase we were warned about, wherein there would be many false prophets. Now rather than FACE the truth on a collective basis too many people are merely shutting down or avoiding its "inconvenient" aspects. Some have said the conditioning of television, the easy act of "changing the channel" is to blame. I would say that the vast numbers of persons consuming anti-depressant drugs or relying on pot or alcohol to get through the day has a net effect that essentially anesthetizes that righteous anger that would otherwise burst all around us, potentially busting the chains that have rendered the modern American citizen a virtual slave to corporate rules, regulations, and policies... all masquerading as the law of our land. Hardly.
While I continue to read the threads and actively post, I realize that I must lift my own spirits by being IN nature and eating nutritious food. In other words, rather than turn off what's happening, it's as if we must fortify our bodies and souls to better stand up to it. It's also useful for me to see the miracles of life, and keep my heart open so that I remain MOVED by the incredible beauty of this world, and sometimes the benevolent actions of its people.
Someone else asked why all this brutality. I believe I have made a strong case that the very concept of the deity is closely related to the war god Mars, or the punitive god (Saturn) of the Old Testament. So long as these beliefs become part of a nation's faith and unquestioned, they have a remarkable capacity to direct action and bypass the normal conscience. The very phrasing that the Middle East debacle is a holy war, or that Bush had conversations with 'god' who told him that this war was needed, or that the air force has a strong Christian evangelizing factor these days, added to the rise of a retrograde mentality that seeks to court Armageddon (End Times) and/or another Crusades. The awakened souls have a responsibility to awaken others, but I agree it is daunting to find so many either clinging to their sleep state, hypnotized, deluded, or chemically "checked" out.
She's right.
Having read Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" around 1965 when I was a fledgling reporter, and having followed these issues of chemical contamination ever since, I must commend Marjorie Cohn for a very brave and historically accurate article here.
As I was reading her article, it came to me that "depleted uranium" is the next big thing (as I already knew), but then she clinched that in her last paragraph.
Isn't it interesting how the U.S. military uses whole populations as a testing ground for new chemical or physical processes of destruction and then somehow denies the destruction and denies they ever did follow-up studies on the destruction...a rhetorical question. Meanwhile, any average American citizen who thinks he or she is safe from such experimentation because it is an "us versus them" thing, is ignorant.
Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, thousands upon thousands of U.S. military personnel were subjected to atmospheric nuclear fallout experiments. Publicity on those tests has been suppressed as much as the Agent Orange and now the "depleted uranium" GENOCIDES.
When the degradation of the genome becomes government POLICY, most people cannot even conceive of the nature of the crime. It is immediately suppressed if you think you participated in this, because, deep down, you know you may be next, and you will be and you already have been. Only the likes of Jung and
Foucault and Franz Fanon and a few others can get us through this.
I am a grandfather. I have two Honorable Discharges [sic]. I have been betrayed. The use of Agent Orange was a WAR CRIME. The use of "depleted uranium" is a WAR CRIME. They are direct crimes against humanity, not merely figuratively as some would like, but literally.
This needs to stop. NOW! The damage caused by "depleted uranium" is essentially irreversible to the entire gene pool of not only human beings, but of all other organisms with which it comes into contact. "Low-level radiation" can be more dangerous to the gene pool than "high-level radiation."
Wars are won not by arms or the lack of them but by ideas.
-30-
Sioux Rose
OLE MAN RIVER: Right on, friend! Let's not forget those Downwinders, or those maimed by DDT or Malathion, the list goes on. I, too, see each "theater of war" as a sick Nazi-like experiment in testing weapons and their chemical counterparts on innocent populations. I am PRAYING that a universal peace force stand up against militarism everywhere, and put an end to nations stealing their peoples' labors (as tax revenue) to invest in more of this Hell. (I am speaking of the global trafficking in arms.)
The hell-fury of Mars, god of war, comes from the one power he lacks: that of making life. I see his imprint on the THEFT of genes and the hubris that seeks to design its own hybrids, though none have been tested, nor rendered with the lasting love that comes from the Earth Mother/Mother Nature/Gaia! Because he cannot make life, he seeks to own, control, or destroy it. Until there is due respect and REVERENCE offered to the Divine Mother, the Divine Feminine, the FEMALE side of Creation, humanity will see its future and present ravaged by this god of death. The balance is off and has been for too long, but now with the assistance of advanced technologies, the carnage Mars is capable of goes beyond what any sane imagination wishes to conjure.
Some may not see the connection, but the boys in the military use a lot of porn and the type of porn being produced today is all about SOILING and DEGRADING the female partner. This kind of disregard in what should be LOVE MAKING is further tearing at the very fabric of life. So many cannot love. I see the proliferation of porn as the psychic component that supports the degradation of the natural world and so many innocent persons. Respect for women, for the vaginal canal through which LIFE emerges, is being TRASHED. And similar conduct is seen in how torture takes on many pornographic practices. There is a massive breakdown in the understanding of the sacred aspect of LIFE, and yet these twisted sickos who now direct our nation have the NERVE to co-opt the terminology of "right to life" to appear to own the moral high ground. It's another propagandized use of smoke and mirrors to HIDE the filth and carnage that is everywhere being furthered to fulfill a business model based on MURDER.
Kudos to you all for outstanding comments on this article. Siouxrose, I'm speechless! One of your best posts, ever!
Last month, I saw a film about Monsanto and their fanatical obsession with GMO foods and worldwide campaign to control the planet's food supply and control the human genome project. I've known this for a few decades. After the film, during Q & A, I said "the executives and chemical and genetic engineers engaged in these crimes at Monsanto should be imprisoned for the rest of their lives for the harm they have unleashed in the world. They make Mc Veigh and Bin Laden look like boy scouts in comparison!" (Received a nice round of applause from the audience.)
Sioux Rose
PEACEMAN: You are always so encouraging, and I very much appreciate your good favor.
As for the Monsanto executives, I'd prefer to see them genetically crossed with insects since that seems about their level of consciousness. Perhaps in their own genetic labs such a future will be made possible for them.
SIOUXROSE: You are a wise teacher and I hardly ever disagree with you, but on this one, I beg your pardon. Two things occured to me, and maybe I'm wrong on the first one but sure about the second one.
First, I think insects are sentient beings (right or wrong) and Monsanto executives aren't.
And even though they are short-lived, insects multiply in large numbers and if genetically crossed with Monsanto execs (poor insects), the offspring might have a longer life-span. Heaven forbid! One extra day is far to long for the Monsanto Monsters!
Sioux Rose
Hi, Peaceman: I was thinking they were blood suckers and that qualifies to me in the league of ticks, mosquitoes, fleas... doesn't that sound like their consciousness? I just had a drive and had such clear thought about the way in which our ENTIRE economy has been turned over to equivalent gamblers, that the price of staples like rice are determined by soulless persons who BET on FUTURES. And I thought of the impact of this charade on the poorest of the poor in 3rd world countries; yet to the extent insurance companies maintain (or gain) sway over health care access, the same gamblers shooting for high stakes quid pro quo profits will play fast and loose with our (the public's) access to health care.
What kind of persons only see numbers, completely negate the impact of those numbers (in the way of actual costs) upon peoples' lives? This is what has risen to power in America, these are who determine the priorities of public policy, persons whose whole view of life is nothing more than a numbers game. Perhaps I've made a better case for mosquitoes? (Although I'm told their calculus and algebra are not up to par.)
I could just cry! Sioux Rose, you said everything I believe. Thank you for your positive comments and encouragement. I am probably a bit older than you, and have been fighting the feminist battle so long now. There is no let up on the backlash that the "masculine" Mars throws at the "sacred feminine." What I want to know is.....where is the sacred masculine?!!! Why is he not using his ample horns to rip apart this insanity of false male power?!!!
hilel and egon, thank you for your kind words. Yes, I will probably stay in this. Good advice to try to work harder to keep my positive attitude with healthy eating and living. egon, you did comfort me simply with the acknowledgement that you are also where I am. Thank you. hilel, maybe we need to form our own groups?
Sioux Rose
INANNA: I just finished a very comprehensive text that uses the Zodiac circle to extend more archetypes to men and women than Mars and Venus alone. It is interesting that about 50 years ago the hero was the quiet, thoughtful GENTLEMAN who resolved crises BECAUSE he placed self-interest aside and considered how to use his abilities and intelligence for the greater good. (Think Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck films.) That concept went away with Reagan! Since then just about every movie portrayal of alleged male power comes from the brute use of direct force. Sometimes I think movies are slick advertisements for weapons! I hate violence but have to admit, the scene in the Matrix where Neo and Trinity enter that building and all they do is shoot as they dance up and down the walls was some of the most GORGEOUS choreography that I have ever seen, and I love fine dance.
It seems to me that after WWII the darker powers in the U.S. recognized how easy it was to profit from war and its aftermath, the rebuilding phase with or without an orthodox Marshall Plan. Rather than wait for a real war, they began to invent reasons for them; and that wasn't difficult once they got hold of media ownership and through the lobby system, bought more and more votes/representatives. The result is that in order to soften the public's conscience, war fever has to be constantly stoked so Hollywood puts out a great many films where violence is both the means AND the ends. Music, if Rap can be called that, seems to me too often the equivalent of hate radio rants put to a solid beat; and TV is full of disgusting programming.
Why do people identify with Earl or that guy on 2 and l/2 men who just gets laid, could care less, and is on to "the next number"? Why is Dawg the Bounty Hunter on A & E? The entire culture has run like water seeking its own level to a virtual swamp or sewer might be more like it.
When I see someone like Watada, and there was an article about a month ago on CD by another soldier who'd seen through the morass and left the fold risking courtmartial and whatever else the macho military can use to turn advocates of peace into enemies worthy of the strictest punishment, I know some men are flying over the Mars-rules cuckoo's nest. Mars is so cowardly, busy spying on the Quakers or turning environmental activists into a category tantamount to eco-terrorist? The twisted values of this killer-state are so off the cosmic radar that I would not find it hard to believe that a higher form of intelligence somewhere in a nearby galaxy doesn't finally say, "Enough!" Deliverance can come in ways few imagine; and since I do believe in a Divine Order, and the daily list of atrocities continues to grow (and we are living in a nation where a great many comforts are still easily gotten) I have to believe a higher agency at some point will influence this earthly petri-dish. It is true that humanity must overcome its own dark impulses, that is a part of the lesson of free will; but the many suffering who have worked on greater self-mastery ought not all be turned into martyrs. At least that would be this earth plan according to Sioux Rose. Naturally the Higher powers have their own higher understanding. I have seen prayer assist healing and I have had times or should I say moments of personal deliverance; thus I believe enough prayer and enough Light has to call in a higher agency of assistance. Otherwise there are indications that Mars (along with his legions of followers, most programmed through a variety of unconscious devices) would just as soon take us ALL on a mass suicide mission. Isn't that ultimately what M.A.D is? What are the odds that Mars will voluntarily admit he's wrong, or turn the wheel over to his DIVINE PARTNER. One thing that would help to begin the healing this planet profoundly requires would be men showing a willingness to be PARTNERS to their significant others, not just the boss, or the head of household, or the power in the home, or the one served, etc. And its political equivalent would also need to be enacted, which is to say more women in fields that represent the public interest. In any case, much could be added on this topic, but I'll quit after this point: I have a woman friend about 10 years older than me (in her early 60's) who said, "We've already fought those battles and been down in those trenches! I don't want to go back." And Susan Faludi did a powerful documentation on the insidious undermining of much progress made by feminists and basic humanitarians in "Backlash." I find it helpful to expose Mars and his agenda so that perhaps some people who took all this macho crap for "God's will" will wake up. When enough souls increase their understanding, their vibrations alter and it acts like a crescendo. I hope we're not far from that critical mass!
Sioux Rose, It is indeed very interesting that the earlier than Reagan hero was the "soft" man. That is a great insight on your part. By the way....The Matrix is one of my favorite movies. Odd that I love the power exhibited by Trinity. I have a bit of the warrior in me as well. I'm reading Howard Zinn's book: "A Peoples History of the United States." This is not a good thing right now in light of my melancholy mood. If you've read it, you understand how one could become totally despondent given that the U.S. has not changed one bit since its' inception! The robber barons are at it again and the government is complicit.
Wouldn't it be heaven on earth if men were truly PARTNERS. And, I'm sure there may be some out there who are. My whole adult life has been spent looking for such a man. Now, I have given up and realize the time is not ripe for such a manifestation. Have you read any of Marian Zimmer Bradley's books? i.e., "The Mists of Avalon?" The Priestess and the Great King...the Stag. Ahhh, I can have my fantasies.
I've read (and have) Susan Faludi's book...."Backlash," and here again, history repeats itself. Everytime the paradigm shift comes close to fulfillment, the dark masculine steps in once again. It is a mystery! Do we have to be annihilated first in order to come back perfected? Is that what's in store for mankind?
Sioux Rose, I was excited to read your comment. So many things you've said....all of them my sentiments exactly. It's almost too painful to have so much validation. Words fail at times like that. I too am in my early 60's, old enough to have lived thru a few great changes. Have you read anything by Starhawk?
Well, sorry gentlemen. I don't mean to exclude you from commentary, nor do I mean to be so personal Sioux Rose. But, thank you for your words. All I can say is...I am with you.
Sioux Rose
Hi, I am in my 50's, but always bonded with women a bit older, like big sisters. I am a GREAT fan of Marion Zimmer Bradley, once joked in this forum that I went on strike (that is, would not prepare meals, was so ensconced in the book) while reading her finest in my view, "The Mists of Avalon." It explains so much!
I have read parts of Zinn's "History," and it's often referred to in this forum, plus I have a good grasp of what the U.S. has done round the world. I was reading John Perkin's "Confessions of a Professional Hit Man," and of course Naomi Klein on "Disaster Capitalism." It's tough to write as much as I do, plus keep up with this forum, plus read other books, and have a life!
I am not a big fan of Starhawk's, although she has a following among the "New Age" types in Gainesville where I lived a ways back. I find myself far more inspired by those mystics who lived and wrote before the "yuppified" l980's when Reagan turned greed into one of the 7 blessings and in my view the entire publishing field (with notable exceptions) moved towards "pragmatic" or what I prefer to term "Republican spirituality," taking a Calvinistic "You control your own reality" or "You can have whatever you envision" approach. It was all about having and getting, the primacy of personal desire, and/or ego; and that is anathema to the wisdom teachings I have gleaned from MANY sources having pursued spirituality for 40 plus years. Most of what the Theosophical Society produces, the channeled works of Edgar Cayce and Jane Roberts appeal to me.
I must run errands... we'll "meet" again in the forum. I am pleased to resonate with you in a meeting of minds.