Wednesday, November 01, 2006

SOTT: Giving Voice to the Censored

An article (thoughtfully withheld from you by the MSM) that spells out what you probably suspected all along, but couldn't bring yourself to admit. The chaos and suffering around you is PLANNED. What will you DO about it?

Knowledge Protects. Ignorance endangers.

Blue Ibis

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America's Darkest Secret

Martha Rose Crow M.S.
16/09/2006

The Nine Stages of American Autogenocide

What Autogenocide Means

Auto comes from the Greek reflexive pronoun while genocide comes from the Latin words gens meaning "race, tribe" and -cidere meaning "kill." (source: http://wikipedia.org)

American Autogenocide is the deliberate, systematic and legal murder of American citizens by socially-engineering the die-off of populations that are "problematic" for the interests of wealth and power. Most victims prematurely die from social forces targeted at them to cause them to wear out by stress. This process is called "Weathering Away" or "Attrition By Stress."

Although it has to be "legal," autogenocide is always committed under the radar so the media won't be compelled to report it and so the people won't see it or understand it. More, the genocide is blamed on the victims and their deaths are hidden-attributed-to other causes rather than the primary one of autogenocide.

What is different between this genocide and other genocides is that this unique genocide doesn't produce mass graves. Instead, the victims are spread over a large geographic area and buried singly, thereby hiding the body count. This keeps the deaths sanitized and homogenized. It also keeps the autogenocide surreal; thus enabling the village to deny It's existence when clues to It's existence are ambundant and abundantly transparent.

Six Primary Factors to Genocide

There are six primary factors underlying genocide. First, there is an overpopulation of people from groups that are not economically or socially important and/or viable to the political and economic elite.

Second, genocides usually happen in times of shortages. The shortage behind the current American autogenocide is work. America is losing jobs while the population continues to grow. The wealthy and industry are loathe to pay taxes to support negative or low producers (useless eaters) because the costs of maintaining these people (via increased taxes and social costs) affects their profits and earnings.

More, when there are too many people in times of great shortages, they become restless and can group together to force democratic and social changes the economic/political/military elite don't want and work tirelessly and relentlessly against.

The third factor is that genocides are common to patriarchal societies. The stronger the institutional and cultural patriarchy, the stronger the chances for acts of genocide to exist, whether external or internal.

Threat to power (now or in the future) is the fourth underlying factor of genocide. For example, approximately one-third of all Americans are minorities and that number is expected to rise unless that population begins to die off. If minorities become the majority, the old, established rule of the country by white male elite will not hold for long unless the country becomes a dictatorship.

The fifth primary factor to genocide is that women and children are the primary targets. Women are exterminated because of their fertility. Eliminate them and the next generation of unwanted people will automatically be eliminated or at least be considerably downsized. This applies to the elimination of children as well.

Six, modern autogenocides don't happen without the help of the media. They constantly distribute the propaganda preparing the village psyche for acceptance of the deaths. They officially ignore the suffering and premature death, thus lending approval to its justification and execution.

As good servants to the status quo, the media "hides" the parts of America the ruling and economic elite don't want the majority of the village to see. Only when a fluke thing happens, like an Act of God like Hurricane Katrina, will America see its other, darker side. Now even that has faded and become buried as the national media has mostly forgotten it at the request of their elite masters. Autogenocide has to be hidden until all the people that are considered liabilities (debit people) in the books of the Patriarchal Capitalist Country are disappeared.

Five Types of Genocide

Roger Smith (1999) identified five genocide typologies. They are as follows: retributive genocide; institutional genocide; utilitarian genocide; monopolistic genocide; and, ideological genocide.

Retributive genocide may play a role in all genocide. It is usually rare as a principle motive and used mainly as a rationalization. It usually flows from the dehumanization attached to victims.

Institutional genocide was politically sanctioned mass murder in ancient and medieval times. It is a universal result of conquest and is an inherent form of warfare. It is motivated by the desire to terrorize and exert dominative power and eliminate any possible retaliation.

Utilitarian genocide was very prominent from the 16th to 19th centuries. It is used for the colonial domination and exploitation of indigenous peoples, although many would argue that the free market system dominates and exploits all groups of people who have no economic or political power. The basic proposition of utilitarian genocide is that some people must die so others can live well and the major force driving it is ethnocentrism and greed.

The most frequent cause of genocide in the 20th century and early 21st century has been the struggle to monopolize power. Monopolistic genocide is a tool for the elite to monopolize and centralize power in the hands of a few.

Most genocide prior to the 20th century was external with the goal of conquest and colonial expansion. Today, most genocide is internal or domestic (groups within the same territorial boundaries are destroyed). Issues not at stake in external genocide are the center of internal genocide: who belongs; who is to have voice in politics; what is the shape of the community; what should the purposes of community be.

The fifth type of genocide is ideological genocide. Religion usually provides a rationale. In many cases, the genocides are carried out to protect and defend a particular religious faith, including certain forms of nationalism.

Camus explained ideological genocide as a metaphysical revolt against humanity in which an attempt is made to create/reestablish a system providing for order and justice that humanity thought to be lacking. At the same time, ideological genocide strives for a type of salvation that strives to eliminate all that is perceived to be impure.

A Modern Genocide Usually Consists of More Than One Kind of Genocide

Most types of modern genocide are a hybrid of two or more kinds. For example, the Nazis committed retributive genocide as well as institutional, utilitarian, monopolistic and ideological genocide.

Retributive: The Jews had to be punished for killing Christ and for controlling finance. They and other "enemies of the state" had to be punished for running down decent society in general.

Institutional: Nazis mass-murdered large groups of people, usually with the help of locals. All was politically-sanctioned.

Utilitarian: Some people had to die so others could live well.

Monopolistic: Nazi Germany committed both external and internal genocide. A premiere reason behind this was to monopolize power.

Ideological: Untermenchen (sub-humans) and other defective people were dragging German society down. Religion provided the perfect rationale as the early Christian fathers and Martin Luther wrote/instructed that the Jews killed Jesus, thus were a cursed and hated people. This was taught for millennia in churches and theological schools.

The modern American autogenocide is also a hybrid. Like the Nazis, it is a hybrid of all five types of genocide.

Retributive: Since Barry Goldwater in the 1960's, the conservatives have done nothing but attack and demonize/dehumanize the poor, until they lost all their perceived humanity. The lazy, tax-sucking, tax-dependent poor had to be morally "saved" by eliminating social safety nets so they would be "motivated to work" when in reality, there was little if any work for them and certainly no work that paid a living wage.

Institutional: The old, established order of elite males rule by terror or what is known as the "patriarchal authority of violence." Institutional genocide reinforces this kind of violence. The autogenocide going on in America right now is politically-sanctioned mass murder. It is politically sanctioned through legislation and through non-legislation (e.g., the continued dismantling of social programs when they are needed more than ever and lack of energy, motivation to reinstate them) and through patriarchal institutions. More, it is politically sanctioned by bureaucracies, male institutions and the corporate-owned media.

Utilitarian: Some people have to die so others can live well, including receiving more share of the community distribution of wealth and more chances for work.

Monopolistic: Autogenocide is internal genocide. The autogenocide being committed against Americans is done to keep the wealth and power in the hands of the established white male order for now and for the future. Think of it as negative, "preemptive" population control to keep the System as it has existed for over two hundred years for the next two hundred years.

Ideological: The conservative right claimed that the poor were dragging the country down morally and economically because they were costing society (living on welfare or getting some other public benefit) when in the "Land of Opportunity "anyone" who "really wanted" a job could get one. The right's "think-tanks" and other institutions launched and paid for "studies" to "prove" their ideologies in their favor. Afterwards, they flooded the social tapestry with "evidence" to sway public opinion in the corner of the right.

In the late 1990's, the American village was constantly covered in propaganda from the government and media proclaiming a "perfect economy" and bemoaning that there were not enough workers to fill all the jobs available. Years later, all of this has been disproved, but it still worked: Part of the American autogenocide became more ideological because of the enormous propaganda released in American communities to stir up civil wars and xenophobia.

THE NINE STAGES OF AMERICAN AUTOGENOCIDE

Gregory H. Stanton presented his model of Eight Stages of Genocide to the Yale University Center for International and Area Studies in 1998. It is a fine model, but he missed the biggest and most important stage: The Decision to Kill. Whether singular or collective, the decision starts the genocide.

1. Decision. Like other forms of genocide, autogenocide is a process started from the top down. The planning begins at the top of the elite patriarchal hierarchy and works its way down the social pyramid to all levels through male channels.

The decision is made in a way so it is never traced all the way to the top. To this day, no paper has ever surfaced to tie Hitler directly to ordering the holocaust.

At least 95% of all communication is non-verbal, thus the language transforms into something else, something usually less concrete and more surreal. Non-verbal communication can (and usually does) becomes or evolves into one or more of the following forms: symbolic, semantic, rhetorical, allegorical, cryptographic, metamorphic, philosophical, psychological, hypnotic, controlling, patriarchal, oppressive, numerological, occult, erotic, homoerotic, theological, prophetic, epiphanic, spiritual, so forth. Many messages with double/triple meanings are woven/hidden within these forms on non-verbal communications.

Most of the messages for autogenocide are conveyed non-verbally, indirectly or through a third-person.

The order is usually "innocent" and done in an indirect way. The elite are always surrounded with males from upper social levels and these males lean on every one of their masters' words.

The order is usually given in an informal atmosphere where the ultra rich go. The order can be given at a club, a country club, smoking room, a fancy restaurant, a sauna, a dining or meeting room of an estate, an executive bathroom, on the golf course (where much of the world's fate has been decided for decades), at "charity" functions, posh parties of the rich, so forth.

There are always lower tiers of the elite at these places, including politicians, plus business and society journalists. The males of these upper groups, plus the media (that are basically owned by the elite) and other conveyers of culture are conditioned and socialized to hear and obey the males above them in the hierarchy. That is how patriarchies work and that is how the ruling patriarchs spread their messages.

The top elite male will start a conversation about one thing and segue it into something else that leads into the "problem." Afterwards, he will make his complaint in an indirect way. He hesitates for a few moments while changing his posture, then tone of voice into a more authoritarian one. After silently and discreetly checking for responses of the male faces in the room and to make sure the right ears are listening, he adds more power to his non-verbal language: he segues from a man to a divine person as he begins to talk like the biblical-type wise man/savior of the village. Although charismatic, his language-verbal and nonverbal- gain in authority, thus high patriarchy. He is at the top of the patriarchal chain, so he must exhibit a great amount of power in a subdued, but apparent way.

After he is sure the right male ears are listening, he begins his list of complaints to strengthen and justify his original complaint. The male ears at the table, urinal, golf club, country club, boardroom, fundraiser, so forth, listen and wait for the "solution" that is really a secret command in the world of males.

Then it comes. The Man of Power will make short, casual, "benign" remarks like, "Something has to be done about this," "The numbers (statistics of growing populations that threaten power) have to change,"or "Back in other times, they knew how to fix this" (it may sound nostalgic, but this is an indirect order to solve the "problem" by using classic patriarchal methods of rule, including the patriarchal authority of violence and genocide. Never once does the patriarch offer any concrete suggestions as to how the numbers of unwanted people are to be changed. This is a phenomenon of Denial, the Ninth Stage listed below.

It is up to the elite males below the aristocratic elite to carry out the order by creating and unleashing legal, social forces at the individual/s, groups, population, so forth, designated for removal.

Right from the beginning, the media is always there, helping in every way. They disseminate the propaganda, weaken opposition by various methods including direct and indirect demonizing of the victims and those individuals/groups who support them, as explained throughout this essay, so forth.

As the order for autogenocide goes through the male channels, it will be picked up and sculpted for palatable delivery in earnest politicians' speeches of the extreme right or in the speeches of those politicians who seek the support/help of the political right, including the Christian right.

The males from the other parts of the social pyramid hear it and if they agree (particularly if they benefit from white privilege), they will repeat the mantra until it is spread throughout the entire community. This starts the denial process of the community. When everyone is in denial, almost all will ignore the truth in front of them.

2. Classification. All cultures have categories to distinguish people into "us and them" by ethnicity, race, religion and most recently, nationality (e.g., muslims, middle-easterners that aren't Jews from Israel, illegal Hispanic workers, so forth).

In patriarchal hierarchies, every one has a class worth with another value that appraises women according to the set patriarchal beauty standards in the culture. In plutocracies, human value is awarded or subtracted by the wealth you own with race, gender and other categories factored in such as "good breeding."

Then there is monetary worth. Everything, from air to people, is for sale in the free market, thus everyone and everything in the capitalist marketplace has a monetary value. Insurance actuary tables prove this, but so does the recent settlement payments to the survivors of the 9/11 victims of the World Trade Center. Survivors of dishwashers (who worked in the fancy restaurants in the towers) received about $200,000 while survivors of bankers and stock brokers got at least ten times that.

In America, not only are Americans classified along race, gender, religion, age, so forth, they are also classified by their worth (or negative worth) to plutocracy and industry.

Having wealth can give you a better classification, but it didn't help the wealthy Jews in Nazi Berlin and it didn't help O.J. Simpson or Michael Jackson and a host of other wealthy people. That's because wealth doesn't always guarantee power. Power is held in select, white paternal hands. Oprah can buy some power with her wealth (opulent lifestyle and choices) but if she doesn't stay to the script (she's an entertainer, not a journalist), the males at the top of the media chain will pull the plug on her entertainment products.

Because its their System, aristocrats, whether titled, merchant or military, do not die of autogenocide unless a new type of government is installed.

3. Symbolization. Names or other symbols are given to the classifications (above) so they can be easily identified. Symbols can be concrete (e.g., a swastika, a "think tank" study that frames one of their issues against certain groups, so forth) or the symbolization can be opaque or invisible (e.g., a zip code).

Innuendoes, gossip, jokes, myths, half-truths, lies, propaganda, attacks and stories are spread throughout the community about selected individuals/groups/races/communities that are targeted for permanent removal.

4. Dehumanization. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder. One group denies the humanity of the other group. People to be destroyed are justified/equated as lesser forms of life. They are scapegoated as factors for lower quality of village life caused by political and economic corruption.

All the genocide propaganda comes from the conservative right in America, although it is silently supported by some members of the left. The representatives of the old order never stop demonizing people/victims that don't fit perfectly into the white patriarchal power model, the needs of industry and/or are a real/potential threat to established white patriarchal power.

The right-wing politicians, with right-wing "think-tanks" institutions and the media demonize the poor/minorities/independent women and spread patriarchal justification that these groups deserve "what" they get because they are dragging the rest of the villagers down.

Institutions that exist solely to promote the status quo (GOP, conservative "think-tanks," conservative media institutions, federalist societies, so forth) start executing skewed studies and statistical surveys whose conclusions always point in the favor of dehumanizing the groups that are to be permanently eliminated.

The media starts releasing and recycling the "conclusions" of the studies and surveys, while all the time, never questions their authenticity and procedure, nor probes to find out who funded it and why. More, the media is always blissfully ignorant of all the negative, hurricane-strength social forces it unleashes and creates when it broadcasts the dehumanizing information.

The media constantly reports the rise of bastard babies, violence, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, criminal activities, sexually transmitted diseases and other diseases: diseases associated with sloth, sexual promiscuous, filthy living conditions, thus connecting the targeted people as unhuman. The media either portrays these people as dangerous and as "carriers of disease," that threaten the larger society, or the media helps the village forget these people by ignoring them in their newscasts. This has been what's happening lately. By ignoring the other humans of the group, the media has dehumanized them because if these people were important to society, the media would be reporting on them and favorably about them like they do the middle and upper classes.

Conservative politicians jump on the bandwagon and denounce the traitorous citizens who "refuse" to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and join the homogenized, "melting pot," American family of workers. "Self-reliance" and "self-initiative" is stressed and the causes of un- or under-employment or the real amount of jobs available (or not available) is ever addressed.

The stronger group denies the humanity of the other group. The stronger group's rhetoric segues into arguing/selling the idea that the people to be eliminated from are less human and more like animals or insects, particularly (economic) leeches and (cockroach) people.

Welfare recipients are demonized by being called "welfare queens" by politicians and the media. Black males are demonized by being portrayed by the media as drug dealers, pimps and other kinds of criminals. White trash is made fun of. Jerry Springer and South Park are good examples of this, and any kind of fringe group are always the target of white comedians.

In Mel Brook's movie, The History of the World, Part I, there is a scene of Roman senators discussing the probability of funding housing for the poor when they all reach a conclusion: F**k the Poor! The Symbolization for genocide is everywhere in the American tapestry and it has been for a long time. Demonization and Symbolism for genocide were masked in Mel Brook's remarks in a 1983 movie that has been seen billions of times. Any time a powerless and/or helpless member of the human community is demonized by forces greater than them, it is a part of the symbolization process.

Laziness is considered worse than a disease in a society that continuously promotes a work ethic that primarily benefits well-connected white males. Laziness is connected to moral diseases (sloth, shamefulness, immorality, drug taking, drinking, bad health, so forth). Through twisted metamorphoses of the symbolic/symbiotic connection of those who don't work (for any reason) or are poor for any reason (because the world's richest nation is sold as the "land of opportunity" where "everyone" can get rich if they work hard enough), autogenocide is righteously sold and justified by Symbolism.

5. Organization. Because autogenocide has to be perceived as non-existent, it has to remain invisible. Thus, it has to be organized and spread by surreal methods such as symbols, innuendoes, urban myths, propaganda, other forms of non-direct, non-verbal communication and/or by "cocktails" (mixtures) of some or all methods. Messages for organization, propaganda, improved propaganda, so forth, for the autogenocide are presented and distributed regularly or daily on the internet. Gop.com and the conservative "think-tanks" are prime conveyers.

Right-wing radio, "think-tanks" and other conservative/patriarchal organizations begin to verbally attack and demonize the targeted people, but they never infer to their permanent removal. This would make the autogenocide transparent. Still, these organizations and institutions, plus the corporate-owned media, purposely spread xenophobia throughout the land.

Local, state, and national politicians begin demonizing the citizens to be culled. They write and pass legislation to start the Siege. They try to become blissfully ignorant of the suffering and death and even when they know the truth, they respond by doing nothing (premeditated non legislation). Politicians do this because this is not what the hidden elite want (their reasons will be discussed later).

The media, owned, dominated and run by members of the elite continue to hide the truth from the village or minimize it when the truth comes to fore.

Support systems are taken away while others are bribed. Government help is cut off as much as possible. "Crises" are created (like a war, threats of terrorism, a virtual war, energy shortages) so public money must first be spent on those things. This purposely drains the public treasury of money and resources to try to save the unwanted.

Religion is bribed from speaking up by offering them juicy government contracts to privatize "charity." This swells their coffers and at the same time, hires members who will faithfully tithe part of their salaries back into the churches' coffers. The Christian "standard" for tithing is ten percent. More, evangelists get the bonuses of having captive audiences of desperate people to sell their religion and will to. Many of the extreme poor end up trading their souls for a bowl of soup and a sandwich at government-funded Christian soup kitchens and/or homeless shelters.

The internal police is built-up ("Homeland Security") and files are maintained on every citizen they can build a file on (so far its about 256 million Americans). The ruling patriarchs keep information on everyone just in case someone might decide to say something public about the autogenocide. The information kept by the government is used to Bully, Blackmail or Buy people (including politicians and victims) to keep their heads down, their eyes closed and their mouths shut.

A note about "Super Censuses": It helps those behind autogenocide determine who is to be "cleansed"/culled. Intrinsic things are factored in: gender, race, age, ethnicity, disabilities/physical handicaps, family lineage, socio-economic standing, perceived physical beauty/desireability (particularly for females), membership in "approved" religions, perceived power and/or potential, amount of loyalty/subjugation to authority established in patriarchal structures and systems, so forth.

6. Polarization. Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda. Extreme right groups and representatives target moderates to intimidate and silence the center.

Privileged, educated males from the extreme right start writing books like the "Bell Curve" (Charles Murray, Jr. and Richard Herrnstein) to "prove" that certain groups are subhuman or as the Nazis called them, "Untermenshen."

This separates the favored groups over the ones selected for permanent removal. The polarization forces the people who are safe from genocide to side with the government if they want to remain comfortable and/or live. Remember, anyone who doesn't agree with the American federal government is considered a "traitor" and traitors are scorned, ridiculed, hated, publicly denounced, humiliated and called "Benedict Arnold."

The middle-class try to stay "neutral," but by their silence and acceptance, they are on the side of autogenocide. The middle-class has to stay silent. Their privileged way of life for them and their children depends on this silence. In America, anyone can "fall from grace" and the best way to do this is to be a person of conscience and do or say something against the status quo.

7. Preparation. The village, victims, survivors and those in power are prepared for the genocide.

The autogenocide has to be conceived in invisibility and executed in invisibility. Suffering and resulting premature deaths have to blamed on something else: diseases, violence, hunger, homelessness, hopelessness, accidents, suicides, murders, so forth.

No one is going to visibly agree or assist in the holocaust. This means that its all done in the abstract. Welfare "reform" laws and other laws are hyped as "tough love" that means, in Orwellian or Alice-in-Wonderland language, that powerless people are being left to their own devices to survive without resources or enough resources to survive or have any kind of a quality of life.

Social forces from Mandora's Box are released from legal, third-parties. This includes legislation, non-legislation, bureaucracies and male institutions.

The groups to be removed are isolated. If they were isolated before, they are made more isolated

The young men are taken out of of the Targeted Neighborhoods/Groups. Before any kind of genocide can be carried out, the men of "battle age" (15-45) are always removed. Since the beginning of history, this has been the standard practice.

It also explains why laws and incarceration in America are aimed at imprisoning and/or disenfranchising men from groups scheduled to be removed. The major population of prisons in America are packed with poor and/or minority males of "prime" age. More and more of these males are being imprisoned all the time, thus emptying the ghettos, reservations, barrios and poor rural areas of men.

With males not around to physically, financially and emotionally protect their women, children, relatives and neighbors, these people are easy targets to disappear.

Social safety nets and jobs programs are removed or altered. This forces poverty, reinforces poverty and depresses the quality of life to the point people start dying in record numbers.

Racism and disenfranchises women/minorities/disabled from decent work so they're ushered into work that doesn't pay a living wage, plus workers without social power are many times forced to work dangerous jobs.

Public transportation in "red zones" does not help the people get to other areas of the cities so they can get better work. Medical insurance is impossible to afford or get from the low-wage jobs the disenfranchised work.

People are pushed deeper into debt and other crises like homelessness, hunger, disease, despair.

Civil wars between sub-groups are started by the elite and media to keep them not only isolated, divided and conquered, but to keep them in so much chaos that these groups have no chance to confederate and become a big enough political power to stop the suffering and deaths.

Schools in "useless eater" areas are purposely underfunded, thus bringing down the quality of life for individuals and communities. Quality of Life is very important: read on.

Quality of Life affects Life Outcome. If Quality of Life is high, people are usually healthier and live long. If Quality of Life is low or non-existent, many people will get sick and usually die from premature death. Bring down the overall quality of life in individuals/communities/groups and make sure that Quality of Life does not go up even an increment, and people will start dying in droves. Every professional politician knows this.

8. Extermination. The New Romans use the modern tactic of Silent Siege (Silent Slaughter) , which indirectly kills people. Isolate and starve people economically, physically, mentally, psychologically, materially, artistically, financially, spiritually, socially, and culturally (except for the nationalism and christian cultures that are toxic in themselves), and predictably, people will die of premature deaths from the stress caused by the isolation and starvation. Its not immediate death like the Nazi Holocaust, but it achieves the same result.

The media continues to keep the autogenocide hidden.

High stress factors lead to high mortality rates. Unleash ruthless, deadly social forces against certain individuals, groups, neighborhoods and/or communities and they will begin to implode. Every social worker, sociologist, psychologist, doctor, nurse, police, urban planner, politician, historian, military strategist, so forth knows this.

Add in all the factors of Stages of 7 and 8, and the body bags really begin to add up.

There is a scientific name for the "weathering away" of poor people by stress: AXIOM OF BIOLOGICAL STRESS FROM POVERTY. I believe that this name limits the scope of death by stress in the American landscape. The proper name to describe suffering and mortality should be: AXIOM OF BIOLOGICAL STRESS FROM OPPRESSION.

The victims are always blamed ("poor life choices" when they had no choices or only a choice of bad choices). They are blamed for their stress when the stressors are external and almost all are socially engineered, and socially engineered to kill.

When safety nets are gutted and politicians/economists/business leaders/sociologists/urban planners/scientists know it will result in the deaths of countless citizens, that is called socially engineering and "framing" social forces to target and kill the Untermenschen.

When politicians won't or refuse enact national healthcare insurance, knowing full well that it will result in premature death for a large number of people with no or low socio-economic value, that is called socially engineering autogenocide. It doesn't matter that the politicians are owned by pharmaceutical companies and private health care groups through campaign donations. When you enact legislation knowing full well that it will lead to enormous amounts of preventable death and you vote for it, you are committing autogenocide.

9. Denial. Because American Autogenocide is carried out in the abstract, thus the surreal, it is hard to prove. That's the evil beauty of it. The deed doesn't lead directly back to the leaders, but to the village itself. The blood is shared collectively and equally in the village because it is collective murder: it happened in a "democracy" (even if its mostly rich people directing it) and thus, the crime is owned by the whole village.

This phenomenon of community evil spreads the blood around so thinly that the remaining people don't see it on their hands. People who did not stand up against the autogenocide are as equally guilty as the leaders who caused it. This makes a village of denial and this enables the autogenocide to continue.

More, the corporate owned media ignores or downplays the suffering and death. These are forms of denial because hiding is a form of denial. If the media is someday confronted about the autogenocide and feels it has to "cover" itself, then it will work to deny the holocaust that happened under its watch.

Graduate students, organizations and others are having difficulty performing mortality studies (especially those related to the poor and/or minorities and singe women) on the local and state level. More, they are having a hard time getting any completed studies results reported by the media, including the internet. This makes connecting other studies and statistics difficult, if not impossible to prove the massive autogenocide. Hiding and distorting mortality rates plus preventing scholars, statisticians and other professional people from adding up the mortality numbers of other American communities and cities keeps the autogenocide invisible, thus denied.

Genocide is never directly traceable to the leaders who wanted it. This makes it easy for the elite, politicians, captains of industry and other instigators to deny it. Again, to this day, there is no physical proof (papers, orders) to link Hitler to the Nazi holocaust. Underlings gave the orders and executed the genocide, but everyone knows that orders for the holocaust came from the top.

It should be noted that the Nazis "cleansed" other people from their communities besides the Jews. They targeted the hopelessly unemployed, "immoral women" including prostitutes (prostitution is rife in hard patriarchal economic times), problematic women, the mentally ill, the non-heterosexuals, political enemies, minorities, so forth.

The New Holocaust in America is also cleansing US communities of the poor, "immoral" women (poor single mothers), problematic women (women who want to live independently of a male sponsor, feminists, so forth), the mentally ill, gays and, political enemies (Senator Paul Wellstone's death still remains a mystery), minorities and other unwanted people.

Why Autogenocide?

In a 1978 letter of resignation from his position of president of the UAW, Douglas Fraser wrote, "I believe leaders of the business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in our country --a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society..."

1. Autogenocide has been solving the population problems of the American elite since the beginning of the country. Its been applied in many different forms over the centuries: small pox blankets and starvation for Indians; cannons fired at protesters in the mid-1800's, the disappearances of little towns who resisted selling out to the Railroad Barons; the CIA introduction of crack to ghetto neighborhoods; criminalizing anything to keep the prisons full of members of certain groups; letting Dickensian poverty in its modern form make people suffer and die prematurely. Thus, American Autogenocide is "business as usual, " making American Autogenocide inherently institutional.

2. American autogenocide hides the deficiencies of American-Anglo Saxon (AASAX) capitalism until it controls all the markets of the world. Capitalism, by its nature alone, simply cannot provide enough paying work for all the workers who need work in America. More, the number of jobs are declining while the number of workers is rising. Quite simply: industry has no use for many people.

3. Killing off the excess population is cheaper, easier and faster than having to deal with them. In capitalistic thought and lexicon, this is called "efficiency."

Low, non or negative producers are costly for a pay-as-you-go, you're-on-your-own (YOYO), pull-yourself-up-with-your-bootsraps merchant society. People without work or with little work and/or without money, still need food, shelter, emergency help, medical care, so forth.

Since the famous "restructuring" of the economy (which is also a restructuring of society back to a close resemblance of the old white patriarchal power hierarchy), more and more people-usually those from the lower tiers of society--can not earn enough money to properly live. This leads to tax money spent on social and emergency services. The rich complain that the tax money could have been better used-used for the priorities of the elite: tax reduction; reduction of capital gains taxes to zero; greater dividends to rich investor; huge salaries and pay packages to CEOs; so forth.

4. As mentioned above, the political and economic elite are restructuring society back to its original institutional, constitutional model of plutocracy and its support model, the elite patriarchal hierarchy of subordination.

5. Autogenocide is utilitarian but the sacrifice of the victims is not for the benefit of the village, but for the benefit of the economic and political elite.

6. Now that the country's infrastructure is in place and hardwired into the federal government, surplus people aren't needed and won't be needed in the future.

7. The wealthy elite and many big businesses are against paying taxes (cuts into their net profits) and governments (local, state and federal) have to raise taxes to support the poor and disenfranchised. Eliminate as much poor as you can so the demand for helping them (and for taxes to do it) drops.

8. Too many unwanted people might figure it out and organize themselves as a force to be reckoned with.

9. Too many people with no hope, no hope for the future and nothing to lose can result in organizing, protests, strikes and rage-fueled riots.

10. Too many poor, disenfranchised and/or minorities with votes threaten the established power and wealth structures. Within 50 years, it is projected that there will be more minorities than whites. This new majority could take out the elite, white patriarchal system. This makes the current autogenocide a "preemptive" genocide. It guarantees continued power and wealth of the elite by keeping the majority of votes in the hands of whites.

11. It is negative population control. America is running out of room for its current population which is continually expanding. Over population can result in greater pollution, social suffering and epidemics. In the mind of patriarchal leaders, somebody has to be removed, so the powerless-the people few will speak up for-are quietly and invisibly removed.

12. Autogenocide can remove enough people to let the earth heal so the rich and powerful can continue plundering it and enslaving the world's populations.

13. Symbolically and literally scapegoats and punishes the powerless for the deeds of the real culprits, the ruling and financial elite. Vents the anger and frustration of the remaining villagers at someone "safe" to blame.

14. It is a result of the natural institutional racism of the System.

15. It is a predictable result of corrupt patriarchal power.

16. It is modern witch-burning. Male economics has historically struggled with the problem of unemployed women and women without male sponsors. Patriarchal societies have historically responded by killing/burning them as witches. It is estimated that ten million people, mostly women, were killed as witches from 1400-1750 and most of these killings were related to economics, patriarchal control of females and the use of scapegoats to soothe the village's anger/tension over corruption, plagues, wars, so forth.

17. Arrogance and racism.

18. Pleasure and the thrill of being able to kill and get away with it.

19. Greed and selfishness.

20. Entrenches more power and wealth in the hands of elite.

21. Shapes reality and the country to the elite's patriarchal, market ideology, will and dreams.

21. Reduces the numbers in slums. Slums are incubators for plagues and civil wars or civil rights movements.

22. Thins out the middle-class. As with all patriarchal hierarchies, there are sub-hierarchies within them. Examples are the hierarchy of white women, the hierarchy of minorities (by skin color, gender, age, so forth). For example, the federal government has several categories for Hispanics, including "White Hispanic." There is also a sub-hierarchy for the middle-class.

In the early days of the country, a small middle-class existed. Many modern politicians embellish the truth about the colonial middle-class to connect some kind of mystical American middle-class of yesteryear to the American middle-class of now. Its all propaganda. The colonial middle-class was small and more prominent along the sea coast.

The Founding Fathers, most wealthy, untitled aristocrats, never intended for a large middle-class to exist in America. Only the descendants of the existing colonial middle-class were to be allowed to be middle-class. Constitutional scholars know this.

Controlling the number of the middle-class worked for almost two hundred years until unionization, the GI Bill and other government programs helped villagers from the lower working class tiers strive to achieve the American Dream. The new middle-class became a problem for the traditional, inherited, historically- and politically- guaranteed white middle-class.

Now that we are facing a work-less world, the elite has no use for such a large layer of middle-class. The primary reason is because they are expensive in a colonial capitalist system whose wealth was designed to accumulate in the hands of the few elite. The nouveau middle-class have come to expect work with decent wages and fringe benefits when the world is flooded with the unemployed, thus the privileges of the last half of the 20th century have become antiquated. This is one of the realities of the "invisible" hand of the market.

Too many middle-class pose other problems for the elite: if there are too many of them, some will vote left or away from patriarchy. It may be legal, but it is a social faux pas against the masters of society.

Autogenocide is the perfect way for the elite to thin out the classes so they are disappeared or more manageable. Not only that, everyone gets the invisible messages of terror, so they are more likely to do as they are told.

Autogenocide tells everyone in the village what their place is and what happens to those who "fail" or "fall." It doesn't matter if the loser were destined to fail. In a highly materialistic, pay-as-you-go-society there are no margins for compassion and empathy. Those things don't make money but cost it.

In the end, American autogenocide has always been about maintaining the current power structure and System, that acts like a modern (evolved) version of the the colonial period power structure and System. The only difference is that modern politicians don't wear broad-coats and powdered wigs.

Faye Weldon, British writer and feminist said, "Everything has changed but nothing is different" about feminism. The same thing can be said about American government since its beginning to now.
23. New American Eugenics in a New American Gilded Age. Despite the weak laws and strong propaganda, America remains classiest and racist. Racism is unavoidable because it is institutional and because in patriarchal economies, where the elite receive the lion's share of the village's wealth, racism works as a selection tool to determine who gets the remaining crumbs and how much.

The first Gilded Age was the era from post-Civil War/ post-Reconstruction Era from 1865 to 1930. This time in American history saw unprecedented economic, territorial, industrial, and population expansion. There was a great increase in ethnic and racial diversity. Social tensions grew as a result of a decreasing Anglo-Saxon majority. The economic gap between rich and poor was great. At the end of this Gilded Age, the elite of America and their institutions began supporting a pseudo-science called eugenics that promised to help solve the social problems of that age.

From its beginning, eugenics has been supported by prominent thinkers, including Plato, Sir Francis Galton, Charles Darwin, Alexander Graham Bell, George Bernard Shaw, and Winston Churchill, and was an academic discipline at many colleges and universities.

American Eugenics was conceived at the onset of the twentieth century and was implemented by America's wealthiest, most powerful, most learned and most influential individuals and institutions, including the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Harriman railroad fortune (the Bush family fortune comes from deep, intimate business relationships with the Harriman family), Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, Stanford University, the American Medical Association, Margaret Sanger, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Robert Yerkes, Woodrow Wilson, the American Museum of Natural History, the American Genetic Association and a sweeping array of government agencies from the obscure Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics to the U.S. State Department.

American eugenicists sought to methodically terminate all the racial groups, ethnic groups and social classes they disliked, feared or deemed a threat to established power, then or later on.

Their goal was to sterilize fourteen million people in the United States and millions more worldwide-the "lower tenth." Afterwards, they planned to eradicate the remaining lowest tenth until only a pure Nordic super race remained on the face of the earth.

American eugenicists exported their philosophy to nations throughout the world including Nazi Germany. More, American elite, through foundations, gave grants to Germany for its eugenics program.

The American Eugenics Society was organized in 1921, following the Second International Conference on Eugenics held in New York City in that year. In 1972, the American Eugenics Society was reorganized and renamed The Society for the Study of Social Biology.

These modern economic times have been called the New Gilded Age because it compares with the first Gilded Age. Today's economic and social conditions, including the enormous inequality that is becoming greater (the gap between the elite and the poor), mirror those of yesteryear. White Supremacist books like The Bell Curve have once been legitimized and praised by the status quo. Eugenic ideas are circulating again, but this time with fury, thus greater power.

Eugenics and genocide is synonymous. This is because eugenics provides a big justification for genocide.

A 1911 study, financed by the Carnegie Institution, identified eighteen possible methods of implementing eugenics in American and around the world. Gas chambers were deemed to be the most effective method, but it was felt that American society was not yet prepared to accept them (and this is where the Germans got first got their idea for gas chambers). Thus,a number of other eugenic methods were adopted, most notably mass sterilization. By marshaling government forces to continually identify and sterilize those citizens deemed unfit for reproduction, it was estimated that the ultimate goal of the master race could be achieved over a period of generations.

The world is running out of any kind of paying work and because work in America is rewarded and rewarded along patriarchal-defined class lines, the bottom twenty percent-mostly minorities, single adult women, disabled, gays/lesbians (despite the media hype, many are poor), the poor, so forth-will be hopelessly unemployed in the future. What is to be done with these people that industry and power elite have no use for and are loathe to support? These people are negative numbers on the balance sheets of a corporate country.

As before-mentioned (#3), it is easier, cheaper and faster to kill undesired groups of people than to help them live decently.

Cause & Effect-The Principle of Causality/Determinism

A. Spirkin writes, "All certainty in our relationships with the world rests on acknowledgement of causality. Causality is a genetic connection of phenomena through which one thing (the cause) under certain conditions gives rise to, causes something else (the effect). The essence of causality is the generation and determination of one phenomenon by another. In this respect causality differs from various other kinds of connection, for example, the simple temporal sequence of phenomena, of the regularities of accompanying processes. For example, a pinprick causes pain. Brain damage causes mental illness. Causality is an active relationship, a relationship which brings to life some thing new, which turns possibility into actuality. A cause is an active and primary thing in relation to the effect. But "after this" does not always mean "because of this". It would be a parody of justice if we were to say that where there is punishment there must have been a crime.

Causality is universal. Nowhere in the world can there be any phenomena that do not give rise to certain consequences and have not been caused by other phenomena. Ours is a world of cause and effect or, figuratively speaking, of progenitors and their progeny. Whenever we seek to retrace the steps of cause and effect and find the first cause, it disappears into the infinite distances of universal interaction. But the concept of cause is not confined to interaction. Causality is only a part of universal connection. The universality of causality is often denied on the grounds of the limited nature of human experience, which prevents us from judging the character of connections beyond what is known to science and practice. And yet we know that no scientist restricts his reasoning to what he can immediately perceive. The whole history of humanity, of all scientific experiment knows no exception to the principle of determinism.

The connection between cause and effect takes place in time. This temporary relation may be defined in various ways. Some people believe that cause always precedes effect, that there is a certain interval between the time when the cause begins to act (for example, the interaction of two systems) and the time the effect appears. For a certain time cause and effect coexist, then the cause dies out and the consequence ultimately becomes the cause of something else. And so on to infinity." (Source)

Autogenocide and the Principle of Causality/Determinism

Autogenocide is socially-engineering predetermined outcomes by cause and effect. Because it is done through legal means and arenas, American autogenocide is a procedure that is little more than a carefully-orchestrated effort to cast an aura of legitimacy over an entirely illegitimate set of predetermined outcomes.

A Favorite Tool of Autogenocide

If poverty is essentially murder, then the issue of income inequality needs to be looked upon differently. A society that allows high levels of inequality is in essence killing its own citizens." Rochie Saks, Income Inequality and its Repercussions for Us, page 131 (Source)

David Williams and his colleagues at the University of Michigan (http://www.parkridgecenter.org/Page78.html) found that people with annual incomes of under $10,000 had more than three times the risk of dying in a given year as those who made more than $30,000. Scores of other studies have produced similar findings.

Socioeconomic status is one of the strongest predictors of health and longevity. Researchers have found that at each step down the socioeconomic ladder, health is poorer on average and people die younger.

The U.S. income distribution is currently among the most unequal in the industrialized world, and life expectancy in the U.S. lags behind that of any developed countries. Recent research suggests that these two occurrences may be linked--that the unequal distribution of income in the U.S. affects the health of the populace.

Growing income inequality is a direct result from the cause of the elite restructuring society and economics. Growing income inequality-a sharp trend in the United States since the early 1980s-results in a breakdown of social cohesion, increased competition for scarce resources and greater levels of stress, frustration, despair, hopelessness and depression: all that usually lead to poorer health.

When a scientist studies American autogenocide, the best forensic tools are charting cause and effect from government action that predetermined the outcomes. For example, the government has constantly protected the health industry over the needs of citizens, particularly those citizens who can not afford medical insurance. It is a statistical fact that people-usually the most helpless of all in society-who don't have health insurance have a 25% higher chance of dying.

"... I am a social worker at a local mental health center in Southern Ohio... Our funding has been cut and we now cannot enroll people without insurance. Our local health clinic that served people without insurance is also getting their funding cut and will probably close. The evidence of a class war is so evident in this area. If you don't have insurance you don't deserve to live. It is getting harder and harder to get Medicaid in Ohio even if you are disabled, so go off and kill yourself or die of an easily treated disease..." Steve from Ohio
(Source)

Economists can predict economic trends and forecasts. Their reports always end up on the desks of the elite, politicians and planners. Politicians shredded the social safety nets when they knew that there was not enough jobs for all the bodies that would need them. Politicians knew that this would cause great suffering and death and it has. Ten years later, the numbers are starting to trickle in. The poor, single females and/or minorities are starting to die in large numbers.

The modern American autogenocide is primarily carried out by legislature. Politicians and other representatives from the status quo, including Big Business, cleverly draft laws that cause negative social forces to target and stress out the populations selected for elimination.

B-O-B

Taught in graduate psychology classes, B-O-B is a simple scientific tool and barometer to explain the outcomes of cause and effect (Causality/Determinism). B-O-B means Behavior (How does it behave?), Outcome (What Are the Outcomes?) and Benefit (Who Benefits?)

Complex things, including systems and how they work, can be more easily understood and subsequently diagramed by breaking down the components with B-O-B. A social or cultural scientist always knows that major social change/restructuring usually occurs to Benefit someone or something. Thus, the decoding with the B-O-B model can start with looking for who benefits.

The patriarchal elite obviously benefit from American autogenocide, but others do as well. They are the rest of the villagers who are allowed to live, although the New America is going to look and act more like it did a hundred years ago, only with modern buildings and technology.

In a raptor-vicious market, competition for resources, including jobs, is more fierce and ruthless than ever. Permanently disappeared villagers and their generations means less competition for the economic and social scraps that are left over after the few elite have received their enormous share. More, the property of the deceased is distributed to the remaining villagers in many ways, including public auctions where property is sold cheaper than if it had been sold on the market.

What's American Autogenocide Really About?

Power. The greatest motive for American autogenocide is Power. Power means imposing your patriarchal/materialistic/greedy/capitalistic/selfish will on someone else: it is the control of human lives to the point of being able to manipulate them, influence them, destroy them and/or take them at whim or with righteous, legal or biblical justification.

Human evil is that which destroys human lives. Autogenocide is the pinnacle of human evil.

M. Scott Peck, M.D., author of People of the Lie, profiles evil people: they have no regard for the truth; they lie and live in a world of lies. They are masters of disguise and cloak themselves with masks of respectability, goodness and often piety. Religiosity is a common and effective disguise. More, it is the appearance of propriety and respectability that is the important factor to cloaking the evil of the person.

Peck defines evil as: "The exercise of political power-that is, the imposition of one's will upon others by overt or covert coercion..." Or in other words, it is the use "of political power to destroy others," for the purpose of defending or preserving the integrity of one's sick self (or group).

American Autogenocide Told From An Eye Witness

It was a Minnesota State Representative who told me about autogenocide. This happened in August of 1998. I called him at his home. Many times, I'd call him about news reports I had seen on television announcing that the "government" reported a surplus of jobs and a shortage of workers. This was almost the daily news in the late 1990's. Chronically under-employed, I wanted to know where these jobs were. Nobody ever seemed to know. When I'd call the television station or Job Service and actually talked with a live being on the other end of the phone (most of the time I would be forwarded to an answering machine), someone would promise to call back and never did.

Almost ten years later, most people know that it was all propaganda. The abundance of jobs that the government and media constantly told the village about didn't exist.

When I called the politician this time, I was worried about the upcoming vote to continuance of the end of welfare. The state government was forcing the most poorest and helpless women in the village to work, when work was almost impossible to find and when it was found, it paid minimum-wage, was part-time and offered no fringe benefits. Armed with research I had been doing, I told him there was not enough work for all the workers in the village.

"How are these women and their children supposed to survive on part-time work and no welfare?" I asked. "Don't you know that many women and children are going to die if you do this?"

I could hear his frustration with me as the tone of his voice changed on the other end of the phone line. Exasperated, he told me, "Okay, Martha, I am going to tell you something off the record. If you ever tell anyone, I will deny it." I listened carefully as he proceeded to tell me something that shocked me all the way to the core of my being.

First, he asked me, "What do you know about farming?"

I replied, "What does farming have to do with women not getting work?"

He replied, "A lot and I'll get to that in a moment." Then he told me that economists, industry and politicians knew that the 'flush' economy was going to last until around the year 2000 (he was right), and then 'welfare reform' would have to be shelved because the more privileged people in society would demand all the remaining jobs of a slagging economy. This didn't happen because the Will of the Elite became too powerful and entrenched, plus the virtual war on "terror" that sucks all the money out of the treasury and spent on the new police state instead of citizens who are going to die from governmental neglect.

The local politician told me that in the interim, someone, namely women and children, had to be sacrificed. Yes, he said, politicians knew that some innocent people were going to die, but 'welfare reform' was a 'red button' political issue that 'had to be addressed' because the middle-class and the upper-classes did not want to pay taxes to support disadvantaged people. Therefore, some of the most powerless people had been targeted for elimination from society.

"It is no big deal," he told me, "Every society does it. Think of it in these terms: Farmers don't keep animals that cost more than they produce. People in power have to make those same decisions regarding people just like farmers have to make the same decisions regarding livestock. Someone has to control the size of the herd. Unlike animals, it is the powerless, not the sick or lame, that are selected to be removed.

Politicians have to make difficult, executive decisions for their constituents, even if it seems unfair. That's what they are elected for and they are giving the voters what they really want. If politicians refuse to make these decisions, they won't get reelected. There are lots of people willing to run for office and make those executive decisions if the current politicians won't do it. These choices are natural and a fact of life, Martha. I told you, every society does it."

Surprised and confused, I replied, "Wait a minute, are you telling me that our society intentionally kills our own people, even women and children, only because the wealthy don't want to share? That these deaths are intentionally planned? Don't the wealthy know that poverty is one of the 'natural' byproducts of capitalism, that capitalism depends on an official 'average' five percent unemployed to hold it up? Are you telling me that all politicians, local ones to national ones, not only know about this murder but willingly participate in it?"

"All of them know about it, Martha," he told me. "Now you do, too. Don't ever call me again and don't ever quote me. I'll deny I ever told you this."

"Wait!" I said, "How you can be a part of this and live with your conscience?"

He hung up on me. I tried to call him several times after that and he would never talk to me.

Putting Flesh and Blood On the Surreal

Any kind of a murder is surreal. It is a symbol of power: Someone has taken someone else's life. It is a symbol of evil, of the dark side of the human existence/experience. The first book of the Bible, Genesis, gives murder (particularly murder of your brother) not only the symbol of ultimate evil, but its parable is a warning to all humans.

Murder always creates a surreal atmosphere. Its name and dynamics are psychological "red buttons" that the psyche (subconscious) recognizes before the conscious. Murder is always dark and it hides in the darkest places that people don't want to peer into because of many reasons including the fact that it might affect their conscience and make them depressed.

Only the perpetrators, researchers and real thirsters of justice will look inside these dark places. You have to have courage to do this because these dark places are rabidly shielded and watched by guards of the elite. Like any murderer, the persons who caused the murder will do everything to keep the evidence hidden. In the case of Silent Autogenocides like the one that is happening in America, the truth of it will remain hidden until all the players have long since left life's arena. More, few ever mourn for the loss of weakest members of society.

When the spotlight is on the murderer, motivation, premeditation, biographies, facts and more are explored to depth. When the spotlight never reaches the murders or the murderers, its accepted by most people that the perpetrators will probably get away with it.

This is not always the truth, particularly in the case of autogenocide.

Forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow, speaking before the May, 1984 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, correctly said,"Of all the forms of murder, none is more monstrous than that committed by a state against its own citizens... The homicidal state shares one trait with the solitary killer--like all murderers, it trips on its own egoism and drops a trail of clues which, when properly collected, preserved and analyzed are as damning as a signed confession left in the grave."

In the two months it has taken to write this article, the author estimates that at least 20,000 Americans have died from autogenocide. These deaths include any kind of premature death by any of the legion of ills that poverty creates or exacerbates. Deaths can include exposure, accidents, gunshots, hunger, drug overdose, lack of medicine or medical care, suicides, homicides, asthma deaths from breathing cockroach feces, cancer, tuberculosis, AIDS, so forth.

Americans, even the ones on the left, are trained (brainwashed) from the cradle to only accept the truth in spoonfuls. This essay is more than a spoonful of truth. Only the most courageous readers have read this far.

Its time to wake the Sleeping Village up! Its time to throw the wild cards on the table and start the dialogue that needs to be started.

The economic and political elite of America have cognitively rigged the Lottery of Life to force premature deaths of those not valuable to white male society and/or industry. The full consequences of mean-hearted, reckless, racist, patriarchal, right-wing Christian, laissez faire capitalism legislation won't be seen for years. By then, tens of millions of unwanted citizens will be dead before their time. That's how American autogenocide works.

Socialists, feminists, activists, minority groups, women's groups, social service groups, ghetto committees, Indian reservation councils, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, ACORN, the Black Panthers, the Gray Panthers, prisoner groups, so forth, need to start counting the deaths around them, including statistics like race, age, income and cause of death. No longer can the usual "causes of death" be attributed to victims of autogenocide. New categories, like "poverty" and "the violence of poverty" need to be considered as primary causes of death with the physical diseases listed as secondary causes.

A central organization or website needs to be established to begin the grim task of counting the bodies of victims and disseminating the information. Once the counting begins, the picture is going to be bigger than anyone ever imagined. It has to be done or the American autogenocide will continue.

The villagers from the lower tiers of society have to collect the death information and find someone neutral to interpret this data.

From the cradle to the grave, propaganda sewn everywhere in the social tapestry tells us that the government and its agents are infallible. As in "the good old days," almost every politician prostitutes themselves to the elite and big business today. Look at who's in the White House right now and how the country's run. The government or corporate-owned media can not be trusted to perform this counting. The people-people in every corner of the US-have to count, literally.

For further reading, I suggest Michael Parenti's article Hidden Holocaust, USA
I recommend that everyone in the world read THE RELIGION OF POWER by Cheryl Forbes. Although I am a pagan and this is a "Christian" book, it is the best book I have found so far that describes power and how it works in this world.

Martha Rose Crow is a feminist, socialist, poet and writer living in the Netherlands. A social economist and cultural scientist, she holds four university degrees in Marketing, Management, Communication and Information Media (master's degree). She can be contacted at martharosecrow@excite.com

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Friday, October 27, 2006

For God's Sake Please Kick These Psychopaths OUT!

Signs of the Times for Fri, 27 Oct 2006

Cheney endorses simulated drowning

[don't be coy. This is Waterboarding and it is torture.]

By Demetri Sevastopulo
MSNBC
Oct. 27, 2006

Dick Cheney, US vice-president, has endorsed the use of "water boarding" for terror suspects and confirmed that the controversial interrogation technique was used on Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the senior al-Qaeda operative now being held at Guantánamo Bay.

Mr Cheney was responding to a conservative radio interviewer who asked whether water boarding, which involves simulated drowning, was a "no-brainer" if the information it yielded would save American lives. "It's a no-brainer for me," Mr Cheney replied.

The comments by the vice-president, who has been one of the leading advocates of reducing limitations on what interrogation techniques can be used in the war on terror, are the first public confirmation that water boarding has been used on suspects held in US custody.

A spokeswoman for Mr Cheney denied that he had endorsed or confirmed the use of water-boarding.

"The VP was talking about the interrogation programme, clearly noting that we do not torture and we live up to our international treaty obligations. He does not discuss any techniques or methods that may or may not be used in questioning," said Lea Anne McBride.

Mr Cheney said recent legislation passed by Congress allowed the White House to continue its aggressive interrogation programme.

But his remarks appear to stand at odds with the views of three key Republican senators who helped draft the recently passed Military Commission Act, and who argue that water boarding is not permitted according to that law.

"[It's] a direct affront to the primary authors of the Military Commission Act in the Senate - John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner - all of whom have publicly stated that the legislation signed by the president last week makes water boarding a war crime," said Jennifer Daskal, advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "This is Cheney ignoring the consensus of his own Pentagon," she said, referring to comments by senior officials that harsh interrogation techniques do not produce reliable intelligence.

John Bellinger, the State Department legal adviser, last week declined to answer specific questions on water boarding, saying Congress would have to determine whether specific interrogation techniques were permissible under the Geneva conventions.

[On September 6, 2006, the United States Department of Defense released a revised Army Field Manual entitled Human Intelligence Collector Operations that prohibits the use of waterboarding by U.S. military personnel. The revised manual was adopted amid widespread criticism of U.S. handling of prisoners in the War on Terrorism, and prohibits other practices in addition to waterboarding. The revised manual applies to U.S. military personnel, and as such does not apply to the practices of the CIA.[6]- Wikipedia]

The Bush administration was forced to work with Congress to pass the Military Commissions Act after the Supreme Court ruled that al-Qaeda suspects were entitled to some protections under the Geneva convention. "Any procedures goingforward would have to comply with the standardsof Common Article 3 [of the Geneva conventions], including the prohibition oncruel, inhuman and degrading treatment . . . ," Mr Bellinger said. "Congress would have to agree that theyare permitted under the law."

Asked in the radio interview whether he would agree that the debate over terrorist interrogations and water boarding was "a little silly", Mr Cheney responded: "I do agree".

[DO you want this man holding your life, your child's life in his hands??]

"I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high-value detainees like Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, that's been a very important tool that we've had to be able to secure the nation," he said.







Thursday, October 19, 2006

Just Give Me a Bag :(

Ok, it's bad enough to be ashamed of your country of birth (see previous entry), but it's even worse to become ashamed of your adopted home. The Western world is definately circling the drain . . .

Blue Ibis
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Harper vows Canadian support for Israel

Last Updated: Thursday, October 19, 2006 9:36 AM ET
CBC News

Canada will not remain neutral when Israel is involved in a fight to defend itself against extremists, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a speech to the Jewish community on Wednesday.

Speaking at a B'nai Brith dinner in Toronto, Harper made no apologies for the stance of his government on Israel, saying the Jewish state can expect the full support and friendship of Canada.

"When it comes to dealing with a war between Israel and a terrorist organization, this country and this government cannot and will never be neutral," Harper said.

"Those who seek to destroy the Jews, who seek to destroy Israel, will ... ultimately seek to destroy us all. It is why Canada's new government has reacted with speed and spoken with clarity on the recent events in the Middle East."

Harper quickly sided with Israel in July after it launched an offensive into Lebanon to fight Hezbollah, which had captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.

Harper said, however, that the Palestinian people need a future that is fair and just and he hopes that a two-party solution, in which the Palestinian people have their own state, will one day have Palestinians and Israelis living side by side in peace.

"Issues of human dignity, of giving people the opportunity to build their community, to realize their own dreams - as long as they respect the rights and dignity of others - are values we also share."

Harper's remarks resonated with members of the Jewish community at the dinner.

Michael Mostyn, a member of B'nai Brith, said Wednesday night that the strong pro-Israel stance of the Conservative government has not gone unnoticed by the Jewish community. [getting those votes sewn up?]

"Certainly foreign policy has an impact, as it would with any other immigrant group here in Canada," he said.

But Mostyn added that support can shift and the Conservative party should not take support from one group for granted because there are many issues of concern to all voters.

"I think Jewish voters are like all other Canadians. There are a multitude of issues that concern them. They are concerned about taxes and security," said Mostyn.

Last week, Harper said the federal Liberal party leadership candidates are anti-Israeli after Michael Ignatieff had said Israel's bombing of the Lebanese town Qana in July, which killed dozens of civilians, was a war crime. [tacky, tacky, Michael. It's rude to accurately name the deed. Look what happens . . .]

Ignatieff, who describes himself as a "lifelong friend of Israel," said Harper's response was inappropriate and Harper was trying to gain politically by commenting on Middle East issues.
Must be a big old campaign contribution on the line here, ya think? After all, minority governments have short lifespans. Gotta get that vote sewn up asap. Here is just a small part of what these "life-long" friends are "fully supporting":

Rights group: Shin Bet denies vital treatment to Palestinians

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

The Shin Bet security service is systematically preventing Palestinians who need medical treatment unavailable in the territories from entering Israel, a new report by the nonprofit organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) charges.

According to the organization, in many cases, patients have been denied urgent, life-saving treatment.

The report says that the Shin Bet automatically refuses entry permits, and reconsiders its decisions only if legal action is begun.

In response, the Shin Bet said that it has to balance security considerations against human rights, and noted that terrorist groups have tried to take advantage of Palestinian patients with entry permits in order to carry out attacks inside Israel.

The report, a copy of which was given to Haaretz, claims that the Shin Bet has veto power over all requests by Palestinian patients seeking to enter Israel for medical purposes or to travel from the territories abroad. Many of the requests are turned down on the grounds that the individual is "forbidden entry." That is a classification for Palestinians whom the Shin Bet considers potential threats to national security.

However, it is rare for someone to be tagged as "forbidden entry" because of specific information about that individual. In most cases, the label is based on general profiles of potential terrorists.

The human rights group carried out an analysis of refused entry requests and concluded that the Shin Bet applies very general criteria in its decisions. According to the analysis, those between the ages of 16 and 35, and sometimes 18 and 40, are considered "dangerous." Single men and women, or those who are married but childless, are usually turned down. Anyone with a record of security offenses, even minor ones (i.e. former prisoners), or with possible motives for revenge (a family member hurt by the Israel Defense Forces), is also turned down, as are students, because universities are described as "hotbeds of terrorism," and AIDS patients (the stigma that the disease carries in Palestinian society opens the patient to blackmail: attack in order to cleanse the family name).

The organization decribes the use of these profiles as collective punishment, and emphasizes that denying medical treatment to Palestinian patients violates their human rights. For some patients, no medical treatment is tantamount to a death sentence.

Even though responsibility for medical services in the territories were transferred to the Palestinian Authority under the Gaza and Jericho agreement of 1994, in practice, the PA cannot meet its population's medical needs, and therefore sends many patients to Israel and Arab countries for treatment.

According to PHR, international law and agreements to which Israel is party require it to provide for the medical needs of the population in the territories. Israel refuses to acknowledge any such legal obligation, but responds to some requests out of "humanitarian concerns." In those cases, Israel charges the Palestinians for the medical treatment.

The report's authors say that the Shin Bet refuses to invest the funds and manpower necessary for more detailed evaluations of Palestinian requests to enter Israel for medical purposes, and as a result, most are automatically turned down. The applicant, who receives a response to his request through the Civil Administration, is never told why the request was turned down, nor is there an easy method of appealing the decision. Many applicants are not even aware that there is a possibility of appealing.

Although hundreds of Palestinian applicants are turned down, the vast majority of those who appeal with the help of PHR are allowed entry into Israel. According to the organization, out of 138 requests it handled last year on behalf of patients who were denied entry permits, 116, or 84 percent, were ultimately approved.

However, whenever the group turns to the High Court of Justice, the state asks the court to treat the case as an exception and avoid making a precedent-setting ruling. And in cases where the state insists on its refusal to allow the petitioner to enter Israel, the court usually upholds this position, on the basis of intelligence that the petitioner is not allowed to see.

The report's authors recommend that the entire method of granting permits be reformed.

According to PHR, "the Shin Bet enjoys secure anonymity that gives it infinite control, which even the High Court has trouble limiting. Denying patients care constitutes torture." The group therefore suggests doing away with the Shin Bet's veto power over requests for entry permits, arguing that the decision in disputed cases should be placed in the hands of an authorized medical professional.

The report also accuses the Shin Bet of trying to exploit Palestinian patients' difficult situations in order to recruit family members as informers, by conditioning permits for medical treatment on a promise to supply information.

The Shin Bet responded that its sole goal is to limit terrorism, and that is the sole criterion for approving or refusing Palestinian requests for entry into Israel. It also maintained that its policies undergo legal scrutiny.

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Just pass me that sick bag,please. BI














Monday, October 16, 2006

It's Just Business Research . . . Really.

Another example of the pathocratic, paramoralistic reasoning that rules the world today. Whatever costume they wear, zionist, illuminati, communist, fascist, remember what we are really talking about are PSYCHOPATHS. THEY are the wolves in sheeps' clothing, whom we ignore at our peril.

Excerpt from the Signs page weekly feature Economic Commentary.

By Donald Hunt
October 16, 2006

....[W]ars, even disastrous ones, make some people rich. They just benefit at the expense of their home society and currency. George Ure blames those fictive psychopaths, the corporations, and those real psychopaths who benefit from those corporations, for the chronic warfare that so damages the average people of the world:

The West is hostage to a view that is profit-oriented; power derives from money, and money flows from corporations. Corporations exist to grow - and without growth profits shrink, and without profits the whole of the Western paradigm is in trouble. When growth doesn't exist to increase standards of living, the excess production must be spent somewhere else, and wars are a fine place to blow up, burn up, and shoot up excess production. I note that as soon as the gunfire stopped Lebanon last month, in came the bankers to make money. It has been almost too pat, too smooth, too orchestrated, at least for my taste.

To get a better understanding of how the psychopaths is charge think and act, ponder the following economic experiment. The economy itself is a weapon in their hands:

Gaza as Laboratory: The Great Experiment

Uri Avnery
October 14-15, 2006

Is it possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it?

That is, certainly, an interesting question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and the United States, in close cooperation with Europe, are now engaged in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain a definitive answer.

The laboratory for the experiment is the Gaza Strip, and the guinea pigs are the million and a quarter Palestinians living there.


In order to meet the required scientific standards, it was necessary first of all to prepare the laboratory.

That was done in the following way: First, Ariel Sharon uprooted the Israeli settlements that were stuck there. After all, you can't conduct a proper experiment with pets roaming around the laboratory. It was done with "determination and sensitivity", tears flowed like water, the soldiers kissed and embraced the evicted settlers, and again it was shown that the Israeli army is the most-most in the world.

With the laboratory cleaned, the next phase could begin: all entrances and exits were hermetically sealed, in order to eliminate disturbing influences from the world outside. That was done without difficulty. Successive Israeli governments have prevented the building of a harbor in Gaza, and the Israeli navy sees to it that no ship approaches the shore. The splendid international airport, built during the Oslo days, was bombed and shut down. The entire Strip was closed off by a highly effective fence, and only a few crossings remained, all but one controlled by the Israeli army.

There remained a sole connection with the outside world: the Rafah border crossing to Egypt. It could not just be sealed off, because that would have exposed the Egyptian regime as a collaborator with Israel. A sophisticated solution was found: to all appearances the Israeli army left the crossing and turned it over to an international supervision team. Its members are nice guys, full of good intentions, but in practice they are totally dependent on the Israeli army, which oversees the crossing from a nearby control room. The international supervisors live in an Israeli kibbutz and can reach the crossing only with Israeli consent.

So everything was ready for the experiment.

THE SIGNAL for its beginning was given after the Palestinians had held spotlessly democratic elections, under the supervision of former President Jimmy Carter. George Bush was enthusiastic: his vision of bringing democracy to the Middle East was coming true.

But the Palestinians flunked the test. Instead of electing "good Arabs", devotees of the United States, they voted for very bad Arabs, devotees of Allah. Bush felt insulted. But the Israeli government was ecstatic: after the Hamas victory, the Americans and Europeans were ready to take part in the experiment. It could start:

The United States and the European Union announced the stoppage of all donations to the Palestinian Authority, since it was "controlled by terrorists". Simultaneously, the Israeli government cut off the flow of money.

To understand the significance of this: according to the "Paris Protocol" (the economic annex of the Oslo agreement) the Palestinian economy is part of the Israeli customs system. This means that Israel collects the duties for all the goods that pass through Israel to the Palestinian territories - actually, there is no other route. After deducting a fat commission, Israel is obligated to turn the money over to the Palestinian Authority.

When the Israeli government refuses to pass on this money, which belongs to the Palestinians, it is, simply put, robbery in broad daylight. But when one robs "terrorists", who is going to complain?

The Palestinian Authority - both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - needs this money like air for breathing. This fact also requires some explanation: in the 19 years when Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza Strip, from 1948 to 1967, not a single important factory was built there. The Jordanians wanted all economic activity to take place in Jordan proper, east of the river, and the Egyptians neglected the strip altogether.

Then came the Israeli occupation, and the situation became even worse. The occupied territories became a captive market for Israeli industry, and the military government prevented the establishment of any enterprise that could conceivably compete with an Israeli one.

The Palestinian workers were compelled to work in Israel for hunger wages (by Israeli standards). From these, the Israeli government deducted all the social payments levied on Israeli workers, without the Palestinian workers enjoying any social benefits. This way the government robbed these exploited workers of tens of billions of dollars, which disappeared somehow in the bottomless barrel of the government.

When the intifada broke out, the Israeli captains of industry and agriculture discovered that it was possible to get along without the Palestinian workers. Indeed, it was even more profitable. Workers brought in from Thailand, Romania and other poor countries were ready to work for even lower wages and in conditions bordering on slavery. The Palestinian workers lost their jobs.

That was the situation at the beginning of the experiment: the Palestinian infrastructure destroyed, practically no means of production, no work for the workers. All in all, an ideal setting for the great "experiment in hunger".

THE IMPLEMENTATION started, as mentioned, with the stoppage of payments.

The passage between Gaza and Egypt was closed in practice. Once every few days or weeks it was opened for some hours, for appearances' sake, so that some of the sick and dead or dying could get home or reach Egyptian hospitals.

The crossings between the Strip and Israel were closed "for urgent security reasons". Always, at the right moment, "warnings of an imminent terrorist attack" appeared. Palestinian agricultural products destined for export rot at the crossing. Medicines and foodstuffs cannot get in, except for short periods from time to time, also for appearances, whenever somebody important abroad voices some protest. Then comes another "urgent security warning" and the situation is back to normal.

To round off the picture, the Israeli Air Force bombed the only power station in the Strip, so that for a part of the day there is no electricity, and the water supply (which depends on electric pumps) stops also. Even on the hottest days, with temperatures of over 30 degrees centigrade in the shade, there is no electricity for refrigerators, air conditioning, the water supply or other needs.


In the West Bank, a territory much larger than the Gaza Strip (which makes up only 6% of the occupied Palestinian territories but holds 40% of the inhabitants), the situation is not quite so desperate. But in the Strip, more than half of the population lives beneath the Palestinian "poverty line", which lies of course very, very far below the Israeli "poverty line". Many Gaza residents can only dream of being considered poor in the nearby Israeli town of Sderot.

What are the governments of Israel and the US trying to tell the Palestinians? The message is clear: You will reach the brink of hunger, and even beyond, if you do not surrender. You must remove the Hamas government and elect candidates approved by Israel and the US. And, most importantly: you must be satisfied with a Palestinian state consisting of several enclaves, each of which will be utterly dependent on the tender mercies of Israel.

AT THE moment, the directors of the scientific experiment are pondering a puzzling question: how on earth do the Palestinians still hold out, in spite of everything? According to all the rules, they should have been broken long ago!

Indeed, there are some encouraging signs. The general atmosphere of frustration and desperation creates tension between Hamas and Fatah. Here and there clashes have broken out, people were killed and wounded, but in each case the deterioration was halted before it became a civil war. The thousands of hidden Israeli collaborators are also helping to stir things up. But contrary to all expectations, the resistance did not evaporate. Even the captured Israeli soldier has not been released.

One of the explanations has to do with the structure of Palestinian society. The Hamulah (extended family) plays a central role there. As long as one person in the family is working, the relatives, too, do not die of hunger, even if there is widespread malnutrition. Everyone who has any income shares it with all his brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents, cousins and their children. That is a primitive system, but quite effective in such circumstances. It seems that the planners of the experiment did not take this into account.

In order to quicken the process, the whole might of the Israeli army is now being used again, as from this week. For three months the army was busy with the Second Lebanon War. It became apparent that the army, which for the last 39 years has been employed mainly as a colonial police force, does not function very well when suddenly confronted with a trained and armed opponent that can fight back. Hizbullah used deadly anti-tank weapons against the armored forces, and rockets rained down on Northern Israel. The army has long ago forgotten how to deal with such an enemy. And the campaign did not end well.

Now the army returns to the war it knows. The Palestinians in the Strip do not (yet) have effective anti-tank weapons, and the Qassam rockets cause only limited damage. The army can again use tanks against the population without hindrance. The Air Force, which in Lebanon was afraid to send in helicopters to remove the wounded, can now fire missiles at the houses of "wanted persons", their families and neighbors, at leisure. If in the last three months "only" 100 Palestinians were killed per month, we are now witnessing a dramatic rise in the number of Palestinians killed and wounded.

How can a population that is hit by hunger, lacking medicaments and equipment for its primitive hospitals and exposed to attacks on land, from sea and from the air, hold out? Will it break? Will it go down on its knees and beg for mercy? Or will it find inhuman strength and stand the test?

In short: What and how much is needed to get a population to surrender?

All the scientists taking part in the experiment - Ehud Olmert and Condoleezza Rice, Amir Peretz and Angela Merkel, Dan Halutz and George Bush, not to mention Nobel Peace Price laureate Shimon Peres - are bent over the microscopes and waiting for an answer, which undoubtedly will be an important contribution to political science.

I hope the Nobel Committee is watching.


Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.









Monday, October 02, 2006

Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)


Signs of the Times: News you won't get anywhere else. Your government certainly won't tell you. (Clickable link)

Blue Ibis

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Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)

Molly Ivins
TruthDig
09/29/06

AUSTIN, Texas - Oh dear. I'm sure he didn't mean it. In Illinois' Sixth Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth, of planning to "cut and run" on Iraq.

Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. "I just could not believe he would say that to me," said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?

The legislative equivalent of that remark is the detainee bill now being passed by Congress. Beloveds, this is so much worse than even that pathetic deal reached last Thursday between the White House and Republican Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The White House has since reinserted a number of "technical fixes" that were the point of the putative "compromise." It leaves the president with the power to decide who is an enemy combatant.

This bill is not a national security issue-this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies. Perhaps this could be considered if we knew the administration would use the power with enormous care and thoughtfulness. But of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place.

Death by torture by Americans was first reported in 2003 in a New York Times article by Carlotta Gall. The military had announced the prisoner died of a heart attack, but when Gall saw the death certificate, written in English and issued by the military, it said the cause of death was homicide. The "heart attack" came after he had been beaten so often on this legs that they had "basically been pulpified," according to the coroner. [getting nauseous yet?]

The story of why and how it took the Times so long to print this information is in the current edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The press in general has been late and slow in reporting torture, so very few Americans have any idea how far it has spread. As is often true in hierarchical, top-down institutions, the orders get passed on in what I call the downward communications exaggeration spiral.

For example, on a newspaper, a top editor may remark casually, "Let's give the new mayor a chance to see what he can do before we start attacking him."

This gets passed on as "Don't touch the mayor unless he really screws up."

And it ultimately arrives at the reporter level as "We can't say anything negative about the mayor."

The version of the detainee bill now in the Senate not only undoes much of the McCain-Warner-Graham work, but it is actually much worse than the administration's first proposal. In one change, the original compromise language said a suspect had the right to "examine and respond to" all evidence used against him. The three senators said the clause was necessary to avoid secret trials. The bill has now dropped the word "examine" and left only "respond to."

In another change, a clause said that evidence obtained outside the United States could be admitted in court even if it had been gathered without a search warrant. But the bill now drops the words "outside the United States," which means prosecutors can ignore American legal standards on warrants.
[Doesn't that make you feel safe from the "turr'ists"?]


The bill also expands the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant to cover anyone who has "has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." Quick, define "purposefully and materially." One person has already been charged with aiding terrorists because he sold a satellite TV package that includes the Hezbollah network.

The bill simply removes a suspect's right to challenge his detention in court. This is a rule of law that goes back to the Magna Carta in 1215. That pretty much leaves the barn door open.

As Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident, wrote, an intelligence service free to torture soon "degenerates into a playground for sadists." But not unbridled sadism-you will be relieved that the compromise took out the words permitting interrogation involving "severe pain" and substituted "serious pain," which is defined as "bodily injury that involves extreme physical pain."

In July 2003, George Bush said in a speech: "The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit."

Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary - these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law.
.
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[don't like Bush? Say so? These could be for you]


[Nazi Torture Instruments from Museum of World War II]
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Molly continues:
I'd like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis.

To find out more about Molly Ivins and see works by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Comment on this article at the SOTT Forum - Best discussions on the Web


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Monday, September 25, 2006

The Definition of Torture: Bush Version

You gotta love the Signs of the Times Forum. Where else would you find these kinds of posts? Nothing like a lively, informative, WELL-MANNERED discussion between intelligent individuals. The post below is the start of one such thread. If this sounds like your kind of place, drop in. You'll feel right at home.

Blue Ibis

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Control the Dictionary, Control the World

By Bernard Weiner
Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers
September 19, 2006

Clinton tried to fudge the truth when he claimed he'd "never had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," but he felt he could get away with that language because, in his mind, he defined "sexual relations" as referring to vaginal intercourse.

Bush, with a straight face, tells us that he has never authorized torture, and he thinks he can get away with that lie because the public is mostly unaware that his administration has totally altered the definition of "torture."

According to the infamous 2002 torture memos, which effectively set the policy, torture no longer means what we all understand that term to mean (physical beatings, shoving suspects under water to "drown" them unless they give up secrets, electric shocks to the genitals, unbearable stress, sexual abuse and humiliation, etc.). No, those internationally-understood definitions have become, under Bush&Co., "quaint" remnants from an earlier era.

Under the leadership of Alberto Gonzales and other lawyers -- mainly from the White House, Rumsfeld's office, and Cheney's office -- the Bush Administration went through all sorts of moral gyrations and emerged with new definitions of what constituted torture. Basically, it's not torture if it doesn't kill you or if the excruciating pain and injuries don't lead to organ failure.

You think I'm exaggerating? Check it out for yourself. The Justice Department's August 1, 2002, legal memo concluded that "the ban on torture is limited to only the most extreme forms of physical and mental harm," which the memo defined as akin to "death or organ failure." (See also "Bush's Torture Deceit: What 'Is' Is," and "Gonzales Grilled on Role in Torture at Confirmation Hearing").

So when Bush says the U.S. doesn't torture and he would never authorize torture, in a sense he believes himself to be telling the truth, since he totally transformed the meaning of "torture" to give it a totally different, exceedingly narrow, interpretation. The Administration apparently believes that as a result of interrogations under what Bush calls its "alternative set of procedures," only if the detainees die or are the victims of organ failure could officials rightfully be accused of authorizing torture. (Actually, it's estimated that perhaps as many as 100 detainees have died while in U.S. custody, scores of them directly from torture.)


A FEW "EXCEPTIONS" FROM TORTURE LAWS

Furthermore, Bush is asserting that U.S. laws against torture, and Congressional oversight of such activity, should only apply to interrogations that take place on American soil. If the CIA uses the "alternative procedures" in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or in the secret CIA prisons abroad, those don't count. Plus, the Administration has moved to shield those who authorized and carry out "harsh" interrogations from national and international laws against mistreatment of prisoners. Meanwhile, of course, a few lower-level, enlisted "bad apples" have been tried, convicted, and sent to prison.

Likewise, according to the Bush Administration, the "extraordinary rendition" of especially recalcitrant prisoners to friendly countries abroad that are notorious for extreme physical torture does not count as the U.S. cooperating in the administration of torture. The Bush crew play variations on: "They were tortured there? Really? We are shocked, shocked! We don't approve of torture and had no idea it was used on prisoners entrusted to their care." Yeah, sure.

But recently, in making the case to Congress that it should pass the Administration's draconian laws permitting such "alternative procedures," Bush let the cat out of the bag and admitted that several al-Qaida suspects gave up a good deal of valuable information while being interrogated in those secret CIA prisons abroad. But he still denies that his administration carried out "torture" there. Does he think we're stupid?

Do you see how it works? And the ramifications of how it works? In short, Bush&Co. have simply rewritten the dictionary to remove their legal liability for such crimes, and in the process have re-written the rules under which they, and their subordinates, act. When reality doesn't meet their needs, they don't consider making alterations to their policies; they just change the definition of what's "real."


BUSH DESPERATE FOR TORTURE VICTORY

In a sign of how desperate Bush is to maintain complete control of the torture definition -- and thus keep himself and other top U.S. officials out of the war-crimes court in The Hague -- Bush took a rare visit to Congress last week to try to forestall defeat of his torture/military tribunals bill. It was a definition struggle again.

The Geneva Convention on the treatment of captured prisoners is quite clear and specific; no country is permitted to use "cruel" treatment or "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" on prisoners in its care. Too "vague," says Bush. Instead, he suggests, CIA interrogators need "latitude" (euphemism: "clarity") in interrogating and torturing suspects so that they won't be nervously looking over their shoulders at war-crimes charges.

The Pentagon's senior lawyers think Geneva's definitions are quite clear and openly disagreed with the hardline Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld interpretation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. Even Colin Powell bestirred his calcified conscience to point out that by trying to do an end-around Geneva, the U.S. risked losing the moral high ground internationally. Also, as Sen. John McCain (who was tortured as a POW in Hanoi) and others have pointed out, the U.S. would put its captured troops in great jeopardy of "cruel and degrading" treatment -- in other words, torture -- similar to what the CIA was meting out in its secret prisons abroad.

Republican "moderate" senators McCain, Graham, Snowe, Warner and others have been demanding that the U.S. remain consistent with the Geneva protections and also provide some legal safeguards to suspects on trial in military tribunals. But time and time again, these so-called "moderates," under extreme Roveian pressure, have caved and given Bush what he wants. As I write this, it's unclear whether they have the courage to stick to their guns this time. We shall see. In the meantime, get this: Bush threatened to close down the CIA's questioning of terrorist suspects unless Congress approves his bill. Talk about cutting off your nation's nose to spite your personal face! Blackmail as a pre-emptive veto.


THE IMMORALITY OF "PRE-EMPTION"

Let's move to another definition, at another level. Bush's National Security Strategy asserts that the U.S. can "pre-emptively" attack another country when it determines that country might possibly be thinking of attacking America or grossly harming our interests. In the "old days" -- that is, pre-Bush -- the definition of "pre-emption" meant that a country, in some circumstances, was permitted under international law to act first when faced with an imminent threat of attack.

In Bushspeak, it doesn't matter that the countries in question might be 10 or 15 years out from being a viable threat, or that while they might be antagonistic to U.S. policies they have no intent of ever actually attacking America. No, according to the Bush Doctrine, you destroy possible or potential enemies first, long before they have the chance to even think of doing the U.S. harm.

That's one of the Administration's ex-post-facto justifications for having invaded and occupied Iraq. Once the early rationales for attacking were shown to be false -- those big lies including that Iraq had stockpiles of WMD, and was allied with al-Qaida in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks -- then the Administration went back to its "pre-emption" rationalization, in effect asserting: "We had to attack before Saddam got close to reconstituting his weapons programs; even though U.S./U.K. intel was confirming that Iraq was well-contained and that it could be 10 years before they would be a believable threat to anybody, we had to act now, to abort that development in its blastocyst stage before that potentially dangerous fetus could grow and do us harm as an adult."

Transfer that rationalization theory to a trial for murder: "Your honor, I cannot be convicted of murdering the victim by shooting him six times. I fully believed he was thinking of doing me harm, maybe next year or the year after that, and so I took him out pre-emptively. It was a clear case of early self-defense." That explanation should satisfy a Bush Administration jury.


NO COURT REVIEW PERMITTED

Perhaps the most reprehensible aspect of the Administration's desperation to avoid indictment for authorizing torture is a tactic they've used in other areas as well: Trying to eliminate judicial review of their actions. In taking this tack, they are making an open assault on the Constitution and several centuries of governmental precedent.

Despite the fact that Bush&Co. have packed the Supreme Court and the various appellate courts with their ideological brethren, they still don't have total control of the legal system, and therefore want to avoid judicial review whenever possible. They know how weak their Constitutional cases are. So they have had their flunkies in Congress introduce a variety of bills to prohibit court review of certain Administration policies and laws -- as if the Supreme Court would ever OK having its judicial prerogatives revoked.

But in the Administration's military-tribunals bill currently before Congress, Bush&Co. also have inserted an in-your-face clause that would prevent civilian courts from intervening in, or reviewing the legality of, the proposed military tribunals. This would totally violate America's historic checks-and-balances system of governance, and would amount to the Executive Branch effectively controlling the Legislative and Judicial branches of government. In short, a budding dictatorship.

As noted previously, the Administration has created what they consider to be an airtight legal justification for Bush to act outside the law whenever he claims to be doing so as "commander-in-chief" during "wartime." Since his "war on terrorism," by definition, is a never-ending war, this means his actions "in defense of the homeland" permanently cannot be challenged. Sounds like the ingredients for dictatorship.


THE COURT SLAPS DOWN BUSH

No wonder Bush is leery of courts ever getting near the justifications for his imperial presidency. The two times when the Supreme Court did review his behavior toward detainees in U.S. care, he was reprimanded mightily, in no uncertain language.

In the 2004 case of Mr. Hamdi, a U.S. citizen, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the Court: "We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens. ... Even the war power [of the President] does not remove constitutional limitations safeguarding essential liberties."

In the recent case of Mr. Hamdan, a foreign suspect, the court slapped down Bush's I-am-the-Law approach again. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority: "[I]n undertaking to try Hamdan and subject him to criminal punishment, the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails in this jurisdiction."


REVOLT OF THE MODERATE MIDDLE

The power to nominate new Supreme Court justices is just one of many reasons w hy the momentum of this outlaw administration must be broken as quickly as possible. Which brings us to the midterm elections in November.

The imminence of that election explains why Bush is trying to create a rushed, "crisis" atmosphere to get his bill passed; after all, his Administration could have brought these suspects to trial anytime within the past five years. "We're running out of time," Bush says, by which he really means: "We've got to get this issue neutralized now, before the election, or else we can't smear the Democrats as pro-terrorist for blocking my bill, since it will be Republicans, with military credentials, who also are doing the obstructing."

Even if the GOP rebels hold their ground this one time, but especially if they don't, the American people -- left, right and center -- must speak with one enormous groundswell of revulsion against the ruling Republican Party in the Congress that has rubber-stamped virtually everything Bush&Co. have asked for. A convincing GOP defeat in the House would do great damage to the Administration's momentum of lawlessness.

The current fracturing of the Republican Party in Congress is a testament to the revolt of the moderate middle in America against the Bush Administration's catastrophic bungling in Iraq, its demonstrated incompetence in the Katrina debacle, its lies and deceits, its slimy denunciations of those who oppose CheneyBush Iraq policy (which means about two-thirds of the American people) as terrorist-supporting traitors, etc., etc.

If the GOP can be roundly trounced two months from now at the polls, its defeat will be due in no small part to those honest, traditional conservatives who, appalled by the hijacking of their once-great party by extremists from the Far Right, are thoroughly fed up and have had enough of misrule on a grand scale. (Note: This election, given Rove's previous history, will require extreme vigilance, and probably court suits, to keep the voting honest and honestly-counted.)

Let us all -- Democrats, Libertarians, Independents, progressives -- join with these moderate Republicans, and start the process of moving our country back to common decency, earned respect, and a sane foreign and domestic policy based on reality and the true needs of the American people. Can I hear an Amen?

Copyright 2006, by Bernard Weiner

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at various universities, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for 19 years, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment: crisispapers@comcast.net .

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Saturday, September 16, 2006

The Meaning Behind the Map

A map is only as good as the legend or key that goes with it. Otherwise it's just an arrangement of pretty colors and shapes. Keep the map in the previous post in mind while reading the following. It may cure you of believing some of the propagada of USIsreal.

Blue Ibis
*********************************

The Right To Return, a Basic Right Still Denied

Palestinian Right To Return Coalition
12/09/2006

- Palestinian refugees represent the longest suffering and largest refugee population in the world today.

- In 2005, there were approximately 7.2 million Palestinian refugees, equivalent to 74% of the entire Palestinian population which is estimated at 9.7 million worldwide.

- The breakdown of the refugee population is as follows:
1. During the creation of the Zionist state in 1948, approximately three quarters of a million Palestinians were forced to become refugees. Together with their descendants, more than 4.3 million of these refugees are today registered with the United Nations
while over 1.7 million are not. According to The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), one-third of the registered refugees live in 59 U.N.-run camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The majority of the rest live in and around cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and of neighboring countries.

2. Approximately 32,000 Palestinians became internally displaced in 1948. Today, these refugees number approximately 355,000 persons. Despite the fact that they were issued Israeli citizenship, the Zionist state has also denied these refugees their right to return to their homes or villages.
When the West Bank and Gaza Strip were occupied in 1967, the U.N. reported that approximately 200,000 Palestinians fled their homes. These 1967 refugees and their descendants today number about 834,000 persons.

3. As a result of home demolitions, revocation of residency rights and construction of illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian owned-land, at least 57,000 Palestinians have become displaced in the occupied West Bank. This number includes 15,000 persons so far displaced by the construction of Israel's Annexation/Apartheid Wall.
- The Right to Return has a solid legal basis:

1. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 13 affirms: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and return to his country."

2. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination [Article 5 (d)(ii)], states: "State parties undertake to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination on all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, color, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of ... the right to leave any country, including one's own, and to return to one's country."

3. The International Convention on Civil and Political Rights [Article 12(4)], states: "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country."

Moreover, the Principle of Self Determination guarantees, inter alia, the right of ownership and domicile in one's own country. The UN adopted this principle in 1947. In 1969 and thereafter, it was explicitly applied to the Palestinian People, including "the legality of the Peoples' struggle for Self-Determination and Liberation", (GAOR 2535 (xxiv), 2628 (xxv), 2672 (xxv), 2792 (xxvi)). International law demands that neither occupation nor sovereignty diminish the rights of ownership. When the Ottomans surrendered in 1920, Palestinian ownership of the land was maintained. The land and property of the refugees remains their own and they are entitled to return to it.

- In 1948, the international community felt a deep sense of responsibility for the mass dispossession, ethnic cleansing and the Zionist transfer policy that began then. United Nations Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, who was later assassinated by a Zionist terrorist hit squad, stated: "It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine" (UN Doc Al 648, 1948). This remains true today as any Jew, regardless of national origin, can gain automatic citizenship while Palestinian Arabs are denied their right to return to their own homeland.

- Consistent with International Law, The United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 194 on December 11, 1948. Paragraph 11 states: "the [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible."

- UN General Assembly Resolution 194 has been has been affirmed by the UN over 130 times since its introduction in 1948 with universal consensus except for Israel and the U.S. This resolution was further clarified by UN General Assembly Resolution 3236 which reaffirms in Subsection 2: "the inalienable right of Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return."

- Israel's admission to the UN was conditional on its acceptance of UN resolutions including 194. Denying the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands is a war crime and an act of aggression which deserves action by the international community. The international community can apply sanctions on Israel until it complies with international law.


- The right of refugees to return is not only sacred and legal but also possible. Demographic studies show that 80% of Israelis live in 15 percent of the land and that the remaining 20% live on 85% of the land that belongs to the refugees. Further, of the 20%, 18% live in Palestinian cities while the remaining 2% live in kibbutzim and moshavs. By contrast, more than 6,000 refugees live per square kilometer in the Gaza Strip, while over the barbed wire their lands are practically empty. Ninety seven percent of the entire refugee population currently lives within 100 km of their homes. Fifty percent live within 40 km. While many live within sight of their homes.

- The inalienable rights of refugees are not negotiable. International law considers agreements between an occupier and the occupied to be null and void if they deprive civilians of recognized human rights including the rights to repatriation and restitution.

- The US is bound by its laws not to fund regimes that violate human rights and basic freedoms. There is no more elemental right than one's right to his/her home and to live in his/her land. The US could use the leverage of the massive financial support it gives to the State of Israel to press for this right.

*Sources:

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta
Palestine Land Society
Badil Resource Center for Refugee Rights
Shaml - The Palestinian Diaspora and Refugee Center
United Nations Relief and Works Agency







Thursday, September 14, 2006

Why Palestinians Fight (Wouldn't YOU?)

The Israeli government has consistently broken treaties and agreements since it's illegal installment in the Palestine region. The proof is in the reality, not the pretty words that delude the West about the "only democracy in the Middle East" or the "most moral armed forces in the world".

See for yourself:

A Pathocrat Speaks His Mind


Signs of the Times for Wed, 13 Sep 2006

A Pathocrat Speaks His Mind

Henry See
13 September 2006
Signs of the Times

It is our hypothesis, backed by the work of Andrew Lobaczewski and our own research, that the people in power on our planet have plans to kill off a large portion of the world's population. The psychopaths, those human-looking predators without conscience, have no love for the rest of humanity. It is a life and death struggle between them and us because they know that if the true nature of their existence as humanity's natural predator ever come to light, they would lose everything.

Every once in awhile, their real aims slip through the filters and appear in the media. It may be because the media itself has been subjected to the process of ponerization for so long that statements such as those below no longer register to the journalists and editors who manage the news as the vile, hateful words that they are.

In this case, CNN had the kindness to report on some honest, but no less frightening for that, words spoken by US Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne:
Air Force chief: Test weapons on testy U.S. mobs

POSTED: 7:56 p.m. EDT, September 12, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne.

"If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. "(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press."

The Air Force has paid for research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service is unlikely to spend more money on development until injury problems are reviewed by medical experts and resolved.

Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people if they are hit with the beam. Some of the weapons can emit short, intense energy pulses that also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices.
The cold-blooded, ruthless, and arrogant nature of our rulers is beautifully captured in his words. Especially the phrase, "If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation".

Following Wynne's logic, one might also conclude that the interrogation techniques practised in the secret, and not-so-secret, US detention centres around the globe are also worthy of use in the United States and on citizens of the United States. But did you have any doubts on that score? Remember, you are either "with us or against us", you either support the phoney "war on terror" or you support the "terrorists".

It isn't a joke.

Your lives, as well as the world your children will inherit, depend upon how you react to such brazen violence and hatred as shown in Wynne's comments, and as is demonstrated in the war on ordinary people waged against us every day.

Comment on this article at the SOTT Forum

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

From the (IDF) Horse's Mouth

It gives a strange sense of hope, however infinitisimal, that the spark of humanity can survive even in the most psychopathic of environments. Please help fan that spark. Read the Signs of the Times and other truth telling sites like WING-TV, and books like Political Ponerology. Blog, state your opinions on forums and discussion boards. Avoid flame wars, but observe them. It is your petty psychopath in action. Learn from them, but THINK FOR YOURSELF. We need you.

Blue Ibis

"You don't see, you don't feel, and you don't look"

Daniel Sturm
09/04/06

An Israeli Combat Soldier Breaks the Silence:

"We all want to think that we are immune, that we can perform an "enlightened" and civilized occupation of Palestine. We want to believe that we are the most moral army in the world. But the truth is, every time you have a case in the press about Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinians, the example is treated as if, "that's a rotten apple." If you were to send every Israeli soldier who has abused a Palestinian during his service to jail, every soldier who has served in the Occupied Territories would have to stand in line. Because you can't serve there without acting like an occupier."

The midday news showed Israeli tanks shelling the Gaza Strip. In a Jerusalem coffee shop, 23-year-old former combat soldier, Yehuda Saul, told me he had made it his personal mission to speak out against the Israeli army when its actions were immoral. The Canadian American-Israeli veteran said that his "arch-conservative family" had slated him for a career in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). But during his third year of service the young platoon sergeant witnessed a scene of looting and killing at a combat mission in Hebron that had troubled him so much that he decided to leave the army. In June 2004 Saul founded "Breaking the Silence" (Shovrim Shtrika in Hebrew), an organization whose 350 members are all former Israeli combat soldiers who can share similar experiences. "Breaking the Silence" is currently preparing a world speaking tour and photo exhibition, offering a critical look at the Israel military's occupation of Palestine.

Daniel Sturm: You criticize Israel's army, yet you served as a soldier in the defense forces yourself. Isn't this hypocritical?

Yehuda Shaul: I think that I and every member of "Breaking the Silence" deserve the attention of the public. From the first diaper that my mom changed, it was obvious that I was going to be an officer. It's not as if I woke up one day, when I was 18, and said, "Hey, let's go and have fun in the Occupied Territories." In a way, we are all ex-soldiers. When I was in the Occupied Territories, you could have said that I was an American soldier. After all, I owned an M-16 that wasn't produced in Israel. I shot grenades that weren't produced with Israeli money, but by American money. Everyone, and especially Americans, have a responsibility to know what's going on in the world. And since I am from here, I am talking about here.

Daniel Sturm: When did you first realize that "occupation corrupts," as you say?

Yehuda Shaul: I grew up in a very right-winged family in Jerusalem. I went to high school in a settlement near Ramallah. When I was 18, there was no question of whether or not I would join the IDF. The only question was how high I would climb. Would I be in an elite commander unit, or just a regular infantry combat soldier? That was the mind-set I joined the army with. But what I took part in and witnessed in the Occupied Territories opened my eyes.

Daniel Sturm: Could you explain?

Yehuda Shaul: In Hebron settlers put a poster on the wall that called for soldiers to refuse to evacuate the settlements [as had been agreed upon in the treaty]. The poster said something like, "Soldier, commander, you must distinguish between good and evil, between enemy and beloved." In the Israeli army we learned that one must deport the enemies, meaning the Palestinians, but never those who were beloved, meaning the settlers. When I joined I had a black and white vision of right and wrong. Later I learned that everything is gray.

Daniel Sturm: What happened in Hebron?

Yehuda Shaul: Hebron is the second largest city in the Palestinian West Bank, with 150,000 Palestinians. Around 600 Jewish settlers live in the heart of the city, and 450 combat soldiers guard them. Under the Oslo agreement of 1997 Hebron was divided into two parts, with 120,000 Palestinians left under Palestinian authority and 30,000 Palestinians left under Israeli authority. At the beginning of the Intifada, from 2000 until mid-2002, the Palestinians began shooting at night, from the mountains down to the settlements. My company officer told us that if they shoot, we have to shoot back. We had three well-positioned posts in Palestinian neighborhoods. We posted snipers and grenade guns. My post was at a former Palestinian school in Hebron. Our mission was to target Palestinian houses. I remember being shocked when I heard this. "You mean we should shoot into the neighborhoods, where people live?" I thought about the safety rules I had learned during training. In order to shoot live grenades, no one should be within a distance of one mile on each side of the target. And now I was supposed to shoot into a neighborhood where people lived. The grenade gun is not an accurate weapon. One grenade kills everyone within the radius of eight meters, and injures everyone within the radius of 16 meters. At night, after the Palestinians shot, we received the order to pull the trigger. On the first day, during the four to five seconds before the grenades hit, you prayed that you didn't hurt anyone innocent. On the second day you are less tense, and on the third day even less. And after a week, it's a game.

Daniel Sturm: Was this when you became critical of the army's mission?

Yehuda Shaul: Not really. I first began to fully understand the corruption after I was discharged. When you are a combat soldier in the Occupied Territories, you can't see Palestinians as equal human beings. Because then you couldn't hop through a roof in the middle of the night, wake up a family, force the women into one corner and the men into another, and tear apart the place. At least when you stand at a checkpoint you see the shape of human beings: One head, two hands, and two legs. But when I was shooting live grenades into neighborhoods where people lived every night - why, that was a computer game!

Daniel Sturm: Weren't your actions justified, considering the violence the Palestinians were using?

Yehuda Shaul: You can't ignore that the Palestinians were using violence. But what is our moral and legal boundary, as a society or a nation? Can we really condone shooting grenades into neighborhoods, as a way of getting back? When we realized we were unable to prevent the Palestinians from shooting back at us, we started a strategy called "making our presence felt." We conducted silent patrols. We walked through streets, shooting onto houses, and shoot off grenades in parks.

Daniel Sturm: At what point did you begin to sympathize with the victims of this war?

Yehuda Shaul: The terminology of "victim" doesn't apply when you're in the field. When in combat you don't see, you don't feel, and you don't look. The name "Breaking the Silence" therefore refers to two levels of silence. The first is the personal level, where we realize what is really going on around us. The second level refers to the silence of society. As I was sitting in Hebron, firing grenades, my parents were just across the street in Jerusalem, hearing on the radio the sentence that every Israeli knows by heart: "IDF forces returned fire to the sources of fire." Of course, there were no sources of fire! We shot without ever finding any specific sources. But this is how Israeli society and human beings around the world receive information.

Daniel Sturm: How have people responded to your criticism?

Yehuda Shaul: Very ambivalent. Some people understand me, some don't. In the beginning, the IDF military police investigators broke into our exhibition, confiscated some items and brought us into interrogation. The idea was to frighten us and to declare us as an extreme case of "rotten apples." For me, it's no longer a question. I can't see myself acting any other way.

Daniel Sturm: Does the military occupation make any sense at all?

Yehuda Shaul: We all want to think that we are immune, that we can perform an "enlightened" and civilized occupation of Palestine. We want to believe that we are the most moral army in the world. But the truth is, every time you have a case in the press about Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinians, the example is treated as if, "that's a rotten apple." If you were to send every Israeli soldier who has abused a Palestinian during his service to jail, every soldier who has served in the Occupied Territories would have to stand in line. Because you can't serve there without acting like an occupier.