Reject HR orgs’ double-dealing, complicity in perpetuating war, war crimes: analyst Gearóid Colmáin

Critical alternatives apropos rights watcher’s latest outburst

Excerpt, minor edit by 

Carolyn Bennett

Why bad worsens endlessly

Paris, France-based political analyst Gearóid Ó Colmáin writing in 2013, also appeared in interviews today on Press TV pegged to release of the latest Human Rights Watch report.

This is some of what Colmáin wrote two years ago about human rights and human rights organizations.

“Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and similar rights-based organizations are the call girls and rent boys of a new type of hyper-individualist imperialism that threatens the future of human beings’ ability to empathize with the suffering of others.”

Dictionary definitions of Rent boy as male prostitute who is an adolescent or young adult; Call girl as woman prostitute who arranges appointments by telephone or computer.

Colmáin continued. “Amnesty International is a war propaganda organization for imperialism. In fact, the majority of the most highly publicized human rights organizations in the West function as ideological indoctrination agencies for neo-colonialism and imperialism.

“In this respect, they have replaced the Christian missionaries of the 19th century who provided the justification for colonial subjugation on the pretext of spreading ‘Christian civilization.’ Christian value-spreading colonialism has been superseded by human rights promotion.”

Propaganda departments of imperialism

“The concept of the ‘rights of man’ was born with the historical rise of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist mode of production. Therefore, human rights go hand in hand with the rights of property. Human rights are always property rights; the rights of exploiters; the rights of oppressors, of the terrorists.…”

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Britannica note)

“The basic principle of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was that all ‘men are born and remain free and equal in rights’ (Article 1)…

…which were specified as the rights of liberty, private property, the inviolability of the person, and resistance to oppression (Article 2).

“All citizens were equal before the law and were to have the right to participate in legislation directly or indirectly (Article 6); no one was to be arrested without a judicial order (Article 7).

“Freedom of religion (Article 10) and freedom of speech (Article 11) were safeguarded within the bounds of public ‘order’ and ‘law.’

“The document reflects the interests of the elites who wrote it: property was given the status of an inviolable right, which could be taken by the state only if an indemnity were given (Article 17); offices and position were opened to all citizens (Article 6).

“…The Declaration is also explicable as an attack on the pre-Revolutionary monarchical regime. Equality before the law was to replace the system of privileges that characterized the old regime. Judicial procedures were insisted upon to prevent abuses by the king or his administration, such as the lettre de cachet, a private communication from the king, often used to give summary notice of imprisonment.

“

Despite the limited aims of the framers of the Declaration, its principles (especially Article 1) could be extended logically to mean political and even social democracy. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen came to be, as was recognized by the 19th-century historian Jules Michelet, ‘the credo of the new age.’”

Colmáin continues his assessment. “…Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others, have been complicit in covering up [war] crimes [and] they should be held to account. It is not because Amnesty International is a phony human rights organization that it is complicit in the war crimes being committed against the Syrian people; rather, Amnesty’s war propaganda on behalf of imperialism is simply a corollary of the bourgeois ideology adhered to by all human rights groups.”

Taking what’s good and making it not worse but much better

Progressive

 alternative

“The current ‘humanitarian’ wars so zealously defended by human rights fanatics are symptomatic of a deep crisis of civilization,” Colmáin writes.

“We should reject abstract human rights and defend social rights.

…Proclaim concrete social rights;

rights to free housing;

the right to democratic ownership of means of production;

the right to live in peace;

the right to a job;

the right to privacy;

the right to free education, transport and health care;

the right to healthy food and water;

the right to freedom of expression.

The current ‘humanitarian’ wars so zealously defended by human rights fanatics are symptomatic of a deep crisis of civilization and should be condemned, exposed, rejected by peace activists, Colmáin writes.

“‘Man,’” he recalls Aristotle, “is a political animal, an animal whose being is inseparable from the polis, the social fabric, the community.…” Thus, contrary to the position of rights organizations and the philosophy of human rights, “Human beings cannot be conceptualized as entities born with inalienable rights but rather as… social beings growing and evolving in dynamic communities that impose ineluctable (inevitable, unavoidable) duties, debts and obligations upon them towards their fellow toilers and laborers.

Without such complex relations of interdependence, there would be no society and consequently no human beings.

 

Sources and notes

2013

“Amnesty International, War Propaganda, and Human Rights Terrorism,” by Gearóid Ó Colmáin: “Peace activists should not only denounce, expose, and condemn Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and similar rights-based organizations’ lies and manipulation but the very philosophy of human rights itself.” Posted at Dissident Voice: A radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice, August 8, 2013, http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/08/amnesty-international-war-propaganda-and-human-rights-terrorism/

Gearóid Ó Colmáin is a political analyst based in Paris and a frequent contributor to Russia Today, Radio Del Sur and Inn World Report. He also appears in interviews on Press TV.

Merriam Webster: Polis

po·lis \'pä-ləs\  n, pl po·leis \'pä-"lās\: (1884): broadly, “a state or society especially when characterized by a sense of community

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.  (2013). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

[1789] Adopted by the National Assembly during the French Revolution on August 26, 1789, and reaffirmed by the constitution of 1958.

Preamble: “The representatives of the French people, formed into a National Assembly, considering ignorance, forgetfulness or contempt of the rights of man to be the only causes of public misfortunes and the corruption of Governments, have resolved to set forth, in a solemn Declaration, the natural, unalienable and sacred rights of man, to the end that this Declaration, constantly present to all members of the body politic, may remind them unceasingly of their rights and their duties; to the end that the acts of the legislative power and those of the executive power, since they may be continually compared with the aim of every political institution, may thereby be the more respected; to the end that the demands of the citizens, founded henceforth on simple and uncontestable principles, may always be directed toward the maintenance of the Constitution and the happiness of all.”

2015

“Western countries including US responsible for world crisis: HRW”: “Human Rights Watch says Western countries, including the US, play a major role in generating or aggravating most of today's crises across the world by facilitating rights abusers' crimes. The director of the leading human rights group, Kenneth Roth, said governments increasingly deem human rights a luxury they fail to properly afford; and this in turn fans the flames of global crises. Roth stressed that the rights records of countries such as the US are full of wrongdoings, which provide a fertile ground for proliferation of extremist groups such as the ISIL. He specifically referred to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq as an instance of these violations. The HRW chief was citing the rights group’s world report 2015.” Press TV January 29, 2015,

 http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/01/29/395284/Western-countries-including-US-responsible-for-world-crisis-HRW

 ______________________________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Unending loop of heinous acts breeds copycat character in America’s youth

A nation whose leaders praise and practice violence with impunity, adults’ hands-off parenting can only expect all-round violence

Commentary by 

Carolyn Bennett

My first thought is that America shows to the world, in its various sectors and in their interconnection, the face of impunity, barbarity, a broken criminal justice apparatus and an equally broken ethic (ethos, principled practice) imaged in relations between and among human beings. The young are without protection or essential principled guidance. Leaders ensconced in government, media, religious and other corporate sectors lecture others all the while harboring and justifying acts of killers, pedophiles and other violent criminals.

US Drone warfare

W

hether it is murder committed by target-list and or order of members of the US branches of government and carried out by military branches and mercenaries against people in countries outside the United States such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Mali, Yemen, Sudan, Congo, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza (or sanctioning such actions); whether it is domestic security and official law enforcement agents brutalizing US residents; whether it is US military personnel (or United Nations personnel) abroad violating or outright murdering other citizens and residents “for sport”; or whether violations are committed by “celebrity” sports figures or by college students—it is all of a kind. Impunity praised breeds the crime. Untreated it permeates the whole.

US endless war 

Impunity, barbarity, violence, broken criminal justice, broken ethic, failure of independence in  reporting, dismissal of the old principle of in loco parentis (as in the case of colleges), breakdown in regulation and oversight, failure to discipline and practice discipline amount to severe breakdown all round.

In the United States of America, among its people is a failure to care. There is a pattern of selfishness among individuals (my fellow Americans) that is wrapped up (as they wrap themselves in the flag) in a care-less-ness they claim as their “freedom”—a callousness through which they give themselves permission to abuse anyone, anytime, anywhere.

On point

“The Hunting Ground” 

The writers and producers of “The Invisible War,” a 2012 film and “investigative documentary about the epidemic of rape of soldiers within the US military” have produced another telling portrait of American character, “The Hunting Ground” (2015), which is now showing at the Sundance Festival. “The Hunting Ground” is described as

…‘a startling exposé of rape crimes on US college campuses, the institutional cover-ups’ (of these crimes), and the resulting ‘devastating toll’ borne by students and their families. Weaving together vérité footage (conveying candid realism) and first-person testimonies, ‘the film follows the lives of several undergraduate assault survivors as they attempt to pursue their education, and justice— despite incredible push back, harassment and traumatic aftermath.’

Y

es, but.

While investigative documentaries do great work in bringing to light ant to public consciousness important issues and questions, what underlies is often too much to handle all at once, or in a film. 

The critical underlying issue, as I see it, is that Americans en masse persist in a deliberately imposed vegetative state, a state of existential mindlessness, a condition of almost continuous distractibility, a madness-like preoccupation with nonsensical things, the superficial and immediate, vacuous pursuits to the extent that they have taken a hands-off approach to the young. There is an unconcern for the formative years, as if the young know best—when, in fact, the very definition of young is to know virtually nothing of substance. Young is synonymous with “unseasoned” and “unversed.”

The young are still the young and as such they are incapable of critical judgment and especially judgment concerning that which is outside their own undisciplined “I-want” selfish interest. Worse than animals, they are incapable even of caring for themselves. The young require mature uncompromised, unbiased mature counsel and instruction; not adults to be their “friends” or “drinking buddies” but adults to care and protect. The home, church, neighborhood, school and the academy (college, university) used to be sources of nurturing, protection, and counsel in good character, in right from wrong. However, these entities have shirked, thrown off traditional responsibilities, leaving the young and developing person with warped, crippled minds; without essential personal discipline, without seeds for developing a sensibility that sees self as other, cares for others as for oneself. 

Centuries have understood the principle, indeed the imperative of elders helping the young to grow healthy and strong—for the whole society, not to violate or in any way consciously injure others. First principle, “do no harm”; but the young also need to be schooled in “the nature of harm.”  

In loco parentis (1818), an adverb, means, according to Merriam Webster, ‘in the place of a parent’ (school officials acting in loco parentis); in loco parentis (1968), a noun, means ‘regulation or supervision by an administrative body’ (as at a university) ‘acting in loco parentis.’

Example is also essential. If the young observe or listen to their government leaders or images in mass media glorifying violence, harm, genocide, rape (and I am not talking about fictional dramatizations but real life figures doing this) —what exactly does one expect of the young? From birth they are fed a concentration of violence and the young copy their “teachers,” escalating with presumed impunity as they grow older.

Films and documentaries are important sources for reporting this reality as it plays out in various sectors of society; but violators will likely not be watching these films. 

They will be watching prime time “eliminators,” “torturers,” “snipers,” “destroyers,” “offenders,” “murders,” the “assassins” and “extrajudicial” slaughterers—all the while demonizing those whom they intimidate, torture and slaughter. 

They will see those who commit egregious wrongs praised in the public square, promoted in prime time—murderers whose alma maters are among America’s “best” institutions of higher “learning”, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, UC Berkeley, UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, Stanford, and other Ivy Leagues—awarded Nobel peace prizes. And a female member of the US Senate, as heard today on Democracy now, calling those “other” people “savages.”

 

What are the young to think? 

What are they to do? 

How are they to conduct themselves when what they witness is an endless loop of prominent Americans, often together with expedient “allies”, committing heinous acts and endless wars; and hailing their wars as peace, their violence as humanitarian, their abuse of human rights as the right thing to do?

In order for society to expect the elimination of assault wherever it may be found, elders, teachers, parents, high-profiled personalities must set the “good” example—find another way instead of violence. 

Elders must reserve the right and responsibility to counsel the young and must diligently counsel them on the “true meaning” of harm; and to follow the “good” example of “doing no harm.”

It is a tall order. But as the youth are the future, it is vitally important that they be taught well so that they may create a better world. A better world is possible but not in the current character of current leaders nor on the current course these icons with cameras and microphones are taking us.

Sources and notes

“The Invisible War” was written and directed by Kirby Dick, co-written by Amy Ziering and Douglas Blush      

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2120152/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_wr#writers

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2120152/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2120152/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_wr#writers

“The Hunting Ground,” exposing how US colleges cover up sexual assault and fail to protect students, was written and directed by Kirby Dick and produced by Amy Ziering with co-producers Bonnie Greenberg and Nicole Ehrlich, associate producer Ian J. Rose, and executive producer Paul Blavin; music by Miriam Cutler; cinematography by

Thaddeus Wadleigh, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4185572/

Sundance Film Festival Screenings remaining: Saturday1/31, 9:00 p.m.,

Redstone Cinema

http://www.thehuntinggroundfilm.com/

http://www.thehuntinggroundfilm.com/#trailer

http://www.thehuntinggroundfilm.com/#about

“Rare example where students accused of sexual assault have actually faced punishment”

Democracy Now Wednesday, January 28, 2015: “As a jury in Tennessee has convicted two former Vanderbilt University football players of raping an unconscious student in a dorm room, we look at a groundbreaking new documentary about sexual assault on college campuses across the country. Brandon Vandenburg and Cory Batey could face decades in prison after being convicted of a combined total of 16 felony counts, including aggravated rape. Two other former Vanderbilt football players, Brandon Banks and Jaborian McKenzie, are awaiting trial over their role in the rape. However, the court cases mark a rare example where students accused of sexual assault have actually faced punishment.

“Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, ‘The Hunting Ground’ shows how colleges and universities across the nation (the United States) are covering up sexual assaults and failing to protect students from repeat offenders. We speak with the film’s director, Kirby Dick, and producer, Amy Ziering. Their previous film, ‘The Invisible War,’ which exposed the epidemic of sexual assault in the military, won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2012 and was nominated for an Academy Award.” http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/28/the_hunting_ground_film_exposes_how

___________________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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40 years wedge war blinds to impenetrable US domestic crises

Abortion a wedge effect not cause: By comparison with real problems, abortion is so minor an “issue”—so off the mark—as to be laughable if it were not for serious damage of distraction that has been committed all these years by individuals’ personal hang-ups and groups’ made-for-media ideological combat of microphones and clever placards.

Commentary by Carolyn Bennett

While I do not forget that people have lost their lives in the United States over the abortion question nor do I dismiss the truth that women’s bodies are their own—and for the same latter reason the question of whether or not to have children is a personal decision to be taken only by an individual woman—I contend that “abortion” is not the real issue. I also do not dismiss the problems of sexual assault—whether in militaries or on campuses, in a woman’s bedroom with her husband (or other partner) or on a corner street, these are not issues of “abortion” or even “women’s rights.”

They are questions of crime and criminal justice. Problems of a broken criminal justice system in the United States, which carries us back to “inequality” – some people are not afforded the same basic human rights as others.

Assault is not the effect, which is often what “the abortion question” is. Having made the woman who is raped (assaulted) the responsible party for a crime that has been committed against her; she is left with the task of getting rid of (aborting) the “bad seed,” so to speak, while the rapist (the assaulter) gets off scot-free.

W

hat is the issue is the underlying cause, the unhealthy precondition that drives a woman, especially in cases of rape or incest or illness of various kinds, to call for legality of abortions; and others, for their reasons, to oppose such legality. The underlying cause is a broken criminal justice system and the nepotism and institutional cover-up that are prevalent on college campuses, in government and board rooms, and in other sectors of society. Remember a member of the US Supreme Court was rewarded with life membership on the court instead of life in prison (or even made subject to prosecution) after having been accused of sexual harassment of a government worker.

Real issues, critical issues, lie under what wedges (gods-gays-guns-unborns) cloud or cover up globally and domestically: chronic poverty; ill health, education welfare, inequality.

Global poverty (facts)

“The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population” receives only “5 percent of global income”. The “richest 20 percent takes three-quarters of world income.” A 2015 Oxfam report puts the super rich’s (the 1 percent's) share of global wealth at 50 percent by the year 2016. 

This is a criminal and immoral taking, with impunity, of more than one's share, thus creating poverty and endless want everywhere. 

“In 2005, the wealthiest 20 percent of the world accounted for 76.6 percent of total private consumption. The poorest fifth consumed just 1.5 percent. The poorest 10 percent accounted for just 0.5 percent; the wealthiest 10 percent accounted for 59 percent of all the consumption.”

The vast majority of peoples across the world are in dire straits and the United Nations will not meet its Millennium Development Goals, set for 2015, to end even the most severe poverty—because the super powerful and the plutocrats are siphoning off all the wealth and getting away with murder while those who have reasonable wherewithal are standing on street corners peddling propaganda and telling less than the truth surrounding a wedge question and causing years of distraction and dissension among the masses.  

A 2010 modest projection found that “at least a third of all private financial wealth and nearly half of all offshore wealth [would be] owned by world’s richest 91,000 people – just 0.001 percent of the world’s population. The next 51 percent of all wealth [would be] owned by the next 8.4 million — just 0.14 percent of the world’s population.

Almost all of [this wealth] has managed to avoid all income taxes and estate taxes, either by the countries where it has been invested and or where it comes from.

[However], for every $1 in aid a ‘developing country’ receives, more than $25 is spent on debt repayment.

In 2006, the world’s wealthiest (approximately 1 billion people) of a world population of 6.5 billion accounted for $36.6 trillion dollars (76 percent). The world’s billionaires — just 497 people (approximately 0.000008 percent of the world’s population) — were worth $3.5 trillion (over 7 percent of world gross domestic product).

 

In 2004, the total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world had already risen “8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion…,” giving this group “control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets.” 

Others, though, were denied bare necessities. One-fourth of the world’s peoples, 1.6 billion of them, “live without electricity.”

An estimated “790 million people in the ‘developing world’”—almost two-thirds residing in Asia and the Pacific—“are chronically undernourished.” Twelve percent of the world’s population, 12 percent living outside the developing world, use or waste “85 percent” of the world’s water.

C

an you imagine the compounding of these conditions under endless wars committed by the liberal and conservative, neoliberal and neoconservative partisans on the streets with placards and in the halls of government and corporate luxury within the United States alone, not to mention in Europe?

Domestic poverty (facts)

 

As the year turned to 2015 the “total resident population” of the United States of America stood at “320,064,285”. Of those, more than 158.6 million were “females” (female population variously reported in 2013 as 161 million, 13 percent black women). And 2012 figures showed “46.5 million people” in this country “were living in poverty,” a figure described as “the largest number” of people in poverty “in the 54 years the Census has measured poverty.”

The majority of the US population is defined as “white,” which means people who, on their census form, wrote or checked “entries such as ‘Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Near Easterner, Arab, or Polish.’” The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those “‘having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.’” This group as of 2013 was estimated at “245,532,000 (77.7 percent)” of the population. Figures in 2010 estimated the number of “White Americans” alone without any other mixtures at 223,553,265 (or 72.4 percent); and “Black Americans” alone without any other mixtures at 38,929,319 (or 12.6 percent).

 

A

nd while I don’t have an isolated break out of existing relative percentages in the population, it would appear that the poorest people (and given their relatively low population numbers), often among black women, are not the ones either needing or clamoring for abortions. So it strikes me as curious that all these 40 years or so women with microphones have claimed that black women are in back allies needing this procedure. I doubt very seriously that the microphone holders have first-hand sightings of these “poor women” (of any color) in “back allies” (or even with coat hangers) searching for abortions. It just doesn't wash for me. 

But poverty is overt, visible; and in the shadows, even of the capitol dome in Washington, DC, as well as on the byways and boulevards of many US cities, towns and villages. One in seven people in the USA live in poverty. An estimated one-in-sixteen live in deep poverty, which in 2012 amounted to “20.4 million people.”

Any idiot can see that the issue is poverty, not what to do once another effect becomes evident. Poverty is “a women’s issue.” More than “five million more women than men were living below the poverty line in 2012; and two million more women than men were living in deep poverty.” The poverty rate for women in the 18-62-age group was 15.4 percent. Within that range is a large chunk of the child-bearing period of course; and, unfortunately, childbearing begins barely past the start of puberty when females have nothing—no education, no income or earning power, no maturity or even common sense. Also in 2012:

9.7 percent of non-Hispanic whites (18.9 million) were living in poverty

More than one-fourth of Hispanics (13.6 million) were living in poverty

27.2 percent (est.) of blacks (10.9 million) were living in poverty.

Living in “deep poverty” in 2012 were

12.7 percent of blacks (almost 5.1 million)

 

10.1 percent of Hispanics (almost 5.4 million)

4.3 percent (8.4 million) of non-Hispanic whites

African American women were unemployed at a rate of 10.5 percent; white women at a rate of 5.8 percent.

In 2010, 21.4 percent of African American women had a college degree or higher; 30 percent of white women had a college degree or higher.

WORK BEFORE US—

equality, 

free education, 

gainful work, 

livable wage for all, 

rule of law, 

incorruptible, competent, nonviolent public servants, 

human rights—

all FAR TOO IMPORTANT 

TO BE HIJACKED 

by WEDGE 

and other 

WARS

In 2012, though African American women made up 12.7 percent of the female population, they held only 8.58 percent of bachelor’s degrees held by women. The college graduation rate of African-American women” subject to 2004 research analysis “was 24.1 percent and has not increased at the same rate as the graduation rates” of other American women hyphenated white, Latina, or Asian.

While American women in total make up “24 percent of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce…; only 2 percent of African American women are represented the STEM fields. Compared with “white women,” black American women experience “three times the rate” of “unintended pregnancies.”

Wedge effect not cause

This is barely a cursory view of the case of wedge effect. But as I’ve said, only an idiot (or a deliberately ignorant person) cannot see that “abortion” is not the issue. The real culprit is ignored or covered up by the wedge show.

Underlying causes are at critical issue—not “abortion”. Abortion is a consequence of the condition of society, the ill health of society: its people, institutions, systems, functioning. We are that society.

Underlying causes include a status quo of corrupt government officials and their collusion with corrupt private, nonprofit and NGO sector agents. Apathy and public neglect; breakdowns in the systems of justice and in nonsectarian institutions of public education, health and welfare—a deliberate obliviousness that rises from a citizenry that at once “hates the rich” and at the same time signs on to “get rich” schemes in a never-ending illusion that “I-too” can get equally rich. These massive millions—with a penchant for mindless buying of lottery numbers, casino chips and big-box-store “stuff”—are the foot soldiers in their own destruction, their own impenetrable inequality and enslavement.

Higher–ups and the masses in their ignorance disparage what they term a “sinister socialism” as they co-conspire in the chronic neglect of the public good. A public that is unmindful of the imperative, the essentiality, of everybody’s contribution to the making of a fully functioning society fails to really care for its own. The gods-guns-gays-“un-born” wedges allow us to keep killing and promoting the killing of “foreigners”, bashing immigrants; and putting off our pressing needs to come together, confront and solve our critical domestic problems.

Sources and notes

“Poverty Facts and Stats: Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day,” Anup Shah data updated Monday, January 7, 2013, http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats.

“Poverty in the United States: A Snapshot,” National Center for Law and Economic Justice

http://www.nclej.org/poverty-in-the-us.php

“Census figures released in September 2013 confirm that record-high numbers of Americans are living in poverty.”

“Fact Sheet: The State of African American Women in the United States,” Center for American Progress, SOURCE: AP/Patrick Semansky

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0884102.html

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/report/2013/11/07/79165/fact-sheet-the-state-of-african-american-women-in-the-united-states/

Race/Ethnicity in US population

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States 

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Likelier to be killed by “toddler” than “terrorist”—Vet. Rory Fanning to US youth

Pakistan's dead

Counter-recruiter to potential recruits: You “don’t have to” sign up

Excerpt, editing by Carolyn Bennett

F

 rom Rory Fanning’s “Letter to a Young Army Ranger” 

Created enemies, justified wars

Interminable “Global War on Terror”

“…Our global war is less complicated to understand than you might think, despite the difficult-to-keep-track-of enemies you will be sent after—whether al-Qaeda (“central,” al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in the Magreb, etc.), or the Taliban, or al-Shabab in Somalia, or ISIS (aka ISIL, or the Islamic State), or Iran, or the al-Nusra Front, or Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. … [I]t’s hard to keep a reasonable scorecard. 

War dead and Destruction
Afghanistan

“Are the Shia or the Sunnis our allies? Is it Islam we’re at war with? Are we against ISIS or the Assad regime or both of them?

Just who these groups are matters, but there is an underlying point that has been too easy to overlook in recent years:

…ever since this country’s first Afghan War in the 1980s (that spurred the formation of the original al-Qaeda), our foreign and military policies have played a crucial role in creating those whom you will be sent to fight.

Terrorizing War
in Afghanistan

Once you are in one of the three battalions of the 75th Ranger Regiment, the chain-of-command will do its best to reduce global politics and the long-term good of the planet to the smallest of matters and replace them with the largest of tasks: boot polishing, perfectly made beds, tight shot groupings at the firing range, and your bonds with the Rangers to your right and left.

“…If you are shipped off to Iraq for our latest war there, remember that the Sunni population you will be targeting is reacting to a U.S.-backed Shia regime in Baghdad that’s done their dirty for years.

“ISIS exists to a significant degree because the largely secular members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party were labeled the enemy as they tried to surrender after the U.S. invasion of 2003. Many of them had the urge to be reincorporated into a functioning society, but no such luck.

“The key official the Bush administration sent to Baghdad simply disbanded Saddam Hussein’s army and tossed its 400,000 troops out onto the streets at a time of mass unemployment.”

Terrorized children 

Slaughtered Innocents

“The number of non-combatants killed since 9/11 across the Greater Middle East in our ongoing war has been breathtaking and horrifying.

“Be prepared, when you fight, to take out more civilians than actual gun-toting or bomb-wielding ‘militants.’

“At the least, an estimated 174,000 civilians died violent deaths as a result of U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan between 2001 and April 2014.

Wounded for life

“In Iraq, over 70 percent of those who died are estimated to have been civilians.

Afghan children and youth
Terrorized

Wounded for life

“So get ready to contend with needless deaths and think about all those who have lost friends and family members in these wars; and who themselves are now scarred for life.

“A lot of people who once would never have thought about fighting any type of war or attacking Americans now entertain the idea—in other words, you will be perpetuating war; handing it off to the future.

Brainwashed by mantras “Freedom,” “Democracy”

Coming Home

“…If we are really going to empty that duffel bag, there is freedom and democracy to unpack.

“If spreading freedom and democracy around the world was on your mind,” consider this. “Though records are incomplete on the subject,” the domestic police, police within the United States, since September 11th “have killed something like 5,000 people—that is to say, more than the number of American soldiers killed by ‘insurgents’ in that same (2001-2015) period.

In those same years, outfits like the Rangers and the rest of the U.S. military have killed countless numbers of people worldwide—targeting the poorest people on the planet. 

 

And are there fewer ‘terrorists’? 

Does all this really make a lot of sense to you?

“…Maybe you still believe that the United States is fighting for freedom and democracy around the world and is in existential danger from ‘the terrorists.’ Maybe it seems like the only reasonable thing to do: defend our country against terrorism.

“The media have been a powerful propaganda tool in promoting that image—despite the fact that, as a civilian, you are more likely to be killed by a toddler than a terrorist.… 

“[And] make no mistake: whatever news outlets may say about the changing cast of characters the U.S. is fighting and the changing motivations behind the changing names of our military ‘operations’ around the world—you and I will have fought in the same war.

Endlessly Under Siege 

“It’s hard to believe that you will be taking us into the 14th year of the Global War on Terror (whatever they may be calling it now). I wonder which one of the 668 U.S. military bases worldwide you’ll be sent to.”

Veteran tells his motives and moves

Having recently graduated from college, “I signed up for the military …hoping to make a better world. Instead, I helped make the world more dangerous. I was also hoping that in volunteering I would get some of my student loans paid for. Like you, I was looking for practical help—but also for meaning.

Endlessly Under Siege 

“I wanted to do right by my family and my country. Looking back, it’s clear enough to me that my lack of knowledge about the actual mission we were undertaking betrayed me—and you and us.

“I hope this letter is a jumping off point for you. And if, by any chance, you haven’t signed that Option 40 contract yet, you don’t have to. 

“You can be an effective counter-recruiter without being an ex-military guy. 

“Young people across this country desperately need your energy, your desire to be the best, your pursuit of meaning.  

“Don’t waste it in Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen or Somalia or anywhere else the Global War on Terror is likely to send you.”

You don’t have to

“I’m writing to you especially because I just want you to know that it’s not too late to change your mind.

“I did. I became a war resister after my second deployment in Afghanistan for all the reasons I have mentioned. I finally unpacked….  Leaving the military was one of the most difficult but rewarding experiences of my life; and my goal is to take what I learned in the military and, as a kind of counter-recruiter,” bring another message “to high school and college students.…”

Fanning concludes his letter.  

“Kids need to hear both sides.

Given the 10,000 military recruiters in the United States working with an almost $700 million advertising budget—there is much work to be done.”

As a social warrior, not a military one, Fanning declares, “The world is worth fighting for.”

Sources and notes

“WE ARE NOT YOUR SOLDIERS! Join Our National Anti ‘Military Recruiters’ Campaign In The Schools And Communities Featuring Iraq and Afghanistan Vets and World Can't Wait,” Rory Fanning, January 14, 2015, “Letter to a Young Army Ranger (From an Old One)… Lead the Way,” Rory Fanning http://www.wearenotyoursoldiers.org/?p=822

RORY FANNING

A U.S. military veteran and author of Worth Fighting For, Rory Fanning is a housing activist living in Chicago, Illinois. Before this, he was a member of the US 2nd Army Ranger Battalion and did two deployments in Afghanistan as part of the US Global War on Terror.

In a Chicago Tribune online review on November 13, 2014, Pete Reinwald writes that Fanning’s book Worth Fighting For “is at once a journal, a guided tour through sites that mark some of the most shameful moments in U.S. history, and a tribute to an athlete-turned-warrior whom the U.S. government hailed as a hero even as it withheld details about the circumstances of his death. More than anything, the book chronicles one man’s political, social and spiritual revolution.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-worth-fighting-for-rory-fanning-20141113-story.html#page=1

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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