Poet's Nook: "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world,
 
and am free...


OneLove

:::MME:::

The War Against Us

John Trudell is an acclaimed poet, national recording artist, actor and activist whose international following reflects the universal language of his words, work and message. Trudell (Santee Sioux) was a spokesperson for the Indian of All Tribes occupation of Alcatraz Island from 1969 to 1971. He then worked with the American Indian Movement (AIM), serving as Chairman of AIM from 1973 to 1979. In February of 1979, a fire of unknown origin killed Trudell's wife, three children and mother-in-law. It was through this horrific tragedy that Trudell began to find his voice as an artist and poet, writing, in his words, "to stay connected to this reality." Listen carefully to Trudell's "We Are Power" speech below. Serious truth-telling in this explosive clip:-

Take the time to explore Trudell's philosophy and be prepared for some critical introspection. You can check out his full documentary here. Another clip that grabbed me was the following where he describes the modern human being as the living dead and this realm we exist in as a place where spirits get eaten: 





OneLove

 :::MME:::

Colonization by Bankruptcy by Ellen Brown

The Pentagon’s Strategy for World Domination: Full Spectrum Dominance, from Asia to Africa by Bruce K. Gagnon

 

Current US military space policy is primarily geared toward two countries, China and Russia.
 

In May 2000 the Washington Post published an article called “For Pentagon, Asia Moving to Forefront.” The article stated that, “The Pentagon is looking at Asia as the most likely arena for future military conflict, or at least competition.” The article said the US would double its military presence in the region and essentially attempt to manage China.

The Pentagon has become the primary resource extraction service for corporate capital. Whether it is Caspian Sea oil and natural gas, rare earth minerals found in Africa, Libya’s oil deposits, or Venezuelan oil, the US’s increasingly high-tech military is on the case.

President Obama’s former National Security Adviser, Gen. James Jones had previously served as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. In 2006, Gen. Jones told the media, “NATO is developing a special plan to safeguard oil and gas fields in the [Caspian Sea] region…. Our strategic goal is to expand to Eastern Europe and Africa.”

In a past quadrennial National Intelligence Strategy report, former U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair claimed that Russia “may continue to seek avenues for reasserting power and influence in ways that complicate U.S. interests…[and] China competes for the same resources the United States needs, and is in the process of rapidly modernizing its military.”

Using NATO as a military tool, the US is now surrounding Russia and easily dragged the supposedly European-based alliance into the Afghanistan war and Libya attack. The US is turning NATO into a global military alliance, even to be used in the Asian-Pacific region. 

ENERGY & MISSILE OFFENSE 

In mid-March of 2009 the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) held a conference in Washington. At that meeting Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) stated, “Missile defense is an important element of our nation’s defense. For example, it is a high priority to field effective defenses for our forward-deployed forces against the many hundreds of existing short- and medium-range missiles.”

Patriot missiles.

The Obama administration is currently deploying “missile defense” (MD) systems in Turkey, Romania, Poland and on Navy destroyers entering the Black Sea. The NATO military noose is tightening around Russia.

Russia has the world’s largest deposits of natural gas and significant supplies of oil. The US has recently built military bases in Romania and Bulgaria and will soon be adding more in Albania. NATO has expanded eastward into Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, right on Russia’s border. Georgia, Ukraine, Sweden and Finland are also on the list to become members of the cancerous NATO.
An Indian journalist observes,

“The arc of encirclement of Russia gets strengthened. NATO ties facilitate the [eventual] deployment of the US missile defense system in Georgia. The US aims to have a chain of countries tied to ‘partnerships’ with NATO brought into its missile defense system – stretching from its allies in the Baltic to those in Central Europe. The ultimate objective of this is to neutralize the strategic capability of Russia and China and to establish its nuclear superiority. The National Defense Strategy document, issued by the Pentagon on July 31, 2008, portrays Washington’s perception of a resurgent Russia and a rising China as potential adversaries.”

Just as we have seen the balkanization of Yugoslavia, Libya, and Iraq by US-NATO it appears that the same strategy has been developed for Russia. With NATO’s continuing military encirclement of Russia the plan appears to be to draw Moscow into a military quagmire in Ukraine that will weaken that nation. The Rand Corporation has studies that call for the break-up of Russia into many smaller pieces thus giving western corporations better access to the vast resource base available there.

The recent announcement by BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) that they have created a $100 billion international development bank to rival the IMF and World Bank has angered western corporate controlled governments who don’t want any challenge to their management of the global economy. Directly after the BRICS announcement we witnessed an escalation of the US-NATO funded and directed civil war in Ukraine.

The Harper government is now recommending that Canada join the US missile defense program. Canadian military corporations are itching to open the flood gates to the national treasury – the profits from a junior partnership with the US in an arms race in space are too much to pass up. But first more cuts must be made to the Canadian national health care program and other valuable social welfare programs. In the US the military industrial complex has targeted the “entitlement programs” – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and what is left of “welfare” for defunding to help pay for the expensive military space technology agenda.
Canada has also undertaken the construction of “armed combat vessels” at the Irving Shipyard in Halifax. This $25 billion program, the largest military appropriation in Canadian history, was supported by every political party in the country. Why does Canada need such a monumental war ship building program?

THE NAVY’S EXPANDING ROLE

As ice melts in the Arctic, the US Navy anticipates that it will have to increase its presence in the region to “protect shipping”. Over the past 25 years, the Arctic has seen a 40% reduction in ice as a result of global warming. Maine’s Independent Senator Angus King recently wrote “gas and oil reserves that were previously inaccessible” will soon be available for extraction. Last spring Sen. King took a ride on a US nuclear submarine under the Arctic ice. Also along for the ride was Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations, who told the New York Times: “We need to be sure that our sensors, weapons and people are proficient in this part of the world,” so that we can “own the undersea domain and get anywhere there.”

A new Navy report called “US Navy Arctic Roadmap: 2014-2030” states: “Ice in the Arctic has been receding faster than we previously thought…and offers an increase in activity.” The Arctic region holds a plethora of undiscovered fossil fuels and natural resources, including an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, the roadmap says.

The report warns that the Navy will face serious logistical challenges and will need to examine ways to distribute fuel in the region to “air and surface platforms”. Operating bases will be needed to host deployed military personnel. Partnerships with nations that border the Arctic and more warships will be needed to ensure that the undersea resources are kept in the hands of US-NATO and away from competitors like Russia.

US Secretary of War Chuck Hagel stated in late 2013 that, “By taking advantage of multilateral training opportunities with partners in the region, we will enhance our cold-weather operational experience, and strengthen our military-to-military ties with other Arctic nations.” 

SCUPPERING PEACE 

President Obama has in the past called for the abolition of nuclear weapons. The Russians, watching an advancing NATO and MD deployments near their borders, are telling the world that any real hopes for serious nuclear weapons reductions are in jeopardy. 

Russia and China attempt to prohibit space weapons at the United Nations.

 Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev delivered the opening address at the “Overcoming Nuclear Dangers” conference in Rome on April 16, 2009. He noted, “Unless we address the need to demilitarize international relations, reduce military budgets, put an end to the creation of new kinds of weapons and prevent weaponization of outer space, all talk about a nuclear-weapon-free world will be just inconsequential rhetoric.”

The entire US military empire is tied together using space technology. With military satellites in space the US can see virtually everything on the Earth, can intercept all communications on the planet, and can target virtually any place at any time. Russia and China understand that the US military goal is to achieve “full spectrum dominance” on behalf of corporate capital.

Using new space technologies to coordinate and direct modern warfare also enables the military industrial complex to reap massive profits as it constructs the architecture for what the aerospace industry claims will be the “largest industrial project” in Earth history. 

TARGET: ASIA 

The deployment of Navy Aegis destroyers in the Asian-Pacific region, with MD interceptors on-board, ostensibly to protect against North Korean missile launches, gives the US greater ability to launch preemptive first-strike attacks on China.

The US now has 30 ground-based MD interceptors deployed in South Korea. Many peace activists there maintain that the ultimate target of these systems is not North Korea, but China and Russia. 

Europe’s leaders are complicit in Full Spectrum Dominance.

The current US military expansion underway in Hawaii, South Korea, Japan, Guam, Okinawa, Taiwan, Australia, Philippines and other Pacific nations is indeed a key strategy in this offensive “pivot” to control China. An additional US goal is to have the “host” countries make significant contributions toward helping the Pentagon cover the cost of this massively expensive escalation.

For many years the US Space Command has been annually war gaming a first-strike attack on China. Set in the year 2017 the Pentagon first launches the military space plan that flies through the heavens and unleashes a devastating first-strike attack on China’s nuclear forces – part of the new “Global Strike” program. In the war game China then attempts to launch a retaliatory strike with its tens of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the west coast of the continental US. But US “missile defense” systems, currently deployed in Japan, South Korea, Australia, Guam and Taiwan, help take out China’s disabled nuclear response. 

Obama’s former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ comments were quite revealing in 2009 when he said, “We’re converting more Navy Aegis ships to have ballistic missile defense that would help against China.”

Missile defense, sold to the public as a purely defensive system, is really designed by the Pentagon to be the shield after the first-strike sword has lunged into the heart of a particular nation’s nuclear arsenal.

Living in Bath, Maine, I have a special perspective on this US-China military competition. In my town, the Navy builds the Aegis destroyers that are outfitted with MD systems. Congressional leaders from my state maintain that more Pentagon funds for Aegis shipbuilding are needed to “contain” China.

Renowned author Noam Chomsky says US foreign and military policy is now all about controlling most of the world’s oil supply as a “lever of world domination.” One way to keep Europe, China, India and other emerging markets dependent on the US and in sync with its policies is to maintain control of the fossil fuel supply they’re reliant on. Even as the US economy is collapsing, the Pentagon appears to be saying, whoever controls the keys to the world’s economic engine still remains in charge.

China, for example, imports up to 80% of its oil on ships through the Yellow Sea. If any competitor nation was able to militarily control that transit route and choke off China’s oil supply, its economy could be held hostage.

One is able to see how the Pentagon will use the South Korean Navy base on Jeju Island, now being constructed despite a seven-year determined non-violent campaign opposing the base, to support the potential coastal blockade of China.

Victim of US nuclear weapons: Hiroshima, 1945. 

Victim of Anglo-American nuclear weapons: Fallujah, 2004. 

CONCLUSIONS 

For many years Russia and China have introduced resolutions at the UN calling for negotiations on a new treaty that would ban weapons in space. Since the mid-‘80s every UN member nation has supported the “Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space” (PAROS) resolution, with the exception of the US, Israel, and Micronesia. This was true during the Clinton presidency as well as during the reign of George W. Bush and now under Obama as well.

A full-blown arms race between the US, Russia and China will be a disaster for the world and would make life on Earth less secure. At the very time that global resources are urgently needed to deal with the coming harsh realities of climate change and growing poverty, we can hardly afford to see more money wasted on the further militarization of space and greater superpower conflict.

The Pentagon actually has the largest carbon boot print on the planet. The US insisted that the Pentagon be excluded from the Kyoto climate change protocols and refused to sign the agreements unless the Pentagon was exempted.

As the US undertakes arming the world to the benefit of corporate globalization our local communities have become addicted to military spending. As we oppose the aggressive US military empire overseas we must also talk about the job issue back at home. Calling for conversion of the military industrial complex, demanding that our industrial base be transformed to create a renewable energy infrastructure for the 21^st century, helps us come into coalition with weapons production workers who must now support the killing machine if they hope to feed their families. 

UK Ministry of Defence warns of new technologies’ potential to trigger a ‘doomsday scenario’. 

Studies have long shown that conversion from military production to creating needed systems like rail, solar or wind turbines not only help deal with the challenges of climate change but also create many more jobs.

It’s ultimately a question about the soul of the nation – what does it say about us as a people when we continue to build weapons to kill people around the world so workers can put food on the table back home?

What is needed now more than ever is unified global campaigning across issue lines. Peace, social justice, environment, labor and other movements must work harder to link our issues and build integrated grassroots movements against the destructive power of the corporate oligarchies that run most of our western governments. The rush to privatize social welfare and the privatization of foreign and military policy must be challenged if we are to successfully protect the future generations. 

                                                *********

OneLove

:::MME:::

Monsanto Seeks to Control World’s Food

The ultimate monopoly would be control of the world’s food supply. Although not the only multi-national corporation attempting to achieve the ability to dictate what you eat, Monsanto Company appears the most determined.

Already infamous for toxic chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), Agent Orange and dioxin, Monsanto’s march toward control of the world’s food supply is focused on proprietary seeds and genetically modified organisms. No corporation or corporate oligarchy possessing a food monopoly would be desirable, but Monsanto is a particularly frightening contender. So powerful is the company that a special law tailored for it was snuck into a congressional appropriations bill funding U.S. government operations.

The Farmer Assurance Provision — better known by its nickname, the “Monsanto Protection Act” — was quietly slipped into an appropriations bill in March by a Missouri senator, Roy Blunt. The appropriations bill had to be passed to avert a government shutdown, providing an opportunity to do a favor for the powerful. Slipping off-topic special measures into bills hundreds of pages long is routine in the U.S. Congress.

Efforts to remove the language from the bill have so far failed. The relevant language is this:

“Directs the Secretary [of Agriculture], if a determination of non-regulated status under the Plant Protection Act has been invalidated, to authorize movement, introduction, continued cultivation, or commercialization for the interim period necessary for the Secretary to complete any required analyses or consultations related to the petition for non-regulated status.”

In plain language, what the above passage means is the U.S. Department of Agriculture is required to ignore any court order that would halt the planting of genetically engineered crops even if the department is still conducting a safety investigation, and rubber-stamp an okay. The group Food Democracy Now! summarized the implications of that requirement:

“This dangerous provision, the Monsanto Protection Act, strips judges of their constitutional mandate to protect consumer and farmer rights and the environment, while opening up the floodgates for the planting of new untested genetically engineered crops, endangering farmers, citizens and the environment.”

The Monsanto Protection Act expires at the end of the government’s fiscal year, September 30, with the expiration of the appropriations bill of which it is a part, but the language could easily be included in next year’s appropriations bills. As outrageous as the special provision is, it is consistent with the basic methodology of public safety in the United States — new products are routinely put on the market with minimal testing (or the product’s manufacturer providing the only “research” and declaring it safe), and can’t be removed from sale until independent testing determines the product is unsafe.

Sell first, ask questions later

In other words, it’s not up the company selling a product to prove it is safe; it is up to others, after the fact, to prove that it is unsafe. This is the case with, for example, chemicals and pesticides. And it is the case for genetically modified organisms (GMOs). No corporation has more riding on GMOs than Monsanto. That is not merely because GMOs have steadily taken an increasing share of foods grown for animal and human consumption, but because of genetically engineered seeds. A report by the Center For Food Safety and Save Our Seeds puts the magnitude of this change in stark terms:

“The vast majority of the four major commodity crops in the U.S. are now genetically engineered. U.S. adoption of transgenic commodity crops has been rapid, in which [genetically engineered] varieties now make up the substantial majority: soybean (93 percent transgenic in 2010), cotton (88 percent), corn (86 percent), and canola (64 percent).” [page 5]

Seeds containing genes patented by Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, account for more than 90 percent of soybeans grown in the U.S. and 80 percent of U.S.-grown corn, according to a separate report by Food & Watch Watch. These seeds have been engineered to be resistant to insects or to withstand the application of herbicides. The report, “Monsanto: A Corporate Profile,” states:

“Monsanto not only markets its own patented seeds, but it uses licensing agreements with other companies and distributors to spread its traits throughout the seed supply. … The acreage on which Monsanto’s [genetically engineered] crop traits are grown has increased from a total of 3 million acres in 1996 to 282.3 million acres worldwide and 151.4 million acres in the United States in 2009. … Monsanto’s products constitute approximately 40 percent of all crop acres in the [U.S.]. …
“A lawyer working for DuPont, the next largest competitor in the seed business, said ‘a seed company can’t stay in business without offering seeds with Roundup Ready in it, so if they want to stay in that business, essentially they have to do what Monsanto tells them to do.’ ” [page 8]

DuPont is one of the world’s largest chemical corporations and a major competitor in many fields. If an enterprise as powerful as DuPont finds itself at the mercy of Monsanto, what chance does a family farmer have?

The reference to “Roundup Ready” in the quote above is a reference to a suite of Monsanto agricultural products (soybeans, corn, sugar beets and other crops) that are genetically engineered to be resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. Farmers growing these crops with Monsanto seeds can thus spray more herbicides on their crops. Unfortunately, as more pesticides are sprayed, weeds and insects become more resistant, inducing farmers to spray still more and thereby introduce more poisons into the environment.

Patents on life reverses precedent

As with the consolidation of seed companies, the rise of genetically engineered crops and the right to patent living organisms is a recent development. After decades of refusal by the U.S. Congress to allow patents on food-producing plants that re-produce via seeds, it passed a law in 1970 allowing patenting of “novel” varieties produced from seeds.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued rulings in 1980 and 2001 allowing living organisms, including plants, to be patented, opening the floodgates to current corporate practices. A frenzy of acquisition of seed companies and a rapid expansion of patents on seeds and plants ensued. The report by Center For Food Safety and Save Our Seeds summarizes what these changes have wrought:

“As a consequence, what was once a freely exchanged, renewable resource is now privatized and monopolized. Current judicial interpretations have allowed utility patents on products of nature, plants, and seeds, without exceptions for research and seed saving. This revolutionary change is contrary to centuries of traditional seed breeding based on collective community knowledge and established in the public domain and for the public good.” [page 5]

The ETC Group, in its report, “Who Owns Nature?,” also highlights the privatization of a commons:

“In the first half of the 20th century, seeds were overwhelmingly in the hands of farmers and public-sector plant breeders. In the decades since, [biotechnology companies] have used intellectual property laws to commodify the world seed supply — a strategy that aims to control plant germplasm and maximize profits by eliminating farmers’ rights. … In less than three decades, a handful of multinational corporations have engineered a fast and furious corporate enclosure of the first link in the food chain.” [page 11]

Proprietary seeds now account for 82 percent of the world’s commercial seed market. Monsanto, according to the ETC Group, directly accounts 23 percent of the world’s seed sales by itself. Monsanto and the next two biggest seed companies, DuPont and Syngenta, sell almost half.
Once a farmer contracts with a giant seed company, the farmer is trapped. Standard contracts with seed companies forbid farmers from saving seeds, requiring them to buy new genetically engineered seeds from the company every year and the herbicide to which the seed has been engineered to be resistant. Monsanto aggressively litigates against farmers to enforce this provision, dictates farming practices and requires its inspectors to be given access to all records and fields. The company has even sued neighboring farmers whose fields unwillingly became contaminated with Monsanto’s seeds.

Doubts raised on ‘benefits’ of GMOs

Nobody knows the full effects on the environment or human health of these chemicals and GMOs. A recent study published in the journal Entropy found that residues of Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, are found in a variety of foods in the Western diet and in turn can cause cellular damage leading to several diseases, including gastrointestinal disorders, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. More than 800 scientists have signed a letter calling for a moratorium on all field trials of GMOs for at least five years, a ban on patents on life forms and declaring that genetically modified crops “offer no benefits to consumers for farmers.”

Genetically modified crops, of course, are carried along by winds and don’t stop at property boundaries. Last month, genetically modified wheat was discovered in the fields of a farmer in Oregon. The Guardian reports that the wheat has never been approved for human consumption and is a variety developed by Monsanto in an experiment that ended a decade ago. Several Asian countries responded to this news by banning imports of U.S. wheat and the European Union advised wheat shipped from the U.S. be tested.

Hoping to expand its reach, Monsanto (and three other corporations) are attempting to corner the market in maize in Mexico, the staple crop’s birthplace. The companies have applied to plant genetically modified maize on more than two million hectares in two Mexican states. Already, according to a report in Truthout, farmers near Mexico City have found their crops contaminated with genetically modified maize.

Sixty-four countries currently require GMO labeling, but such labeling in the United States is bitterly fought by Monsanto and other giant agribusinesses. The companies argue that GMOs are safe, but if they are so proud of their products, why do they resist them being put on a label for consumers to see? Nor does the revolving door between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Monsanto inspire confidence.

Corporate lawyers and others who have done work for Monsanto, for instance, subsequently moved to the FDA, where they gave approval for Monsanto products. Although corporate executives going to work for the U.S. government agencies that regulate them, then going back to their companies, is a common practice, Monsanto has sent an extraordinary number of executives to government posts.

Nonetheless, this specter shouldn’t be looked at overly simplistically as Monsanto being an evil company. It and its competitors are acting in the way that capitalist competition mandates they act — grow or die is the ever present imperative. All industries move toward monopolization (a handful of companies dominating an industry, not necessarily a “pure” monopoly of one); corporations grow to such massive size that they can dominate their societies; and the surviving corporations convert ever more human activity or traditionally public spheres into their private profit centers. This is the natural result of market competition and allowing “markets” to determine social outcomes.

Monsanto happens to be the company that is most ruthless at navigating and further developing these ongoing systemic trends, just as Wal-Mart is the company that is the leader among retailers forcing the moving of production to the lowest-wage countries, squeezing suppliers and exploiting workforces. That does not mean that we should be content to allow Monsanto to grab control of the world’s food supply or make life itself a commodity. Quite the contrary. The specter of any enterprise gaining a monopoly over food is too frightening to contemplate, never mind an enterprise so dedicated to squashing anybody who gets in its way.

The idea of Monsanto (or any other corporation or bloc of corporations) wresting control of the world’s food supply sounds like a bad science fiction movie or a crazy nightmare. But modern capitalism is heading toward that previously unthinkable place. The time is to organize is now, for we never have as much time as we think we do.

OneLove

:::MME:::

Musings

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen~~Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

OneLove

 :::MME:::

How the Brutalized Become Brutal by Chris Hedges

The horrific pictures of the beheading of American reporter James Foley, the images of executions of alleged collaborators in Gaza and the bullet-ridden bodies left behind in Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are the end of a story, not the beginning. They are the result of years, at times decades, of the random violence, brutal repression and collective humiliation the United States has inflicted on others.

Our terror is delivered to the wretched of the earth with industrial weapons. It is, to us, invisible. We do not stand over the decapitated and eviscerated bodies left behind on city and village streets by our missiles, drones and fighter jets. We do not listen to the wails and shrieks of parents embracing the shattered bodies of their children. We do not see the survivors of air attacks bury their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. We are not conscious of the long night of collective humiliation, repression and powerlessness that characterizes existence in Israel’s occupied territories, Iraq and Afghanistan. We do not see the boiling anger that war and injustice turn into a caldron of hate over time. We are not aware of the very natural lust for revenge against those who carry out or symbolize this oppression. We see only the final pyrotechnics of terror, the shocking moment when the rage erupts into an inchoate fury and the murder of innocents. And, willfully ignorant, we do not understand our own complicity. We self-righteously condemn the killers as subhuman savages who deserve more of the violence that created them. This is a recipe for endless terror.

Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described what happened when he obtained a knife and confronted a German in an office. The act he carried out was no less brutal than the beheading of Foley or the executions in Gaza. Isolated from the reality he and the other inmates endured at the camp, his act was savage. Set against the backdrop of the extermination camp it was understandable.

“It’s not a decision,” Engel said. “You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, ‘Let us to do, and go and do it.’ And I went. I went with the man in the office, and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, ‘That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.’ ”

Any good cop, like any good reporter, knows that every criminal has a story. No one, except for perhaps a few psychopaths, wakes up wanting to cut off another person’s head. Murder and other violent crimes almost always grow out of years of abuse of some kind suffered by the perpetrator. Even the most “civilized” among us are not immune to dehumanization.

The enemies on the modern battlefield seem elusive because death is usually delivered by industrial weapons such as aerial drones or fighter jets that are impersonal, or by insurgent forces that leave behind roadside bombs or booby traps or carry out hit-and-run ambushes. This elusiveness is the curse of modern warfare. The inability of Sunni fighters in Iraq to strike back at jets and drones has resulted in their striking a captured journalist and Shiite and Kurdish civilians.

U.S. soldiers and Marines in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israeli soldiers in assaults on Gaza, have been among those who committed senseless acts of murder. They routinely have gunned down unarmed civilians to revenge killings of members of their units. This is a reaction I saw in several wars. It is not rational. Those murdered were not responsible, even indirectly, for the deaths of their killers’ comrades, just as Foley and the Shiites and Kurds executed in Iraq were not responsible for the deaths of Sunni militants hit by the U.S. Air Force.

J. Glenn Gray, who fought in World War II, wrote about the peculiar nature of vengeance in “The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle”:

When the soldier has lost a comrade to this enemy or possibly had his family destroyed by them through bombings or through political atrocities, so frequently the case in World War II, his anger and resentment deepen into hatred. Then the war for him takes on the character of a vendetta. Until he has himself destroyed as many of the enemy as possible, his lust for vengeance can hardly be appeased. I have known soldiers who were avid to exterminate every last one of the enemy, so fierce was their hatred. Such soldiers took great delight in hearing or reading of mass destruction through bombings. Anyone who has known or been a soldier of this kind is aware of how hatred penetrates every fiber of his being. His reason for living is to seek revenge; not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but a tenfold retaliation.

Those killed are not, to the killers, human beings but representations of what they fear and hate. The veneer of the victim’s humanity, they believe, is only a mask for an evil force. The drive for vengeance, for “tenfold retaliation,” among those who are deformed by violence cannot be satiated without rivers of blood—even innocent blood. And Americans do as much of this type of revenge killing as those we fight. Our instruments of war allow us to kill from a distance. We therefore often lack any real consciousness of killing. But this does not make us any less depraved.

“Few of us ever know how far fear and violence can transform us into creatures at bay, ready with tooth and claw,” Gray wrote. “If the war taught me anything at all, it convinced me that people are not what they seem or even think themselves to be.”

I am teaching inmates at a supermax prison this summer. We are reading William Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” Every student in my classroom was charged with murder, and, though the American judicial system imprisons its share of innocents, it is a safe bet that many if not most in my class have killed. At the same time, once you hear the stories of their lives, the terrifying domestic abuse, the crushing poverty, the cruelty of the streets, including police use of deadly force against unarmed people, the societal and parental abandonment, the frustration at not being able to live a life of dignity or find a job, the humiliation of being poorly educated—some went into prison illiterate—you begin to understand the power of the institutional racism and oppression that made them angry and finally dangerous.

Marguerite Duras in her book “The War” describes how she and other members of the French Resistance kidnapped and tortured a 50-year-old Frenchman they suspected of collaborating with the Germans. The group allows two of its members who were beaten in Montluc prison at Lyon to strip the alleged informer and repeatedly beat him as onlookers shout: “Bastard. Traitor. Scum.” Blood and mucus soon run from his nose. His eye is damaged. He moans, “Ow, ow, oh, oh. …” He crumples in a heap on the floor. Duras wrote that he had “become someone without anything in common with other men. And with every minute the difference grows bigger and more established.” She goes on: “Every blow rings out in the silent room. They’re hitting at all the traitors, at the women who left, at all those who didn’t like what they saw from behind the shutters.” She departs before finding out if he is executed. She and her small resistance band had become Nazis. They acted no differently than Hamas did when it executed more than 15 suspected collaborators last week in Gaza

Our failure to understand the psychological mechanisms involved means that the brutality we inflict, and that is inflicted upon us, will continue in a deadly and self-defeating cycle in the Middle East as well as within poor urban areas of the United States. To break this cycle we have to examine ourselves and halt the indiscriminate violence that sustains our occupations. But examining ourselves instead of choosing the easy route of nationalist self-exaltation is hard and painful. These killings will stop only when we accept that the killers who should terrify us most are ourselves.

                                                                   *************

OneLove

:::MME:::

Poet's Nook: " The Danger of Silence" by Clint Smith

OneLove

 :::MME:::

Ferguson Unmasks the War on Black America by Glen Ford

“The military character and mission of the police is more clear today than when the Black Panther Party and others sounded the alarm in the Sixties.”

The brave and besieged people of Ferguson, Missouri, have already caused serious complications for the U.S. National Security State. By virtue of simply standing their ground in their own small city, the demonstrators have forced the local, county and state police to show their true, thoroughly militarized colors. Ferguson’s righteous agitators and rebellious Black youth have succeeded in pinning down in one small space the armed forces of racist repression in full view of the corporate and the people’s media, so that the whole world can bear witness to the truth of what another generation proclaimed nearly half a century ago: that, in the Black community, the police are an army of occupation.

The military character and mission of the police is more clear today than when the Black Panther Party and others sounded the alarm in the Sixties. Back then, the first SWAT teams were staking out sniper positions on city streets and the federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration had only just begun to funnel millions of dollars in surveillance technology, guns, body armor and all manner of lethal equipment to local and state police departments across the country. The term “mass Black incarceration” had not yet been coined, but it was only a matter of time before a permanent, militarized police offensive against rebellion-prone ghettos would cause unprecedented numbers of Black prisoners to flow into the greatest gulag in the history of the world.

A Force to Crush a People

White America perceived that it was at war with Black people, who no longer knew their place – and so, places of confinement were made for them; fortified dungeons to house millions. Since America tells itself and the rest of the world that it does not make war on its own citizens, and that there is a sharp and Constitutionally defined separation between the military and civilian functions of the State, the war against Black people had to be called something else – a War on Drugs, or simply a War on Crime. Therefore, it was not long before the words “crime” and “drugs” and “Black” came to mean the same thing since, really, there was only one war going on. And, it continues, still.

The young people of Ferguson, and greater St. Louis, and all of urban, suburban and rural Black America understand perfectly well that war is being waged against them. The powers-that-be every day of the year make it is crystal clear to Black people, especially Black men, that an overwhelming and lethal force is prepared to crush them – for any reason, or for no reason at all. This is the definition of a war of terror. It requires the aggressor to engage in constant and ever escalating displays of disciplined force – which is what militaries do. By refusing to disperse, the Black people of Ferguson have compelled the police to flaunt their military nature and mission before the eyes of the world. The American National Security State is embarrassed. But it will take a social transformation – that is, a revolution – to disarm the beast.

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OneLove

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MME's (Double) Jam of the Day

That is Frank Mccomb on vocals on "Phoenix". It's a shame more people aren't hip to this brother's stunning vocal range & song writing skills. He sounds just like the late great Donny Hathaway on this cut which came out a few years back but never saw the light of day. 

The live performance he did at the Java Jazzfest is just off the charts! He even sounds like Stevie Wonder on this brilliant interpretation of Stevie's classic, "Superwoman (Where Were You?)". Check out his catalog here.

OneLove

 :::MME:::

Paths

Spring In Hallerbos Forest, Belgium

Image credits: Kilian Schönberger

Rhododendron Tunnel in Reenagross Park, Kenmare Ireland

Image credits: Robert Ziegenfuss

Autumn In The White Carpathians

Image credits: Janek Sedlar

Rhododendron Laden Path, Mount Rogers, Virginia, USA

Image credits: David Mosner

Winter Forest Path, Czech Republic

Image credits: Jan Machata

Padley Gorge, Peak District, UK

Image credits: James Mills

Spring In Spencer Smith Park, Burlington, Ontario, Canada

Image credits: Shawn Marshall

Spring In Dog Mountain, Washington, USA

Image credits: Danielle Hughson

Jacaranda Tree Alley

Image credits: George Veltchev

Cotton Tree Alley In Taiwan

Image credits: Sue Hsu

Mount Rainier, Washington, USA

Image credits: Danielle Hughson

Spring In Woodburn, Oregon, USA

Image credits: Danielle Hughson

Dark Hedges In Ireland

Image credits: Stephen Emerson

Taiping Mountain Path in Taiwan

Image credits: Justin Jones

Hitachi Seaside Park Path In Japan

Image credits: nipomen2

Forest Trail In Bavaria, Germany

Image credits: Kilian Schönberger

Russian Forest Path

Image credits: Elena Shumilova

Winter Sunrise On Path In Campigna National Park , Italy

Image credits: Roberto Meloti

Migliarino San Rossore Park Path In Pisa, Italy

Image credits: Andrea Iorio

Bamboo Path In Kyoto, Japan

Image credits: Yuya Horikawa

Autumn Path

Image credits: Lars Van Der Goor

Path Up To The Halnaker Windmill in Sussex, UK

Image credits: Sam Moore

Autumn Path In Kyoto, Japan

Image credits: Takahiro Bessho

Tunnel Of Love, Ukraine

Image credits: Oleg Gordienko

Wisteria Flower Tunnel Path in Japan

Image credits: mindphoto.blog.fc2.com

 Springtime Path In Holland

Image credits: Lars Van De Goor

Path Under Blooming Trees In Spring

Image credits: Emanuel Costinas

Forest Path In Autumn

Roads and paths pervade our literature, poetry, artwork, linguistic expressions and music. Even photographers can’t keep their eyes (and lenses) off of a beautiful road or path. Paths like these have a powerful grip on the human imagination – they can bring adventure, promise and change or solitude, peace and calm. There’s nothing like a walk down a beautiful path to clear your head – or to fill it with ideas! I’ll leave you with an excellent quote from J. R. R. Tolkien’s works while you enjoy these images; “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to."

OneLove

:::MME:::