What's Different: The New Norm, Your "Right" to remain silent while being Waterboarded

It is absolutely the case that Mukasey is a True Believer in all of the most extreme positions of the Bush administration regarding presidential power. That has been clear from the beginning. It is why he was chosen. After all, as a federal judge, he ruled that the President has the power to detain American citizens on U.S. soil indefinitely without ever having to charge them with a crime -- a position he more or less repeated on the first day of his confirmation hearing. ... This notion that Mukasey's unwillingness to declare waterboarding categorically illegal crosses some sort of bright Beltway line seems equally unconvincing, even somewhat manipulative. It has long been known that the Bush administration directed the CIA (at least) to waterboard detainees who were convicted of nothing. There was very little real protest about any of that from any genuine Beltway power circles, including Senate Democrats.
In fact, even knowing that, the Military Commissions Act was enacted merely a year ago, deliberately leaving an unclear legal landscape (at best) as to whether waterboarding was outlawed. And Democrats did not even engage in the debate, and did not even try to mount any serious opposition to it. Quite the contrary. ... What Judge Mukasey believes is, without question, radical and disturbing. His beliefs -- from the power of the President to violate Congressional statutes to limitless war powers to the authority to order barbaric interrogation methods -- would have been unthinkable six years ago in an Attorney General. But now, it and he are well within mainstream Beltway ideology, thanks to some combination of acquiescence and active support from the core of both political parties. And there is something deeply artificial and manipulative about a Congress that has decided to permit all of these things to take root to pretend suddenly that they are so offended by them, that what Mukasey believes crosses their bright lines so clearly that he cannot be confirmed. ... In the America that exists today thanks in no small part to our Beltway establishment, there is really nothing unusual or out-of-the-mainstream about Mukasey, and there is something bothersome about this play-acting in pretending otherwise. ... When Bush says: "9/11-AlQaeda-Terrorism-GiveMeX," Democrats always ensure that he gets "X." The only variable is how they will do it, which specific members will ensure that it happens. "X" here was Mukasey's confirmation, and Democrats are thus complying as always. At least the embarrassing efforts to pretend they were ever really going to block this nomination have come to an end.

Glenn Greenwald, "Mukasey's nomination and the sudden opposition to "waterboarding", Salon.com, Nov 2, 2007

So what if America’s chief law enforcement official won’t say that waterboarding is illegal? A state of emergency is a state of emergency. You’re either willing to sacrifice principles to head off the next ticking bomb, or you’re with the terrorists. Constitutional corners were cut in Washington in impressive synchronicity with General Musharraf’s crackdown in Islamabad. ... In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite. That’s why a Mukasey can be elevated to power with bipartisan support and we barely shrug. ... The Bush years have brought an even more effective assault on those institutions from within. While the public has not erupted in riots, the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like General Musharraf’s.
More Machiavellian still, Mr. Bush has constantly told the world he’s championing democracy even as he strangles it. Mr. Bush repeated the word “freedom” 27 times in roughly 20 minutes at his 2005 inauguration, and even presided over a “Celebration of Freedom” concert on the Ellipse hosted by Ryan Seacrest. It was an Orwellian exercise in branding, nothing more. The sole point was to give cover to our habitual practice of cozying up to despots (especially those who control the oil spigots) and to our own government’s embrace of warrantless wiretapping and torture, among other policies that invert our values. ... The Pakistani leader further echoed Mr. Bush by expressing a kinship with Abraham Lincoln, citing Lincoln’s Civil War suspension of a prisoner’s fundamental legal right to a hearing in court, habeas corpus, as a precedent for his own excesses. (That’s like praising F.D.R. for setting up internment camps.) Actually, the Bush administration has outdone both Lincoln and Musharraf on this score: Last January, Mr. Gonzales testified before Congress that “there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.”
To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal.

Frank Rich, "The Coup at Home," NY Times, Nov 11, 2007

With regard to our national myth, note this from the conclusion of (Frank) Rich's latest piece:
"We are a people in clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon."
There it is: we are unique. There is not and never has been anyone or any nation that is our equal. We are the best there ever was! I implore you to reflect upon one critical element of this perspective: it is a very short step from believing that you are "set...apart from the world" to believing that you have an inherent right to rule it. If you are the best that ever was or ever could be, why shouldn't you rule it? ... It is true that the style of the Bush administration is notably crude and aggressive. But if genuine, widespread opposition to the administration's policies had existed, Bush would never have been able to enact his program in the first place -- and the Democratic Congress would not ratify and sanctify his crimes, as they have done and continue to do. ... And we've used torture as a standard means of warfare for decades. We just used to hide it better, and we had better PR about how we weren't "really like that." Some of you even said you wanted torture to be brought out "into the open." So we did that.

Arthur Silber, "The Barren, Deadly Wasteland Further Considered, and the New Normal", Nov 11, 2007

Sounding like one of those “blame-America-first, wacko Leftists,” (Ron) Paul said U.S. foreign policy was a “major contributing factor” to 9/11. “Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attacked us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. ... We’re building an embassy in Iraq that’s bigger than the Vatican,” plus 14 other permanent bases in the Middle East. “What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us.”

Sean Gonsalves, "Ron Paul for President?" Jun 9, 2007

"The American Republic is in remnant status. The stage is set for our country to devolve into a military dictatorship, and few seem to care." -Rep. Ron Paul

Mike Whitney, "Ron Paul, Big Media's Invisible Candidate", Nov 9, 2007

I think it’s very difficult to explain their position, because I don’t think their position is defensible. I think when you consider that our whole nation is at risk, our constitutional form of government has been undermined by lies, by illegal war, by massive debt, how can you explain the position of Democratic leaders? ... They’re planning to attack Iran. When you think about the defense authorization budget including a provision that would retrofit Stealth B-2 bombers so they can carry 30,000-pound bombs, which would then be dropped on nuclear research labs, creating an humanitarian and ecological disaster, “What are we waiting for?” is the question, not “Why don’t we wait for the election?” ... Since when does it become unfashionable to stand up for the Constitution, to stand up for our nation's laws, to stand up for international law, to stand up for moral law? Since when does it become inconvenient to take a stand that would help secure our democracy once again? I mean, we’re really -- it’s all at risk right now...

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Interview with Democracy Now, Nov 9, 2007

Tell myself - on the ride home
Getting tired - hating all I've known
Holding on - like it's all I have
Count me out - when it's clear
that I - find it hard to say
And you - find it hard to care

I - wanted to see - something that's different
something you said would change in me
Wanted to be - anything different
everything you would change in me

Lyrics to "Different" by Acceptance

          While working on schedules for employees, I would create a template for an “Everyman,” (or “Everyperson,” for those requiring political correctness). This gets into some very technical and complex computer skills and terminology, using things called “Copy” and “Paste” which meant rather than typing in numbers for every single day, I would fill out a schedule once, typing in lots of 8’s, then do a magical “Copy” maneuver. After that I would then cast a spell called “Paste” on another page. (Sorry for the complex computer technospeak. I am a computer programmer, and I get carried away sometimes.) Later, I would only have to fill in the differences in each person’s attendance rather than constantly retyping things that were similar. It was faster to concentrate on what was different about each persons circumstances.

          Similarly, the people of the United States like to see themselves, not in how they are similar to those other countries in the “West,” basically meaning “Old Europe” by the Newspeak terminology, combined with Canada and Australia, but in how they are different. The list of similarities is long, varied, and not usually understood as they are more cultural. And Americans, while understanding that other cultures do in fact exist, are not, how shall I say, particularly, or at all, well-versed about them. Yet without knowing about them, we celebrate what makes us different, better, whatever it is or may be.

          There are actual differences, though those are not the kind of things most Americans think about. Among the other countries we perceive to be “like us” we alone go around invading and bombing other countries, lately without the fig-leaf of UN approval or any legality, to “help them.” We install or support leaders who bring Martial Law and suspend Constitutions, Parliaments, or play around with their election laws to “promote democracy” abroad.

          Among other countries "like us", western countries, we alone kill people, lots of people, not the least of which our own. While Europe has moved away from executing people, the US has moved towards “streamlining” and speeding up the process getting rid of those pesky time consuming things called “appeals” (sometimes even trials) which occasionally cause us consternation or embarrassment when people are found out at the last minute (or oops, later), to have been completely innocent the whole time.

          We alone among the group of nations we at least consider our peers (though they are wise in subtly trying to slowly distance themselves from us lately) to consider health care something that should be rationed out to the wealthiest first, and in the sake of economics, left up to the poorer ones to fend for themselves with "the marketplace". We maintain that access to affordable health care is a perk if you have a good job, not a "right" as in those countries (what we consider, in our best possible but highly inaccurate mirror), how those of our “friends” think of their own citizens. They consider health care, humorously, to be a “right” of all of their citizens, and, get this, “regardless of their ability to pay for it.” Makes them all look like Commies in comparison to us brave, go it alone, stick it out (or "to them") to the end free-marketeers (or profiteers).

          But our perceived differences are in a different field, also bizarrely termed “rights.” We tell ourselves and the world, except for a equal right to health care and the rights not to be tortured, executed, or held without trial, (those rights are for sissy countries), that we have more of them. In fact, our more numerous rights are so wonderful, we have the right to enforce other countries to adhere to them, even if they don’t like them and a majority of their publics do not want them, and do not want us there. It is our right to “educate” them, up to several generations if it takes that long, until they see the light of the rightness of our versions of “rights”.

          Yet it is an irony, (not that we do not have rights to other things like say papertrailess electronic unprovably rigged elections, or papertrailess (warrantless) searches and off-the-books investigations of anyone), that we expouse the concept of rights in the first place. We clearly have no idea of the definition of the word, which makes it easier for us to completely misuse and misunderstand it completely. To most Americans, as taught by our media and fictional TV shows, our rights are not really rights at all.

          Oh, we will say if we have them, they are “right” and if we do not have them, they are not “rights” but beyond that myopia, we think that rights are rescindable, and therefore, are some new form of animal not yet living in a dictionary. Rights are not for everyone. “Rights” are things that do not belong to terrorists, terrorist suspects, or other people deemed by us to be “bad guys.” Countless numbers of our television shows, fiction and news, pose the question, “what about the rights of the victims?” This escapes the logic, as we usually do, that those who took them away from others, victims, were CRIMINALS, and doing so, taking them away is or should be, by definition, A CRIME.

          So our rights, which we clearly have the most of, which all the world should aspire to if they knew what was best for them, (without resistance of course, and if they don’t we are free to force them to adopt them by whatever means it takes), are not really rights in the classical sense at all. They are more like guidelines, which may or may not apply depending upon our, or our President’s, right to say if you have them or not. Hint: Most non-citizens, and definitely most other countries, don’t (unless we or he says they do).

          Europeans, Canadians, and Australians, the ones fortunate and unfortunate to be considered “like us” by us, are generally exercising their right to keep quiet and support us blindly in whatever we may to do, or not make much a fuss about it outside of their own borders, so as to keep the rights we give them. That being, generally to rule themselves, quietly, so long as they do not pass laws we don’t like (makes us look bad), and not call us too loudly on our many hypocrisies.

          Europe for instance, can berate Iran for “interfering” in the government of Iraq, by supposedly sending in weapons and occasional troops, while in the same breath completely ignoring our illegal invasion, hundreds of thousands of troops and “support” (mercenaries, cooks, drivers, and on rare occasions, even interpreters), gigantic (semi-(must stick with Newspeak))-permanent bases, an indefinitely long planned occupation regardless of local opinion about it, and oh, arming both sides of a civil war there without limits or outside checks and balances on who we give or sell arms to. No irony there in the least.

          Europe’s hypocrisies pile up as quickly as our own, but they do it to support Europe’s being allowed keeping the “classical” definition of rights, those that apply to everyone. Well not everyone. They can protest potentially blatently rigged elections in Russia, but not Florida or Ohio. They can condemn attempted outside influence over Ukraine but not Mexico. They know the rules, and generally keep their strict adherence to the antiquated "quaint" notion that “rights” apply to everyone, get this, “all the time”, basically to their own citizens without demurring to our looser, more fun definition of being for only those who we say have them. Unless of course, we select some of THEIR citizens to not have them. Then they can, must, and have done, quickly forked them over to us to ship them off to some third world hell hole to be tortured indefinitely and without charges. Their “rights” definition does not come on the cheap you know.

          To say that rights are not absolute, that they are not "all the time" and certainly not for all people, means basically, they are not “rights” at all. As any American, European, Canadian, Australian, British subject, (or worse, someone without any of the “like us” cover) who has been rendered by us to another country to be tortured can tell you, what they were told THERE is the truth. “You have no rights.”

          Yet whatever we think “rights” are, we still as Americans, think we have more of them and we are prouder of them while most of our citizens, far more than in other countries, openly say and think that these "rights things" are not for everyone. They are just for those who obey the law, or are not suspected of anything. THEY have the rights, and rights for others besides them “gets in the way” of keeping us “free” from those who would “take away our rights.” Those trying to extend those “rights” to foreigners, suspects, or generally any potential “bad guys,” they are traitors, underminers of our “rights” which we have defined out of existence by not giving them any meaning anyway.

          Our concepts of “rights,” as more like privileges; the privilege to be not tortured, not to be kidnapped, not held without charges in secret, these now will spread more and more because basically we, at the point of gun if need be, have redefined them as being subjective and optional for the entire world. General Musharraf in Pakistan can say he will keep Martial Law (declared last week) going while he puts together hasty elections in less than 2 months time. President Saakashvili, President of Georgia can and has said the same. The unprecedented Soviet like “State of Emergency” (declared also last week) will stay in effect until he sees “a requirement to lift it,” possibly not before new hasty elections also in less than two months time. And that is just in American defined or supported “Democracies” in the last week!!!

          Add to those a collapse of the “Cedar Revolution” we supported in Lebanon, our supporting of the President of the Palestinian territories in completely suspending its Parliament and declaring Martial Law after the elections which we had triumphed as proof of our democratizing, but did not go as planned so this was justified, and you get the gist of how our “democratization” of the world is going. (And those are just in the areas we claimed to have been our “successes”. You literally don’t want to know about Somalia and a few other places things went far worse than we saw fit to talk much about, never mind brag about.) And Europeans will cheer the presence of these new, if under martial law elections, if we say so, as being progress and how praise much democracy is blooming around the world, on cue.

          And not the least of which, how swimmingly our democratizing of Iraq, the crown jewel in our efforts to give the world our wonderful new and improved definition of “Rights” has gone. No where else on Earth, literally, has seen our new definitions of “rights” and “democracy” played out so fully to the shocked silence of Europe and anyone else trying to keep off of our “shut up or we will democratize you” radar or list. Not only our President, but even those who just want to be President and have a chance, can and do openly talk now about how the leadership of that “sovereign country” whose “legitimate government” wants us there, had better shape up, privatize its oil resources to our oil companies, or see that “ought to be replaced.” Not to mention that that government must continue to ignore the 66%-75% of its own public that wants our troops out of their country immediately or as quickly as possible.

          But I know our new, improved, more opaque definition of the word “rights” is not the worst definition. It is among the worst, to be sure, since it is only for those who we, or our President, or even to spread the “power” around a bit, who our Press, can decide who deserves it. I have wasted more words on this subject than anything else lately that I can think of, the need not to attack Iran, a country with a far far worse definition of rights than even we have.

          When learning in Europe that asylum seekers had been “rendered” to the US for “questioning” which probably skirted our new improved definitions of torture, I also was clued in on the government of Iran, not that I needed a refresher on the subject. In being advised of the difficulty gaining admission to the protection of European wider more dictionary founded definitions of “rights”, I was told about a case of an Iranian who everyone knew or said would be tortured and killed upon being returned to Iran, yet was returned anyway to the hardly unpredictable result. And no doubt, he was one of many. I have no illusions about the brutality of Iran’s current definition of “rights” or its regime, nor what they do to people there who do not agree with them.

          What is at issue is our definition of “Democracy,” the real dictionary definition, that nations are free to determine their own system of governments, say things we don’t like, even do things we don’t like, even if it seems to us as evil. To claim that Iran is “interfering” in Iraq is a sick joke compared to what we have done there and are continuing to do there daily. To say Iran is a threat to us or to a nation, Israel, which has already stealthily developed hundreds nuclear weapons of its own, is also untrue. Iran is no threat to us, nor to Israel, nor will it be anytime soon. We want to take out, as we have said repeatedly in other venues, any nation which might soon reach a position to challenge our increasing control over our “new backyard", the Middle East. End of story. The true one anyway.

          Attempting to redefining languages to permit us to do everything we say or believe to be wrong is inexcusable because it is not our RIGHT to do so. Meanings of WORDS, HUMAN RIGHTS, they are universal concepts, defined among and agreed to by a MAJORITY of ALL PEOPLE or they are LIES. No one nation is their guardian, much less one that evades such definitions or tries to redefine them according to its own liking or its present circumstances.

          Torturing meaning, torturing truth, is as bad or worse, than torturing people, and that too is inexcusable under EVERY regime. And the greater one nation’s supposed “power,” one would think goes with it their greater ability be able to adhere to the laws, international laws written by and large BY THEMSELVES, literally, and in their own favor.

          The greater too, with greater power, would be their increased responsibility to set an example that international laws and human rights are inviolable under ANY and ALL and EVERY POSSIBLE circumstances, or they are LIES. And if you don’t know the meaning of inviolable, look it up, because neither apparently do the present US Executive Branch, its Congress, and often its Courts.


Last time by me to the Waterboard: What is Different, What Song Remains the Same.

          105 years ago a very different Senate cared very much if waterboarding was torture or not. They held hearings on it, listen to graphic testimony about how it was done by Americans accused of doing it. “Executive privilege” to disallow Congress from investigating it had not been invented yet. “National Security” was not an excuse then to bury the significance that the US at the time was in the eyes of all the world then, a country that condoned and practiced torture.

          105 years ago, those who were found guilty of practicing waterboarding at the behest of the US government not only feared jail, they went to jail despite that it was approved of by the President. Congress was not willing to simply sweep it all under the rug and give everyone immunity before the truth could come out, and thankfully for awhile, then at least, a little sunlight was shown, and for awhile at least, publicly at least, it was a crime. And all that even though then, there was no Geneva Conventions then for America to have been violating by such torturing of its prisoners, whereas now they are indeed international war crimes and not just bad manners. Just back then, a sense of decency, morality, and possibly military codes of action that were deemed by some to be “quaint” until there were, somewhat reluctantly reestablished.

          105 years ago, as now, some made light publicly of the torture which we were exposed of doing. One (then) unapologetic torturer claimed jokingly in testimony before Congress, the one that cared, that waterboarding someone was no worse than giving him or her a little too much wine. One (now) Presidential candidate (Guiliani) said, if the classified things we are doing is torture, such as sleep deprivation in addition to waterboarding, stripping people naked and putting them in freezers, and so on, then he too is being tortured by running for President because he is not getting enough sleep. In both cases, many in the public were highly amused and applauded.

          105 years ago America was not less hypocritical than today. We were quietly wrapping up two different genocides on two different continents. We were just getting used to a recent prohibition put on our citizens restricting them of buying and selling of human beings, allowing their ownership, their torture (except when extremely unusual, much like today with pets), and the selling off of their children since they belonged to their owners and not to their parents.

          105 years ago we had our share of war reporters who excused or at least mentioned in print our “going to the dark side” of torture and other more extreme acts because it was a “different kind of war” against a “different kind of enemy” which we “could not afford to lose.

Mr. Henry Loomis Nelson is a very well-informed (war) correspondent of large experience, and not likely to exaggerate. On April 29 (1902) he stated... "Moreover, the soldiers reasoned that, as the United States have imposed upon them the duty of putting down the insurrection, these brown men must be overcome at all hazards: while the war against them must be conducted upon the principles of savage warfare since most of those who are fighting are classed as barbarians." He quotes from the letter of an officer who had served in the islands the following: "There is no use mincing words. There are but two possible conclusions to the matter. We must conquer the islands or get out. The question is, Which shall it be? If we decide to stay, we must bury all qualms and scruples about Weylerian cruelty, the consent of the governed, etc., and stay. We exterminated the American Indians, and I guess most of us (unlike present day where we can simply, like some Germans, Turks, Russians, Georgians, etc. simply deny America was trying to exterminate races, the “us” he was referring to was soldiers such as himself who actually carried it out, live and in person, less capable of the “distancing” we modern “more civilized” people are allowed do, and just deny these genocides ever happened, as denying them as loudly and intimidatingly as possible) are proud of it, or, at least, believe the end justified the means; and we must have no scruples about exterminating this other race standing in the way of progress and enlightenment, if it is necessary."

105 years ago, we also had an elite-dominated media which framed our support of a militarily-imposed, loyal to us, government fighting an “insurrection” against our occupation force that invaded them to “help them,” (one million estimated dead fighting to put down opposition to occupation) as helping their people while they were being exterminated. “Senator Lodge laid before the committee a report by A. Hazlett, who was sent to the Philippines by the Women's Christian Temperance Union of Columbus, Wis. It shows that the moral conditions of the islands is better than ever since the American occupation...” NY Times 4/22/1902.

          105 years ago, those who approved such policies, despite its current then backlash, would go on to dizzying heights of American Glory. The President who not so secretly condoned it and approved it, would go on to be considered one of American History’s five greatest Presidents, so George Bush is not that delusional that history may vindicate him. He too, could like that other president who condoned torture, wind up on Mt. Rushmore as well. It is unfortunately not as far fetched as it sounds.

          Of those responsible for carrying out waterboarding, against the law only for the low level torturers who went to jail for actually carrying out his orders, one man went on not only to become President of the United States, but also then later became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. One could well argue because of that unique achievement, he, Taft, was our Greatest Leader ever. Just say if you will, the words Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Chenney, or Chief Justice Donald Rumsfeld. Supreme Court ‘Justice’ Aberto Gonzales or the honorable Supreme Court Justice John Yoo. Stranger things, actually those exactly, did indeed happen despite an American public who was once upon a time way back then, abhorred about its private torturing, and wanted it exposed. It all, like the water torture itself, did not go down well or easily with the general pubic, at least at first.

          105 years ago, though we committed to, and were beginning winding down, unconscionable crimes of massive scales, we were by and large then a religious people too. But not religious in the sense of accepting, let alone entertaining the idea, that killing millions or billions of people by America with as-yet uninvented weapons we would threaten the world with (while justifying using them on others by accusing others of wanting that knowledge of how to make weapons like ours to one day threat us with in kind, or least since that will always be numerically and financially impossible for them to do, to be able to defend themselves), and which if used might bring about for us an age of Jesus-approved, genocide paid for, heaven on Earth, the Rapture.

          105 years ago we had Congressional hearings for show, and a President who publicly at least, “was willing to get to the bottom of things” and, that if there were “a few bad apples,” he wanted them rooted out. It was all a show of course, but it would have made for great TV, or at least some memorable sound bites.

Cruelty is no longer denied. It is now avowed and justified. Thus Colonel Groesbeck, at one time the judge advocate general (JAG) of the Phillipines, says:
“I believe the water cure, as practiced by the American Army in the Philippines, to be the most humane method of obtaining information from prisoners of war that is known to modern warfare.”

Of this, the Boston Transcript well says:
“Apart from the brutality of this utterance, it is singular as coming from an officer who has held the position of judge advocate general (JAG) of a department, and therefore should have at his fingers' ends the rights of prisoners of war and all persons of all ranks in military service, whether captive or free.
“When judge advocates, like Groesbeck and Glenn, defend and practice the crimes which they are bound to punish, when military courts sentence General Smith to admonition and men convicted of torture to a trifling fine, and when over them all is a Secretary responsible for the very crimes which we are trying to discover, how can we expect to detect and punish "every instance of barbarity on the part of our troops," as the President promises?

”

          Now we have already had one Attorney General, Alberto Gonsales, who was seemingly, to paraphrase the above, “responsible for the very crimes” a far different, far more pliable Congress is (sort of, and occasionally when not more generally backdating immunity to prevent any disclosure of those crimes, and quash their own parties impeachment drives) to discover. Those Attorney General sanctioned crimes being advocating and approving an illegal wiretapping program and a clandestine torture and secret prison program. Especially when the President himself claimed to fire any one of those “bad apples” who was not one of course himself, when it was revealed it was himself or the Vice-President doing the lying, both of whom are off-limits and off-the-table for criminal investigations, despite publicly admitting to breaking several laws.

          Since Congress is willing to give it all that a pass, there is no surprise that a new Attorney General will be approved who likewise sees all that as irrelevant. We can forget, as he tells a newer, fitter, more informed Congress that he doesn’t know if waterboarding is torture or not, that a previous Congress held hearings declaring waterboarding to be torture, that LIFE Magazine showed a graphic representation the torture method it on its front cover. As bad as the press was then, unlike now, they did not simply move on to celebrity gossip and let us remain a nation of torturers. We can forget because we choose to, because we have no collective memory as a nation, and at times seemingly, just as little a collective conscience.

RCP and Two Years After, the Very Changed World Continues

         I have written a lot of posts here now at TruthRevival.Org. I am proud of each. My main web site is down again and will be for awhile, partially for financial reasons, partially by choice. That site, PolSci.com, and this blog, and my other blog (For Those Who Never Had It) are intertwined because the blog posts are later improved a bit (grammatically corrected), and cataloged over at PolSci.com. The (previously referred to) Fall 2007 “issue” will be moved back to Winter 2007, and, if then at all, released at that time.

         For those who might get to see the corrected posts there, they would be able to see how they intertwine. The Bicycle Race post here was simply most of the times I referred to bike riding in my papers and notes, which had all been included at PolSci.com. Those bicycle references cut across some strange and different times, and the future, should George W. Bush and Dick Cheney decide to accept it, will probably hold much stranger things and times, and hopefully genetic mutants will not be among them (hopefully for a good few decades at least).

         I count among those writings, three essays which I am most proud of, and because that site is down, and may never return, I will post an excerpt of one still up elsewhere below. And of the one not up at all (but inconceivable now to be vanished completely) I will put up below in its entirety since, for the moment, is not available anywhere else, and since this is its second anniversary.

        These three essays are not the kinds of things one could put on a resume or refer to on college application, not that college is likely for me to be resumed anytime soon, but they are definitely what I am most proud of at this point in time, politically speaking. They are, in chronological order, the original Radioactive Cereal Principle (RCP) (November 13th 2005), Constitution Cola (May 30th 2006), and When I Think I Might Never See Hawaii Again (September 24th, 2006).

         The original RCP, I am pleased to admit, I did not think once of myself before writing it and trying to get it out there. Only with the second one, RCP2, did I pause to think, what would writing this mean to myself and my life should things go badly, and things going well after that was never in any way likely whatsoever. As I said many times, getting it on record was solely the point, and what happened after that was up to anyone or everyone else. My life at the time, not that anyone necessarily would believe it, was not even much of a consideration.

        What I omitted from that was only due to not wishing to “accidentally” increase what I thought I was trying to work or speak out against. They are often connected, and often it is the case, too often to count, that you make worse the things you tell yourself or others you are trying to avoid or lessen. Sometimes, often, that is out of your control, the effects, but when you know them or sense them, or damn well should or ought to try to know or sense them, you must take that into consideration because otherwise, you are a liar to yourself.

        Was there any point or effect to writing RCP? Outside of my own life, I cannot gauge and no one has yet claimed otherwise, it made little if any difference. The timing of lots of things, some still yet to happen, sure seemed to have gotten changed around.

        For me, after a nasty bit, there was no gigantic retribution for having done so, the greatest threat to Low Fruit. But then yet there are always every day endless new potentials for other yet-to-be invented new shoes which might drop, so all I know that it did for me was to open up a little space in time where I could write a little while longer.

        Constitution Cola, the second one I mention above, was written out of anger. It was passionate, and was very well done, but that I can pretty much say had no effect whatsoever. It inspired no one. It made no difference to have written it, but it made me feel better. The anger was in the Supreme Court’s throwing up a blockade for whistleblowers against Bush/Cheney. Not that the Republican and then the Democratic Congresses were not all too eager to join them and make all the bad accusations of “crimes” go away and make the “crimes” not even crimes anymore.

        Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had at that time recently been accused of blackmail by the Speaker of the House Dennis Hassert, a Republican no less, and the mainstream Press, the veritable Third Estate of government, the safeguard of Democracy, well they just sort of yawned.

        Well, maybe they just knew they only had left their right to remain silent because he had just also warned/threatened reporters that he would arrest them if they pursued the illegal wiretapping program allegations, or any other ongoing illegal programs. And not too subtly let it be known their cell phones, among other things, had been tapped all along.

        The third thing I mentioned that I am most proud of, and will include an excerpt of below, is When I Think I Might Never See Hawaii Again. It was good, it was from the heart, and it was trying to imbue a perspective that our glorious leadership cannot for the life of them fathom, what if this is all there is? What if they never see their hometowns again, their children again?

        For people (Congress) supposedly reacting out of constant fear thrown at them, fear of their constituents thinking they are weak, fear of a right wing press that even Republicans lawmakers admit being terrorized by, fear of terrorist attacks, but seemingly completely without fear of handing over every last scrap of power the mythical magical wondrous “Founders” gave to their positions and legislative bodies.

        Seemingly their jobs now are to tear the Constitution to shreds, put little pieces of it into things called “bills” to send to the President so he can veto them and make its destruction, piece by piece, the new law of the land.

        Habeas Corpus? (The right to some sort of charge and a trial before being imprisoned (and tortured), not even now, "indefinitely") A bill, not a writ, not a "self-evident right," or according the Attorney General, not even a right at all. Congressional approval needed to attack Iran? A Constitutional mandate or directive, and a foundation of our Republic? No, sing it from School House Rock, “I’m just a bill, a little ol’ bill, but I might be a law, … someday.” Smack down veto threat, and little ol’ bill (and Separation of Powers) goes away. Not today thank you, can’t tie his hands. Can’t let a Declaration of War make the world an unambiguous place without undeclared wars, unrecognized occupations, and unmentionable, literally, US war crimes.

        The fear that motivates Congress and America these days is not even good fear. What are good fears you ask? Good fears make you act to eliminate what you are afraid of. Common sense says you cannot eliminate all terrorists if terrorists can be anyone or anyone can become a terrorist.

        You cannot spy on everyone all of the time (though they will make a ton of money trying), you cannot control every country’s government (though they will kill a lot of people trying), and you cannot make everyone afraid of your weapons, not even while you are using them on people. You can, when you are done with an orgy of death, that attempt at making the world submit to your non-existent authority, ditch the fear by trying to make peace with them. That is how you kill fear, at the source.

        The source of fear is not people. The source is, as many have countlessly said before, and will say later, fear is created by what you do not, cannot, and choose not, to understand or acknowledge. The fear we have is real and warranted because somewhere, in the back of our minds, we as a nation are aware of the truth of the terrors we are giving the world while claiming we do not see it ourselves.

         The greatest fears we have, and rarely as Americans will we admit, is that our fears are justified. That just because our Washington Press buys the fact that if the White House does not admit something, it never happened, or is left in a less-defined gray zone between what is real and what is not. That there are things we are doing now, things we are responsible for, which we should not, but will not doing stop either. And that it will come back to haunt us if it is not already on the way.

         Waking up and confronting THAT fear, that good fear, that can inspire people to wake up and do something to counter it, that is always just around the corner. Derrick Jensen in The Culture of Make Believe, (the best title IMHO for American Culture ever), similarly writes…

         As this dawning dissonance began to tear at my insides, again and again I considered that the confusion must come from within, that I must be missing some simple point: No one could be so stupid as to destroy their own planet, all the while chatting breezily about golf, “reality-based TV” (whatever that means), and How about them Cubbies? What seemed profoundly important to me seemed of no importance to most people, and what seemed important to so many people seemed trivial to me. … The United States bombs Vietnam to save the Vietnamese people, it arms death squads through Latin America to save the people there, it bombs Iraq to save the people there. I kept thinking: Is there something I am missing?
        … I asked David Edwards how this plays out in our day-to-day lives. He told me, “We build our lives on certain beliefs, then spend much of our time protecting ourselves from conflicting beliefs. … It may seem that he has everything to lose and nothing to gain from that sort of self-examination, and so his unconscious will protect his sense of self from a very painful conflict by dismissing or ignoring any evidence that he participates in these atrocities. And it will do so in such a way that it never even occurs to him- even with the evidence staring him in the face- that there’s the slightest thing wrong with what he is doing. The same is true of journalists, for example, or politicians, whose livelihoods and self-esteem are based on serving corporate power; under no circumstances can they allow themselves to comprehend the true nature of the role they are playing.”

The Culture of Make Believe, Derrick Jensen, 2002, Pg 141, Context Books, NY

         Yet reality is never shut out completely, even in the most extreme instances referred to above. One must know and constantly be workings against what one knows but is choosing not to acknowledge. This knowledge becomes fear, becomes dread, becomes the dark recesses of where we choose we ought not to look at what we as individuals or as groups, societies, countries, or cultures, are doing to others. And worst of all, that knowing or acknowledging that we have surrendered our right to question it openly and effectively without fear.

        Dying is easy then, when having to live daily in denial at the obvious and increasingly frequent greater and growing injustices, and with the ever changing definitions of the official Newspeak insanity, and still yet choosing to think or consider oneself a rational being. It becomes then, the living is what is hard. Unless of course, you batten down the hatches, forget about any or all possible consequences, and try to let out on (what you think are) the right occasions what you know that others, by choosing not to acknowledge will get themselves, and possibly yourself too, killed.

1) The Radioactive Cereal Principle, November 13th 2005

“Precautions must be taken not only to protect operations from exposure to enemy forces, but also to conceal these activities from the American public. The knowledge the Agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles.” Auditor, MKULTRA, CIA 1961 (1)

“At the time, Senator Edward Kennedy basically said, “The intelligence community of this nation, which requires a shroud of secrecy in order to operate, has a very sacred trust from the American people. The CIA’s program of human experimentation of the ‘50s and ‘60s violated that trust. It was violated again on the day the bulk of the agency’s records were destroyed in 1973. It is violated each time a responsible official refuses to recollect the details of the program. The best safeguard against abuses and abusers is a complete public accounting of the abuses of the past.” Carol Rutz (2)

“Given the manual's repeated instructions to probe and exploit the individual mind-frame of the subject--to place "a tap on the psychological jugular"--it would not be surprising to find that yet another MKULTRA project, the PAS, was incorporated into CIA interrogation strategies. The CIA was loath to release its manuals to the American public, but the agency has readily shared its expert opinions on interrogation with military and intelligence forces around the world. In numerous cases both the CIA and the Defense Department have been implicated in the international dissemination of torture and other political terror tactics. The tricks of the trade were often exported to governments who turned the brutal methods against their own civilians. U.S. involvement in this terror trade has been so widespread that its effects can accurately be described as global in scope.” Jon Elliston (3)

“many, including me, would choose a beating. The effects of most beatings heal. The memory of an execution (mock execution) will haunt someone for a very long time and damage his or her psyche in ways that may never heal. In my view, to make someone believe that you are killing him by drowning is no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank. I believe that it is torture, very exquisite torture.” Senator John McCain (4)

"Somewhere in the upper reaches of this Administration, a process was set in motion that rolled forward until it produced scandalous results," said Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) yesterday, referring to the shifting government policy on torture. "We may never know the full story, because the Administration has circled the wagons and stonewalled on requests for information. What little we know we owe to leaks, to the initiative of the press, to international human rights organizations, and to a few internal Defense Department investigations, and to Freedom of Information Act litigation." Senator Patrick Leahy (5)

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called the culture of secrecy "a belief system . . . a way of life" that blurs judgment. "By increasing the scope for discretionary judgment, secrecy enhances the rule of man and subverts the rule of law. With the facts hidden, the administration can and does define reality as it sees fit. The White House believes that the president has a "blank check" in the war on terror and is effectively above the law.” Joe Pitts (6)

"... the 1995 Hearing of the President's Committee on Radiation, and they say "In the 1950's and 60's the CIA engaged in an extensive program of human experimentation using drugs, psychological, and other means, in search of techniques to control human behavior for counter intelligence and covert action purposes." In other words, they are training agents, it says here, by using mind control on them... a 1963 CIA Inspector General's report on project MKULTRA which was "a program concerned with research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of deployment in clandestine (secret) operations to control human behavior." John Rappoport (7)


         The Radioactive Cereal Principle first appeared in my notes about a year ago as a paper to be written at this time. If unsuccessful, then this is to try to put things now in a better perspective without saying too much now. Enough has been written already in my papers and the notes (now hopefully widely propagated) that many could put the pieces together if I am not allowed to speak for myself or become timely incommunicative.

         The Radioactive Cereal Principle is not about the actual secrets but the effect they have upon society, the covering of them up. Not only does that give societies a dishonest, schizophrenic, and ultimately false view of themselves and what they do, it spreads like a cancer unseen and ultimately kills, corrupts, and destroys people's lives, all in secret, and with a public forever free to smile in ignorance of what is done, supposedly for their benefit, but since they will never know or hear about any of it, for whoever wants to or is in a position from benefiting from secret money, secret programs, and untold methods of coercion inevitably targeted back upon their own representatives and republics, and on the blissfully clueless citizens themselves.

         The title comes from the programs made public by the Clinton Administration (1995 Hearings of the President's Committee on Radiation)(7) on how the government secretly gave doses of radiation to children, pregnant women, and others without their knowledge or consent, knowing of potential dangers but justifying it in the name of medical research and national security. National security is a mantra which can and has covered up far worse things than just putting poison in children's cereal. It is a blanket excuse to do anything you want to anyone you wish if you have the right job, because no one is ever suppose to know about it, and you are told, you are free from having to worry about any consequences from the public because none of them ever will.

         But now I am talking also about the collateral damage, not the ones who suffered because the government did something so reprehensible, it could not tolerate (or survive the publics outrage) people finding out about what they did to them, but what it does to those unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time to put together too many of the pieces, and being questionably too high-minded (read unpredictable) to be bought off or kept silent.

         In doing a search on the Internet for the above quotes (searching radioactive cereal), I came across the story of Carol Rutz.(2) Many of her claims seem too fantastic, too much to believe that it could ever get that far out of control, yet for those willing to put aside their patriotic unthinking cap momentarily, if not having happened to her, there is ample evidence similar things did happen in government sanctioned secrecy to other children.

         It was either President Ford or Carter who publicly announced in the mid-1970's that the government would from that day forward no longer be prostituting children to foreign diplomats or businessmen they wanted to impress or buy strategic influence with them or their countries, all in the name of national security, thus admitting that the CIA had been prostituting someone's children, and the MKULTRA program by its later names would make sense to have been involved. Again, they had to come from somewhere. TIME Magazine ran a good article mentioning the implications, but that the US government itself could be the beneficiary, promoter, instigator, and sole operator of what could only be called a network of child sexual slavery as recently as less than 30 years ago never really seeped into the publics awareness, nor was it suppose to. Oh yeah, we did that, talk about something else now.

         There were allegations made that it came undone because local law enforcement investigating that a child prostitution ring operating out of the D.C. area, with links to other cities, did not like being told that this was off limits for them to look into. Those who ignored the warnings not to pursue it, finding out it was in fact the US government itself running the operations, they were not in a good position. People were fired, set up to be arrested, drugged and sent to mental hospitals, possibly even killed, just for doing what they were supposed to be doing, just not supposedly, in this instance, succeed at. At a certain point, it must have reached a critical mass where it could no longer be covered up, or the cost of all those counter-operations to ensure the main operation succeeded in running with impunity and under total secrecy would continue.

         The risk for knowing something like this, that your government intentionally poisoned kids, pimped kids to rich foreign diplomats, businessmen, or kings, or other similar things, and might not wish to forever hold your peace about it, you would automatically be considered an enemy of the state, no matter how law-abiding, God-fearing, flag-worshipping true patriot you otherwise might have been considered up until that point. From that moment on, you would simply forever, and not for long, from that point on simply be in the way, an error about to be corrected.

         The Radioactive Cereal Principle does not involve me. I am smart enough to generally steer clear of not coming across what I am not suppose to know about and try to stay in the dark about my government's doings as much as most people. However, some are unfortunately not able to avoid the potential effects because you can never tell exactly how they will break. Theoretically for every new action (crime) taken to cover up one crime which the government should never have committed, that new action itself needs to be covered up. Eventually like in the D.C. case, one would think the cost of keeping things covered up would some day finally get too high, potentially thousands of new instances (crimes) to cover up all related to keeping one thing quiet which should never have occurred, and all those new cases being covered up solely because of how easily avoidable and far less damaging it would have been to have come clean about it in the first place, not that any involved would ever have to worry about jail, they are above that, though they might lose the promotions they covet.

         Though I may be on the outside as far as any specific cases needing to be currently covered-up, potentially no one is outside the scope of the criss-crossing webs and cover-ups which are both new and old. The United States has one again sunk as low as it is possible to go, what US Vice-President Dick Cheney called going to the dark side. The new skeletons they are exponentially adding to the already overflowing closet is causing the old ones to have to move out.

         The abuses of authority due to what the administration now regards it can keep secret in perpetuity has led to an arrogance greater than that which destroyed Rome. President Bush has by executive order tried to give ex- and future ex-Presidents, namely himself, the power to keep things secret indefinitely as long as he is alive and so chooses, to the degree that a sitting President now has, so he will never have to face up to revelations about his own mistakes or horrific abuses equally as bad or worse than those under MKULTRA while on his watch. Even Putin is still working out how to give himself THAT much power after leaving office. Though I cannot name any specific cases, and given the abuses already made public thus far, the public has become immune to hearing them anyway in those becoming rarer instances the US media acknowledges by reporting on them (omitted from US news: (8) The recent charges by the Pro-American Pro-occupation Iraq government that the US used chemical weapons with heavy causalities and women and children dying horrifically as the their bodies were dissolved away spreading of the chemicals eating into their flesh under their clothes and turning them into leather like corpses wearing clothes, burned alive and watching it spread on them unable to stop it. And these charges were not made by biased against us enemies but by those who want us there, but to stop doing that sort of thing. This was not deemed newsworthy for Americans to hear (8) that our government was caught doing the same kind of things we call War Crimes or Crimes Against Humanity when other countries do them or Saddam Hussein did it. Without our publics hearing about it, our hands are thought to remain clean.) If not for the shroud of protection from the Radioactive Cereal Principle, there is little doubt now Bush would have gone out of the history books the same way as Hitler, by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

         While claiming the US does not stand for torture, Bush has just now openly said anyone who would speak out in favor of limiting his ability to order the torture of others as "unpatriotic". He has also recently warned others not to try to "revise history" on the reasons we went to war with Iraq when it has been proven that he was lying. Don't try to effect an established lie by trying to bring in, let out, or try to find the truth, he says. He thinks he has the power to create reality, and the power given to him by the media fondling and dependable as clockwork cover-ups gives him due reason to be delusional.

         Whereas the United States used to have a representative list of which countries respected human rights and which were abusers, we now have a hypocritical list that many to most nations would say we belong at the top of as the worst abuser. Bush has almost openly yet coyly bragged about how will stop at nothing, even torture, and the press has been complicit by hardly raising an objection to the official state-line insanity. Overseas, we have pressured other countries to curtail civil rights, even encouraged martial law and the suspension of legal processes, almost worldwide, in the name of the War on Terror.

         Even while fostering an anything goes policy within the CIA, the administration has shown itself willing to try to force reports to be doctored to its political objectives, ignored anything they do not wish to hear, been arrested for divulging state secrets to score political points, and creates fall guys (to be well-rewarded later) to tell them the lies they want to hear to justify wars of aggression and profiteering. Anyone who has studied the fall of the USSR like I have can tell you, it was the same atmosphere of invulnerability and willingness to ignore legitimate intelligence over what it only wished to hear and be told which caused it to collapse.

         America has in less than 4 years gone from being a country respected and admired all over the world, even among Islamic nations and peoples, to a country reviled and thought to be the greatest enemy or threat to peace and stability in the World, and that is just among our friends and allies publics! The rest REALLY hate us now. Bush has purposely played the part of a firebug to start incendiary policies bound to exacerbate tensions and problems around the World so he can portray himself as a hero for standing up to them. Milosovich comes to mind as having played the same game, much to his country's detriment.

         Believe it or not, I saw and still see getting out as my best chance to help. The shit is about to hit the fan bigtime as far as world peace goes, if not this year, then the next, or within the next few years. A void is growing and a polarization against both the US and World institutions has never greater threatened America and its interests, and it is all being self-inflicted. The world needs America more than it realizes, but the America it needs needs to get its shit together, and soon, or both America and the world will have lost the best chance at long-term stability in exchange for a few hundred extra billions of dollars of short-term profits.

         If I am wrong, if I am not so far removed from the Radioactive Cereal Principle as I thought, then I shall soon find that out. Chances are good from my perspective then it might be that I was borne too close to the center and may have been in a hopeless position from the start. Still, I am what my country made me and luck willing and with a little foresight, our courses will converge again on safer and higher ground.


1) 2005 Whitehead John W. 2005/05/18 A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on Our Children and Other Innocent People: An interview with Carol Rutz :
http://www.rutherford.org/oldspeak/articles/interview/Rutz.html

2) 2005 Whitehead John W. 2005/05/18 A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on Our Children and Other Innocent People: An interview with Carol Rutz :
http://www.rutherford.org/oldspeak/articles/interview/Rutz.html

3) 1999 Elliston Jon 1999/ 03 THE CIA AND TORTURE ON THE RECORD, PART 2 : http://www.sonic.net/~doretk/Issues/99-03%20SPR/thecia.html

4) 2005 McCain, John 2005/11/13 Torture's Terrible Toll : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10019179/site/newsweek/

5) 2005 SECRECY NEWS 2005/02/03 SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2005, Issue No. 13 http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2005/02/020305.html

6) 2005 Pitts, Joe W. 2005/10/01 SECRETS, LIES & TORTURE : President Bush's Penchant for Secrecy Is Moving Us Toward a Closed Society http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20051001secrets_2.cfm

7) 200? Rappoport, John, The CIA, Mind Control, & Children, CKLN-FM Mind Control Series -- Part 10, Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto, CA

8) The day after I first wrote this, the Pentagon came clean about it and admitted to using White Phosphorous in battle against combatants in Iraq despite earlier denials by the State Department. While still claiming it is not illegal to do so, and technically not a chemical weapon (unless intentionally used against people as a weapon) because the US does not consider it a chemical weapon as many other nations do. While I applaud any admittance of past mistakes, which is after all the whole point of this paper, that the lies and cover-ups do far more damage in the long run, the US continues to state the obvious and not have it challenged or followed up by the press. "We do not intentionally target civilians." No shit, but that does not mean they are not using it on civilians inadvertently. Chemical weapons are killer clouds. They are not responsible for which way the wind blows, except politically speaking, which is all politicians seem to care about. Still, my hat is off to the Pentagon in this instance, and I am hopeful the Bush/Press disinformation wall is cracking, but not because of the American Press, which did not even consider it a valid story despite overwhelming evidence until the Pentagon itself admitted to doing it. Maybe since Brian Williams (9) does not think the government secretly bribing the press to run favorable stories is not against the rules, maybe paying them not to run stories they don't like will be fair game also one day, if not already.

9) 2005, Media Matters, 2005/12/05 NBC anchor Williams: Bush administration has "right" to buy media coverage http://mediamatters.org/items/200512050010


2) Excerpt: When I Think I Might Never See Hawaii Again, September 24th 2006

        Some may think me unworthy to speak of him, others would condemn me for calling him a great American leader, yet if he was not an American, who can say they are? If American's are not a race, as we like to point out, but many races, then why cannot an American be one outside of a government? Governments come and hopefully will go and give way to better and more just ones, but people and places remain. There was no doubt he was a good leader and an American, therefore it is not wrong to say he was an American leader to which any could be proud of.

         I have mentioned him before in my writings, and mentioning him now is because so many have not heard his most famous words, now dead in the hearts of Americans, many but not all, and need rekindling now more than ever. All that was great about America, the government at least, that small portion of what is America, has gone terribly wrong. Former President James Carter's belief in a self-correcting mechanism is unfortunately seemingly misplaced at the moment. We have been fed illusions of our worth, blinded to the suffering we are inflicting all over the world in the name of values it is apparent to all all over the world we are not living by and seemingly no longer believe in except to use as an excuse to take what we wish and do whatever is our will.

Nothing can I remember having moved me more deeply than when I read the words below. It is not just words, not just pain or agony at the reality of war we have been sanitized from, protected from, and because of which, that distancing, we watch men and women without hearts advocating things on television to us and to children, what they are teaching to a new generation, advocating avoidable attacks that would cost thousands of innocent lives, without guilt over what they say, without hesitation in what they are advocating, and without regrets. Joseph's pain inoculated me against thinking like that, and his words will outlive the hate mongers, the torture advocators, and those who scorn diplomacy and the avoidance of war as "weak".

         These words, his words, will outlive those people because the world they advocate cannot endure, would not survive. A world which not only remembers these words but learns from them, takes them into its heart as I have into mine, that is a world which can endure. That is the future I work for, hope for, would live and die for, but the future we are creating now, what our present leaders wish to give the world, that is nothing I would want to be a part of. That world in which we have already recently killed tens of thousands of innocents in cold blood unnecessarily, and would kill millions if not billions to prevent the world from growing beyond the systems we have now, based on the need for war, the rewarding of aggression, and the sanctity of mass murders beyond scale in the name of country and in the name of God. May their notions not be passed on. Humanity could not long survive it if they do. The goal and the means to take us to that better world are found in the words below for any to hear, to know, and to feel, and to guide us back from the brink by remembering the slaughters we have done in the past, and are about to repeat again.

"It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are -- perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."