Where are the US riots?

While the Arab world seems to finally be waking up, the people of the US are still fast asleep.

Inspired by the Tunisian revolution against its dictatorial president and government, protestors in Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan and Albania have taken to the streets, and up to 4 Moroccans have set themselves on fire. Reports are even coming in of an Egyptian stock market crash.

One just has to look at what the majority of people have been demonstrating against in these countries to wonder why these revolutions haven't yet hit the US: chronic unemployment and government corruption, something in abundance in the US.


I person in 7 - that's 15% of the population, or 45 million Americans - are poor according to Associated Press. There are well over 15 million officially unemployed. But the US considers the labour force the number of people employed plus the number unemployed but seeking work, while it considers the non-labour force tincludes those who are not looking for work, those who are institutionalised (eg prison) and those serving in the military. And its the shrinking numbers of the actual labour force that keeps the unemployment rate from going through the roof.

One must ask if they're brain dead too, as one wonders why they aren't all out in the streets...

Amnesty International: Inhumane Treatment of WikiLeaks Soldier Bradley Manning

Amnesty International has finally written a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates objecting to the conditions of Bradley Manning's detention:
Inhumane Treatment of WikiLeaks Soldier Bradley Manning | Human Rights Now - Amnesty International USA Blog

Both Glenn Greenwald and Prof. Juan Cole both have pieces on this:

Glenn Greenwald: "America's treatment of detainees"

Prof. Juan Cole: "Bradley Manning and Mohamed Bouazizi"

But why haven't they declared him to be a Prisoner of Conscience?

The UK's most senior civil servant, Sir Gus O'Donnell, covering up crimes against peace.

The UK's most senior civil servant, Sir Gus O'Donnell, is covering up crimes against peace. According to the Guardian:

"Britain's top civil servant, Sir Gus O'Donnell, is preventing the official inquiry into the Iraq invasion from publishing notes sent by Tony Blair to George W Bush - evidence described by the inquiry as of "central importance" in establishing the circumstances that led to war.

O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, consulted Blair before suppressing the documents, it emerged tonight."

What has the UK country become? How is it possible that in this day and age, unelected officials can have so much power? It's completely anti-democratic. Someone somewhere should take this man to court for covering up evidence of a crime.

Chilcott has written to this unelected, anti-democratic official at least 3 times and has received the same fobbing off each time: 'The Cabinet Office said: "There is an established convention covering papers of a previous administration whereby former ministers would normally be consulted before release of papers from their time in government."'

So what the Cabinet Office is really saying is that if Hitler had been British, it would have been impossible to release any papers without his consent, a full two fingers, basically telling the British electorate to fuck off.

It's high time that 'conventions' like this were made illegal by law. Or that there be a higher law that makes these conventions non-binding in cases of possible criminal conduct.

Somebody ought to have a serious word in O'Donnell's ear and tell him that if he doesn't release these papers it's off to the Hague with him. These fucking civil servants, they think they're so civilised yet they're nothing more than common criminals...

Kiko Veneno - La rama de barcelona (both versions)

Listen/watch Version 1 first then Version 2. Love it!

Kiko Veneno - La rama de barcelona (Version 1)



Kiko Veneno - La rama de barcelona (Version 2)

War and Hypocrisy

Respuesta a Felipe González en "Los Desayunos de TVE" con Ana Pastor

Hablando del Tea Party y la última matanza en EEUU, noto que el Sr. Gonzalez utilizaba los mismos términos que el 'establishment' estado-unidense. Que el autor de la matanza es un loco y que las palabras no matan... creo que este hombre debería quedarse callado ya que es mayor y no deja de hablar tonterías, vamos, que la edad no perdona ni al Sr. Gonzalez.

Nadie habla del terrorismo blanco como hacen en el portal de Michael Moore o en el excelente blog del Prof. Juan Cole. Y comentaristas como Krugman en el NYT apunta a una retórica eliminacionista (eliminationist rhetoric): las 'sugerencias que se debe eliminar los del otro lado del debate por cualquier medio necesario, retórica utilizado contra Julian Assange y por los descerebrados de la derecha de EEUU contra los Demócratas y que ha llevado a esta matanza.'

Como dice Juan Cole, este discurso es de hipócritas, ya que no se desestime de manera similar, obviamente, los musulmanes inestable quienes, como los llamados "patriotas" de la banda McVeigh, a veces se recurren a la violencia...De hecho, los chiflados musulmanes de derecha y los chiflados estadounidenses de derecha  están obsesionados por ansiedades similares, acerca de un gobierno poderoso en Washington.

Por otro lado quisiera felicitar a la Sra. Pastor por su vuelta al programa con las esperanzas de que sea tan contundente y combativa con otros como con el Sr Gonzalez - por ejemplo ya quejé sobre su entrevista  servil al colombiano Uribe.

Chris Hedges: 2011: A Brave New Dystopia

This really is a must read.

Chris Hedges: 2011: A Brave New Dystopia

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.

We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled. 

Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse. 

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” Orwell wrote in “1984.” “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin uses the term “inverted totalitarianism” in his book “Democracy Incorporated” to describe our political system. It is a term that would make sense to Huxley. In inverted totalitarianism, the sophisticated technologies of corporate control, intimidation and mass manipulation, which far surpass those employed by previous totalitarian states, are effectively masked by the glitter, noise and abundance of a consumer society. Political participation and civil liberties are gradually surrendered. The corporation state, hiding behind the smokescreen of the public relations industry, the entertainment industry and the tawdry materialism of a consumer society, devours us from the inside out. It owes no allegiance to us or the nation. It feasts upon our carcass. 

The corporate state does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader. It is defined by the anonymity and facelessness of the corporation. Corporations, who hire attractive spokespeople like Barack Obama, control the uses of science, technology, education and mass communication. They control the messages in movies and television. And, as in “Brave New World,” they use these tools of communication to bolster tyranny. Our systems of mass communication, as Wolin writes, “block out, eliminate whatever might introduce qualification, ambiguity, or dialogue, anything that might weaken or complicate the holistic force of their creation, to its total impression.”

The result is a monochromatic system of information. Celebrity courtiers, masquerading as journalists, experts and specialists, identify our problems and patiently explain the parameters. All those who argue outside the imposed parameters are dismissed as irrelevant cranks, extremists or members of a radical left. Prescient social critics, from Ralph Nader to Noam Chomsky, are banished. Acceptable opinions have a range of A to B. The culture, under the tutelage of these corporate courtiers, becomes, as Huxley noted, a world of cheerful conformity, as well as an endless and finally fatal optimism. We busy ourselves buying products that promise to change our lives, make us more beautiful, confident or successful as we are steadily stripped of rights, money and influence. All messages we receive through these systems of communication, whether on the nightly news or talk shows like “Oprah,” promise a brighter, happier tomorrow. And this, as Wolin points out, is “the same ideology that invites corporate executives to exaggerate profits and conceal losses, but always with a sunny face.” We have been entranced, as Wolin writes, by “continuous technological advances” that “encourage elaborate fantasies of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, actions measured in nanoseconds: a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose denizens are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge.” 


Our manufacturing base has been dismantled. Speculators and swindlers have looted the U.S. Treasury and stolen billions from small shareholders who had set aside money for retirement or college. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus and protection from warrantless wiretapping, have been taken away. Basic services, including public education and health care, have been handed over to the corporations to exploit for profit. The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate establishment as freaks. 

Attitudes and temperament have been cleverly engineered by the corporate state, as with Huxley’s pliant characters in “Brave New World.” The book’s protagonist, Bernard Marx, turns in frustration to his girlfriend Lenina:

“Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?” he asks.
“I don’t know that you mean. I am free, free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody’s happy nowadays.”
He laughed, “Yes, ‘Everybody’s happy nowadays.’ We have been giving the children that at five. But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else’s way.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she repeated.

The façade is crumbling. And as more and more people realize that they have been used and robbed, we will move swiftly from Huxley’s “Brave New World” to Orwell’s “1984.” The public, at some point, will have to face some very unpleasant truths. The good-paying jobs are not coming back. The largest deficits in human history mean that we are trapped in a debt peonage system that will be used by the corporate state to eradicate the last vestiges of social protection for citizens, including Social Security. The state has devolved from a capitalist democracy to neo-feudalism. And when these truths become apparent, anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity. The bleakness of our post-industrial pockets, where some 40 million Americans live in a state of poverty and tens of millions in a category called “near poverty,” coupled with the lack of credit to save families from foreclosures, bank repossessions and bankruptcy from medical bills, means that inverted totalitarianism will no longer work.

We increasingly live in Orwell’s Oceania, not Huxley’s The World State. Osama bin Laden plays the role assumed by Emmanuel Goldstein in “1984.” Goldstein, in the novel, is the public face of terror. His evil machinations and clandestine acts of violence dominate the nightly news. Goldstein’s image appears each day on Oceania’s television screens as part of the nation’s “Two Minutes of Hate” daily ritual. And without the intervention of the state, Goldstein, like bin Laden, will kill you. All excesses are justified in the titanic fight against evil personified. 

The psychological torture of Pvt. Bradley Manning—who has now been imprisoned for seven months without being convicted of any crime—mirrors the breaking of the dissident Winston Smith at the end of “1984.” Manning is being held as a “maximum custody detainee” in the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. He spends 23 of every 24 hours alone. He is denied exercise. He cannot have a pillow or sheets for his bed. Army doctors have been plying him with antidepressants. The cruder forms of torture of the Gestapo have been replaced with refined Orwellian techniques, largely developed by government psychologists, to turn dissidents like Manning into vegetables. We break souls as well as bodies. It is more effective. Now we can all be taken to Orwell’s dreaded Room 101 to become compliant and harmless. These “special administrative measures” are regularly imposed on our dissidents, including Syed Fahad Hashmi, who was imprisoned under similar conditions for three years before going to trial. The techniques have psychologically maimed thousands of detainees in our black sites around the globe. They are the staple form of control in our maximum security prisons where the corporate state makes war on our most politically astute underclass—African-Americans. It all presages the shift from Huxley to Orwell. 

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling,” Winston Smith’s torturer tells him in “1984.” “Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression. Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone records turned over to the government. We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history. Many of us have our daily routine caught on dozens of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits are recorded on the Internet. Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are patted down at airports and filmed by scanners. And public service announcements, car inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to report suspicious activity. The enemy is everywhere. 

Those who do not comply with the dictates of the war on terror, a war which, as Orwell noted, is endless, are brutally silenced. The draconian security measures used to cripple protests at the G-20 gatherings in Pittsburgh and Toronto were wildly disproportionate for the level of street activity. But they sent a clear message—DO NOT TRY THIS. The FBI’s targeting of antiwar and Palestinian activists, which in late September saw agents raid homes in Minneapolis and Chicago, is a harbinger of what is to come for all who dare defy the state’s official Newspeak. The agents—our Thought Police—seized phones, computers, documents and other personal belongings. Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury have since been served on 26 people. The subpoenas cite federal law prohibiting “providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.” Terror, even for those who have nothing to do with terror, becomes the blunt instrument used by Big Brother to protect us from ourselves.

“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?” Orwell wrote. “It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.”

Wikileaks Cables Spain: U.S. used the arrest of a Marine from the Sixth Fleet to brand Spanish police as racist

Translated from the Spanish daily El País (with links to the cables):

 

 Mount Whitney, The flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet

 
An incident between agents of the Guardia Urbana of Barcelona and several crew members of the Mount Whitney, the flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, in early 2009, caused a serious diplomatic incident between the governments of Madrid and Washington.. In addition, last summer, the State Department used this incident to warn Afro-American tourists traveling to Spain that they were at risk of arrest. Barcelona City Council now says that its officials were carrying out actions against petty drug dealing and scoffed at the accusations of racism.

After the altercation with the staff of the U.S. Navy, the government of Barack Obama sent a diplomatic note in February 2009 that a Marine and several colleagues were targeted at gunpoint. The U.S. Consulate General in Barcelona warned then that the Sixth Fleet had said that after that incident, it was "reluctant" to re-anchor in the Catalan port.

The case erupted on January 22, 2009, when a crew member of the Mount Whitney was "accosted" by plainclothes municipal police who "did not identify themselves properly" and that, moreover, "who pointed a gun at his shipmates " During his detention, the sailor claimed he was knocked to the ground, and that he needed several stitches in his head. He was arrested and later released without charge. "There were suggestions the incident might have been racially motivated (the crewmember was African-American)," points out a confidential note from the embassy.

The Barcelona Town Hall (responsible for the local police under Spanish law) version said: "The plainclothes officers were conducting undercover drug dealing surveillance work in the Drassanes Plaza. They detected a conversation between George Thomas Kee and two youths of North African origin, and suspected a possible drug transaction, the officers proceeded to identify the suspects."


"An agent identified himself by showing his badge, but Mr. Kee began to gesture angrily, trying to leave the scene. The agent tried to take his arm, and when a corporal approached him, Mr. Kee hit him in the neck and punched the policeman. Then a group of 15 or 20 people (marines) started approaching the police in a hostile manner, shouting in English. (...). Seeing that this group continued to move forward, the agent drew his gun pointing it toward the ground, making the group stop and begin to move back, " according to the municipal report.

Kee was taken to Pere Camps Hospital  and a corporal and an officer of the Guardia Urbana were taken to the Mutua Universal clinic suffering from "injuries of varying degrees." Kee made a statement at the Ciutat Vella (Old City) police station saying he had no intention of attacking the agents, but thought they were going to rob him, as in the US "police identify themselves to suspects by showing their badge in one hand and in the other hand they point their gun at the suspect." After he was arrested "for assault on law enforcement officers" in Les Corts police station, he was visited by a consular representative, two Liaison Officers from the Spanish Navy and two from the U.S. Navy.

Barcelona Court number 20 closed the case shortly afterwards. The internal investigation of the local police concluded without finding any irregularities in the police officers' conduct, despite finding some mistakes in their actions.

The embassy emphasized the "gravity" of the matter and "the potential negative effects that could result if the Spanish Government did not take appropriate action." The embassy sent the foreign minister a "verbal complaint" demanding an explanation of the altercation (190 015 cable).

Two weeks later, the Consul General Todd Robinson met with the Barcelona Councillor for Security and Mobility, Assumpta Escarp, along with the Quartermaster of the Guardia Urbana. The consul "told Barcelona authorities that quick communication either directly with the Commanding Officer of the ship or the Consul General might have kept the situation from spiraling out of control and causing subsequent reactions in Barcelona, Madrid, Naples, and Washington, DC" (Cable 190 628). The authoritiesvundertook to contact Sixth Fleet officials in Naples (Italy) as well as liaison officers at the base in Rota (Spain) to clarify the situation.

After a few days, the Consul wrote to the then President of the Generalitat, José Montilla, the Mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Hereu, and the director of the Guardia Urbana, Xavier Vilaro. At the same time, he contacted the Office of Human and Civil Rights. The Embassy in Madrid and the chairman of the Standing Committee on Bilateral Co-operation in Defense Affairs raised their unease with the Spanish authorities. And the Chargé d'Affaires sent a complaint to the Secretary General for Defence Policy.

After all these complaints, the only response received was a letter from Vilaró, who lamented the "inconveniences" arising from the incident and stated that the case was the subject of an internal investigation, according to the cable. The US Consul in Barcelona again met with several representatives of the City and told them the Sixth Fleet was reluctant to re-anchor in Barcelona and that the case had attracted the attention at the highest level of the Department of State. The diplomat stressed that the U.S. Government demanded "assurances that U.S. ships would be welcome to the city."

Conclusion: US Marines are quite happy dishing it out when they're holding the weapons, but can't take the heat themselves...just as well the Barcelona police didn't do as the US Marines and police do: shoot first and ask questions later...

Washington Post: Soft on Nicaragua

Who writes this crap? Yet another piece of revisionism by the WaPo, showing how much US media is in  bed with its criminal govt. instead of holding its criminal actions to account.

The first sentence is as far as anyone need go: "AQUARTER-CENTURY ago the United States went to extraordinary lengths to prevent consolidation of a leftist dictatorship in Nicaragua, funding an opposition army and even mining the country's harbors."

A 'dictatorship' in WaPo language is a govt than doesn't let US corporations run riot as though they owned the country.

'Funding an opposition army', is creating, financing, training and arming a terrorist force to instill fear throughout a country, and is illegal under international law. The International Court of Justice found the US  "in breach of customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another state".

And,'mining the country's harbors', was an action so completely illegal under international law that the same judgement condemned it as ""in breach of its obligations under customary international law not to use force against another State, not to intervene in its affairs, not to violate its sovereignty and not to interrupt peaceful maritime commerce" technical terms for international terrorism.

What a bunch of sick hypocrites.

Open Letter to John Whittingdale, chairman of the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee

Mr Whittingdale,

The Guardian writes today: "John Whittingdale, chairman of the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee, attacked Boyle's comments as "deeply offensive" and hard for Channel 4 to justify. He also called for an immediate Ofcom investigation."

Your comments are outrageously hypocritical and blatant, cheap demagoguery that one would expect from a ruling member in a totalitarian state, which is what this country's government is increasingly beginning to look like.

Anyone with half a brain could see that Boyle's use of the terms, as Channel 4 state, was "clearly intended" as satirical. It is apparent that John Stuart Mill's comments on Conservative's are right on the ball where you are concerned. Either you are incredibly stupid or, as I suspect, you are a deeply cynical, amoral phsycopath.

What is 'deeply offensive', however, is that you sir, voted for an illegal, criminal war of aggression on Iraq. You voted for rejecting a second UN resolution, you voted to reject the motion that the case for was unproven, and you voted to reject the motion that the case for war was not established. Your voting record on this issue puts you firmly on the same moral level as the 1939 Nazi party led by one Adolf Hitler, and clearly shows your hatred of true democracy, as you ignored the democratic wishes of the British people, the majority of whom were firmly against the war, and could see through the lies used to sell it.

What is 'deeply offensive' sir,  is your complete lack of concern, for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, or as  Frankie Boyle stated,  "we are murdering a load of shepherds. What gets me is our callousness as a society when we read out our dead on the news first, because our lives are more important. Other people's aren't worth as much."

I suggest you read Mark Curtis's book 'Unpeople' to read the history of the British government's "Ministry of War, department of nigger bombing,", and his article "The colonial precedent", which ends with this passage, remarkably similar to Mr Boyle's remarks: "Iraqis are in practice regarded as "unpeople" whose deaths matter little in the pursuit of western power; the major block on committing atrocities is the fear of being exposed and ministers will do all they can to cover them up. The public is the major threat to their strategy, which explains why they resort to public deception campaigns." It is this public deception which Wikileaks is highlighting, and to which Boyle was referring.

I also suggest you take a good read of Pullitzer prize-winning journalist Chris Hedge's piece at truthdig.com: "Bitter Memories of War on the Way to Jail" in which he writes:

"War perverts and destroys you. It pushes you closer and closer to your own annihilation—spiritual, emotional and, finally, physical. It destroys the continuity of life, tearing apart all systems, economic, social, environmental and political, that sustain us as human beings. War is necrophilia. The essence of war is death. War is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. It is organized sadism. War fosters alienation and leads inevitably to nihilism. It is a turning away from the sanctity of life.

And yet the mythic narratives about war perpetuate the allure of power and violence. They perpetuate the seductiveness of the godlike force that comes with the license to kill with impunity. All images and narratives about war disseminated by the state, the press, religious institutions, schools and the entertainment industry are gross and distorted lies. The clash between the fabricated myth about war and the truth about war leaves those of us who return from war alienated, angry and often unable to communicate. We can’t find the words to describe war’s reality. It is as if the wider culture sucked the words out from us and left us to sputter incoherencies. How can you speak meaningfully about organized murder? Anything you say is gibberish.

The sophisticated forms of industrial killing, coupled with the amoral decisions of politicians and military leaders who direct and fund war, hide war’s reality from public view. But those who have been in combat see death up close. Only their story tells the moral truth about war. The power of the Washington march was that we all knew this story. We had no need to use stale and hackneyed clichés about war. We grieved together.

War, once it begins, fuels new and bizarre perversities, innovative forms of death to ward off the boredom of routine death. This is why we would drive into towns in Bosnia and find bodies crucified on the sides of barns or decapitated, burned and mutilated. That is why those slain in combat are treated as trophies by their killers, turned into grotesque pieces of performance art. I met soldiers who carried in their wallets the identity cards of men they killed. They showed them to me with the imploring look of a lost child.

We swiftly deform ourselves, our essence, in war. We give up individual conscience—maybe even consciousness—for the contagion of the crowd and the intoxication of violence. You survive war because you repress emotions. You do what you have to do. And this means killing. To make a moral choice, to defy war’s enticement, is often self-destructive. But once the survivors return home, once the danger, adrenaline highs and the pressure of the crowd are removed, the repressed emotions surface with a vengeance. Fear, rage, grief and guilt leap up like snake heads to consume lives and turn nights into long, sleepless bouts with terror. You drink to forget.
...
The masters of war are slaves to the idols of empire, power and greed, to the idols of careers, to the dead language of interests, national security, politics and propaganda. They kill and do not know what killing is. In the rise to power, they became smaller. Power consumes them. Once power is obtained they become its pawn. Like Shakespeare’s Richard III, politicians such as Barack Obama (and indeed one John Whittingdale. DS) fall prey to the forces they thought they had harnessed. The capacity to love, to cherish and protect life, may not always triumph, but it saves us. It keeps us human. It offers the only chance to escape from the contagion of war. Perhaps it is the only antidote. There are times when remaining human is the only victory possible.

The necrophilia of war is hidden under platitudes about honor, duty or comradeship."

I personally will not be happy until you and all your cronies who voted for this illegal war are standing in the dock of the ICC. You are a disgrace to this country and to any peace-loving person.

Yours most sincerely,

David Sketchley