The video (below) of “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi” (another one of the fictional “nom-de-guerre” names so beloved of Islamic jihad fighters), shows a hesitant youngish man delivering in Koranic verse style the announcement that he (in all modesty appropriate to a disciple of Mohammed) is the new caliph of Iraq, Syria and Levant that all must bow down to.
As the Angry Arab says; When you bill yourself as a caliph you inevitably raise expectations. And as the Arabic saying goes: ‘the mountain went into labor and gave birth to a mouse’. What a lousy performance.
While these young psychopaths have a certain predilection for violent murder and ignorance, they are definitely not idolised by the vast majority of Sunni Muslems around the world. The sectarian violence, mysoginism and vengeance they espouse, fomented largely through Wahhabi funds from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and with “special assistance” from U.K. and U.S. “intelligence” over the years, fools few on the Arab street. These young violent men are simply tools of those who wish for nothing better than all-out mayhem, death and environmental destruction in middle eastern states that do not sufficiently support a Western view of who should control the world’s resources.
Desperately seeking fame on Youtube, as they behead another infidel of whatever religious persuasion, they are like little children given dangerous toys to play with by the grownups.
Their “secret” cavalcade of many miles of brand new Toyota’s through the deserts of Iraq from Syria to capture key Iraqi northern towns, was somehow never spotted by Western spy satellites. Make no mistake, these are the “moderates” that Western governments have been funding to overthrow Assad’s Syria , and now Maliki’s Iraq, for the past five years. This is a deliberate plan by Western governments to de-stabilise and overthrow any middle eastern government that 1) doesn’t support the ongoing Israeli destruction of Palestine and Palestinians, and 2) doesn’t support the right of the U.S. to basically do anything it wishes to.
It would be amusing if it were not so sad that these nasty little psychopaths in offices in London, Paris and Washington who get others to do their killing and torture for them, believe that this is the way to a brave new future; a “New American Century“. Take the former British Chief of Defence Lord Richards’ brilliant proposal to train and equip 100,000 jihadists to take Damascus from Syrian Government forces, with substantial Western air support- (read collateral air damage) on the pretext that this would reduce civilian casualties in in Syria! . Fittingly, the great Lord Richards was also once Nato commander in the brutal fiasco that is the fourth Anglo Afghan War and is now a senior advisor to the right wing British International Institute of Strategic Studies, and which strangely enough, supported the US invasion of Iraq and is now very anti the current Shi-ite based Maliki government in Iraq.
And of course let’s not forget the $500 million dollars worth of armaments and training from President Obama and Congress that will go only to the ‘moderate’ extremists in Syria fighting the Syrian government forces.
Or perhaps note the leaked ( unverified but eminently plausible ) Rand Corporation document advising the Western Ukrainians how to destroy Eastern Ukraine- these guys in their cosy little offices in the city are oh-so-ruthless in getting others to murder and torture and destroy on their behalf ( but only of course where it benefits their bank accounts).
In that article Monbiot once again traces human civilization’s inability to look at the reality of our circumstances; our headlong race to “having our number called” because of the inherent insanity of the concept of “growth” and “progress” in a finite world system. It seems extraordinary for a so-called “intelligent species” that we globally refuse to acknowledge the inevitable trajectory of the “growth” strategy almost every human being on the planet has subscribed to.
And not only are we fouling our own back doorstep with poisons, the detritus from our consumption of “things” and the laying waste of the natural world upon which we depend, we are also fouling the world’s upper atmosphere with our “space junk”! We seem determined as humans to destroy ourselves and all the living beings we share this planet with. In less than a blink of an evolutionary eye, homo sapiens have largely destroyed the living fabric of this world.
The logic of this insanity should be absolutely clear to every single human being on this planet, and yet the argument that ‘growth and progress’ are anathema to our medium to long term survival, is seen as heresy. Look around: the world we share with millions of other species on this planet, is rapidly turning into a totally homo sapien centric world; where every living and dead thing exists simply for our use and gratification. We are rapidly closing down this planet as a living entity: – sealing over the soil with roads and buildings, poisoning the land with chemicals, burning pieces of it to spread into the atmosphere at colossal rates, modifying the landscape to meet human needs without regard to the other species inhabiting it, digging holes in the ground so we can spread more detritus over the surface of the planet, killing off innumerable species to feed our insatiable appetite- the list goes on and on and on….
What are we growing into?-where are we “progressing” to? are we happier?, more contented?, more in tune with the world?, kinder to our offspring and other beings?. No; we are more discontented, more avaricious, more grasping of things we do not have but which mean nothing, and more determined to destroy both other humans and the environment, to satisfy our short-term greed.
How can the supposedly so well-connected collectivity of humans on this planet have acquiesced to such an insane model of living? Are humans so blind that they can only see what is immediately before them and the immediate well-being and gratification of their own species? Humankind’s current 50 year strategy leads over a cliff.
What does it take for there to be change?-and will it be too late?
We live in a perpetual cycle of mutual self-justification of our crazy system which creates a seemingly sane “bubble” of human world activity within an insane and dead-end construct. The self-perpetuating myths of progress measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are the very measures of change in countries’ economic activity that are driving the world’s living things to extinction.
Stead and Stead (p1) Joseph Campbell (1988) points out that these myths reflect the underlying paradigms that guide the thoughts and actions of the people of a particular culture. Espousing society’s myths is a primary function of all of its institutions, be they political, religious, educational or economic. Campbell (1988) says that you can tell the dominant myth of a given society by examining the heights of its buildings. The multi-storey seats of economic activity that define the skylines of our cities today demonstrate that humankind’s most dominant current myth is economic wealth.”
In the “Common Knowledge” framework, a paradigm shift of societal knowledge can occur with the input of just one new point of reference.
Our lives as social beings are based on shared certainties of how the world works. Because those illusions are no more real than any other “certainty”, they can easily come crashing down, and a new set of “certainties ” or “truths” constructed. Game theory has also often been used in the area of economic assumption and speculation.
Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate, the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100. This extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity has no historical precedent. It’s totally at odds with our scientific knowledge of the finite resource base and the fragile ecology we depend on for survival. And it has already been accompanied by the degradation of an estimated 60% of the world’s ecosystems.(from ‘Thinking the Unthinkable’, Tim Jackson)
And yet – despite the hype from corporates and governments, it will be relatively easy for most of us to change to become part of a steady state economy. Within a few decades we will have forgotten the importance of having the latest gadget, the next holiday to God-knows-where, or the latest fad or food. Small-scale organic farming provides a readily usable model to replace agri-business’ toxic produce, whilst producing wonderful benefits to the world and our fellow species. We will take our essential equipment for repair, instead of “recycling” to the landfill pit, we will accept as normal that everything we own does not have to be new and shiny, and rely more on local food resources and communities. Yes, the investment banks, multi-national corporations and billionaires will disappear, but we will all then have the time to re-assess what it means to be human and happy and connected to our living world.
The People’s Republic of Donestk was formed in 7th April 2014; breaking away from the state of Ukraine after a very informal referendum of its local population. The referendum was largely caused by the decisions of the Kiev interim Government, after it deposed the former elected ( but like almost every other President of Ukraine since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 – extremely corrupt) president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych fled from power as a result of the Maidan protests and threats to his life, led by right wing extremists.
The interim Ukrainian government’s decision to effectively marginalise Russian speaking Ukrainians through banning the Russian language and subsequently calling anti-Maidan groups in the East, “terrorists”, led to the formation of pro-Russian paramilitary groups in the East, in the oblasts of Donestk and Luhansk. Their stated aim was to preserve their Ukrainian/Russian identity against the threats by neo-nazi extremists to “purify” Ukraine, in the new interim Kiev government; largely from within the Slovoda Party and Right Sektor paramilitary groups based in the West of Ukraine.
It is currently unclear what level of support the “self-proclaimed” (are not all state entities initially “self-proclaimed”?) Donestk People’s Republic has with the local population, with some very problematic opinion polls run out of Kiev and funded from the U.S. which state pro-Russian support at less than 40%. Facts on the ground would seem to suggest otherwise, especially since the killing of 39 people in the Trades Hall centre in Odessa on May 2 2014, apparently by right wing football hooligans from the West.
It is also problematic whether those currently running the administration of the Donestk PR have the best of the local population at heart, or are simply opportunists , ex-soldiers and thugs. In addition there is always the tendency with any revolution, especially when under pressure from the outside, to respond in more and more draconian and violent ways towards its own population. Are the Donetsk PR officials any less rascist, anti-Jew and voracious than those in Kiev?-time will tell.
Notwithstanding those concerns, the creation of this ‘people’s republic’ does present a unique opportunity for a better state not seen for perhaps almost a hundred years on this planet. The opportunity to begin afresh, untainted by cronyism, the powers of the corporates, the drive for “progress” at the expense of the planet. An opportunity for a state entity driven by altrusim, responsibility for the vulnerable and a respect for the environment. Impossible you say?- certainly improbable when we look at our current rapacious “growth” (read; money-for-the-rich and baubles for the poor) driven state entities.
What we need then, is the development of state structures that foster:
Community initiative and responsiveness- local town “councils” where every citizen has a voice and a right to be heard and responded to.
Central and local policies that recognise that “growth for growth’s sake’ is nonsensical and destroys both our own living environment and the other living things around us- ‘growth’ is the short term path to death
Central and local initiatives that encourage inter-connectivity between people- eg local community places within walking distance for food and product distribution, green spaces,
Town planning which “forces” people to mingle together to get their work done: eg small interconnected urban areas, green spaces and gardens
Local and central state welfare systems that all citizens buy into according to their capacity to pay through taxes, and all are recompensed equitably in times of trouble
Principles and policies that create respect for the other living beings interacting with the human population.
Training for all age groups in the art of mindfulness
An understanding that violence to others destroys oneself
an inalienable obstruction to business interests influencing state and local political decisions (i.e absolutely no capacity for corporates to finance politicians)
It can (and must) be done. For the sake of all of us on this little blue ball.
T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, The Hollow Men, ends with the following lines…
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
A recent study, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center and using new statistical modelling methods, predicts that this current civilization will likely collapse in another twenty to fifty years. The study draws analogies with past human civilizations; the Assyrian, Roman, Mayan, Minoan, the various Chinese empires…. We can assume that like us; the populations of those civilizations had every reason to believe their civilization was unique and would last forever. While civilisational collapse is quite rare, characterised by entire ways of life, systems of thought, cultural values and worldviews disappearing, political collapse occurs frequently ( eg empires and kingdoms disintegrating). What appears likely to happen in our modern context, given the confluence of a number of catastrophic events, is civilisational collapse.
While this particular study has been sharply critiqued by journalists and scientists alike for its simplicity and generalisations ; the broad conclusion that, as Paul Simon aptly put it ,”everything put together falls apart” , is a healthy reminder of human hubris.
The single most important story unfolding in not-so-slow-motion on this planet is the ongoing destruction of the natural world in the name of “progress” and “growth” (ie consuming ever more “stuff”) by humans; , which will in the near future, significantly negatively impact on this species. Despite our insistence to the contrary, humans are entirely reliant on other species for our survival. It is a given that is blindly ignored by politicians, businesspeople and businesses and all those with a current stake in the way our “civilization’ currently works ( ie all of us).
As key resources become more expensive to extract, the world economy (which is apparently now the full extent of this ‘civilization’) begins to contract and distort . And as the gap between rich and poor widens, the “have-nots” increasingly demand in more and more violent ways, their right to a slice of the pie. As the oceans and atmospheric temperatures rise, so do the pressures on our artificial nation-states. As we progressively and rapidly eliminate species after species to produce more things, to make “progress”; our chances of long term survival as a species are being rapidly reduced. Our civilization demands that we assume that we have an infinite volume of resources to consume for the infinite future in a closed planetary system – a small contradiction in terms! We are indeed heading for the perfect storm.
Study after academic study shows that the more we gain from a civilization’s prosperity, the more we are blind to its failings and contradictions and its inevitable fall. This tunnel vision says , that ‘if I am doing well out of this catastrophe then it cant be a catastrophe at all!’
Homo sapiens pride themselves on their remarkable intelligence; their capacity to manipulate their environment for their own ends. They appear unable to grasp that that self-definition process of appropriating everything good, intelligent and wonderful to human attributes, is simply the result of their blinded vision. If by definition, species that manipulate their environment are determined to be superior to all other species; then lo-and-behold!- homo sapiens are superior beings! Because homo sapiens are above all other traits, social beings, all of us have an intensely strong need to “fit in”, to belong to the group. Agreeing with other people on ‘our’ group’s thought processes and paradigms is an essential part of this togetherness. However, agreement does not it make it truth.
Thus, it does not matter that the capacity to manipulate the environment for the benefit of our species and at the expense of all other species on this planet might not be quite such an intelligent thing to do, given that the environmental devastation and species destruction is largely for homo sapiens’ short term pleasures, power and baubles.
Were we to say that a species that can sustain itself easily and efficiently without damaging its environment in the process, were more ‘worthy’ beings than other species ; then homo sapiens would not be registering on the short-list!
Over the millenia, homo sapiens have been able to convince themselves that people of other cultures, or colour, or background are inferior to one’s own culture because of this self-defining process. Using the same intellectual process, the more different another species is from ourselves, the less worthy , less intelligent, more expendable and worthy of our exploitation and destruction that species becomes. The more differentiated from our species the “other” is, the easier it is to dismiss its inherent traits and qualities and its right to life. However on our ever smaller blue planet, we no longer have the luxury to differentiate between “them’ and ‘us”.
How much easier then is it to dismiss the equality of other species with ourselves when their characteristics, strengths and skills are so different from homo sapiens, and when it is so much to our benefit to be able to kill and exploit other species without moral qualms.
As Henry Gee also points out succinctly in his Guardian article , each species’ particular traits or “strengths” are based purely on, firstly, what biological mechanisms of sense are available to them ,and secondly, how they use those senses to that species’ best advantage. Homo sapiens may not value our sense of smell because its not a particularly efficient sensing mechanism in homo sapiens, but you can bet a dog does!
The capacity for self-delusion in our species is immense. Witness the largely American driven anti- climate -change camp. Of course we cannot be destroying our planet with C02 through industrialization, because capitalism and owning the means of production is the reason for our being! – after all, aren’t we, the US consumer, the greatest people on earth because our nation is the epitome of capitalism?
As another example of collective self-deception, Seth Klarman, the manager of the $27billion hedge fund, the Baupost Group, recently remarked on the similarities of the world’s banking system to the ‘Truman Show’, the late nineties Hollywood film, where the lead character “lives a seemingly charmed world, snuggled comfortably into an American suburbia of white picket fences and crisply cut lawns. But gradually Truman starts to notice something is not quite right. He is actually trapped inside a film set controlled by hidden directors, and discovers to his horror that he is the unknowing star of the world’s most popular reality TV show.” In one of the more blatant nuances of reality shifting homo sapiens have acquiesced to, our financial system is in essence simply one of “smoke and mirrors” -the manipulation of facts and figures designed to obscure reason and reality; a fragile house of cards.
The dreaded “black swan”!
One key point of difference with previous human civilizations around the world is that our current civilization is a global one; each of the parts are inextricably connected. Apart from a few small tribes in isolated areas, every one of us has bought in to this unique method of environmental destruction. Thus when this civilization collapses -(and it is a “when” and not an “if” ), that collapse will be both more rapid and more global; there will not be another model of homo sapien civilization around for the survivors to pin their hopes on. The other significant difference with other previous human civilizations is this current one’s geographical reach. Vast areas of the planet have now been laid waste in the name of human progress.
So, while the modelling conducted by Safa Motesharrei may be flawed, it does provide an opportunity for serious debate about the direction this global civilisation of ours is taking us..
The current unstable and dangerous situation in the Ukraine where large elements of the Russian speaking part of the Ukrainian population in in Eastern and Southern Ukraine are apparently pushing for Russian annexation can be largely attributed to Ukraine’s turbulent and violent history.
Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine is considered by many Russians to be the birthplace of Russia, or “Kievan Rus” in the thirteenth century. While no longer a predominantly Russian speaking country, its principal connection has been with its more powerful northern neighbour over the last 800 years.
Ukraine ,or “the Ukraine” as it is often known, literally means “borderlands”, an indication of its status as a standalone state entity over the last 1000 years.
After the Partitions of Poland (1772–1795) (around the time of the US War of Independence), Ukraine was divided between Russia and Austria, with the largest part of Ukraine being integrated into the Russian Empire, and the rest under Austrian (known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire since 1849) control.
Gaining its independence briefly from the Russian Empire in the chaos following the Russian Bolsehvik Revolution of 1917 , Ukraine was forcibly incorporated under Soviet control in 1921 and remained a semi-autonomous republic of the Soviet Union until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, when it once again became independent.
During the rule of Stalin in the USSR in the 1930s, agrarian collectivisation policies were brutally enforced across the entire Soviet Union, but particularly in what has been referred to as the bread-basket of Russia; the Ukraine. Known as Holodomor, the communist collectivist policies resulted in at least 7.5 million deaths with mass starvation occurring amongst the peasantry of western Ukraine particularly. Ukraine has defined the process as genocide, and the brutal process of starvation and loss of lands was instrumental in the rise of right-wing groups in Western Ukraine, (whose populations tend to be more Eurocentred than the South-East), who supported the principles of both Mussolini’s fascist party in Italy and Nazi policies in Germany. The views were largely centred by 1943 in the actions of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army led by Stepan Bandera, in ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews as well fighting with the Nazis against the Russians . Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) was strongly supported by Western intelligence agencies and particularly the CIA after the second world war .
In addition to those horrors, in 1944 approximately 200,000 Crimean Tatars were forcibly deported to other parts of the USSR because of their presumed alliance with the Nazis, where a large percentage subsequently died of starvation. Those Tatars who have since returned to the Crimea remain fiercely hostile to the Russians and some have been implicated in anti-Russian warfare in other countries and also within Crimea and wider Ukraine.
Jews and Russians were seen to be the cause of the death, destruction and dispossession which occurred in the Holodomor. In retaliation, Ukrainian fascist and Nazi groups were formed which both fought alongside the Nazis against the Russians and also aided in the Nazi’s Jewish progroms in Western Ukraine. The Svoboda party and its activist group, the Pravyi Sekor (Right Sector), are the current manifestations of those nationalist movements. Members of these two groups have also fought alongside Chechnyan separatists and jihadists in Russia in the past few years. In addition the right -wing Ukrainian nationalist private army and political party, the Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defence (UNA-UNSO) , a violent and extreme right-wing and anti-Russian organisation, has been implicated in the sniper shootings of both police and demonstrators in Maidan Square in Kiev.
In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet President of the day, transferred the Crimea , to the Southeast of Ukraine and previously part of Russia itself , to the Ukraine republic .
The Wolfsangel, Svoboda’s first party logo (1991–2003) and now widely used as a uniform emblem by the Right Sector, is both a truncated swastika and the acronym “HH”- for “Heil Hitler”
The most defining reason for the recent demonstrations in Maidan Square in Kiev, against the corrupt but democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych, was Yanukovych’s decision to switch from supporting alignment and eventual Ukrainian integration with the European Union (after IMF “re-alignment” of the economy), to alignment with Russia and its $15 billion no-strings loan. It is likely that many of those early demonstrators in Maidan Square saw their chance to escape a Ukraine of poverty, for the wealth and opportunity of Europe, slipping away. However the muscle on the ground at Maidan Square and even since the new government in Kiev was installed, has been the Svoboda Party (whose insignia up until 2003 was the Wolfsangel, both a symbol for the swastika and the acronym for “Heil Hitler”) and its hand-maiden, the ‘Right Sector’.
Alexander Muzychko (Sasha Biliy of the “Right Sector” ) “speaking” to a state prosecutor 27th Feb
While Svoboda has partially dissociated itself from its neo-Nazi past; its offspring, the Rights Sector or “Pravyi Sektor” regards “de-Russification” of Ukraine as its core ideology, along with ensuring the ethnic purity of the Ukrainian population including the exodus of Jewish populations, and good moral values.
Global Research notes that ” Canvas, formerly Otpor, received significant money from the US State Department in 2000 to stage the first successful Color Revolution against Slobodan Milosovic in then-Yugoslavia. Since then they have been transformed into a full-time “revolution consultancy” for the US, posing as a Serbian grass-root group backing “democracy.” While Poland under President Tusk, and Sweden have been pushing for Ukraine’s integration into the EU since the initial “colour revolution”, with the strong backing of the US State Department and CIA, they have perhaps inadvertently been also supporting and subsidizing the far right Ukrainian agenda, who have no interest in EU integration. Ostensibly EU/US support has been for the “technocrats” (ie those who support IMF financial “reforms” ) like ex-boxer Klitschko and the newly appointed acting president Oleksander Turchinov. (of Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland’s “fuck EU” fame”)
However one of the first steps of the new government was to rescind the previous government’s recent legislation to legitimize Russian as an official language of the Ukraine. It is likely that that rescindment, more than any other factor, was the key reason for South-Eastern Ukrainians of Russian descent, many of whom solely speak Russian, to fear for their future in a ‘Ukraine for Ukrainians’.
The other major factor is undoubtedly the fear by Russia that the new Ukrainian government will also rescind the lease recently extended out to 2042 for Russia’s only warm water naval base. As the US is well aware, the Sevastopol base allows the Russians to re-supply its ally President Bashad in Syria against US, Turkish and Saudi funded extremists in the Syrian civil war. Loss of the warm water naval base in in the Crimea would have significant negative strategic impacts for the Russians, as the British and French are also only too aware of, after their battles, in alliance with the Turks to re-capture the Crimea and Sevastopol from the Russians in the Crimean War in 1853.
It should be noted also that the industrial base of Ukraine is predominantly in the South-Eastern parts of the country, where there are significant populations of Ukrainian ethnic Russians, and where it’s heavy industry was a key part of the Soviet economy. As with many ex-Soviet states, the factories are by Western standards, unproductive and out of date, and hence would require massive injections of IMF capital and machinery, along with massive layoffs of superfluous workers; a prospect for which Western industrialists have been rubbing their hands in glee since the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004. (Post-script-see the great analysis of the neo-con plan for acquisition of Ukrainian/Russian assets by Michael Hudson here )
The complex interactions of internal Ukrainian and international players, create the opportunity for war. The Russian decision to send in more troops into the Crimea certainly escalates the situation. Additionally, other South-Eastern Ukrainian cities with varying proportions of Russian speaking populations, are now also rising up against the new Kiev anti-Russian government and establishing self-protection militias against the Right Sector and other far-right Ukrainian groups. How much support those Russophiles will get in the cities of Donetsk, Kharkov, Simferapol, Odessa Lugansk and Kerch, is currently unknown. Russia currently insists that its forces have not left their Crimean bases (25,000 Russian troops are permitted in the Crimea as part of the Ukraine /Russia lease agreement) and that all pro-Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine are pro-Russian Ukrainians – a statement disputed by the EU and the U.S.
Given the tragic history outlined above, it would appear the only rational solution to the problems exacerbated by foreign state actors, is negotiation. In the 1990s the 55-state member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (the OSCE) was created to deal with détente in Europe and emerging post-cold war problems . The OSCE offers a unique and relatively non-partisan pathway to a negotiated settlement of the complex issues facing Ukraine. The alternative, despite the huff and puff from NATO and the US, may well be the secession of some part of what is now Ukraine to form a Russian speaking autonomous or semi-autonomous state, unless the power and hostility of the far right groups opposed to ethnic Russians in Ukraine can be controlled.
Through its abrogation of key elements of the Geneva Convention by using torture, genocide and illegal incarceration of people it thinks could do things to US interests that the state might not like, the US has progressively negated key aspects of the constitutional protections for its own citizens. In addition, professional bodies such as the American Pyschological Association and the American Medical Association, in tacitly legitimizing torture and murder ( drones or otherwise) and random indefinite imprisonment of people the state thinks might be a risk to the US, have destroyed their legal and moral authority .
The Orwellian legal and state double-speak ( what is evil is good, what is war is peace) by US political and legal figures, is now accepted as truth by the vast majority of US citizens and many in the Western world. Many US citizens are consequently no longer able to differentiate between right and wrong/truth and lies.
The US has been fighting wars to protect its “interests” (read companies) for most of its existence, beginning with the genocide of the North American Indians who populated much of North America at the time of European settlement and leading to the wars with Spain in the Carribbean and the Philippines in order to develop an empire to exploit , as with other Western powers of the time.
But it is really only in the years after the end of Second World War in 1945, that the power of the corporations in the US has finally overturned all semblance of human rights, decency and fairness in the US . These wars, and particularly the genocides committed in North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Iraq, have lead to no negative national consequences for the US , and have thus resulted in those in power in the US believing that they are immune to the impact of the death and destruction they inflict on others.
Moreover, over those intervening 65 years of constant war, the US has steadily become a “war machine”- its raison d’etre being to fight and kill others for what they have. Each marine that returns home brutalised and scarred by the reality of war; each soldier who returns to his home town finally knowing the truth of what “the greatest nation in the world ” really stands for, is a time bomb of death and destruction to that community. A culture of violence as the solution to anything has now totally permeated every aspect of American society. To quote another of those biblical aphorisms -“what ye sow, so shall ye reap”
And with each war, the targets of American state violence become ever more aware of the complete and viciously laughable hypocrisy of the United States; it’s Presidents mouthing ghastly platitudes of the US being the ” shining city on the hill” , the exemplar to the world of peace and democracy, while raining terror and death on the helpless. For the families and communities of the millions killed by the US military since the second world war, there remains no justice – no resting place.
What is now desperately needed is an international legal body that is truly impartial-no longer controlled by those rich and powerful states who commit the the vast majority of the terror and death they so loudly condemn in others. An international body that seeks justice, not vengeance, that ascribes appropriate compensation to those whom the powerful have done injustice to.
When every war-mongering state, not just as is currently , its head of state, knows that, regardless of the colour of the skin of those in power, the warring state will be punished with heavy financial reparations for the evil it has done- only then will the incentive for war rapidly recede and justice prevail.
The Guardian, in an article of 22nd January, notes that the The American Psychological Association (APA) has declined to rebuke one of its members, Dr John Leso for his known complicity in the torture of the US kidnapped suspect Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was ” charged” by the Pentagon in 2008 for his suspected involvement in 9/11.
The Guardian notes that “the APA did not deny Leso took part in the brutal interrogation of the suspected 20th 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed al-Qahtani, whose treatment the Pentagon official overseeing his military commission ultimately called “torture”.
The American Psychological Association describes itself as ” the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA is the world’s largest association of psychologists, with more than 134,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members.Our mission is to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people’s lives.”
APA’s communications chief, Rhea Farberman has stated that a seven-year ethics investigation could not meet the burden of finding “direct unethical conduct” by Leso, and said it was “utterly unfounded” to fear the organization has condoned professional impunity.
The evidence of John Leso’s complicity in torture is incontrovertible in creating an inhumane environment for Mohammed al-Qahtani to be tortured by his “interrogators”. Dr John Leso therefore both unequivocally breached the APAs code of conduct and the universal medical ethic of “do no harm” .
No labyrinthine legal argument can allow the APA to escape its responsibilities to ensure its members behave in ethical and humane ways to their patients.
The APA has clearly now abrogated that responsibility and most certainly undermined the rights of human beings to the right to be treated humanely by state apparatus, and has consequently eliminated any professional credibility it may have had in the eyes of the global public and clinical professionals around the world.
It would therefore be expeditious for the APA to re-consider its astounding decision to condone torture by its members and to immediately and permanently dis-bar John Leso from its membership. However, this is unlikely to happen.
Since the beginning of the “War on Terror” in the United States, and the various Western countries who have been complicit in the fictional “war on terror”, we have seen increasing use by the state of statements by their “legal experts” to justify war crimes, torture and murder on an ever-expanding scale.
The APA’s excuse that the evidence about Dr Leso’s complicity in torture did not meet the burden of finding “direct unethical conduct” is clearly at odds with the facts. It does however reflect the fear by a supposedly ethical and professional body, of the power of the state to inflict harm on even such a prestigious professional body as the APA .
Weasel words and legal sleight of hand must instead be used by the APA’s legal advisors to justify this cowardice. However when such a professional body, which in their words, exists to “benefit society and improve people’s lives”, abrogates it’s right to instill justice, ethics and fair play out of fear of state retribution , there appears little hope for the foreseeable future of a fair and just society in the United States.
On November 26 2013, the UN General Assembly voted to proclaim 2014 the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People was requested to organize relevant activities in cooperation with governments, the UN system, intergovernmental organizations, and significantly, civil society. The seven countries who opposed the proclamation were Israel, United States, Canada, Australia,Micronesia, Palau, and the Marshall Islands. The vote was 110-7, with 56 abstentions.
I would ask that readers take some time to read the accounts of what has happened to Palestine and the Palestinian people since “ The Catastrophe”, the” Nakba, when in 1948 Israeli troops and gangs brutally forced out hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the lands and houses they had lived in for centuries, killing many in the process .
This dispossession, 65 years later, is ongoing; each day more Palestinians are uprooted from their homes, their houses and orchards bulldozed and new “settlements for Israeli Jews only built over the rubble. The brutality, intensity and magnitude of the occupation is for some reason, a matter for silence by Western governments. Perhaps sharing in the guilt of the Nazis in the Jewish genocide in Europe, they turn a blind eye to the ghettoization of the Palestinian people. The victim of violence has indeed become the perpetrator. In the West Bank, the Israeli government have walled the population in , has carefully calculated the minimal calorific intake to keep each Palestinian alive, and has over many years reduced West Bank Palestinians lives to subsistence level, reliant on “illegal” tunnels supplying food from Egypt, while health , water and sewage systems crumble. This systematic policy is designed to force Palestinians to abandon their homeland to allow more Israeli settlement. What is urgently needed is for our New Zealand government to finally stand up to Israel and their US supporters and say “enough is enough” and permit international law to prevail. A separate Palestinian state is now no longer viable after 65 years. What is required therefore is, in the spirit of peace and reconciliation, a process of restoration of justice. Modelled on the Treaty of Waitangi process and the South African Peace and Reconciliation process, a unity government of all religions and politics across Israel and the rump of Palestine needs to be set up. This government would oversee the return of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been dispossessed over the past 65 years , the release from jail of the many thousands of Palestinian political prisoners (men women and children) , and the full compensation or return of lands lost since the occcupation.
Nelson Mandelas’ vision of reconciliation and hope for the future can result in an Israel/Palestine state that brings a message of hope to the Middle East. The alternative is not worth imagining..
In the latest absurdity upon absurdity in this fictitious “war on terror”, the UK Police have defended their actions in holding and interrogating for 9 hours Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda on the grounds that Miranda was suspected of terrorism because he may have been relaying truthful information about a wide range of Western governments’ illegal spying on its citizens.
As the headline above notes; the UK Police’s rationale for the infringement of Miranda’s rights, was that they “had a duty to protect the public and our national security ” (from such unwarranted journalism). With both the UK and US police forces being increasingly accused of both corrupt and violent behaviour, it is little wonder the public in those countries feel a sense of betrayal by the state. Who are their police and armed forces in fact protecting?
Certainly the deliberately manufactured farce of muslim terrorism ( funded with enthusiasm by the CIA, and various other “intelligence” western agencies around the globe- not to mention our “allies”- the Saudis), is providing an ever more thinly stretched excuse for heavy handed enforcement behaviours, surveillance and the erosion of civil rights.
Who and what is it all for?
It would appear that much of this deterioration in rights and freedoms is simply to improve the profits of those international corporates , whether media, arms manufacturers , energy companies telecommunications or security companies that are able to buy the required influence in western “democracies”.
As it becomes increasingly clear that we are nearing the end of the free capitalistic lunch-with the remainder of the world’s natural resources being rapidly frittered away for a few quick bucks – the corporate billionaires are rushing for the exits, and trampling us “little people” in the stampede.
Over the last 20 years there has been increasing scientific evidence of the reality that “animals” vary little from homo sapiens in terms of their capacity to feel, to have cognition and to be aware of their circumstances. That very ‘useful’ set of historical assumptions of the lack of true ‘awareness’ of other species compared to homo sapiens, which has enabled those of us who wish to kill or hurt other species on the grounds of their implicit inferiority to humans, has now been fully discredited.
Tilly
It is therefore inevitable that, over the next few decades, a global ethical and moral shift to the full valuing of other sentient life on our little planet will occur. This will in turn translate into a massive reduction in meat eating by homo sapiens and the need for environments where other species are respected and protected. While this world-wide ethical and moral shift and its translation into alternative action to value other species as we would our own, may currently appear absurd to my dear readers, it is worthwhile to consider how rapid the global moral and ethical shifts against issues such as slavery or the rights of women have occurred in the last 200 years.
It is therefore vital that both states and individuals start to explore both the implications of that shift in attitude towards species other than our own, and to assist in driving that change towards a better world for all of us who inhabit this little blue world.
While the challenges to the economic environment of those state entities whose economies are predominantly reliant on the export of meat are undoubtedly immense if we are to shift to a no-kill economy; the opportunities as a world leader in environmental and species ethics and practice are also enormous.
The evidence for the greater efficiency and sustainability of a non-meat based agrarian economy is out there now; we can start to plan for this inevitable change or be sidelined by other more ethical and forward looking economies. No-kill agricultural produce that is produced in a fully environmentally sustainable way, will be in huge and ever-increasing demand as the ethical and moral framework of our species shifts its awareness in the decades to come.
Given the indisputable evidence that other animals than homo sapiens have the same value and senses as ourselves, it is imperative that all laws regarding the management of animals ensure that no cruelty or suffering is permitted under government regulation.
In just one of many examples of research into animal behaviour that explores the real capacities of other species, the recent Guardian article on the work of Tetsuro Matsuzawa at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University exposes how chimpanzees on a number of cognitive fronts are superior to homo sapiens .
It is important to note that all research by homo sapiens is naturally slanted to place positive attributes on those skills that are traditionally deemed “human”, and to either ignore , minimise, ridicule or even simply not observe those skills and attributes of other species that are less familiar to us or deemed by humans to be not important or irrelevant. In addition, our sensory range as humans limits our capacity to even understand at a basic level , th edepth of awareness of many other species.
One revealing comment by Prof. Matsuzawa in the Guardian article is his statement that “As humans evolved and acquired new skills – notably the ability to use language to communicate and collaborate – they lost others they once shared with their common simian ancestors. “Our ancestors may have also had photographic memories, but we lost that during evolution so that we could acquire new skills,” he says. “To get something, we had to lose something.” As the supremely arrogant and species-centric organisms that humans are; we have glorified our skills, while ignoring our sensory and cognitive deficits in comparison to other species on the planet.
Perhaps our most unique skill, is our capacity to manipulate our environment to suit our own ends. It is likely to also be our, and the rest of the species on this planet’s , undoing.
Postscript
A recent article in The Guardian entitled “The American lawyer seeking human rights for chimpanzees” examines with some incredulity and implied mirth at the idea-that a US lawyer is campaigning for chimpanzees to have the same legal rights as human beings. The article references the NonHumanRights Project ; one of the first of many human organisations devoted to rights and equality for all sentient beings on this planet.
New Antarctica 