Are You a Terrorist?
PLEASE NOTE: What follows is obviously not directed at my friends at The 99. It is an essay excerpt written for a different place. I wanted my colleagues to see it, because parts of it are inspired by things I've learned here and by links I've followed that were posted here.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Let us Synchronize our Moral Compass
We should be ever mindful of the fact that ISIS are a creation of US imperialist slaughter and mass displacement, along with secular liberal authoritarianism and suppression.
Any US meddling in the region should be opposed wholesale by the genuine left, if it does exist, for the horrors of US imperialism that it is
I am struggling to reconcile the logic of Europeans, Americans, or other foreign entities who heroically opposed the Iraq war with now supporting mass slaughter against sovereign nationals or so-called rebels in Syria, Iraq, or anywhere else in the Middle East. My position is this: Oppose any bombing of Syria or any sovereign region by the US, France, Great Britain, Australia, Russia or any other murderous regime with a squadron of warplanes ready to inflict the terror of aerial bombardment.
Solidarity with those people being terrorized from the skies is the natural position of a truly sentient human being with an undamaged mind.
The attack on the World Trade Center and the Paris Massacre were specifically targeted terrorist attacks in response to specific imperial violence against Middle East people and their assets. These specific occurred as a direct response to the Imperialist ideologies and actions initiated by France and the US that operate in the two locations that were attacked. If you believe that the criminal attacks against the WTC or Paris were attacks against "The West" by the "uber-Islamic ideology," then it is your buy-in to this delusional notion that is actively fostering US imperialist slaughter.
The very idea of a "monolithic West" that is somehow under attack is the ultimate achievement of Anglo-centric media propaganda and brainwashing. It compels you into a psychic crisis, where you lose your moral compass and actively condone atrocities against humanity, which is executed in your name and on your dime. To help neutralize the propaganda effect, study a world map and consider this: Cui bono, while escaping direct blowback?
A word about terrorism: Terrorism is a war tactic that has been used by all "armies" throughout all of recorded history. Terrorism is an attack on civilian (or cultural) targets inside the enemy's territory. The purpose of terrorism is to demoralize a people and turn them against the wars that their armies are waging. It is a popular subject in classical art and is displayed on the walls of museums throughout the world. Remember the ever popular "rape and pillage" and "sack and burn?" That is terrorism. Raping and pillaging was a beloved terrorist activity among US troops during the deadly "surge" against the innocent tribal people of Fallujah — men, women, and children who were unable to "resist" the savage terrorist attack of the Americans.
The United States is both adept and prolific in the use terrorism as a modern military tactic. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both US terrorist attacks in Japan that were focused entirely on Japanese civilians. No military targets were harmed by the US deployment of nuclear weapons. The firebombing of the city of Dresden in Germany was a US terrorist attack directed specifically at innocent civilian flesh and cultural targets. There is no nation on earth has come close to the masses of humanity that has been slaughtered by modern US terrorist attacks directed at civilians.
If the word "terrorism" gives you a thrill of fear or triggers a judgement of "evil" directed at foreign-others, or if the word "terrorist" elicits any particular emotional rise in your mind, then you are caught in a tsunami of hypocrisy and may be brainwashed beyond all help.
So, I ask you to ask yourself: Is your moral compass calibrated in a sane fashion relative to reality on-the-ground in this cosmos? Or, are you enabling terrorism.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Questions, comments, or concerns?
Comments
So, any comment of why you don't get comments to this
essay?
Of course, that's the position. Pretty much goes without saying, no?
Everything else sounds a bit black and white in moral terms and the question is very leading. It feels like if I were to say something critical, I would already be a terrorist. That's borderline manipulative. But that doesn't change my position. I don't consider myself a terrorist and if others think differently, then they should think again.
https://www.euronews.com/live
I read now through Meteor Blades diary for
"The Day of Mourning" and all its comments. I used to read all of his diaries, so I wasn't expecting anything less than what he posted. The comments are almost always the same. It's an endeavour to educate and I am glad he does it so brilliantly. One of the few writers who always stayed fair and detailed and never caused pain with his comments.
I just don't want to get into the current that sometimes develops in comment threads, that any sort of critical thoughts towards arguments some victim defenders bring forward is regarded too hastily as any kind of "washing", obviously mostly "white washing". There is the "green washing" as well. And there is the "I have many black friends"-sort of washing, or there is the "subconscious racism"-washing.
Of course there is lots and lots of "washing" going on all the time and I understand the need to point out those "dirt history washers" and fight against it. But rarely can one person understand the cultural and historical points of views of thousands of different tribes. It's the big picture, like lotlizard mentions in one of her comments over there, that is important to get and not getting drawn into the "washing" kind of semantical hair splitting.
If I may say so, I sometimes envied those, who can claim being an anchestor of victims, no matter where they become a victim and by whom, just because if you are not a victim, but descendant of victimizers, you are out of luck and rarely believed in anything you say or not understood.
Lemme stop here, because. heh, I am whining...
https://www.euronews.com/live
The one-sidedness of the "victim" narrative gives the game away.
The most highly organized, well funded, heavily armed, and exquisitely ruthless power structures in history conjure up a one-sided narrative in which their sole purpose was only and ever to defend and avenge innocent victims.
Pointing out that these structures themselves victimize whole populations on an industrial scale, and showing the least bit of compassion for those innocent victims is only tolerated many generations after the fact.
Yes, now there is a little corner of the "mainstream" where one is allowed to present the American Indian side of the Thanksgiving story.
Yes, now there is a little corner of the "mainstream" where one may question — provided it is done in the feeblest, most "civil" and academically detached voice one can muster — whether the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified.
No, the "mainstream" still finds it much too soon to show more than homeopathic amounts of empathy or compassion towards — as a prime example of an "out" group in Western discourse — the Palestinians in light of what they have endured.
(Here's an exchange on the GWS that shows what is likely to happen when one does show such empathy.)
The "mainstream" psychologically conditions one to side with the bullies or be derided as an outsider. Expect to be barraged with both outright name-calling and warnings such as "now you are getting into CT [conspiracy theory] territory" or "you don't seem to realize how stupid [or other pejorative] you are making yourself look."
Sometimes I feel all the time, emotion, and effort I've devoted to politics over the last ten years has been a total waste and has achieved less than nothing. I wish I could have all that time, passion, and energy back.
Other times, I see — as this diary lays out so well — how easy it is to be seduced into mindlessly cheering on the terrorist acts, tactics, and strategies of the U.S. and/or other governments.
Then my feeling is that, though absorbing so much history and politics has gained me little, at least I have not been seduced into that. In its humble way, that alone is a dharma and a mitzvah.
now I am not sure I understood the essay correctly
I think I experienced that on dailykos and it had an effect on me though I tried to handle it somehow on an emotional level.
Your comment is excellent and expresses lots of feelings I have myself.
Yes, I think that is what happened to the young Max Blumenthal in Germany. His engagement for the Palestinian's fate was considered "too heavy", ie more than a homeopathic amount - as you so beautiful express it -, especially as he wanted to distribute his "bitter medicine" exactly they day, Germans wanted to "demonstrate their feelings of guilt for what they had done (Kristallnacht and Holocaust) and respect the victims (European Jews murdered). Being so far and for such long time away from Germany, this incident confused me a lot in the beginning. Listening right now to the video, I linked to, just makes my head spin again. It is really necessary to dig into what Max has to say. It's difficult for me to do and judge clearly.
With regards to Pluto's essay, I was just wondering what would happen if being critical of those, who defend the victims, would be equated as "enabling" terrorism of the heavily armed US and other governments. I am not clear if I made myself correctly understood.
I want to be able to be critical even to those, whose mission it is to defend the victims of oppression and exploitation or genocide, if I happen to find something in them, I can't support, or if I feel those defenders may have blind spots in their visions. I kind of don't want to be counted as an enabler of terrorism, if I find something on the victim defenders, which I think is not right as well. That's why I said I am not a terrorist or an enabler of terrorism. Don't know if you can follow me in this.
Thanks for your outstanding comment.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Unlike at Creamsicle*, the folks at the c99 community inspire me
to put effort into it and try to live up to a higher standard. That “higher standard” encompasses many things — truthfulness, mindfulness, writing style, and “journalistic ethics.” (Sometimes it turns into an “insomnia commando,” but what the heck, you all are worth it.)
You're very welcome, mimi.
* In my childhood, Creamsicle (now a registered trademark of Unilever) referred to a popular frozen confection on a stick, a compromise between a hollow shell of orange sherbet and privileged white vanilla ice cream in the moderate center forming a pragmatic whole.
Voldemort Syndrome
I am cursed to view the world with parity. "If New Jersey was attacked and occupied by Syria, and if Americans fought back or resisted, would the Americans then be insurgents and terrorists?" I am not a nationalist. I do not identify with any particular dirt mound on this planet. So, parity is the only way I can set my moral compass, and frankly, I must conclude that only Orcs and imbeciles do it any other way.
I noticed the American Indian / Thanksgiving awareness loosening up. Bit it still doesn't come close with what actually happened: A human genocide of 100 million that took place on the blood-soaked-soil of the the United States. The largest and most horrific human genocide in world history. It happened at the exact same time the gun was invented. This continent could not have been cleared and stolen, otherwise.
That was a forbidden topic until now.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki still doesn't fly, cognitively, in the minds of white colonists.
The silence here said so very much. But, I never saw it any other way.
And there are dangerous things that no one speak of. The golem behind this entire Western horror show cannot be discussed at all, because it is not worth the ensuing social and political grief. Albert Einstein said it once and done, in his 1948 letter to the NYT. And, it was already too late.
I've come to the same conclusion. It is, in my judgement, my only real moral achievement of significance..
At this point, my speech is so censored that I cannot even comment with on a climate change thread, because stating the obvious core "truth" in the matter is way too much,way too soon. I've given up on that topic, altogether.
As Frederic Hayak rightly pointed out: “It is not difficult to deprive the great majority of independent thought. But a minority who retain awareness and the inclination to criticize must also be silenced.”
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
I had to look it up: "Voldemort Syndrome"
my little family had it back in the days. Everybody used it against the other to make their arguments. It was very tiring, very emotionally draining. But it's the only way in a sense. And no, you never give up, just protect yourself, as to be able to go on.
https://www.euronews.com/live