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How the U.S. Army Kills Its Own Soldiers

A horrifying, exclusive report from JoAnn Wypijewski on the grim secrets of Fort Sill, Oklahoma. How a sadistic drill sergeant tortured basic trainees, amid brutal indifference that led to the death on March 19,2006,of 21-year-old PFC Matthew Scarano. Dead Movement Marching? Cockburn and St Clair assess the failures of the national antiwar groups, even as popular opposition to the war tops 60 per cent. Stalin or Confucius? Chris Reed on the Secrets of the Garden of Bliss, otherwise known as North Korea. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

March 28, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
Shias May Now Turn on US Forces

March 27, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
War Crime in a Mosque

Joshua Frank
The Democrats' Daddy Warbucks

Ron Jacobs
The Case of the Anti-Minutemen Five

Jeff Lays
Eternal Spending for a Never-Ending War

Davey D.
We Didn't Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Us

Robert Billyard
"I Did Not Join the British Army to Conduct US Foreign Policy"

Jim Rigby
Why We Let an Atheist Join Our Church

Lisa Viscidi
Justice and Impunity in Latin America: the Case of Rios Montt

Nick Dearden
Refugees: Thirty Years in the Western Sahara

Gideon Levy
Are We Done Killing Children, Yet?

Website of the Day
"Love Me, I'm a Liberal " (Updated)


March 25 / 26, 2006

Alexander Cockburn
Why There's No Strategy to End This War

Patrick Cockburn
The Battle for Baghdad: It's Already Begun

Ralph Nader
Bush's Divorce from Reality

Christopher Reed
Slave Labor and Hell Ships: Mitsubishi Awaits Judgment for Its War Crimes

Jeff Ballinger
Memo to Walter Mosley: the Crisis in Black Leadership

Joseph Massad
Blaming the Israel Lobby

Brian Cloughley
The Fifth Afghan War

Chris Floyd
Death in the Village of Isahaqi

Elaine Cassel
Abortion Politics: The FDA and Plan B

Dave Zirin
Death Row Talks Back to Etan Thomas

John Chuckman
Sorry, Prime Minister, Afghanistan is Not Canada's War

Sharon Smith
"Si Se Puede!": On Chicago's Streets

Christopher Fons
A City With Latinos

Chris Kromm
Coretta Scott King a Communist? There's a History Here

John Bomar
Neurotic-in-Chief: Bush's "Change of Course"

Ron Jacobs
More Than Just a Band

Maymanah Farhat
What MoMA Does to "Islamic" Art

St. Clair / Walker / Vest
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Harley, Davies, Engel and Subiet

Website of the Weekend
Peacecast

 

March 24, 2006

Cockburn / Sengupta / Duff
How the CPT Hostages were Freed

P. Sainath
Bribe or Die

Todd Chretien
Jim Crow Goes Fishing: the Racist War on Immigrants

Marty Omoto
The Other California

Michael Carmichael
Islamophobia at Downing Street: Tony Blair's Bipolarity

Peter Phillips
Impeachment Movement Grows; Media Yawns

Gabriel Kolko
The US Empire vs. Reality

Website of the Day
Music for Peace

 

March 23, 2006

Charles V. Peña
Bush's Pro-Terrorism Defense Budget

Joe DeRaymond
El Salvador 2006: a Broken Nation

Robert Fisk
"US Authorities Say..."

Jonathan Cook
The Emerging Jewish Consensus in Israel

Tom Engelhardt
Whatever Happened to Congress?: an Interview with Chalmers Johnson

Joshua Frank
Political Lemmings: the Democrats and the Precipice

Norman Solomon
The Ultimate Scapegoat: Blaming the Media for Bad War News

Robert Fitch / Joe Allen
An Exchange on the State of Organized Labor

Patrick Cockburn
Kirkuk's Dr. Death

CounterPunch News Service
On the Proper Way to Address a Bible-Waving Republican State Senator from Maryland

Website of the Day
Bird-Dogging Kerry

 

March 22, 2006

David MacMichael
Iranian Nuclear Showdown: an Unnecessary Crisis

Juan Santos
Brown Skin, Yellow Star: Making Latinos Illegal

Paul Craig Roberts
Hollow Nation: Americans Don't Live Here Anymore

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's My Lai?: Shooting Any Iraqi Who Moves

Ramzy Baroud
The Jericho Raid

Jason Leopold
The Mysterious "Official One": Woodward's Plame-Leak Deep Throat

Dennis Perrin
Killer Lies from Cheney's Harlot

William Blum
The Cuban Punching Bag

Jeffrey St. Clair
Contract Casino

Website of the Day
Bird Flu: Will It Cross Over?

 

March 21, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's Delusional Speech

Winslow Wheeler
Lipstick on the Pig: the Fiasco of Congressional Earmark Reform

Tom Engelhardt
Cold Warrior in a Strange Land: an Interview with Chalmers Johnson

Arnold Oliver
To the Guy Who Called Me a Traitor: Dissent and the Iraq War

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
When Black Cops Go Bad: the Killing of Elio Carrion

Mike Whitney
Death Squad Democracy

William A. Cook
Israeli Human Rights: Starve the Palestinians

Sophia A. McLennen
Assault on Higher Education: the Conservative Push for the Right Student

 

March 20, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
A Collapsing Presidency

Dave Lindorff
Howard Dean Tells CounterPunch: DNC No Foe of Impeachment

Ralph Nader
The DNC's "Grassroots Agenda": Howard Dean's Plea for Advice

Diane Christian
License to Lie: Over to You, Dante

Jeff Halper
"To Hell with All of You": the Power of Saying No

Harry Browne
Unhappy St. Patrick's Day: Bush's Crackdown on Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein

Norman Solomon
Why are We Here?: Is There a Right Way to Wage a Wrong War?

Patrick Cockburn
Death Squads on the Prowl; Iraq Convulsed by Fear

Website of the Day
Abugate

 

March 18 / 19, 2006

Cockburn / St. Clair
Three Years On: Where's the Resistance Here on the Home Front?

Werther
Bombs and Butchers: "Where Do We Get Such Men?"

Chris Kromm
Katrina Aid Package: Much Too Little; Much Too Late

Patrick Cockburn
Halabja: Kurds Destroy Monument to Victims of Saddam's Poison Gas Attack

Elaine Cassel
Abortion Politics and Animus for Women: Can Justice Kennedy be Swayed?

S. Brian Willson
Iraq Vets and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Fred Gardner
The War on Kids

Brian Cloughley
General Insanity: the Prevarications of Gen. Peter Pace

Laura Carlsen
Challenging Disparity: Toward a New US Policy in Latin America

Eamon Martin
Life in the Shadows of the Empire: Mysterious Photographers of Nothing

Julie Hilden
Free Speech in the Classroom: Teachers Don't Enjoy Enough Legal Protection

Alison Weir
So Much for "Sunshine Week": AP Erases Video of Israeli Soldier Shooting Palestinian Boy

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Krieger, Louise, and Engek

Website of the Weekend
Are the Elites Turning Against the Effects of the Israel Lobby?

 

March 17, 2006

Eduardo Galeano
Abracadabra: Uruguay's Desaparecidos Begin to Appear

Greg Moses
Bush and Nuclear Preemption: Do You Feel Safe With This Man's Finger on the Button?

Richard Falk / David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is Dying: What Now?

Cindy and Craig Corrie
Three Ways to Remember Rachel

Amira Hass
Hamas's Haniyeh: "I Never Sent Anyone on a Suicide Mission"

Mike Marqusee
Reasons to March

James Petas and Robin Eastman-Abaya
Philippines: the Killing Fields of Asia

Website of the Day
Black Shamrock

 

March 16, 2006

Norman Solomon
Hook, Line and Sinker: War-Loving Pundits

Tom Philpott
Neoliberalism at the Garden Gate: Community Farming in LA

Heather Gray
Anne Braden: the South's Rebel Without a Pause

Amira Hass
Is Hamas Playing into the Hands of Israeli Hardliners?

Missy Comley Beattie
Dangerous-to-Society Women: Locked Up in the Tombs

Sen. Russell Feingold
President Bush has Broken the Law; He Must be Held Accountable

Lucinda Marshall
President Ken Doll: Bush Insults Women on Intl. Women's Day

Andrew Bosworth
From the Man Who Voted Against Katrina Aid: Joe Barton's War on CITGO

Clancy Sigal
In Celebration of Dachau's 73rd Anniversary, Halliburton Gets Concentration Camp Contract

Website of the Day
Help Rebuild the New Orleans Public Library


March 15, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Raid on the Jericho Jail

Winslow Wheeler
Hiding the Cost of War: Paying for Iraq with Supplemental Funding

Diane Christian
Sharon's Stroke

Ron Jacobs
New Tenants for Abu Ghraib?: a Cell for Kissinger and Haig

Missy Comley Beattie
How Many Brinks to Pass?

Jared Bernstein
The Minority Wealth Gap

Noam Chomsky
The Crumbling Empire

Website of the Day
French Students Reclaim the Streets of Paris

 

March 14, 2006

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
No Requiem for a Black Conservative: the Fall of Claude Allen

Dave Lindorff
Why the Gitmo Tribunals are a Bad Idea: Exhibit A, t he Moussaoui Case

Kevin Zeese
Divide and Rule in Iraq Gone Awry

Todd Chretien
Counting the Dead in Iraq: Why is the Left Understating the Carnage?

Jason Kunin
Canada in Afghanistan: "We're Here Because We're Here"

Thomas Palley
The Economics of Outsourcing

Cockburn / St. Clair
Pages from the Liberals' War

Website of the Day
Golf Courses and Swimming Pools

 

March 13, 2006

Uri Avnery
The Missing Word

Dave Lindorff
Extra, Extra! Media Reports on Censure Motion

Mike Whitney
South Dakota's Taliban: the Fanatics are on the Loose

David Green
Questions of Solidarity: Blacks and Jews in Neo-Con America

Jeremy Scahill
Rest Easy, Bill Clinton: Slobo Can't Talk Any More

Mike Ferner
Up Against the Wall, Son: Hungering for Justice During My First Congressional Testimony

Corey Harris
Memories of Ali Farka Touré

Paul Craig Roberts
Killing Off Milosevic: Was Serbia a Practice Run for Iraq?

Website of the Day
Prayer Flags for Peace


March 11 / 12, 2006

Alexander Cockburn
Democrats: When the War Was Lost

Ralph Nader
Bush at the Tipping Point

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Did Bush Destroy Iraq?

Ben Tripp
My Night at the Oscars: the Happy People Speak Out

John Strausbaugh
The Cowboys and the Village Voice: Alt Press Flagship Goes Corporate

Landau / Hassen
Why "We" Fight "Their" Wars

Robert Bryce
A Thousand Pages of Rage

Gary Leupp
Why They Really Think They Must Defeat Iran

Fred Gardner
"But He's Good on Our Issue"

Ron Jacobs
Condi and Iran: Folly, Tragedy and Farce

Jonathan Scott
Science Fiction's Black Oracle: the Genius and Courage of Octavia Butler

Ramzy Baroud
Who Will Stop Bush's Militant Militarists?

Jordan Flaherty
Gitmo on the Mississippi: Life Under the Klan Wasn't This Bad

John Chuckman
Parable of the Hatchet: the Fallacy of Nation-Building in Afghanistan

Joe Allen
Smearing Ron Carey and the TDU: Bob Fitch's Hatchet Job

Julia Kendlbacher
Amazonia: Where All Life Matters

St. Clair / Walker / Pollack / Vest
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Hassen, Harley, Ford and Subiet

Website of the Weekend
No Hay Ser Humano Ilegal

 

March 10, 2006

Ben Rosenfeld
The Great Green Scare and the Fed's Case Against Rod Coronado: a War on the First Amendment

Lila Rajiva
The Gitmo Documents: Miller, Boykin, Cambone and Feith

Saree Makdisi
From Rachel Corrie to Richard Rogers: the Wall, the Javits Center and the Bullying of an Architect

Elena Shore
FBI Grills US Professor Over Support for Venezuela

Joshua Frank
How the Green Party Slays Their Own

Dave Zirin
Lynching Barry Bonds

Aura Bogado
An Interview with Subcomandate Marcos

 

March 9, 2006

John Walsh
Neocon Daniel Pipes Advocates Civil War in Iraq as Strategic Policy

Annie Zirin
Leftwing Generals: the Dark Side of Liberal Imperialism

Brian McKenna
We All Live in Poletown Now: GM and the Corporate Uses of Eminent Domain

Chris Floyd
Scar Tissue: How the Bushes Brought Bedlam to Iraq

Rachard Itani
"Over There": Iraq as Soap Opera

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Action Thing

Wylie Harris
Immigration and Jeffersonian Democracy: Free Borders Make Good Neighbors

Alexander Cockburn
Ex-State Department Security Officer Charges Pre-9/11 Cover-Up

Website of the Day
About Pace: Expelling Anti-War Students

 

March 8, 2006

Patrick Bond
The Loans of Mass Destruction: Wolfowitz's Anti-Corruption Hoax at the World Bank

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Elusive Victories in Haiti

Pat Williams
Buyer's Remorse: Bush, the View from the Purple States

Lance Selfa
The Democrats and Dubai: the Politics of Distraction

Mokhiber / Weissman
Have You Ever Been Convicted of a Felony?

Walter Brasch
Compromising Civil Liberties

Vijay Prashad
For Them Indian Mangoes: Anatomy of an Agreement

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie: a Call to Action

 

March 7, 2006

Werther
Half a Trillion Dollars: It's an Awful Lot of Money to Make Us Less Safe and Less Free

John Blair
Dr. Strangelove is Our President: Global Peace Through Nuclear Weapons

Dave Lindorff
The Impeachment Groundswell and Bush's Last Hope: the Democrats

Mike Whitney
No Immunity: Israel's Policy of Targeted Assassination

Warren Guykema
Who is Afraid of Rachel Corrie?

Sen. Russell Feingold
Misleading Testimony About NSA Domestic Spying

Robert Jensen
Why I am a Christian (Sort Of)

Norman Solomon
Digitalized Hype: a Dazzling Smokescreen?

Bernie Dwyer
Hopeful Signs Across Latin America: an Interview with Noam Chomsky

Website of the Day
Golem Song


March 6, 2006

Ralph Nader
Bush and Katrina: "Situational Information?"

Dave Zirin
Why Did Pat Tillman Die? an Investigation Reopens

Vanessa Redgrave
Censorship of the Worst Kind: the Second Death of Rachel Corrie

Walter A. Davis
Theater, Ideology and the Censorship of "My Name is Rachel Corrie"

Joshua Frank
Down By Law: the Mysterious Case of David Cobb

Nate Mezmer
A Second Look at "Crash": More Myths About Blacks and Racist Cops

Paul Craig Roberts
America's Bleak Jobs Future

Website of the Day
Crossroads: Race, Class and Art


March 4 / 5, 2006

Alexander Cockburn
The Dubai Ports Purchase: National Insecurity, Imported or Homegrown?

Jennifer Van Bergen
Bush's NSA Spying Program Violates the Law

Steven Higgs
Dying for Their Work: Westinghouse Workers and the Highest Level of PCBs Ever Recorded

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Generals, the Legislators and the Gulfstream VIP Transports

Ron Jacobs
Stealing Back Adam's Rib

Rev. William E. Alberts
Remember Damadola

Colin Asher
Goodbye, Dubai: the Teamsters and the Ports

Fred Gardner
Denney's Law

"Pariah"
Scapegoats and Shunning: Sexual Fascism in Progressive America

John Scagliotti
Brokeback Mountain: Pain is Not Enough

Seth Sandronsky
When the White House Walks Away: Bush, Arnold and the Flood Risk in the Central Valley

Joan Roelofs
A Challenge to Rebuild the World

Arjun Makhijani
The US / India Nuclear Pact: a Bad and Dangerous Deal

Ardeshr Ommani
Destroying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Diana Barahona
An Open Letter to Freedom House: Release Info on Your Federal Grants

Ben Tripp
Bonzo, Wherefore Art Thou?

St. Clair / Socialist Worker Staff
Playlist: What We're Listening To

Poets' Basement
Engel, Davies, Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Return of Pearl Jam

March 3, 2006

Laura Carlsen
Mexico: the Power of Corruption and the Corruption of Power

John V. Whitbeck
Two States or One?

Chris Floyd
The Monolith Crumbles: Reality and Revisionism About Iran

Mohamed Hakki
Wolfowitz at the World Bank: Cronyism and Corruption

Pratyush Chandra
Bush in India: Dinner with George and Manmohan

John Scagliotti
Why are There No Real Gays in "Brokeback Mountain"?

Website of the Day
Support the IRC!

 

March 2, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economic News is Spun

Dave Lindorff
Troops to Bush: Get Us Out of Here!

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Democracy: the Hamas Factor

Saul Landau
Halfway Down the Road to Hell

Joe Allen
The Murder of George Jackson: an Interview with His Lawyer, Stephen Bingham

Steve Shore
Berlusconi on Capitol Hill: "I Am Italy!"

Denise Boggs
Roadless and Clueless: Wilderness Logging Greenwashed by Enviro Groups

Norman Finkelstein
The Attacks on Beyond Chutzpah

Website of the Day
ScreenHead

 

March 1, 2006

Mairead Corrigan Maguire
The Human Right to a Nuclear Free World

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The India That Can No Longer Say No

Faheem Hussain
Bush in Pakistan

Antony Loewenstein
Spinning Us to War with Iran: an Aussie Perspective

Elizabeth Schulte
The Charge to Overturn Roe Has Begun

Mike Whitney
Sudan: Beware Bolton's Sudden Humanitarianism

John Ryan
Canada and the American Empire

Michael Donnelly
Brokeback Mountain: a No Love Story

Tom Reeves
Haitian Election Aftermath

Website of the Day
Mardi Gras Index: Reuilding of New Orleans Stalled

 

 

 

 

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March 28, 2006

God's Torturers: From Torquemada to Opus Dei

Torture Works

By MANUEL GARCIA, Jr.

Does torture work? Can foul means prevent a fouler catastrophe and thus redeem themselves by producing a greater good? Of course not, but those in power need discussions like this to continue, to give them a fig-leaf of official respectability. Consider this testimony by Ana Valdes.

I have been following with attention and curiosity the discussion about torture, if torture works, how it works, and why we are still using it, despite our declaration that we live in a civilized world. As one who has been tortured, I can say, yes, torture works, not because of the pain inflicted, or the feeling of loneliness and despair, but because torture acts at a level of consciousness we seldom have access to.

I was 19 years old when I was tortured, in Uruguay, at that time one of South America's most 'exemplary' countries, with a long tradition of democracy and legality. Uruguay, a country with a small army and without any military conscription, demanded several CIA agents to train its military in torture and pressure. The agent who trained my countrymen in torture was the American Dan Mitrione. He was executed by guerrillas in 1971. Afterwards, a swarm of agents came to our country to 'take the reins', vindicate Mitrione, and dismantle the guerrilla force.

We were tortured by people we knew. I was raised in a family with several members in the military. I was beaten and tortured by friends of my uncles and my cousins.

Some years ago, I went to church in Spain and confessed (I am a freelance Catholic, I accept some aspects of the Church and its doctrine, but about others I am critical or skeptical). I didn't know the priest was a member of Opus Dei, the Catholic right-wing sect who supported Franco and Pinochet. He asked me why I have not been in confession for so many years, so I told him briefly about my four years in jail, and my exile in Sweden. He asked me how I felt about the men who interrogated me. I was a bit struck by his question ... up until that time, I had not given them much thought. Yet he insisted, and so I said "Today, I am not sure how I feel. I can accept that many of them believed they were right, and that torture or pressure were only methods to gather information, but ..." He interrupted me and said: "But you should love the people who tortured you. They did it to save your immortal soul. If you died under torture, you should go directly to heaven. They were good Catholics, and only wanted to save you from the devil, and from Marxism." Torture is still in my body as a memory and as a trace. It's still a challenge for me to discover the reasons why friends of my uncles, and good Catholics, could torture and kill, and still go to church on Sundays. (1)

* * *

I have never read a more succinct justification for abandoning religion. The falsity of Catholicism, Judaism, Islam and all other denominational "higher power" cults is vividly expressed right here: "But you should love the people who tortured you. They did it to save your immortal soul. If you died under torture, you should go directly to heaven. They were good Catholics, and only wanted to save you from the devil, and from Marxism."

Thus, love Tomas de Torquemada and the Inquisition; love the Falangist and Franco's death camps; love Himmler, the German SS and the Nazi officials running the death-camp nation of Poland -- most "good Catholics" and "good Lutherans"; love the CIA-backed Latin American fascists (see the Costa Gavras' film on Dan Mitrione, "State of Siege"); love Pinochet (see Costa Gavras' film "Missing"); love the Salvadoran and Guatemalan Armies, especially after dark when they prowled as death squads; love the CIA-proxy Nicaraguan Contras who targeted rural school teachers and doctors for torture and death; love the US "interrogators" in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and other shadowy locations; they are all good Catholics, or Episcopalians, or Methodists (like Bush and Cheney), or Baptists, or "Christians" of one kind or another, who go to churches, sing hymns and spout pieties of a "superior god" they share with Jews, a god deemed likely to win against the inferior god of the devilishly heathen Muslims, who yet seem capable of finding the exact same divine love and inspiration in their hearts to torture, shoot and behead other human beings whose presence on Earth they find offensive because they are "Shia" or "Sunni," or worse yet a Christian convert who "renounced Islam," or perhaps was a wife or daughter who was raped and now deserves stoning to preserve the male "honor" (as many Pakistani wives and daughters found out after the 1971 India-Pakistan war over Bangladeshi independence).

Yes indeed, with a Sky-God whose power on earth is mediated by a male hierarchy there is always an excess of fatal love for those who do not fit into the divinely attributed social structure, and our mullahs and inquisitors and South Dakota legislators and priests must exert full control over the frightening power of unrestrained woman, birthing, life and thought, or "all" will be lost to "the devil" and "Marxism." Better YOU (never they) die and "go directly to heaven" -- guaranteed even better than the lifetime of your car's tires -- than to upset this finely honed hierarchy of domination and denial. GOD IS MURDER.

Torture exists because some people are "better" than others by virtue of their power, which they invariably declare a right descending from a Divinity that favors them as Its agent, Its "disciple," Its "servant." They are merely "soldiers in the Army of Christ," men who humbly submit to Allah and man His jihad, all to bring you into alignment -- defined by your betters -- with the "will of God." Priests are the executioners of the human soul, the headsmen of human intellect, stunting and poisoning the growth of human potential. Camus describes how Catholic priests blessed the barrels of the rifles of Falangist firing squads executing Republican prisoners during Spain's Civil War (1936-1939) and the following dictatorship.

Objectively, there is no compelling reason why a person of any religious or non-religious view should be more or less likely to be a torturer. But, as one looks at the sweep of history it is clear that torture follows religion, because torture is cruelty practiced by fear and ignorance. As one moves to social groups more firmly based on the Enlightenment (post-Renaissance humanism and socialism) and Buddhism (as a philosophy and psychology more than a devotional religious practice and sectarian division) one moves away from the likelihood of torture. And don't tell me about Communist torture until after you have read Camus's book "The Rebel" and understand that Stalinism was just another man-made religion -- as they all are.

We have Stalinism in the USA right now, just as they had it in Imperial Rome, just as they had in Pharaonic Egypt; we have become our own gods: Hail Pharaoh!, Hail Caesar!, Greetings Comrade Chairman!, I'm blessed to meet you Mister President! Our Church is the State, our leaders are our gods, we obey the divine will. Who can contend with that? Who can say our acts are not the implementation of Divine Good? That we have this power PROVES it is just, it is ordained, and we who implement it, who submit to it, are blessed, "saints" in rapture.

When torture "works," we have reached the point of deep decay along a path of descent laid out by both Lord Acton and Euripides: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely;" "whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." When torture "works" it is time to tear everything up and start over.

Leave the churches, the synagogues, the mosques and the patriot-church of government; real justice and real humanity are to be found outside them. Salvation is in seeking your full human potential in association with others similarly involved. Because there is no "higher power," nor "purpose" nor "intelligent design" to the universe, life is "empty" as the Buddhists say; and this is "marvelous" because it means every life is of equal value, and the fulfillment of that life is to be found in what its individual chooses to fill it with. Isn't this truly marvelous?, you are free to seek your fulfillment in your own manner, and it will have the same cosmic significance as any other life. Goodness is not a product of external control and compulsion -- let alone torture -- it is an outgrowth of the individual effort at fulfillment. We "make good" by "being good" in the same way we "make peace" by "being peace," by being the living embodiment of "goodness" and "peace" to the experience of others. Our actions may be breast-feeding a baby, packing a school lunch, or devising an economic development plan for a nation.

Similarly, we can act out goodness by dismantling the churches, the religions, the governments, the corporations and the economics that torture humanity.

Manuel Garcia, Jr. is a physicist who studies fluid flow, electricity and energy. He can be reached at: mango@idiom.com

Notes

[1] Ana Valdes, posting to the International Justice Watch Discussion List, 25 March 2006




 

 

 

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