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TechnoratiThe Terror-Industrial Complex
The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security does not come from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.
The bizarre story surrounding Siddiqui, 37, who received an undergraduate degree from MIT and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University, often defies belief. Siddiqui, who could spend 50 years in prison on seven charges when she is sentenced in May, was by her own account abducted in 2003 from her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children—two of whom remain missing—and spirited to a secret U.S. prison where she was allegedly tortured and mistreated for five years. The American government has no comment, either about the alleged clandestine detention or the missing children.
Siddiqui was discovered in 2008 disoriented and apparently aggressive and hostile, in Ghazni, Afghanistan, with her oldest son. She allegedly was carrying plans to make explosives, lists of New York landmarks and notes referring to “mass-casualty attacks.” But despite these claims the government prosecutors chose not to charge her with terrorism or links to al-Qaida—the reason for her original appearance on the FBI’s most-wanted list six years ago. Her supporters suggest that the papers she allegedly had in her possession when she was found in Afghanistan, rather than detail coherent plans for terrorist attacks, expose her severe mental deterioration, perhaps the result of years of imprisonment and abuse. This argument was bolstered by some of the pages of the documents shown briefly to the court, including a crude sketch of a gun that was described as a “match gun” that operates by lighting a match.
“Justice was not served,” Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network and the spokesperson for Aafia Siddiqui’s family, told me. “The U.S. government made a decision to label this woman a terrorist, but instead of putting her on trial for the alleged terrorist activity she was put on trial for something else. They tried to convict her of that something else, not with evidence, but because she was a terrorist. She was selectively prosecuted for something that would allow them to only tell their side of the story.”
The government built its entire case instead around disputed events in the 300-square-foot room of the Ghazni police station. It insisted that on July 18, 2008, the diminutive Siddiqui, who had been arrested by local Afghan police the day before, seized an M4 assault rifle that was left unattended and fired at American military and FBI agents. None of the Americans were injured. Siddiqui, however, was gravely wounded, shot twice in the stomach.
No one, other than Siddiqui, has attempted to explain where she was for five years after she vanished in 2003. No one seems to be able to explain why a disoriented Pakistani woman and her son, an American citizen, neither of whom spoke Dari, were discovered by local residents wandering in a public square in Ghazni, where an eyewitness told Harpers Magazine the distraught Siddiqui “was attacking everyone who got close to her.” Had Siddiqui, after years of imprisonment and torture, perhaps been at the U.S. detention center in Bagram and then dumped with one of her three children in Ghazi? And where are the other two children, one of whom also is an American citizen?
Her arrest in Ghazi saw, according to the official complaint, a U.S. Army captain and a warrant officer, two FBI agents and two military interpreters arrive to question Siddiqui at the police headquarters. The Americans and their interpreters were shown to a meeting room that was partitioned by a yellow curtain. “None of the United States personnel were aware,” the complaint states, “that Siddiqui was being held, unsecured, behind the curtain.” The group sat down to talk and “the Warrant Officer placed his United States Army M-4 rifle on the floor to his right next to the curtain, near his right foot.” Siddiqui allegedly reached from behind the curtain and pulled the three-foot rifle to her side. She unlatched the safety. She pulled the curtain “slightly back” and pointed the gun directly at the head of the captain. One of the interpreters saw her. He lunged for the gun. Siddiqui shouted, “Get the fuck out of here!” and fired twice. She hit no one. As the interpreter wrestled her to the ground, the warrant officer drew his sidearm and fired “approximately two rounds” into Siddiqui’s abdomen. She collapsed, still struggling, and then fell unconscious.
But in an article written by Petra Bartosiewicz in the November 2009 Harper’s Magazine, authorities in Afghanistan described a series of events at odds with the official version. The governor of Ghazni province, Usman Usmani, told a local reporter who was hired by Bartosiewicz that the U.S. team had “demanded to take over custody” of Siddiqui. The governor refused. He could not release Siddiqui, he explained, until officials from the counterterrorism department in Kabul arrived to investigate. He proposed a compromise: The U.S. team could interview Siddiqui, but she would remain at the station. In a Reuters interview, however, a “senior Ghazni police officer” suggested that the compromise did not hold. The U.S. team arrived at the police station, he said, and demanded custody of Siddiqui. The Afghan officers refused, and the U.S. team proceeded to disarm them. Then, for reasons unexplained, Siddiqui herself somehow entered the scene. The U.S. team, “thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and took her.”
Siddiqui told a delegation of Pakistani senators who went to Texas to visit her in prison a few months after her arrest that she never touched anyone’s gun, nor did she shout at anyone or make any threats. She simply stood up to see who was on the other side of the curtain and startled the soldiers. One of them shouted, “She is loose,” and then someone shot her. When she regained consciousness she heard someone else say, “We could lose our jobs.”
Siddiqui’s defense team pointed out that there was an absence of bullets, casings or residue from the M4, all of which suggested it had not been fired. They played a video to show that two holes in a wall supposedly caused by the M4 had been there before July 18. They also highlighted inconsistencies in the testimony from the nine government witnesses, who at times gave conflicting accounts of how many people were in the room, where they were sitting or standing and how many shots were fired.
Siddiqui, who took the stand during the trial against the advice of her defense team, called the report that she had fired the unattended M4 assault rifle at the Americans “the biggest lie.” She said she had been trying to flee the police station because she feared being tortured. Siddiqui, whose mental stability often appeared to be in question during the trial, was ejected several times from the Manhattan courtroom for erratic behavior and outbursts.
“It is difficult to get a fair trial in this country if the government wants to accuse you of terrorism,” said Foster. “It is difficult to get a fair trial on any types of charges. The government is allowed to tell the jury you are a terrorist before you have to put on any evidence. The fear factor that has emerged since 9/11 has permeated into the U.S. court system in a profoundly disturbing way. It embraces the idea that we can compromise core principles, for example the presumption of innocence, based on perceived threats that may or may not come to light. We, as a society, have chosen to cave on fear.”
I spent more than a year covering al-Qaida for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East. The threat posed by Islamic extremists, while real, is also wildly overblown, used to foster a climate of fear and political passivity, as well as pump billions of dollars into the hands of the military, private contractors, intelligence agencies and repressive client governments including that of Pakistan. The leader of one FBI counterterrorism squad told The New York Times that of the 5,500 terrorism-related leads its 21 agents had pursued over the past five years, just 5 percent were credible and not one had foiled an actual terrorist plot. These statistics strike me as emblematic of the entire war on terror.
Terrorism, however, is a very good business. The number of extremists who are planning to carry out terrorist attacks is minuscule, but there are vast departments and legions of ambitious intelligence and military officers who desperately need to strike a tangible blow against terrorism, real or imagined, to promote their careers as well as justify obscene expenditures and a flagrant abuse of power. All this will not make us safer. It will not protect us from terrorist strikes. The more we dispatch brutal forms of power to the Islamic world the more enraged Muslims and terrorists we propel into the ranks of those who oppose us. The same perverted logic saw the Argentine military, when I lived in Buenos Aires, “disappear” 30,000 of the nation’s citizens, the vast majority of whom were innocent. Such logic also fed the drive to root out terrorists in El Salvador, where, when I arrived in 1983, the death squads were killing between 800 and 1,000 people a month. Once you build secret archipelagos of prisons, once you commit huge sums of money and invest your political capital in a ruthless war against subversion, once you empower a network of clandestine killers, operatives and torturers, you fuel the very insecurity and violence you seek to contain.
I do not know whether Siddiqui is innocent or guilty. But I do know that permitting jailers, spies, kidnappers and assassins to operate outside of the rule of law contaminates us with our own bile. Siddiqui is one victim. There are thousands more we do not see. These abuses, justified by the war on terror, have created a system of internal and external state terrorism that is far more dangerous to our security and democracy than the threat posed by Islamic radicals.
162 Comments so far
Show AllThe American empire has, for decades, operated without concern for human rights and engaging in numerous abuses both at home and abroad. That is hardly news. However, this has accelerated with a level of impunity as well as level of complicity on the part of our political leadership and "we the people" over the last several years that is new and omnimous.
We are to the point that we have become a rogue nation where power has become its own justification. Elections are now only a show since that power is derived from its own concentration and existence and not from the consent of the governed. A passive and uninformed and misinformed population is well managed with the usual nauseating pieties to "supporting the troops," with the constant drumbeat of fear-mongering, and with the Orwellian appeals for the protection of the "Homeland."
Meanwhile our treasuries of resources: moral, legal, spiritual, and financial are being pillaged to condemn our future and that of future generations to perpetual darkness, fear, despair, and decline.
There is no hope.
We will not self correct since the system is so corrupt and dysfunctional that it can only spin into collapse to then lead to a decidedly grim and uncertain future. All systems social, biological, or physical can reach a point where their decline and disintegration becomes inevitable.
And that's where we are.
I fully agree - at age 66, I've seen enough of the dynamic you describe to know you've hit the nail on the head!
Well put. But new life will come from rot and decay. Eventually corrupt systems disintegrate, and are replaced by something better; and this is something to hope for. It is time for us to start imagining what replaces "the system."
Thanks. I would certainly hope that something better comes into being.
I find it hard to be hopeful on that though, since societies in decline and disintegration are usually obsessed with the security to obtain increasingly scarce and unpredictable resources as well as personal and collective security.
These fears and obsessions stifle the creativity that could create a more functional order. Instead, they foster individual and collective authoritarian impulses that seek to somehow bring order and predictability to the progressive instability and insecurity that these situations present. Think France after the fall of the Ancien Régime, Kerensky Russia, or Weimar Germany...
Sorry for the pessimism.
Sioux Rose
KM: I read somewhere that about one-third of the world's people believe in reincarnation. If you can entertain that possibility, then tragic as it may be, it's clear that a lot of people are checking out. Some may have agreed, on higher planes prior to this lifetime's inception, to be martyrs, those that risked being taken by the dark acts of war, so that humanity would (through the witness of their suffering) at last learn to place war outside its lexicon entirely. The tsunami that struck Thailand several years ago took 250,000 in a relative blink of an eye, then the quake in Pakistan took 65,000 (or a figure in that ballpark), added to this recent horrific event in Haiti, taking 200,000. And then there are the nebulous statistics of losses from America's "war against terror," while playing the lead role AS terrorist.
We know the planet cannot maintain the high numbers given the present species of consumption, a pattern being marketed worldwide. Whilst the rich nations and their wealthiest elites are the greatest offenders on the scale of ecological damage, even poor persons deplete their forests and lose the top soil necessary for viable agriculture.
Please do not take this post to suggest that I condone these losses. Rather, due to their awful pain and often equal basis in folly, I seek a higher understanding of why so much pain and loss of life (even throughout entire ecosystems) is so rabidly underway.
50 years from now our planet may have a reduced population, and I believe, far saner just systems of global governance, not of the authoritarian type, but those that truly gather the regions' leaders together to make decisions based on genuine consensus. It reminds me of the design related by Ken Keyes in "Return of the Bird Tribes." I like to think of earth as a time-share vacation plan, and knowing I will come back, I try to keep my little area in good shape. Perhaps others might do likewise if they understood they will return. Immortality alters the way we look at the potentials of our kind suspended in a journey based on a life to life continuum.
"50 years from now our planet may have a reduced population"
My fear and speculation is that the planet's population will be greatly reduced and living on a still smoking and irradiating cinder. No weapon has ever been invented that has not been used full-on in warfare. Of course, perhaps, a real nuclear disarmament will transpire, but I find that highly unlikely. I hope for future generations' sake I'm wrong.
Sioux Rose
KENT: Have you ever heard of Pat Rodegast who channeled two books, Emmanuel I and Emmanuel II? I had the privilege of sitting in on a session in New Paltz, New York maybe 15 years ago. The majority of attendants were psychologists and professionals in the healing fields. We were all asked to place a question on a tiny piece of paper and drop it into a hat. Then the channel's assistant would read the question, and Pat, opening herself to this discarnate source of wisdom would speak, and answer it. Someone in the group mentioned a nuclear-based WWIII; and while the answer given some time ago may no longer apply (?), it was, "Divine Intervention will not allow it."
Science can deliver many things, and yet there are many things it cannot answer. Religion, too cloaked in authoritarian creeds, misses the boat on many spiritual things. In my view, the mystic stands at the gap between the two. I truly believe in a Divine Order, and I see its evidence everywhere in nature, though less so with human beings who, in utilizing their gift of free will, create such dasdardly things for one another to cope with. (And many wonders, too!) You've probably heard my often long explanations that equate society's exaltation of Mars (unconscious, of course) with so much war, violence, YOY policies, and an utter breakdown of society, with true love quite rare in this world.
I hope Emmanuel's response is still viable; for if not, what you describe as the dead burning crisp of a once placental, green paradise... would not be fit for any life forms but the insects that possibly learned their blood-sucking ways in a previous phase when human beings again chose weapons/arms over joining hands. And the meek inherited the earth.
Not necessarily.
The Weimar Republic was replaced with NAZI's in post WWI Germany.
Sioux Rose
DCH: And now it is one of the more enlightened nations, having learned from the scars of war! When I spent time in Nepal at a Buddhist monastery with 80 people from around the world studying meditation, it was a young German guy (who I affectionately nick-named Copernicus) who impressed me more than anyone else in the group. There were times when we were privileged to put questions to the high monks via translators. His were so profound, and evidenced a universal consciousness. That type of mind no longer sees the nation-state as the be-all, end-all, but rather utilizes its unique cultural identity to lend its efforts to improving the world for ALL. What a great mind that young man from Germany had. And I'd like to think there were many others like him. To me, he was an ambassador of the ad hoc sort.
"And now it is one of the more enlightened nations, having learned from the scars of war!"
That is the problem in a nutshell. The U.S. has never since the civil war suffered massive war destruction, comparable to Europe after WWII. That kind of destruction does tend to turn one against war as a solution for anything.
Sioux Rose
MEMORY: Excellent post!
Some young women fear child birth, and some die during its course. Others imagine what it will be like to hold a brand new baby (fresh from the heavens) in their arms. If we focus on the fire as opposed to the Phoenix, we may shortcircuit our own roles as potential mid-wives to this huge, inevitable process, or Transition, that is already in beginning stages. Labor, anyone?
It's very bad, indeed. Trouble, big trouble, is on the horizon.
Sioux Rose
KM: I agree with your assessment. Some days I feel more positive, in spite of it, than others. But this key is always true: Crisis owns the seeds of new and unique opportunity. Also stated as, "Serendipity favors the prepared mind," and "Necessity is the Mother of invention."
I do not think we have the capacity to imagine what is next. However, the labor process that takes us to this next phase, Phoenix rising in symbolic form, will not be easy or gentle. Still, this climax may signify the lifetime we've all prepared for... where the sum of our past skills, knowledge, and inner know-how come to the fore. Often a person doesn't know what they are made of until some test warrants its demonstration. Such a catalyst runs parallel to the passion Chris Hedges has associated with war in some of his earlier writings. Living on THAT edge can galvanize the individual to produce... or go beyond his or her previous limits. Lots of us will be riding the edge, and thus obtain the opportunity to know "the rush" and exceed ourselves in what its momentum may cast us into creating.
I would add observations of Buckminster Fuller - synergy - alignment is an observable dynamic along the lines of Serendipity favoring the prepared mind.
Each generation has what it needs to for mystical allignment - love. It requires attention and exercise, particularly in tough situations.
We each see a portion, as we are part of a greater whole. The greater whole being the stuff of our being, we know the greater whole 'in our bones'.
Faith is not blind, it sees with the third eye.
Sioux Rose
OLD GOAT: Your references support the points I attempted to make. Thank you for bringing your insights to the forum. Naturally, I agree!
Sad to say, very well put. I'm 60. I've seen enough also to know that your commentary is spot on.
It is a sign of our almost complete moral degeneration that this New York jury did not have at least one citizen who refused to convict, causing a hung jury in this travesty of legal procedure. Our government shames us more and more each day.
Tony Vodvarka
"Our government shames us more and more each day."
You are right, and also we shame ourselves. The failure of even one juror to refuse to convict is sickening and frightening; not what I would have expected of the supposedly skeptical and savvy citizens of NYC.
It was only six years ago that a jury in Boise, Idaho, refused to convict Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a University of Idaho computer science student and citizen of Saudi Arabia who had been accused of terrorism and visa fraud for building and maintaining Web sites for Islamic groups.
Those 12 Idaho jurors refused to buy the government's lies and refused to be complicit in destroying an innocent man's life, even if he was an Arab. I'm not aware of any other jury in a "terrorist" trial in the U.S. that has shown the integrity and courage of these people in (very) redneck Idaho.
But maybe the feds learned something in Boise, and who's to say that, in this time when the president of the U.S. claims the right to order the murder U.S. citizens abroad, that the jurors in NYC weren't subjected to threats by the CIA? Why would the government stop at jury-tampering, if they're okay with murder?
Actually, petrkrop, it was probably more a case of the right of lawyers, in the American jury selection process, to exclude any potential juror, for any reason whatsoever, even for no reason at all. And in this case the prosecution probably excluded anyone who appeared to have an IQ above fifty.
I think the Idaho case shows, in any case, that the fringe anti-Fed cowboys of Idaho are actually more hip to the evils that lurk in the nation's capital than are the common citizens of New York City, who are perpetually bombarded with mass media propaganda.
Recall also the South Dakota jury that refused to covict the first group of defendants that were accused of murdering FBI agents in the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975 ("The Incident at Ogalala").
Good point. Thanks for that.
Sioux Rose
CLOVIS: Good points. I would add that the very fact this took place 7 years ago speaks volumes. In those same 7 years the fear-machine has been packaging its own version of the war on terror to such an extent that the entire political axis has shifted further to the right (which of course is fed by fear, in its will to control and render authoritarian "principles" the law of the land). A lot of conditioning has taken place to make sure that most can no longer BE neutral. Propaganda does that over time... like the lie told often enough.
nicely said.
Nor would any object during the Salem Witch trials.
The questions is , are American Citizens regressing out of fear of not be seen as part of "The Mob" and thus a traitor , or is it the baseness of the desire to see another SUFFER?
The next time someone suggests you should be ashamed for not supporting US troops in Afghanistan or ridiculed for comparing the US "Officials" to the Gestapo point to this as an example of not only WHY you feel that way but WHERE the mob will go when they put loyalty to Country above loyalty to truth and justice.
Sioux Rose
GWNORTH: You should be a U.S. Senator! Your perspective takes so much into account, if only we had reps like you!
I would add to your thesis the stupidity factor. The mob aspect, or the need for many to go along to get along, as opposed to risking the psychological price of being castigated as an outcast, is of course major. Yet there are so many who truly do not understand, are so enculturated to an authoritarian belief system that they trust what their "leaders" tell them; and they honesty see the world through the prism of good guys and bad, and seldom consider that their own might fall into the camp of the latter. In a word: conditioning, 24/7, the Bernays' dream machine out in full power to manufacture consent and absolutely marginalize all voices of intelligent dissent. As a result, a lot of people really have NO IDEA what's actually at stake, or going on.
Thank you, thank you! Great posts all around.
Sioux Rose, your contributions to this site are invaluable.
I just want to add one of those Seven Deadlies, Sloth, to the equation. It is one of the major human flaws - okay, make that 'Sins' - that allow the Bernaysian conditioning to take hold so completely. To those of us who do our homework, it may seem to be the stupidity factor, but in the end, my compassion takes over and I realize that there are too many variables (education, nurturing, respect - or lack of) that contribute to the corruption of the Human Spirit. Who are we to judge? For when we witness the uncorrupted, mature, Human Spirit it is awesome to behold --- R.I.P. Howard!
And most disturbingly, this laziness of which I speak leads directly to the Savior Syndrome we've been witnessing this past year.
Sioux Rose
OLD PECULIAR: This lady lion likes the pat on the head. Gracias. And I fully agree with you. It does warrant compassion to recognize the POTENTIAL of so many persons who instead have, as you put it, let sloth put their urge to learn to sleep. Most of us recall the lines from "The Once and Future King" where Merlin reminds King Arthur that in this world he may see his greatest dream tank, his most cherished love betray him, even his friends turn away. And thus what is the prescription for getting on with this thing, this precious gift called human life? Merlin defined it as learning. As a teacher, I have been interested in that; and as a natural radical given to marching to her own drummer, when I was about to graduate from SUNY at Albany, there was a surplus of teachers in New York State. Thus the protocol was for very strict criteria to be met before one would be licensed. The supervisor who was known to just drop in on te classes of novice, student-teachers had a reputation for strictness. I later learned that indeed he was a Virgo (the sign known for its natural penchant for perfectionism). Anyway, I was wild in those glorious college days, and I partied late at night only to show up to class late. He thought he had my number and warned me. Yet when he walked in on me teaching Shakespeare (I think it was Macbeth) to a group of slow readers, he was essentially mesmerized. He took me to lunch and told me "Seldom have I been more impressed with a classroom demonstration." He then admonished me that I still had to pass his final exam. I got a 97 thanks to an almost photographic memory.
The Bahai faith sees the teacher as one of the few noble professions. And it is the teacher's gift, art, and challenge to inspire that love of learning in students. What's pitted against that ideal currently is the MSM with its mesmerizing powers, the lousy faux food filler that shuts off brain chemistry, and the awful weight of our increasing materialistic obligations in the form of all the dues that "Caesar" claims from our labors and allotment of daily bread. In short, there are no simple cookie cutter answers to what ails us; for the entire society has been inculcated to the most insidious of values. In truth, a good part of the nation functions as do addicts (to a number of substances), and therefore a MASSIVE detox is called for. THAT will be part of the wake-up call the stars tell me is not long in coming.
Thank you for the glowing words. They keep me going as a mostly unacknowledged writer.
Beautiful. I look forward to reading that book of yours.
Sioux Rose
Old Peculiar: Thank you for your kindness.
What could be the crux of this article is when Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, accurately point out that, "It is difficult to get a fair trial in this country if the government wants to accuse you of terrorism." As Tony V. notes, not one juror on that trial apparently had the intelligence to question whether the U.S. government could possibly have fabricated the charges against Ms. Siddiqui in order to promote their bogus war on terrorism. Perhaps the solution is to make sure that any trials involving charges of terrorism against individuals, either foreign or domestic, be held on neutral ground to ensure that an American jury will not be swayed by their patriotic emotions. One has to also wonder how much exposure this trial has received in the American corporate media.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
There have been scattered reports about the allegations against Ms. Siddiqui, scant intelligent coverage of her trial. This article is the first that I've read that even mentions she has two children who are missing. Few Americans know that we imprisoned and tortured children (and may still do so far as I know) in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oh, but in Pakistan, there's lots of press and very large protests that you also didn't hear about. The Pakistanis correctly view the USA as an enemy that's invaded their country, to the point where India is no longer seen as the greatest threat. The current government of Pakistan will not stand much longer unless it starts to actively fight against the USA.
Why can't more people in this country try to imagine themselves in a country that is the subject of all of thus USA bullshit? We seem to think its okay to just go occupy any country we feel like. Well, suppose the US was occupied by, oh, say, China. I guess we'd just love that. We'd just love the government of China wouldn't we?
We are occupied by ourselves. Evidence: the Patriot Act and other executive directives combined with no accountibility for the massive law breaking done.
Have you ever considered that Big Brother doesn't watch us; rather, we watch it?
Kent,
Thank you for making this point. In its dealings with the international community, US behavior defines the audacity of hypocrisy at full stretch.
Through its arrogant and lofty rhetoric claiming the doctrine of "preventative war," its repeated failure to honor international treaties, resolutions, and laws it finds inconvenient, and by committing acts of naked aggression, terrorism, subversion, and economic interventions in the affairs of sovereign, foreign nations, the US declares itself EXEMPT, with impunity, from the principles of universality, i.e., the application to itself the same standards it applies to others. Per Noam Chomsky, "... if we adopt the principle of universality : if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others -- more stringent ones, in fact -- plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good and evil. ”
It's hard to get even an unfair trial if the government accuses you of terrorism. They disappear people.
The ones who should have been on trial are the ones who abducted her in the first place. This is madness.
Good article by Hedges, about a very important case that should be getting more press.
One comment, however. Hedges writes that "the threat posed by Islamic extremists, while real, is also wildly overblown, used to foster a climate of fear and political passivity, as well as pump billions of dollars into the hands of the military, private contractors, intelligence agencies and repressive client governments including that of Pakistan."
This, of course, is true, but he neglects a couple of important aspects of the problem, the first being that it is very much in the interests of Israel and the Zionists in the US to overplay, if not feed, the terrorist threat, as this plays directly into their own scenario of the Middle East problem and helps strengthen the already strong identification of America's interests (an angle much cultivated by the MSM) with those of Israel. Clearly, this aspect of the question is inseparable from the self-feeding needs of the MIC as articulated by Hedges, but it still bears being stated more explicitly.
The other aspect his article neglects is that the Siddiqui "trial," with its clearly false testimony and bizarre background, fits the pattern of trumped-up events, including false confessions obtained by torture and mysterious car bombings that seem to serve only the interests of the occupiers, used by the US government and military to justify wars and military actions that have no clear, irrefutable justification in fact or evidence.
I think both these considerations are essential to a fuller understanding of what this terrible show trial represents.
The saddest thing is that which you correctly label "trumped-up events" are swallowed hook, line and sinker by most of our fellow citizens.
from the article:
"The leader of one FBI counterterrorism squad told The New York Times that of the 5,500 terrorism-related leads its 21 agents had pursued over the past five years, just 5 percent were credible and not one had foiled an actual terrorist plot. These statistics strike me as emblematic of the entire war on terror.
Terrorism, however, is a very good business. The number of extremists who are planning to carry out terrorist attacks is minuscule, but there are vast departments and legions of ambitious intelligence and military officers who desperately need to strike a tangible blow against terrorism, real or imagined, to promote their careers as well as justify obscene expenditures and a flagrant abuse of power."
yes, one of the great things about the extortion business is the ability to play both sides concurrently...
if you don't have actual terrorists to justify your expensive, and invasive, 'security', you can BE the terrorist...
Don't forget, US defense/security is our largest jobs/welfare program, but don't tell that to Tea Baggers as they hate socialism.
km0591,
I hear your despair and frustration with what does seem to be an overwhelming tsunami of evil. And yes, I think we have been a rogue nation for some time now. Very few question an investment in weapons that is greater than all of the other nations of the world COMBINED.
But there ARE those few, who despite overwhelming conditioning, misinformation and manipulation, see through it all to the truth. They are questioning the actions of empire. The seemingly insatiable quest for more, more, more. And there are growing numbers of people who are questioning the plausibility of progress inside our corporate-controlled duopoly.
There are people, like Chris Hedges and like Howard Zinn and like you whose humanity resonates with the fullness of compassion that we were meant to attain.
Yes, knowledge can be isolating and painful. It has always been easier to collaborate than to confront.
I have the sense that we are nearing a precipice of change. We need every single person like you to be at the front vanguard of that change to keep it on the track of human progress.
Don't ever gve up.
Thank you for this post. Words like these always make me feel uplifted because I agree with their sentiment. Zinn wrote an article explaining how history is full of unpredictable and sudden revolutions that have exploded out of the bleakest times and I believe and hope this is one of these times.
I too can see a precipice of real change on the horizon. And though it won't happen with this administration I do believe it will happen sooner than most expect.
A jury trial means being judged by people too dumb to get out of jury duty.
Plus those that want to fry some ragheads.
I do not want to get out of jury duty. I want to hang a jury in a bullshit drug case.
You set your sights too low, given the endless B.S. that Federal prosecutors use to win drug cases such as framing the workers at state approved marijuana distribution outlets as drug kingpins,* it’s my hope to get a jury to return a verdict of Not Guilty.
*While this tactic was common during the administration of George W. Bush supposedly under Obama the Feds will not be going after state sanctioned medical marijuana facilities. It’s my guess that even under the new policy the Feds will still use every dirty trick allowed during the war on drugs to send minor offenders away for years.
The war on drugs laid the entire ground work for destroying the Bill of Rights. Had there not been a million holes shot in the Bill of Rights and the rights of the accused during the war on drugs Bush would not have had such an easy task in shredding the rest of the Bill of Rights
Sioux Rose
MADHOOSIER: Excellent post. Your final paragraph echoes something I have been also relating for years, and few seem willing or wanting to connect the ominous dots. I am very glad that you see what I have been noticing. I remember standing on the White House lawn for a huge anti-Vietnam war protest with thousands of long-hairs, and lots of joints going around. Plus we burned effigies of Richard Nixon RIGHT there. The neocons of that time knew they could not block our right to vote, unless they could come up with ways to charge us with breaking laws. So they made the leisure drug of our generation into the great taboo and presto, 2 million incarcerated. (Obviously this is not the only category used to imprison Americans.)Peace-loving peace-pipe passing youth suddenly on the "most wanted" lists for drug-based detention, and a nation of "crimial records" is born, or should I say reborn. And then in some instances this voting block's right to vote has been negated. It's been an insidious little assault on liberty. Now they've worked to erode the very CONCEPT of privacy, starting with the Jerry Springer tell-all, spill-your-guts talk shows, to the "Survivor-styled" public's viewing eyes cast over others' private acts, deeds, and thoughts. From there, it's onto making torture into another entertainment feature, and suddenly, all BASES for civil liberties slip-slide away. The dark side has never lacked for imagination or resourcefulness. All the money pouring in from right wing think tanks, and/or military (DARPA) initiatives and programs poses no shortage to an invasive set of 21st century style tactics, all improvisations upon the old theme of total control of citizens, particularly those capable of stepping out of line in thought or deed. Like us.
Standard procedure in The Homeland.
Welcome To The Homeland
Welcome to Germany
Welcome to the Hyper-White Techno-Evangelical Inquisition.
800 billion additional dollars to the Lockheed-Halliburton-Raytheon War Machine
Now up to over a trillion dollars for the Brown&Root- Dyncorp- Blackwater Killing Complex;
In addition to the regular 500 million or so a minute for the
Narcotics Trafficking- CIA- Military- Industrial- World's Greatest Polluter- Criminal Think Tank Complex
Small scale tactical nuclear weapons cocktails
served up to brown skinned children
with distended bellies
by well-manicured barbarians in Citadels and Mansions
by their servants in boardrooms
with distended bellies
With 725 military bases
With 350 outposts
In 132 countries
In Every jungle
In Every tree
All baby-faced tamarinds run for cover, hiding in their mother's breasts
America- A fundamentally sick society
America- A culture of conquest
Get out of Iraq Get out of Viet Nam
America get out of Colombia
America get off the Rez
America get out of Afghanistan
America get out of etcetera
America, a fundamentally sick society.
Welcome to Plastic Racist Nation
Welcome to McAmeriWal-Martika
Germany- The Fatherland
America- The Homeland
Welcome to Soft Fascism
General Reinhard Gehlen head of German military intelligence on the Eastern front and his network of spies and terrorists were brought over to the USA after World War 2 in the now well known Operation Paperclip. From these advisers and functionaries, Allen Dulles, copying many of the methods utilized by the likes of Herr Gehlen, shaped what we now know to be the CIA.
Instruments of Statecraft
Counterinsurgency Literature
Strangle Them- Starve Them
Hold an election
Call it Democracy
I pledge allegiance to the United Sports Utility Vehicle
of Der Father- der Home Land of the Fee
Home Land of Wage Slavery
Land of Tidy White Bestiality
A Land of Pre-Ordained Brutality
A Land of Hyper-Tense Entreprenurial Mentality
Overthrow Castro
Overthrow Arbenz
Overthrow Mossadegh
Overthrow Chavez
Overthrow National Sovereignty
Overthrow Dignity
It is time to stop living
The Lie that is America- I Secede
Chill dude your going to give yourself a stroke. Its not worth getting yourself so crazed. Your allowing these assholes to defeat u by letting their sheer madness to infect your soul.
I disagree. Writing is a form of therapy and helps keep us sane.
Sioux Rose
SEAGLASS: Your implies possession, such as "Please take your coat." You're means you are, and it's a verb. Thus, "You're allowing these..." etc. As a former English teacher, I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking poorly of those posts that don't demonstrate even a 5th grade educational level in their use of grammar and diction. And you sure sound like someone else on these threads whose whole purpose appears to be the human equivalent of dispensing Prosac. "Stay calm, everyone. Everything is under control. Just extend a little more patience and trust towards your benevolent leaders." Sure...
I share your concerns and linger on the tantalising idea of secession.
But I think we need to take some resonsibility for the terror that our nation manifests for others, for the violence and the poverty of both resources and soul that we represent.
What if those of us who want to resist secede through the action of tax-resistance? If enough people had the courage to with-hold economic support, it would slow down their system.
By the way, seaglass, your flip dismissal of the moving work of art posted by mcoyote is really frustrating. Read it again, I think you might learn something, geeeeeeeeeeeeeez!
Well, sure, but... how 'bout that Super Bowl? Who dat?
I understand that one of the teams won! Surely THAT will turn your frown upside down!
· Yr Obd't Servant
mccoyote,
Great stuff man!
So what if it is negative! So is half of the stuff on here but at least this is creative.
Very well done!
jasondylan
Sioux Rose
MCOYOTE: Great post! It should be a mantra featured as progressive radio rap!
Thanks Sioux.
Don't write much poetry these days. Wrote this a few years back. Maybe I need to rekindle a flame.
Sioux Rose
MCOYOTE: Looks like the flame is burning brightly. The forum has just given you a standing ovation. Bravo! Now you can write your next poem or opus!
I like your poetry, coyote: "Tidy White Bestiality / Pre-Ordained Brutality / Hyper-Tense Entrepreneurial Mentality"
Quite a triad.
Reminds me that once upon a time Bob Dylan wrote lyrics as good as that.
Every word rings true. What else is there to say?
This epigraph form Hedges' "Empire of Illusion" says it well:
"We had fed the heart on fantasy,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare."
William Butler Yeats
It is a challenge to be simultaneously aware of the massive horrors being implemented worldwide,from death, to control,to theft and still not be sickened.
I am curious if people who experienced the Great Depression and Hilters greatest depth of power perceive today as worse.
Would a tax revolt actually starve the government or would they just print more money, and would that create hyper-inflation?
Does all the money borrowed, in the form of treasury bonds,which has the USA at the economic mercy of China, maintain the trade deficit or does it support the yearly budget also?
The government IS going to print more money because it must to pay off the bonds which support both trade and budget deficits.
"I am curious if people who experienced the Great Depression and Hilters greatest depth of power perceive today as worse."
My mother (79) and aunt (84) are incredulous at the actions of the US Empire and say it no longer represents them. I second their opinions and have written that the federal government has effectively seceded from the states that created it.
Thanks Karlof
we already have had massive inflation in housing..... in the 1970's and 80's you could get a nice house for around 1.5 times your income...... Now you can get a decent house for around 10 times your income.....
and there went your discresionary income......
I call it the 20 dollar rule..... every utility, insurance policy etc wants that last 20 dollars from my wallet.....
the problem is THEY ALL WANT IT - leaving me bankrupted on the side of the road in the ditch.....greedy bastards!
Some points about the inflation in house prices:
At the same time that property prices have massively inflated, salaries have stayed fairly stagnant.
The result being that people who already own (nice) houses / properties see the value of those properties inflating fast, their monetary wealth goes up, even if their salaries are stagnant. People who are trying to get a house for the first time, however face huge issues: ever increasing price of housing, combined with stagnant salaries.
This economic policy of inflating land prices, while holding down the cost of labour, has been ongoing for the last 30 years.
Sioux Rose
RFLOH: In Florida BOTH are going down at the same time. Care to wager a prediction on what that will lead to?
>>Does all the money borrowed, in the form of treasury bonds,which has the USA at the economic mercy of China, maintain the trade deficit or does it support the yearly budget also?.<<
Both of these I am pretty sure is based upon borrowed money, but then the government for half the year is operating on the cuff.
Gary
“I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
As I recall the Great Depression from my childhood and the end of the Hitler regime as a young war widow, those times were so different and the values and interests of ordinary people so different that it might as well have been a different world as well as a different time.
When the full exposure of the results of Hitler's pathology and the full truth of the results of the twisted minds that conceived of such evil were revealed, ordinary Americans recoiled in horror and disbelief. It was not as though no one had never known such unspeakable things had ever happened before. We knew, but they had happened far away in what we thought of as less civilized, almost imaginary places that seemed totally removed from the familiar USA.
For my generation, having had husbands and brothers, uncles and cousins, and all the young men we had grown up with, fighting and dying to make the world safe for all of us back home the final revelations of Hitler's barbarity made it all seem up close and personal. But we all knew such insanity would never be unleashed on the world again for we would never allow it to happen. We were sure of that.
Life in America in these times may be good for some people, but for too many, it is worse, much worse than I ever remember. The economic conditions, however, bad as they are, still allow for many more ordinary families to live much better than the average family in the depths of the Great Depression. The deprivation of the 30's was so wide-spread that almost everyone was affected and in such a way that, as the old saying goes, you'd just have had to be there to understand. I remember when my mother was thrilled to get a new broom at Christmas. Forget new clothes, toys, or new anything. That continued through the Great War as everything was rationed.
But that was all right as we knew things would get better--which is the difference between these dreary economic times and these. Not much of a sense of hope today. When I was growing up wearing hand-me-down shoes and dreaming of the wonderful things I was going to do and all the wonderful places I would go when I grew up, we all knew things were going to get better--and in the meantime, we dreamed, we shared and we coped. We also had a president who gave wonderful fireside radio talks that pulled the whole country together and made us feel he shared in our problems and was working to make things better. Today's dreams, in contrast, have largely given way to anxiety about an uncertain future for children and young people.
There is a loss of faith today that corrodes and undermines the public trust to the point almost of mass paranoia. We've been lied to and decieved by people we should be able to trust for so long that lies seem to substitute for public policy. Small wonder that new conspiracy theories arise every day. Nothing, as it turns out, is ever what it appears to be. We vote for one thing and get another. We can't be sure our vote is counted and we feel certain our voices are not heard. Books are being written by professionals who warn us of the taking over of big business and public power by psychopaths who masquerade as sympathetic to populist causes while conning the unwary. The union itself seems to be coming unglued. We are trapped in endless, senseless, contrived, brutal wars and the powers that be openly speak of wars of the future. These futile wars have been going on almost continuously since my youth and still they continue at enormous cost of lives and of treasure into my old age.
I think America has lost its way and I grieve for my country, but I do not for one minute believe all is lost. If we look at the past, it becomes more and more clear that history has valuable lessons to teach us if we can just pay close attention to those lessons. We have choices. Nothing remains the same for long and it is pointless to try to cling to notions of what we have lost or to wish to return to what we think of as better times. But we can build a better future if we make wiser choices.
Most human beings are better people than they are made out to be and want a better world. Why should the peaceful, hardworking majority be dominated and manipulated by the elite minority? We need to have a government that represents the needs of the people instead of catering to those who are lost in some fantasy of great riches or world domination. A better world is not only possible for those who now despair, but we may be on the very threshold of change. Let it happen peacefully.
There is already a collective grass roots awakening to the need for genuine change--not only in the way we are governed, but in the way we think and of what we value as a people. I keep hoping these transformations will come, and come soon--but doubt it will happen from the top down but rather from the bottom up--from the people themselves. I may not be here to see it, but I have a lot of faith in the new generations now coming up.
Thank You for your comment
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Excellent comment, Basenjis.
Thank you for taking the time to express your ideals. Good stuff.
Sioux Rose
BASENJIS: Wonderful and enlightened post. Thank you for still believing in the higher spirit of humankind, and for sharing the powerful witness of your own personal experience and wisdom.
May I add that these are my thoughts on the 65th anniversary of the death of my young husband, a commando in WWII. He lost his life in Luxemburg on Feb. 8, 1945 parachuting ahead of the US forces in the final stages of the Battle of the Bulge. He was 21 years old. My 19 year old brother was killed 4 month earlier in France.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
"And where are the other two children, one of whom also is an American citizen?"
"Siddiqui’s defense team pointed out that there was an absence of bullets, casings or residue from the M4, all of which suggested it had not been fired. They played a video to show that two holes in a wall supposedly caused by the M4 had been there before July 18."
This is most probably a standard CIA/military cover-up for a botched hand-over from the CIA torturers to the Military & FBI for what they originally hoped would be a Military Tribunal Commissions trial they could kite into a propaganda coup (with an even grander fabricated terrorist plot) they could pimp to the corporate McNews whores. It probably went bad when she panicked and tried to flee the police station unarmed so, bullet-heads and cowards that they are, one of them panicked and shot her so they had to re-rig the story from there on.
Sound like a reasonable scenario except by her own account she did not try to flee but simply stood up and frightened the CIA and FBI cowards (convinced by their own propaganda to be over-wary of suspected "terrorists"); who then shot her in the stomach, and tried to cover-up their error.
And succeeded in doing so.
Gary
“You should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster”
-- Quentin Crisp
Being able to "convict" a Muslim woman of terror-related charges is incredibly important to our genocidal crusade called "war on terror". A conviction like this wins over milions of US hearts and opens them up to tolerate bombings of houses filled with women and children, in an effort to terrorize locals into fleeing, or putting down their arms against the mammoth aggressor.
"These abuses, justified by the war on terror, have created a system of internal and external state terrorism that is far more dangerous to our security and democracy than the threat posed by Islamic radicals."
The problem as always, Mr Hedges, is the so-called justification.
The 'war to end war' had a much nicer ring to it. Even 'making the world safe for democracy' had some appeal despite the questionable credentials of its primary advocates. But the jingoist sloganeers have fallen short ever since.
I suppose it's increasingly difficult to find any positive bases for aggressive warfare in a nation that so exemplifies every negative value imaginable. So fighting to alleviate the pervasive terror of the citizenry will have to do, I guess, even 'tho the great preponderance of that terror, both internal and external, originates within the state that is allegedly leading the fight against it.
One wonders at times whether a more honest 'U.S. war for the expansion of multinational corporate interests with no allegiance to any country' might not work just as well with the largely indifferent American populace. It would certainly save a lot of global wincing at such obviously phony American propaganda.
We can speculate for years as to Siddiqui's guilt or innocence but the fascists in the military and the FBI have muddied the waters so much that we'll never know the truth, which is a central element to their strategy. Have "witnesses" tell a hundred conflicting stories, then throw her in prison regardless of substantial evidence. That's how we handle accused terrorists. They're guilty the moment they're accused, taking a page from Kafka. Soon we'll all be Joseph K.
Siddiqui is just a scapegoat to illustrate a point. In the phony war on terror, anyone anywhere may be snatched up for extraordinary rendition or assassinated in broad daylight to drive the lesson home: Remain in fear of terrorism or risk being accused of it yourself. Obama endorses this terrorism practiced on the public at large. How many more lives will he destroy in this delusional war on "terror", where those allegedly fighting the war are the REAL terrorists? The president being terrorist in chief.
"The president being terrorist in chief."
Good grief! Let us not award any addtitional titles to an office with powers that already exceed those that absolute monarchs of days gone by could only dream of in their wildest imaginings. A jeweled crown is the only missing item, and even Caesar was smart enough to reject such an obvious symbol of tyrannical power.
Perhaps he could get away with a small laurel wreath and maybe a codpiece for certain military occasions.
Hah! Been there, seen that.
Codpiece = Mission Accomplished
Ephraim: "Remain in fear of terrorism or risk being accused of it yourself."
That pretty well sums it up.
Another variant, which we could call the Cass Sunstein Law, might be: "Believe in terrorism, or you are a terrorist."
Mr Spock:
"No sign of intelligent life here, one to beam up."
"..permitting jailers, spies, kidnappers and assassins to operate outside of the rule of law contaminates us with our own bile...have created a system of internal...state terrorism far more dangerous than Islamic radicals."
Our "noble minded" leaders do not care in the least about what physical danger we in. You can tell that by the food, health-care, consumer and environmental laws we all live under.
This country's corporate/gov't does not deserve our allegiance any longer. They deserve only our contempt and need to be resisted and defeated in order to save the majority.
Sioux Rose
AREMAGEN: So true! "Unsafe at any speed" on steroids! And that's why, in fiction, I cloned Ralph Nader. We'd need a LEGION of him, clones of a modern equivalent of David to stand up to so many industrial Goliaths. Luckily, nature, source of so much of the wealth claimed by these "artificial persons" has about had it with the abuse... and when the great Mother gets fed up, a whole lotta shakin starts goin on.
Sioux Rose
I look forward to your comments. Thank you for them. I bet you've read Ceanne DeRohan. I'm not conventionally religious yet I feel that the only way out of this is Divine intervention. I concur, Mother nature always wins.
Seems you've written fiction. Re: the reading thereof. Where, what, how?
PeaceLoveTruthBeauty!
Jack Chase
Sioux Rose
JACK CHASE: I've been writing movie scripts since 1995 and so far not sold a thing. Since I believe in my work (and a few friends have told me they're quite good), I began self-publishing some of these scripts, converted into novels. One is entitled, "The Caretakers," and another, "To See Among The Blind." I just completed a second edition of a very humorous children's book (for "children of all ages"), entitled, "Cassandra's Tale." It makes use of insects to portray the twelve original archetypes, a/k/a Zodiac signs and each one's unique character. It's my idea of a way to teach children the great circle, heaven's model of democracy in which the long-standing ism divisions may be at last transcended. It also offers the ancient recipe, the key one that bypasses the nonsensical "one size fits all" approach of our times. In contrast it reflects the unique and Divine purposes assigned to each of the 12 sacred paths. Jesus chose 12 disciples and Abraham founded 12 tribes. This "12 thing" has a certain cosmic ring to it!
If you google my name, my website pops up with info on all my books. I have written eight, with two anticipated ones now in development. I appreciate your asking and of course, am thankful for your complimentary acknowledgement!
Thank you Sioux Rose, way. I will look them up. My heart dilates reading your and other comments here. I am familiar with the Twelve of twelve thousand. Maybe there is something to the metaphysical/spiritual reading I've been doing since teenage days, oh so long ago. As an artist whose income has been turned off like a faucet, thinking it's not called making a living for nothing, and not too happy about, nor ready for, the alternative, I hope I can hang on to see Mother in all Her glory, where She needs to be, again.
"Trust those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." Andre Gide
Jack Chase
Sioux Rose
JACK: I can appreciate the status of "starving artist" as our nation does not reward its artists, mystics, poets, visionaries, or inventors. If you go to my site and read the blurbs on the books I have available and then email me, I'd be happy to send you one gratis copy of your choice. If I did what I did for the money, I'd have quit long ago! Like the commercial for Levy's Rye Bread done years ago, I, too "answer to a higher authority."
"They deserve only our contempt and need to be resisted and defeated in order to save the majority."
What does it look like to resist and defeat the "country's corporate/gov't"? How do you propose to dissolve your allegiance? Sarah Palin suggests we need a new "revolution". Her words are empty rhetoric. I doubt she knows what she is saying. You, I assume, are much brighter. So what do you suggest?
I propose to dissolve my allegiance to the leaders of this country, not allegiance to democracy.
A person can start out by simply withdrawing any support whatsoever from the R & D parties. You help the ones on the bottom, you automatically help the ones on the top.
There are other political parties; socialist, green, that you can vote for even though they won't win. It would be a protest (resistance) vote.
Pick an organization that is apolitical and support their efforts like Nader's organizations.
Write letters to the editor and voice your displeasure with the two-party system.
Whenever you get mail from the Ds or Rs write Return on the envelope, mail it and make them pay for it.
I plan to write Senator Durbin from Illinois and tell them that if he votes for health-care reform without a public option or SB 7139 (a law which will automatically bailout any future bank failures) that I will vote for neither the new D Senator nor the D Governor.
I haven't voted for a D since 1988.
Stay healthy everyone.
Health is your #1 priority.
Healthy and informed.
Every healthy body will eventually be required for the next Runnymede.
Do you think we will EVER pack the DC mall again like back in the 60's?
There is and has been a better way for decades.
The better way is not in the interest of profits and control of the goy.
Play dumb and hands at the 10 & 2 while driving.
The King and his Knights do not like serfs who sass back.
And I DO feel bad for anyone who has brown skin or middle eastern features in this country.
Seriously, I'm a white dude with blue eyes and the state probably considers me a threat.
"At the trial 3 of 4 psychiatric experts concurred that she was faking mental illness." It seems that Siddiqui did not help her case by outbursts in court regarding terror plots. The prosecution reported that the Afghans took her into custody due to notes "referring to mass-casualty attacks and New York landmarks," hardly relevant to the case being tried. "The judge denied a motion for a mistrial. The trial took an unusual turn when an FBI official asserted that the fingerprints taken from the rifle, which was purportedly used by Aafia to shoot at the U.S. interrogators, did not match hers."
"According to Pakistani newspaper The News International the Taliban have threatened to execute US soldier Bowe Bergdahl in retaliation for Siddiqui's conviction"
Wikipedia is worth checking.
It seems this lady was mentally unstable and unfit for trial.
Perhaps they're running low on mentally stable 'terrorists' that can be brought to face U.S. 'justice' and a jury of their 'peers.' For that matter, has anyone checked the mental stability of the prosecuting authorities recently?
Haaaaaaaaa
Or checked to see what meds they are on?
"Mentally unstable and unfit for trial". I can imaine that might be true after five years of torture and solitary confinement, the loss of two of her children, one an American citizen, being dumped on the street, and then re-arrested because she was making raving threats of revenge and tried on a clearly false charge, after being shot twice in the stomach. Can't we see and feel, as American citizens and, hopefully, aware human beings, the surreal torture this person has been put through and just exactly what filthy, amoral and degenerate practices our taxes are paying for?
Tony Vodvarka
Sioux Rose
TONY: Thank you for your genuine humanity! Everything you said is so painfully true!
POET: Great post. You definitely played sleuth on this one with class!
When do we get really angry? One gets tired of anger, there is so much out there, but occasionally something like this comes up, so stinking, so vile and transparently evil, so unaccountable, that it is hard to know what to do.
I agree. This extremely toxic mixture of fundamentalist christianity, fundamentalist capitalism and imperial militarism has resulted in an almost psychotic mind-set and worldview amongst the Imperial operatives at the heart of the Military-Industrial-Financial-Media Complex, and it is this psychosis that U.S. forces are unleashing and inflicting on innocent people all over the world. This worldview is so insane that the people *inside* it dont even know how existentially insane they are.
But there is more. I think elites all over the world know that the global industrial system is going to collapse, and what we are really seeing behind all of the various insanities is the elites grabbing what they can while there is still something to grab, not giving a damn what kind of damage they do and how many people they kill, and this mind-set is slowly spreading everywhere as the human race approaches global catastrophe if we do not radically change our adaptation to existence.
Check out this article by Richard Heinberg:
http://www.postcarbon.org/article/67429-china-or-the-u-s-which-will
"I think elites all over the world know that the global industrial system is going to collapse ..."
At the least, they are very much aware that a major shift in the global power structure is on the near horizon and are scurrying madly to secure for themselves whatever they perceive as possible salvation from moment to moment.
So-called "collateral damage" has never been a significant consideration. It's just more prevalent and noticeable during "periods of adjustment" to use their own terminology.
Very astute and frightening article. Wish I could disagree with it, but I cannot.
Well worth a read, but not if one is already in a depressed mood.
A sniplet: >>....In addition to its huge debt burden, the U.S. also suffers from a shrinking manufacturing base, a big trade deficit, eroding quality of education, and a foreign policy that serves the interests of arms manufacturers while undermining the long-term interests of the nation. Regarding the last of these items, a 2006 World Public Opinion poll showed large majorities in four leading ally nations (Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, and Indonesia), together accounting for a third of the Muslim world's population, believe the U.S. is determined to destroy or undermine Islam. Within those countries, most people surveyed support attacks on American targets. And it just so happens that most of the world's future oil supplies will be coming from Muslim nations. Brilliant.<<
Gary
“Disaster is a natural part of my evolution. Toward tragedy and dissolution.”
-- Chuck Palahniuk
Well stated.
"Siddiqui, 37, who received an undergraduate degree from MIT and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University,..."
********
Was she doing contract work for the Pentagon or the CIA as a very smart person who had an advanced degree in neuroscinece?
"Siddiqui,...was by her own account abducted in 2003 from her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children—two of whom remain missing—and spirited to a secret U.S. prison?"
************
What did she suppossedly know that her captors wanted to learn so badly that they were willing to torture her for 5 years?
*************
"Siddiqui was discovered in 2008 disoriented and apparently aggressive and hostile, in Ghazni, Afghanistan, with her oldest son. She allegedly was carrying plans to make explosives, lists of New York landmarks and notes referring to “mass-casualty attacks.” But despite these claims the government prosecutors chose not to charge her with terrorism or links to al-Qaida—the reason for her original appearance on the FBI’s most-wanted list six years ago."
**************
As I ponder these passages in Hedges article, it sounds more and more like elements of Lee Harvey Oswald (a highly intelligent suppossedly radicalized individual),
James Earl Ray (who was extradicted on some comparitivly minor charge from England in order to take the fall for the assassination of MLK Jr. for which he was never tried in court because he copped a guilty plea on very bad advice from his legal counsel)
and Sirhan Sirhan (the suppossed assassin of RFK who couldn't shoot straight, had a gun with the wrong caliber bullets than those that killed RFK, and could not remember anything about the whole affair--including the incoherant scribblings in notebooks in his own hand that were found in his living spece--despite repeated attempts through hypnosis to help him to do so)
*******************
Could Siddiqui be an MK Ultra subject whose mission designed by her handlers is to have her give her life in order to further their contrived "war on terror"? Of course I don't know for sure but the whole episode has the familiar and rotten stink of CIA mind control all over it.
Poet
One never knows if and when such games are being played, but it is certainly possible.
Great post, poet. Let's not forget Zacharias Moussaoui as well, who was completely off his rocker from all the 'enhanced interrogation' by the time he came to trial. Moussaoui was the one whose laptop was confiscated by the FBI, who were then slapped down by higher-ups in Washington and told they were not allowed to open it. Maybe he too knew a few damning things before his brain got scrambled?
You are closer to the truth than 99.9% of the population could ever consider.
Check out tonight's guest on Coast to Coast AM discussing electronic harassment:
http://www.satweapons.com/
Along with free energy, manipulation of the human mind, on an individual (MK Ultra) and mass (HAARP) scale is SO fantastic that who's going to believe it?
It's been around since the 50's and I suspect our buddy Kim Jong Il has played around with the technology a little too much on himself.
I suspect the use of these technologies on very bright individuals like Siddiqui is exactly what the shadow Gvt. has been doing for decades, kicking them to the curb once their usefulness has waned.
People don't know the half of what is meant by "Assymetric Warfare" and "Full Spectrum Dominance"
They are warring on our very mind.
But exploding boobs sells copy and the Goy look no further than that to be afraid.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
"....and the Goy look no further than that to be afraid." ???
Does this mean all the right-wing American Zionist Mitnagdim don't?
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
She had too much expert scientific knowledge in such a specific brain-related field--very expensive and time consuming training to be so readily expendable--UNLESS they brought her in with her expertise in neuro-science thinking that with her Pakistani language and cultural skills she might be of special use in helping to develop some new ultra-torture method or torture technology for use on the Pakistani Taliban. Then when she saw what they wanted her to do she freaked out, they realized she was probably going to whistleblow to the government or someone in the press who might actually listen. Or maybe she tried to whistleblow internally and was targeted for retaliation by higher-ups. So they psy-oped her until she was extremely mentally unbalanced and terrified, did God knows what to her other children, and plopped her down in an alien city for the OTHER half of the torture/"military justice" equation to use her for her propaganda value.
Excellent hypothesis.
Nothing is too far out these days.
I often wonder how far down the rabbit hole these experts in cutting edge science go before they don't like what they're seeing.
I put her case in with the mysterious deaths of prominent microbiologists the past few years.
And I am mystified how Sibel Edmonds is still free.
Surely they could have trumped up charges on her to clam her up.
Nothing can be allowed to affect the agenda!!!
William S. Burroughs used to say that there was 'no job so dirty, so foul that you could not find a "#cking" scientist somewhere to do it.' Which is not to say they're all bad. I prefer a good scientist to an economist or a politician any day.
Sibel Edmonds was smart to go public early and big. If she hadn't she might already be dead or in prison on some spurious charge. Even though she didn't get a lot of MSM TV coverage she did get bursts of print media coverage in the "papers of record" and she raised enough of a stink to get heard by a few senior Democratic members of Congress and then wrote several articles and started her own organization and website. She's too out and well-known by the human antennae of the political establishment for the night crawlers to get her. They deal with people like her by ordering their mass media to ignore her. The general public never heard of her therefore she doesn't exist.
Chris Hedges was interviewed by Sibel recently. Check out her excellent podcast; Sibel Edmonds Boiling Frogs. Also Scott Horton has interviewed Sibel on antiwar radio. But so few are really listening.
Thanks for the reference to Sibel Edmonds podcast. I will definitely listen!
I think that Metal is correct when he states that she was smart to come out early. I also remember that she and Daniel Ellsberg appeared together a few times.
Q: Last night, I listened to the Sibel Edmonds/Peter Coillins interview Chris Hedges. Thanks for bringing it to my attention! Excellent!
Sioux Rose
METAL: It's like a built-in fail-safe, in that those who know too much can be taken, accused, tortured, and then once their minds are bent, the common perception is that their testimony is too whacked out to be taken seriously. What a defense! Kafka meets "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," with a touch of "Blue Sky" thrown in.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Hi Sioux Rose,
I'm not familiar with your reference re: "Blue Sky." Is that from a novel or a movie?
Blue Sky stars Jessica Lange and Tommy Lee Jones, and was released in 1995. Ms. Lange won an Academy Award for her performance.
I agree with Sioux Rose's analogy, with the films/books she listed.
Last week, I watched the 1962 Orson Welles film, The Trial, starring Tony Perkins and Jeanne Moreau, the great French actress, based on the Franz Kafka novel, with the screenplay written by Mr. Welles. It is frightening, and more relevant today than when it was made.
In reference to one of your other posts: Your comments reminded me of the German citizen, Khaled al Masri, who was kidnapped by the C.I.A. (December 31, 2003)and tortured, then finally dumped somewhere in Albania in May, 2004. The C.I.A. already knew they had the WRONG man, but continued for a time to detain and torture him. When I went to hear Jane Mayer speak about her book, The Dark Side, she talked about interviewing Mr. al Masri, and that he broke down and cried as he told her his story.
Your perceptions about Siddiqui could be correct! Your outline of events certainly follows other very similar stories that we already know.
Today, Amy Goodman interviewed Eamon Javers whose new book was just published -- Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy -- with additional proof of government and corporations in cahoots with each other.
If you are interested, or if you haven't already watched it, you can go to:
www.democracynow.org
Sioux
KAY: You're always so well-informed! Thanks for the post!
(Ah ha. So this is where everybody was lurking.)
This case is simply horrendous -- I don't have the skill of wordcraft to express any more eloquently than this travesty of "justice" really sucks the big one. It's inexcusable that such an obviously trumped up case should even go to trial in the first place. And then they found 12 abject cowards to convince this poor, bewildered woman?
I wish, like SR points out maybe a third of Earth's population does, I could believe in reincarnation but I have trouble with all those "extra" souls needed to fill bodies being produced at nearly 20 per thousand every year. Then karma would make at least some sense. But I cannot accept it, I feel this is our ONE chance to get it right, and believing otherwise is the height of wishful thinking.
Still, it WOULD be nice if the bad karma potentially generated by this case COULD translate into increased toil and trouble in a future life for the lying agents, the judge, and yes even the jury. But I don't see the universe working that fairly.
Free will means we are on our own -- our fate in our grubby little hands -- and human stupidity means the odds are stacked against us.
Gary
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
-- Plato
Sioux Rose
GARY: Many moons ago I attended a lecture on prosperity. Since I believe I've lived Native American previous lifetimes, I operate from an innate sense of conservation. I do not like waste--not in food, running water, excess use of fuels, or the way too many Americans TOSS things into the trash. When I posed a question to the speaker as to why people should seek out more than they need he answered that there were countless leaves on the trees, and one could not count the countless grains of sand at the beach. That ours was a planet of abundance.
I still live a very conservative (in terms of resources) lifestyle, and yet I do understand his premise for prosperity. I share this with you as numbers can be very telling and also very confusing. How can you be so sure that all souls who have lived across time are not all gathered here for this big, long-time predicted event? Can you be certain that intelligent life residing in other spheres has not lent some of its more patient, enlightened beings to this earth experience to help out at this transition juncture?
Numbers, or a perceived count, should never lock one into a presumption of finitude.
One of my favorite life memories (I shared this once before in the forum) was a night during my college days when perhaps 25 people were sitting in a circle in someone's dorm. There were lots of joints circulating and the subject we began to debate was that of INFINITY. The natural mystics understood that the concept itself precludes measurement, but the more science-oriented materialists were CERTAIN that with the RIGHT INSTRUMENTS infinity could be measured. Gary, your post makes me think you'd have been among that portion of the circle.
SR, I would LOVE to be wrong about all this. But I see _no_ real evidence of divine intervention, nor that of enlightened souls from somewhere beyond our own world. I have to go with what my poor eyes can see and my limited mind (and perhaps soul) can comprehend. It all still smacks of wishful thinking. A little too good to be true. Just as your figuring on past souls supplying new bodies ignores that the vast percentage of human lives across time exist today.
But I respect your right to your opinion and I am very happy it brings you comfort and insight. Wish I had something that could raise me above the mud. But I see the world rolling around in the gutter with but ourselves capable of getting out of that gutter. I cannot await help from beyond.
Peace and good karma to you.
Gary
"Contrary to popular misconception, karma has nothing to do with punishment and reward. It exists as part of our holographic universe's binary or dualistic operating system only to teach us responsibility for our creations -— and all things we experience are our creations."
-- Sol Luckman
Sioux Rose
GARY: I don't find the quote by Luckman and the way karma operates as being mutually exclusive. And if you ever want to open your mind to how Divine intervention works (worked for me when I flipped a rental car with faulty steering as I was traveling at 79 MPH on I-95 heading to Miami and almost walked away from a complete crash, car flip, etc), a remarkable series written by a team of British researchers makes for compelling reading: The Wisdom and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East, by Baird Spalding. I think Speilberg read it, or portions, before he filmed "Raiders of the Lost Arc." It's out of print, but sometimes can be found through Amazon or a book dealer.
I HAVE studied Eastern philosophies -- especially Buddhism -- but would love to read that book but I'm on a limited income so unless the book is in the state library system (of KY?) I cannot afford to buy it. Ditto most of the interesting books mentioned by others here on CD.
BTW I was aware of the idea that animals can become human souls but that one really bothers me -- why would a perfectly good animal soul WANT to be human?
Reincarnation has some very interesting evidence for it -- I was aware of that -- but I suspect it is rather rare, not universal. But that is just my personal take on the matter.
As always SR, a very interesting discussion. Thank you.
Gary
"You must acknowledge and experience this part of the universe. Karma is intricate, too vast. You would, with your limited human senses, consider it too unfair. But you have tools to really, truly love. Loving the children is very important. But love everyone as you would love your children."
-- Kuan Yin
Siouxrose, of course infinity can be measured. It is infinitely long and infinitely wide and infinite in infinite dimensions. Sorry, I couldn't resist that.
As an aside I used to have horrible nightmares over the concept of infinity as a child because I couldn't understand it. As it came up frequently in math at school in my teens, I felt that I was incredibly dense and that everyone else except me could understand it and that I alone was missing something important in my brain structure. I live in a very visual world and I am also horizontal thinker, you see. There is enormous cognitive dissonance between those two. The concept of infinity was and is overwhelming.
Much later I realised that people just used it mechanically without giving it any thought -they just accepted that it behaved in a convenient predictable manner, much like a catalyst, when referenced in algorithms.
Back to the topic above. Does everything go in infinite pendulums and circles?
Sioux Rose
SANCTUARY: In all humility, I must leave your closing sentence for the physicists. I do not have the answer. Infinity is intriguing, and meant to be. What would the experience of life in a (human) body be without questions to resolve, mysteries to explore? When I was a child I used to bike to other towns. One time my famiiy called the police because I was about 8 and gone all day. I rode my bike 3 towns away. I've always had a thing for adventure, and learning constitutes the great adventure. If we had all the answers, we would need to be embodied.
I love the metaphor of the circle. Everything comes full circle in so many ways, and the circle truly has neither beginning nor end. It is the shape of a nest, and a woman's breast, the orbital path of things as tiny as electrons to as great as entire solar systems. We are a society that's been bred to relate to linear constructs with the great heavenly circle consigned to a great taboo. I have made it my life mission to change that... for the sake of tomorrow's children. The circle has NO sides, and is an exquisite peace model... one that invites all tribes to the proverbial decision-making table. I elaborated on this theme at length in my children's book: Cassandra's Tale.
Sioux Rose, thanks. Your comments are always valuable reading.
If everyone travelled at a relatively early age before the formative processes perhaps became set, minds would be widened and there would be far greater understanding and genuine humility.
The world would be a far better place.
Ha! There's no hope for me though -I'm Aries.
Jesus was maybe all about re incarnation as well.
Where was He from 18 to 30 anyway?
Why is it so hard to find information about his lost years?
Who was he studying with?
What secrets did the old men cut out of the books at the Council of Nicea in 325AD?
As a Christian I want to know!
What's being hidden from me?
Would it be too much to handle?
Would it collapse the almighty stock markets?
Would people stop going to work?
What's being hidden from the world while these puppetmasters keep us all fighting down here in the pit?
Sioux Rose
ARCHER: Are you a Sagittarius? Glad someone else in this forum is hip to the Council of Nicaea. That's when all references to reincarnation were expunged from the Bible... except for one: when Jesus said, "I came before but you knew me not."
"Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation" by Ian Stevenson is the master work, and fits all the scientific methodologies so loved by academe. What it reveals is tough to dismiss. It's written for skeptics, and those who love details!
Thanks for the book tip Rose, I'll check it out.
I'm a Cancer actually, brought up Catholic and reciting the Nicene Creed every Sunday.
After so long I stopped taking for granted the words that were rolling off my tongue without thinking and became interested in the Apocrypha.
Don't ask the priest or lay ministers about that stuff though. No no no.
Reading books like Fr. Malachi Martins "Hostage to the Devil" and hearing sooo many interviews with people who knew details from the past that they couldn't have possibly have known got me down a path that I hope doesn't refute my religion, but build upon it.
I believe modern science & physics is zeoring in on the truths and someday may be able to quantify them.
Surely, a million Hindu's and Buddhists can't all be wrong?
There has to be more to it than I've been told and it's within my intelligence and energies to search out the real deal.
Sioux Rose
ELFIN: I asked about the Sag-reference due to your use of the word "archer." Sagittarius is the archer who aims his arrow towards the target. In metaphor, it represents the power of intention, holding ones thoughts firm as they aim at the target, i.e. the outcome desired.
Jupiter, which rules Sagittarius, is exalted in Cancer. My family's estate lawyer had photos on her office wall where she was in rider's clothing mounting her horse. I asked if she was a Sag, and she, too, is a Cancer. Again, it's due to the Jupiter association. I dated a guy whose daughter (a Cancer) also was an expert rider, and know of another young Cancer female who was described to me as a "horse woman." I point this out because astrology works like a Kaleidescope. The many facets create a unique design, and the sun sign designation only reflects a portion of it.
I was not raised as a Catholic, so I had no exposure to the Nicene creed. I have read much on the life and teachings of Edgar Cayce, and one book, "Cayce's Story of Karma and Reincarnation," speaks about the Council of Nicaea and how at that time the church elites made the very political decision to expunge all references TO reincarnation from the available texts of the Bible. The Vatican has quite an occult library, but wants this info to remain taboo. Interesting. There is power that comes from a higher understanding, and it is precisely THAT power which the old elites, a marriage of church and state entities, STILL wish to keep in the dark. The occult is not a reflection of the dark side, but rather, what is retained in secrecy... and exists only for those with eyes capable of seeing. Of course, some will abuse this power, for like any resource, the thing itself (even money) may be neutral... until such time as the species of human motive is applied.
Nice chatting.
Elfin
A book you might enjoy is "The Jesus Sutras" by Marin Palmer
Xian province in China?
its interesting to think in terms of epochs
Buddah, Lao Tzu, Christ, Mohammed, and heaven knows how many others unnamed appeared within a realtively short period with millennial effect.
The same with thinking about how the rainforests were 'thought of' as being 'uninhabited' when in fact they have been the result of human activity for millennia.
i have read over the years some arguments that those "lost years" where when jesus actually traveled EAST - - as some have said above, even as far away as persia, china...who really knows?
some have said that jesus actually just learned things from philosophies of the east that were already in practice and reconstituted them for his own preaching, claiming whatever he claimed as "divinity".
people can remember that it is around that time that Buddhism also was ascendant in india.
for that matter...it is part of Indian history of which they are proud, at least of their ancient history...that a great king or emperor long ago - around just before the time of Jesus ..and when buddhism had been "discovered"...had turned away from his being emperor -
that this Ashoka - one of their greatest warriors and emperors - had inherited the first unification of india from among its disparate tribes - from his father who was revered.
but that this ashoka grew to become a fierce warrior with such cruelty and bloodlust that he loved conquering the different provinces (states they are called today in modern india) -- to keep enlarging his empire.
but then in the middle of his most powerful years - after yet another bloodthirsty conquest (he was infamous for lining up conquered warriors and people on the fields and have their heads cut off and then placed on spikes) - he had an almost sudden turn of mind...he realized that all his conquests and acquisitions left him completely empty...
and he began to question things...and he heard about some "preacher" somewhere (this is purportedly the "gautama buddha") ....
and went on a journey to find out and listen ....then he started to gravitate towards that "teaching"......
until one day - he decided to travel around the country , be among the people, and ask them "how do you want to live? how do you want to be ruled"?
and invariably the answer was that people just wanted to live with just modest needs and without fear and to have decent lives.
so he began to make edicts and proclamations - using the "suggestions" of the people everywhere....and had written in stone pillars that still exist today everywhere in india ...what amounted to india's first "constitution" which declared the freedoms of people ..and he began to use the vast wealth of his empire and treasury to "correct" the sins he had committed against people..to improve their towns, their roads, their houses, their trades...etc...
one of the things he did was - as a result of his hearing the teachings of "the buddha" - to ensure that the spot where people claimed the buddha sat under a tree to preach - was to be preserved..and it is still that place today somewhere in india.
EVEN including what indians today say is probably the original "official source" of their well-known "respect" for all animate beings - what amounts to today's "ANIMAL RIGHTS"...
because he extended his concerns to such an extent that it was not only limited to PEOPLE but also to other living beings...but he backed it up by encouraging education and understanding for animals and the natural world.
but he was still not "fulfilled" despite all that - because the weight of his guilt at all his crimes against people in his conquests was so heavy -- that he eventually abdicated and left his throne - to follow the ascetic life and became a hermit in a cave where he died...still looking for "forgiveness" or "nirvana"
Eastern religions teach that animals can be reborn as humans, beings from other worlds in the physical Universe can be reborn as humans and beings from higher levels of existence can be reborn as humans. There is no shortage of beings for available human lives. Though a difficult school of life our world holds unique spiritual potential for enlightenment. There are those who fail out of this school of life of course. Those who torture and unjustly imprison people will have that done to them in future lives.
"Though a difficult school of life our world holds unique spiritual potential for enlightenment."
Maybe we're in a kindergarten where the most important lesson is "don't be an asshole". Others would equate that to the golden rule.
there is that commonality in eastern thought. you are right. I am from the philippines and although raised in a "western" religion of catholicism.. i can understand and am aware of what else was there in "eastern" thought -- which points to the idea of honoring one's ancestors , or "spirits" , or the inanimate world. at least that's a general sense underlying eastern thought.
it is probably expressed differently through the different religious tenets such as Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism...shamanism..etc.
but perhaps buddhists express it most elegantly:
the power of karma...or the idea of constant "rebirth"...
but with the idea that one is reborn - for as long as is needed, UNTIL one "learns" to do the "right" thing - which is to have compassion for all living things and creation and to realize that one is only a small part of the whole.
until one arrives at that -- to emerge from the "circle of suffering" which is the 'rebirth' cycle - then one will not achieve "nirvana" or enlightenment...which supposedly is the removal of all "desire" -- taught as the root of all suffering.
contrasted to that philosophy -- western thought INDEED looks VERY , VERY primitive. of course FEW easterners actually are able to achieve what that "might be"...as few humans probably can since - apparently - its discipline and demands are so beyond the capacities of most of us.
but -- it doesn't negate the fact that IT IS part of eastern thought ...which is completely absent from western thought which itself is completely wrapped around "possessing"...
even "salvation" in the western christian thinking is a form of "possessing" -- possessing "heaven, salvation, one-ness with god" as a form of perfecting the earthbound ideas of "welfare" and "achievement".
such as in :
have a house on earth -- wait til you get to heaven...you'll have a palace.
buddhism simply sweeps away that very notion.
there was a buddhist monk that explained "life" or reality or our existence in the world this way:
that "the individual's life is like that of a molecule or part in the water of a great river...it is one with the great river....but has not yet become an individual...when the river falls over a cliff and becomes a waterfall..you see the droplets separate...and that is the individual...our life is that time of the waterfall....when the water has reached the bottom of the cliff -- it is one again..and the droplets return to the great river".
it is one of the most beatifual imageries of existence.
Sioux Rose
TEDDY: Great post, as was your explanation above, as to why the US militaristic footprint upon other lands is HARDLY amenable with the claim of bringing freedom and democracy to those societies invaded. Nice work. Your compassion is always in evidence, you're an older soul who understands much.
TXBODHI: Great post!
teddy, first of all, I salute you for keeping an open mind towards other religions despite having been "raised in a "western" religion of catholicism" :)
I sometimes wonder if this absence of the concept of karma is what has enabled an "extra" level of brutality that would be required during imperial conquests. If you notice, most kingdoms and empires in the east have been somewhat of limited size, and not constantly prone to expanding. China has been a big empire for a long time - but I'm somewhat ambivalent about what motivated this empire to grow. Perhpas it was partly out of necessity for security and stability, and having achieved a certain level of security, they stopped expanding further. India itself has never been under one empire, except for short periods of time - once during emperor Ashoka's time and later on under the Mughals, and even then, there were several large parts of India that were not part of these empires. The reason I mention this, is that it seems to me that the concept of karma seems to put a check on kings and emperors from ruthlessly expanding their empires. The absence of this concept, or the "guarantee" of salvation by accepting the One True God, or a combination, seems to permit an extra level of brutality that would seem part of most imperial ventures.
Why do some people have to blame America for everything? Pakistan is a military dictatorship where religion is used to control and abuse. The US needs to get the hell out of there so that Pakistanis can fight for their own democracy and the USA can stop being everyone's scapegoat.
Yep
Agreed
Let em duke it out.....
We got enough troubles right here in the U S and A to deal with.
Yes, Pakistan is a military dictatorship and the US knew and condoned the dictatorship before we made ourselves at home there. Where are you getting the "fight for their own democracy" statement from. They have democracy when the US, along with the Pakistani military, isn't trying to manipulate it.
We were not invited there. We have forced ourselves on them for what we perceive as geopolitical reasons.
We are not a benign scapegoat handing out candy to children. We are not a helping hand to the common citizens. We are killing their men, women and children because they won't do what we say. Therefore they are the enemy. That has been US policy world-wide since 1945. Have you been asleep for 65 years?
Keep reading Common Dreams, Counterpunch.com, Zmag.org, Informed Comment and they will bring you up to speed on the issues.
I said for the US to get out of Pakistan so that they can fight it on their own. They need us and we don't need to throw them money or anything. Let them pick their own leaders and religion.
Even the US can't "pick" their religion although we would do anything for that ability.
They do pick their own leaders as long as they pass through the US "filter".
Any fighting that Pakistan/US is doing in Pakistan is at the demand of the US. So actually they don't need us. We need their help and that's why we "throw them money". If we were not in their country for reasons that benefit mostly the US oil companies there would be no fighting. Pakistan liked things exactly the way they were before 9/11.
Shawn Berry -- Aramagen and others and yourself are really ONE on our thoughts and hopes that America would change - and STOP being the bully and empire that it is.
but you are also forgetting that when you say america should just leave and let those people choose their way of life, just as no one in the world has ever dictated to america what to do with itself (unless you think about ISRAEL that is the tail that wags the dog) - that statement of yours contradicts FACTS.
"those people" elsewhere ALWAYS have had their ways of life- in fact, thousands of years of their own civilizations that point to the SAME hopes and needs and wants of any human society:
to have families, to honor their elders, to carry on what they learned and improved on, to have better futures, to eat properly, to work with honor, to share in their communities...just like ordinary americans ...
BUT america has gone "over there" to DISRUPT them - a mere 250 year old "nation" that thinks it has found the magic potion for civilization - and has demonstrated, right from the start , a COMPLETE absence of conscience and respect for other cultures -- starting with destroying the NATIVE INDIANS - to grab the land and impose its supposedly more "civilized" european view of the world....which - whether from spain or france or england or germany or italy , or now USA -
have NO rivals for brutality, callousness, insiduousness and hypocrisy COMING from such a SMALL region of the world -- the White Region of European "thought" of conquest and theft of lands and resources "over there" (as you would put it).
you say : "let those people choose" their leaders, their politics, their society...
well-- that IS what those people have been doing for thousands of years!
that IS what the Iranians were doing in the 1950's when they wanted to kick out the foreigners, be it russians or arabs or english or french or americans and their corporations trying to grab Iran's oil and gas and control her internal affairs..they CHOSE democracy - but the USA disliked IT because it was a SOCIALIST democracy that nationalised oil and gas and was going to put a stop to US and English Petroleum industries from continuing to divy up IRAN's NATIONAL TREASURES and leaving nothing for the iranians....
exactly as the usa has done globally in all forms.
move away from iran -- and turn to HAITI, to the Philippines, to Vietnam, to China, to dozens and dozens of countries...people WERE choosing their way of life ....
what DID the USA DO? interrupt and impose "our will and the will of our chamber of commerce to render them permanently subjugated" (John Perkins, former CIA "economic hitman") ...and "if that doesn't work...that's when we send in our Army...that's what you see in iraq"...
so -- why should you quarrel about the whys and wherewithals of the argument when you know as much as any that it is the PRESENCE of the USA in "those lands" that has , at best exaggerated their problems which they CAN figure out what to do as they always have, imperfect as it is, but at worst, the USA only WORSENS ...with nary an interest in the welfare of "those people" -- beginning with the most obvious sign of all:
UTTER COMPLETE lack of respect and even interest in the uniqueness of other cultures..and just sweeping them away as if they are dust so it can "re-organize" them according to its views which TURN OUT to be SO DISASTROUS and PRIMITIVE and BARBARIC and UNcivilized - after all!
and you know what that is in simple , old terms?
we all know it , it is called PILLAGE and RAPE and THEFT.
so -- you can not possibly - any american really, can not possibly be in the RIGHT to quibble about "why is everyone blaming america?"
the answer is :
Because AMERICA deserves the blame, it EARNED it.
we starte from the NAtive Indians who never did anything bad TO EUROPE. but tried to stand their ground for THEIR way of life and THEIR native land...
and here we are:
as Even Senator Ron Paul among others with similar statements have said :
"why are they against us? why are they HERE to attack us? why do they HATE US? it is because we ARE THERE".
If you read the Paki papers a little, you get a sense that the military are finally losing part of their iron control, at least going by the bluntness of the editorials. The military originally grabbed power in a coup supposedly SPONSORED (again dammit) by the United States. So we are DIRECTLY responsible for the fragileness of the democracy that is taking hold there. We have also funneled hundreds of millions to the military even when they were in total control.
So it is a large part our mess. But drone strikes are NOT the way to go; neither are American troops (we have special ops in Pakistan). We need to, as the Kerry-Lugar bill at least partially does, funnel aid to the people, not just the military, of Pakistan. And stay the hell out of their politics.
Gary
“Suddenly it looks like the policy is not tough diplomacy, but the path to war.”
-- Jon Alterman
Shawn Berry -- the fact that Pakistan or other countries are what they are - whether before or after foreign interferences - is a DISTINCT point from blaming america for what SHE DOES ..which includes meddling that excacerbates what are already imperfect situations elsewhere.
Pakistan was not even a country - just a region in Near Asia - until it was carved out from the result of divisions between the muslims and hindus after gandhi succeeded to first unite them all -- of INDO origin - against england.
whatever the results foreign meddling by england excacerbated what were civil wars or differences, leading to what you rail against :"Pakistan is a military dictatrship"
in which america embroiled itself to replace England as the new "foreign master".
if the tribes of an island fought amongst themselves ..they can be blamed solely if no foreign influence was involved.
people can say "'well they are fighting, blame that king, or that queen, or that bad person...but not the USA - it was never involved".
but SINCE the USA does involve itself globally - which results in strife and other problems LIKELY far greater than if it did NOT involve itself , which everyone knows is "for national interest" and has NOTHING to do with "democracy" or humaneness...but just AMERICAN POWER ...
then it is logical to say:
"america is to be blamed"....because its involvement is commensurate to its power which is commensurate to that power's involvement's CONSEQUENCES which also are as great and as dire according to the potency of that "great power's" involvement.
it is like the saying:
"when america sneezes the world gets a cold".
why is america "blamed for everything?"
it is because america has used its power IRRESPONSIBLY in its global involvement. rather than help nations to be prosperous in their own right an be fair..it has used its power and wealth to "permanently subjugate them to our will"....JOHN PERKINS, former CIA "economic hitman".
you want examples?
IRAN TODAY - consequence of the USA meddling in the affairs of nation that was the most democratic and most advanced in the middle east - and literally destroyed centuries of very careful, critical evolution to become a better place of great culture , politics, thought, philosophy, poetry, art, trade, language....literally the middle east's
CENTER of world trade - even formerly calling Tehran "THE PARIS of the Middle East".
now - see how Iran has become a "centerpiece" of "global concern" blared around by america.
WHO BROUGHT IT TO THAT? the USA.
we can go down a very very long list . and a year will go by with "complaints" and discussions that are not repetitive of the list of what america has done - and we will only have scratched the surface on the extent of what america REALLY has caused in so much strife, suffering, unnecessary quarrels and problems globally.
and that -- in ONLY 200 hundred years since it became capable of maritime force.
and remember -- even if you are talking about the "TROOPS over there" around the globe -- the "ARMED FORCES" of the USA are only the MILITARY expression of the more deeply insidious involvement of the USA globaly -- namely , its corporatist CAPITALIST imperial stretch.
even where there are NO troops or "military invasions" -- there are troop or RELATED entities of american presence to "spread the gospel" of capitalism...which has proven to be DESTRUCTIVE.
remember that the OPEN occupations of massed troops by america elsewere are only in places that are so threatening to american hegemony that it HAS to send them - openly ....
but THAT also is just the advanced phased of what John Perkins, Former CIA "economic hitman" described as the USA's imperial project - where the EARLIER phases are in effect everywhere - until they have a "need" for military action to impose that imperial project.
Thank you Chris Hedges for yet another amazing article!
Your work has always demanded attention,introspection and action.
What more could a seminary grad want as a reaction to their work.
I look forward to reading Empire of Illusions.
God Bless you sir!
The credibility of author Chris Hedges, already good, is bolstered by his first-hand observations in Argentina and El Salvador. We really need, in this country, to make an effort not to be the most uneducable persons in this world, and to stop thinking that the truths and history of other places don't apply to us.
As far as the secrecy and mystery concerning this case, the government should come clean. In fact, it always should come clean AS A MATTER OF SENSIBLE POLICY. Don't want people speculating? COME CLEAN THEN-- SIMPLE AS THAT!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aafia_Siddiqui
At least you can see her picture.
Preemptive arrests of Muslim men have been going on in America for years. If the government thinks that due to his political views a Muslim man, may some time in the future, become a terrorist, they charge him with bogus crimes based on circumstantial evidence. They smear him as a terrorist in the media, disallow him to defend himself against the smear of terrorism, and get him convicted by confusing and inflaming the jury. Most Americans would be afraid to go against their government and not convict these innocent Muslim men.
Humans beings have followed authority, good or evil, for centuries as if authority is divinely ordained.This is becoming a greater danger due to global overpopulation and higher technological advances juxtaposed with less conscientious concern for the common good and for future generations. " If we do nothing but complain about society's ills forgetting that we are society, from which corrupt and ignorant leaders obtain and retain their power, then society will destroy us and our children, by the power of our own Apathy." (Thomas Merton)