Happy as a Hangman

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig

Innocence, as defined by law, makes us complicit with the crimes of the state. To do nothing, to be judged by the state as an innocent, is to be guilty. It is to sanction, through passivity and obedience, the array of crimes carried out by the state.

To be innocent in America means we passively permit offshore penal colonies where we torture human beings, some of whom are children. To be innocent in America is to acquiesce to the relentless corporate destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species. To be innocent in America is to permit the continued theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the state by Wall Street swindlers and speculators. To be innocent in America is to stand by as insurance and pharmaceutical companies, in the name of profit, condemn ill people, including children, to die. To be innocent in America is refusing to resist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not only illegal under international law but responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. This is the odd age we live in. Innocence is complicity.

The steady impoverishment and misery inflicted by the corporate state on the working class and increasingly the middle class has a terrible logic. It consolidates corporate centers of power. It weakens us morally and politically. The fraud and violence committed by the corporate state become secondary as we scramble to feed our families, find a job and pay our bills and mortgages. Those who cling to insecure, poorly paid jobs and who struggle with crippling credit card debt, those who are mired in long-term unemployment and who know that huge medical bills would bankrupt them, those who owe more on their houses than they are worth and who fear the future, become frightened and timid. They seek only to survive. They accept the pathetic scraps tossed to them by the corporate elite. The internal and external corporate abuse accelerates as we become every day more pliant.

Our corrupt legal system, perverting the concept that "all men are created equal," has radically redefined civic society. Citizens, regardless of their status or misfortune, are now treated with the same studied indifference by the state. They have been transformed from citizens to commodities whose worth is determined solely by the market and whose value is measured by their social and economic functions. The rich, therefore, are rewarded by the state with tax cuts because they are rich. It is their function to monopolize wealth and invest. The poor are supposed to be poor. The poor should not be a drain on the resources of the state or the oligarchic elite. Equality, in this new legal paradigm, means we are all treated alike, no matter what our circumstances. This new interpretation of equality, under which the poor are abandoned and the powerful are unchecked, has demolished the system of regulations, legal restraints and services that once protected the underclass from wealthy and corporate predators.

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Breaking Our Addiction to War

By Brian Willson, Global Research

I am sick of being anti-war. Are wars inevitable? War crimes? If we really don't want wars, it behooves us to get serious about understanding their causes, and choose to radically address them. Otherwise, what's the point? Feeling a "rush" with like-minded folks at political actions only perpetuates our addiction to anti-war rallies, which do nothing to stop wars from occurring.

The inarticulate presidency of George Bush II successfully unmasked the US empire for everyone to see in its gruesome glory – laying bare all the lies, sordid details, and egregious consequences of unfettered greed. Then the hopium associated with Obama's election served as a soothing tranquilizer, quieting the movement, at least for a time. Yet, no matter who is in power, wars continue ad nauseum. To learn why we must examine the vertical/hierarchical, patriarchal political-economic system to which we humans have adapted over millennia.

First, let's look at US history. The record reveals a chronic, depressing pattern of war making – 550 direct military interventions since 1799 in more than 100 countries. More than 300 of these have occurred since World War II, including bombing of 28 countries. In addition, the US has conducted thousands of covert interventions, mostly in "Third World" countries.

The longer view: Since the advent of "civilization" around 3500 BC (55 centuries ago), there have been 14,600 recorded "decisive wars," not counting thousands of smaller, "indecisive" ones, according to the Norwegian Academy of Sciences. This coincides with development of writing and emergence of patriarchal, hierarchical kingdoms, most of which later became empires. The rulers of these kingdoms gained power by manipulating surplus that had grown out of the agricultural revolution. Another coincidence with the advent of civilization is a notable increase in findings of human remains for which the cause of death has been attributed to warfare injuries. Archaeologists have found little if any evidence of systemic warfare prior to this time.

Since 1500 AD, war scholar Quincy Wright documents 3,000 recorded "battles" which involved casualties of at least 1,000 in land battles, and 500 in naval ones, with an additional quarter million "hostile encounters." The US Army alone has been engaged in over 9,000 "battles and skirmishes" between 1775-1900, most against Native Americans, with the US Navy engaged in over 1,100 encounters in addition.

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Chomsky, Singer declare support for WikiLeaks’ Assange

Eric W. Dolan writes for The Raw Story:

Two distinguished scholars and activists, Noam Chomsky and Peter Singer, signed an open letter to the Prime Minister of Australia on Tuesday, urging the government to condemn calls for Australian citizen and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be assassinated.

[ ... ]

"The materials—we should understand—and the Pentagon Papers is another case in point—that one of the major reasons for government secrecy is to protect the government from its own population," Chomsky said in an interview with the Democracy Now's Amy Goodman. "In the Pentagon Papers, for example, there was one volume, the negotiations volume, which might have had bearing on ongoing activities, and Dan Ellsberg withheld that. That came out a little bit later."

The Pentagon Papers were a collection of top-secret Department of Defense documents on the history of the United States' involvement in Vietnam that were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg.

"But if you look at the Papers themselves, there are things that Americans should have known that the government didn't want them to know," he continued. "And as far as I can tell, from what I've seen here, pretty much the same is true. In fact, the current leaks are—what I've seen, at least—primarily interesting because of what they tell us about how the diplomatic service works."

Singer said there was a "clear parallel" between the Afghanistan war documents leak and the Pentagon Papers.

Although greater transparency has some bad consequences, Singer concludes that "a climate of openness makes it more likely that governments and corporations will act more ethically."

"In a world in which terrorists have committed atrocities and threaten to commit more, to seek complete government transparency is utopian," Singer wrote at Project Syndicate in August. "Sometimes it is possible to do good only in secret. Yet on the whole, a more transparent community is likely to be a better one – and the same applies to a more transparent world."

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U.S. Concerned About Uganda War Crimes Using American Intelligence - WikiLeaks

By Milton Allimadi, Black Star News

The United States is concerned about possible Uganda army war crimes in its fight against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), while using U.S.-provided intelligence. Remarkably, the U.S. ambassador even warned Uganda to let American officials know in advance when it intended to commit war crimes while battling the LRA, according to revelations in memos provided by WikiLeaks.

The U.S. has been providing Uganda with intelligence and about $4.4 million in equipment to fight the LRA. Nevertheless, Washington is now disillusioned with Yoweri Museveni and is hoping that the February vote will restore the shine that the country has lost, a memo by the U.S. ambassador to Uganda, Jerry Lanier, states.

The explosive revelations comes in several memos sent to Washington by ambassador Lanier; they were provided to media by WikiLeaks.

The United States now seems so concerned with human rights abuses under the Museveni government including in fighting the LRA that embassy officials are even investigating killings going back eight years ago. A December 17 memo by Lanier discusses a notorious 2002 execution of a prisoner, Peter Oloya, on alleged orders by Col. Charles Otema Awany, the head of Uganda's military intelligence in northern Uganda. "On November 3, 2009, Gulu District Chairman Walter Ochora told PolOff that he, Lt. Col. Otema, and President Museveni discussed an intercepted message on September 16, 2002, revealing plans by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to liberate prisoners from Gulu central prison," states the Lanier memo. "Ochora said President Museveni ordered Lt. Col. Otema to go to the prison, secure the prisoners, and bring them back to the military barracks."

The reference to PolOff is to the political officer in the U.S. embassy in Uganda, Aaron B. Sampson. The prisoner, Oloya, was reportedly shot in the back and later buried after being beheaded, which is probably why the U.S. is now keenly interested in exploring the full nature of the government it supports in Uganda. What's more, Otema Awany was subsequently promoted and is now a Brigadier in the Uganda People's Defense Force (UPDF). The investigation of the Oloya killing by the United States officials and it's time frame is critical. Oloya was killed after July 1, 2002, when the Rome Statute, the instrument that created the International Court of Justice (ICC) came into effect. Uganda is a signatory to the statute.

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Psychological Operations Get a New Name

Marc Ambinderreports for the National Journal:

The term "psychological operations" has a certain odor about it. It connotes deceit and manipulation -- even brainwashing. And in today's military, anything that smacks of the Pentagon's history of psychological warfare is not politically correct.

A few months ago, the U.S. Special Operations Command, which, by law, is the executive agency for psychological operations, or "PSYOPs," decided that a name change was in order: Operations aimed at influencing the emotions of people outside the United States would now be known as "Military Information Support Operations."

When the name change was first proposed, it took a millisecond for the thousands of active psychological operations officers and noncommissioned officers to deride the new acronym. "MISO" -- like the Japanese soup. "MISO" -- followed by references that aren't appropriate for an online news site that might be seen by children.

But up the chain of command it went, and as of late last week, it's official.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates put his signature on a memorandum officially changing the term. Marked "For Official Use Only," the memo notes that "PSYOPs" had become so toxic a term that commanders often failed to use vital tools at their disposal because of the negative connotations associated with the term.

"Although PSYOP activities rely on truthful information, credibly conveyed, the term 'PSYOP' tends to connote propaganda, manipulation, brainwashing and deceit. As a result, a wide range of military-information related activities and capabilities have become tarnished by the term," Gates wrote.