“I Wake Up Screaming—Vietnam and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”

An exerpt from “I Wake Up Screaming—Vietnam and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” by Lucian J. La Joie describing his experiences in Vietnam:

...A native village flooded during the monsoon season. Every year this village floods during the rainy season. An American would think, move the village to higher ground. To the native peasant Vietnamese, the ancestral homeland where the past generations are buried is one of the most precious, important possessions of life. This is one of the reasons that the Strategic Hamlet Program of the South Vietnamese government failed. Uprooting the peasant farmers from their homeland and keeping them in "protected enclaves" generated resentment between the peasants and the South Vietnamese Government.

At this particular village, the villagers were being evacuated by the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN). There was a shortage of boats to evacuate the villagers. Too many people, not enough boats. The ARVN were in charge of the operation. Our squad was assigned for extra security under operational control of the ARVN. The ARVN Captain said because of the shortage of boats the peasants could only bring one item as a carryon. One suitcase, one bag, one box, one only, no exceptions, one only.

A Vietnamese peasant woman shows up. Under one arm she has her baby about one year old. Under her other arm she had a small pig about fifteen inches long. The ARVN Captain stops her and says only one item as carryon. The peasant woman protests, arguing that the human baby is a live child and not a carryon. The ARVN Captain will not budge on his position. Only one carryon per person.

The peasant woman steps back and places her baby face down in the river and drowns it, holding the baby until it quits kicking and lets go of the baby's body and climbs into the boat with the pig under her arm. The peasant woman could always have another baby but she might not ever own another pig. That is how poor the peasants were.

Tears stream down the mother's face as she watches the small corpse float down the river. The ARVN Captain gloats and the Marines are getting pissed off. We are here to help these people, not to enforce a police state. The ARVN troops think what has just happened is funny.

After the baby's corpse floats down stream about fifty yards the ARVN troops use it as target practice, laughing all the while. I walk over to the ARVNs who are shooting and use my steel helmet and hit the ARVNs in the head and knock one of them unconscious. I sucker punch them with my helmet. The rest of the ARVNs point their weapons at me and, in response, all the marines point their weapons at the ARVNs. It is a Mexican standoff.

Here we are, supposed to be allies and we are pointing weapons at each other ready to shoot the shite out of each other. The ARVN Captain orders the u.s. Marines to lower their weapons because he outranks everybody. I tell the ARVN Captain he is a bad officer and marines do not take orders from bad officers. The ARVN Captain then orders the marines to provide security until the ARVNs had evacuated all the peasants. I tell the Captain ''F**k you, we're leaving! 'The marines promptly get into their boat and escort the boats of peasants that are already loaded in boats down the river.

Upon returning to our parent unit, Echo Company, I filed an after action report detailing the incident, including statements from those who witnessed the Vietnamization [i.e. “pornerization”] was in progress. The report was buried in the paperwork. Life is cheap in a war zone.

What can you say? You know it goes on. You know it is happening right now in Iraq. You know this is the attitude of the IDF to the Palestinians.

Rudy Giuliani on Freedom

From the Rocky Mountain Chronicle - RUDY! we get this quote from Rudy Giuliani on his vision of freedom:

"Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

Psychopathic Bosses Get Promoted

In a Reuters article Bad bosses get promoted, not punished?: we learn that "In the study to be presented at a conference on management this weekend, almost two-thirds of the 240 participants in an online survey said the local workplace tyrant was either never censured or was promoted for domineering ways."

One of the study's authors, Anthony Don Erickson, Ben Shaw and Zha Agabe of Bond University in Australia, wrote that:

"The fact that 64.2 percent of the respondents indicated that either nothing at all or something positive happened to the bad leader is rather remarkable -remarkably disturbing."

It won't come as a shock to anyone who has worked in an American company. A large part of the frustration of workers in the US comes from facts like this. The corrupt, the cruel, and those without a sense of compassion rise to the top while people who treat others with curtesy, respect, and understanding fall to the bottom. It is explained away with rhetoric about needing to be lean and mean in "today's economy", about being loyal to the company -- as opposed to your fellow humans. These are examples of what Andrew Łobaczewski calls "paramoralisms", phrases that appear on the surface to appeal to our best instincts but which on analysis are found have a meaning that is exactly the opposite, that is, to cover-up and excuse the worst horrors under a blanket of righteous-sounding words:

Paramoralisms: The conviction that moral values exist and that some actions violate moral rules is so common and ancient a phenomenon that it seems to have some substratum at man’s instinctive endowment level (although it is certainly not totally adequate for moral truth), and that it does not only represent centuries’ of experience, culture, religion, and socialization. Thus, any insinuation framed in moral slogans is always suggestive, even if the “moral” criteria used are just an “ad hoc” invention. Any act can thus be proved to be immoral or moral by means of such paramoralisms utilized as active suggestion, and people whose minds will succumb to such reasoning can always be found.

In searching for an example of an evil act whose negative value would not elicit doubt in any social situation, ethics scholars frequently mention child abuse. However, psychologists often meet with paramoral affirmations of such behavior in their practice, such as in the above-mentioned family with the prefrontal field damage in the eldest sister. Her younger brothers emphatically insisted that their sister’s sadistic treatment of her son was due to her exceptionally high moral qualifications, and they believed this by auto-suggestion. Paramoralism somehow cunningly evades the control of our common sense, sometimes leading to acceptance or approval of behavior that is openly pathological.

Paramoralistic statements and suggestions so often accompany various kinds of evil that they seem quite irreplaceable. Unfortunately, it has become a frequent phenomenon for individuals, oppressive groups, or patho-political systems to invent ever-new moral criteria for someone’s convenience. Such suggestions often partially deprive people of their moral reasoning and deform its development in youngsters. Paramoralism factories have been founded worldwide, and a ponerologist finds it hard to believe that they are managed by psychologically normal people.

The conversive features in the genesis of paramoralisms seem to prove they are derived from mostly subconscious rejection (and repression from the field of consciousness) of something completely different, which we call the voice of conscience.

A ponerologist can nevertheless indicate many observations supporting the opinion that various pathological factors participate in the tendency to use paramoralisms. This was the case in the above-mentioned family. When it occurs with a moralizing interpretation, this tendency intensifies in egotists and hysterics, and its causes are similar. Like all conversive phenomena, the tendency to use paramoralisms is psychologically contagious. That explains why we observe it among people raised by individuals in whom it was developed alongside pathological factors.

This may be a good place to reflect that true moral law is born and exists independently of our judgments in this regard, and even of our ability to recognize it. Thus, the attitude required for such understanding is scientific, not creative: we must humbly subordinate our mind to the apprehended reality. That is when we discover the truth about man, both his weaknesses and values, which shows us what is decent and proper with respect to other people and other societies.

(Via Signs of the Times.)

Boris Berezovsky: Oligarch, Murderer, MI6 Agent

Today there's an interesting item on SOTT that caught my attention: Brazil orders Berezovsky, soccer bosses detained. It's one of those little "tip of the ice-berg" things that just make you go "hmmmm..." The story tells us that:

Judge Fausto Martin de Sanctis froze the bank accounts of one of Brazil's most popular teams and said Interpol would be asked to carry out the overseas arrests of Berezovsky, Kia Joorabchian and Nojan Bedroud.

The article then notes - rather disingenuously in my opinion - that:

Berezovsky was Russia's most prominent and controversial businessman in the mid- and late-1990s and a Kremlin insider under Russia's first post-Soviet president, Boris Yeltsin.

But he fled to London in 2000 and has become a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin. Britain has annoyed Moscow by rejecting requests to extradite the businessman to Russia on corruption charges.

So, Russia wants Boris but the UK won't give him up, and now, all of a sudden, Brazil wants him too and is issuing an arrest warrant? Say what?! Is somebody putting the screws to Boris? It's hardly likely that London will give him up... hmmm... maybe that's the point: somebody is putting the screws to MI6 through Boris? Just to refresh your mind, have a look at the following items:

Berezovsky on wanted list in 2001

Russians point finger at Berezovsky over ex-spy's death

Polonium detected at Berezovsky's office

Boris Berezovsky: The first oligarch

Berezovsky to be interviewed by Russian detectives

Blockbuster Revelations!! Mystery witness implicates Berezovsky in Litvinenko murder

Berezovsky:'I am plotting a new Russian revolution'; London exile Berezovsky says force necessary to bring down President Putin

Russia vows legal action against Berezovsky on sedition charges

Lugovoi be aware! Berezovsky says you are a dead man.

Britain: Litvinenko murder not intelligence-linked. Berezovsky denies his MI6 connections

Lugovoi says Litvinenko, Berezovsky spied for U.K.

Russia says Litvinenko visited Chechnya to kill for Berezovsky

Berezovsky fraud case goes to court

Berezovsky charged with plotting coup in Russia - lawyer

No surprise! CPS advises police no prosecution of Boris Berezovsky over press report

Russia says U.K. refusal to open case vs. Berezovsky ungrounded

UPDATE!! Oooh! Things are heating up! Lookit this:

Britain 'will expel Russian diplomats over Litvinenko'

Russian diplomats are facing expulsion from Britain as the crisis over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko escalated today.

Moscow and London are on the brink of a damaging showdown after President Vladimir Putin refused to hand over the main suspect in the poisoning of the former spy.

The Foreign Office is expected to announce a tough response as early as next week after Moscow formally confirmed it would not extradite Andrei Lugovoi. Downing Street is considering a range of "punitive measures" including ejecting diplomats - a move certain to prompt a "tit for tat" response from Moscow.

Looks to me like some "tit for tat" stuff is already going on here!

Myth and History in The Bible

As an amateur historian, researcher and author, I spend most of my time reading scholarly papers, articles and books on a wide range of historical topics. Giovanni Garbini, author of the "Myth and History in The Bible" is my new favorite and I am hoping that more of his work will be translated into English and read by everyone, not just scholars.

It would be difficult to summarize the many fascinating subjects covered in this small volume: "The Myths of the Origins of Israel", "Cain's Impunity", "Abraham and Damascus", "Reuben's Incest and the Contested Primogeniture", "Moses and the Law", "Davidic Traditions", "The Calf of Bethel", "Ezra's Birth", "Birth and Death of a Messiah", "The End of Myth". In summation, Garbini writes:

"The examination of some aspects, usually neglected, though evident and essential, of the mythic reconstruction of Israel's past and of the figure of its God as the Hebrew religious thought presented them in the Bible presents us an apparently paradoxical situation. The Law and the Prophets ... codify and exalt a kind of religion centred on the cult of Yahweh, national and sole true god, who established the Jerusalem temple as his only seat; from the other, they reveal explicitly the moral inconsistency of that god... his unfulfilled promises and the vacuity of all the practices related to his cult.

"The first chapter of Isaiah, which opens the section of Latter Prophets and, as all the writings placed at the beginning of a collection, gives the key to its interpretation, cannot be more explicit in this regard. The chiefs of Jerusalem, that is the high priests, are called 'rulers of Sodom' and its population 'people of Gomorrah (Isa. 1:10). Against them, in the following verses, God refuses all the cultic practices: sacrifices, burnt offerings, visits to the temple, oblations, incense, new moon, Sabbath, readings, fastings, assemblies, feasts, prayers. It is not pointless to ask ourselves what was the effect on the priests of the obsessive motif, present in all the Bible, of gratitude to Yahweh for the deliverance of Israel from Egypt: such a deliverance never took place and was invented by themselves to allude, probably, to their return from Babylon.

"...[T]he interesting thing is that, apart from the many details concerning the external activities of the priesthood (which any Jew in Jerusalem could easily see with his own eyes), the texts do not contain any information about the structures, the organization and the other activities of the priestly class; it is like seeing only the front of a building.

"In these biblical writings we find not only a description of the religious practices, but often also their history, their meaning and their mythic origin, and since the religion of Israel is the expression of its relationship with Yahweh, all Israel's history becomes the history of this religion. In other words, these books fix a precise moment in the history of Hebrew religion, when a deep reflection on its nature was carried out. On the basis of this reflection, the entire past was reinterpreted (not as it was, but rather as they wanted it to be) and the future imagined, a glorious future with Jerusalem at the centre of the world."

Garbini writes in a companion volume, History and Ideology in Ancient Israel, an amplification of the above problem:

"Biblical Yahwism certainly reflects a monotheistic conception, but at the same time it is something less and something more than monotheism. ...Yahwism seems to be something less than monotheism: God is certainly one, but he is essentially the God of just one people and he acts only with them. If we reflect on this aspect, which is the central nucleus of the Old Testament, we discover that here we have what the historians of religions call henotheism rather than monotheism. On the other hand, Yahwism is also, and perhaps above all, an extremely rational vision of the world and of the privileged position that the people of Israel occupies in the world. So it would be legitimate to ask whether one could consider as a real religion, with all that this word implies.. a doctrine like that taught in the Old Testament in the first millennium BC, which denies the survival of the spirit."

He then asks how it is that a 'religion' which attributes importance to liturgies practiced only in Jerusalem, (that is, not by all Jews at that period of history), which denies survival of the human spirit, could even have survived and spread, especially after the destruction of said temple.

Good question.

Myth and History in the Bible is full of detailed linguistic analyses that are rational, sophisticated and, at the same time, easy to follow. An interested non-scholar can easily read this book and begin to understand just exactly what a "religious scam" Judaism really is, though, of course, it offers no answer as to how it managed to be foisted on the Western world via its equally mythical Christianity. (Those answers are contained in Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology). It also makes it abundantly clear that the Jews have no right to steal the land of the Palestinians at all because their whole history and claim to Palestine is based on myth and fraud.

A definite "must-read" though be prepared for a (very) few awkwardnesses in the translation; I'm sure it wasn't easy to translate academic Italian. Even so, it is a surprising easy read even if you must often pause to consider the importance of Garbini's insights.

Paul Krugman: Sacrifice Is for Suckers

Economist's View: Paul Krugman: Sacrifice Is for Suckers: "Back when the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson%u2019s identity began, Mr. Bush insisted that if anyone in his administration had violated the law, %u201Cthat person will be taken care of.%u201D Now we know what he meant. ..."

No comment necessary.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

US warns of 'spectacular acts of terror' | Herald Sun

US warns of 'spectacular acts of terror' | Herald Sun: ""

They'd know, wouldn't they?

(Via Ron Paul Online.)