The Normalization of Deviance

Submitted by Meteor Man on Fri, 08/19/2016 - 12:27am

The U.S. has not fomally renounced the Geneva Conventions, we simply violate them at will:

Although the U.S. government would not dare to formally renounce the Geneva Conventions, the normalization of deviance has effectively replaced them with elastic standards of behavior and accountability whose main purpose is to shield senior U.S. military officers and civilian officials from accountability for war crimes.

Because . . . the normalization of deviance says we can.

The U.S. foreign policy establishment and its mainstream media operate with a pervasive set of hypocritical standards that justify war crimes — or what might be called a “normalization of deviance,” writes Nicolas J S Davies.

This is how it operates:

The normalization of deviance from the rules and standards that formally govern U.S. foreign policy has been quite radical. And yet, as in other cases, this has gradually been accepted as a normal state of affairs, first within the corridors of power, then by the corporate media and eventually by much of the public at large.

There ain't no turning back:

Once rules have been breached, decision-makers face a cognitive and ethical conundrum whenever the same issue arises again: they can no longer admit that an action will violate responsible standards without admitting that they have already violated them in the past.

For example:

For example, once U.S. officials had accepted the Orwellian “doublethink” that “targeted killings,” or “manhunts” as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called them, do not violate long-standing prohibitions against assassination, even a new administration could not walk that decision back without forcing a deviant culture to confront the wrong-headedness and illegality of its original decision.

But of course! Targeted killings are nothing like assassinations! Completely different!

That puts me right up against the fair use limit. The rest of the aeticle is an outstanding analysis of how widespread killing of innocent civilians has become the new normal. War crimes are now considered diplomatic tools.

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/08/15/us-war-crimes-or-normalized-deviance/

Tags:

war crimes

Geneva Conventions

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Comments

Submitted by Tall Bald and Ugly on Fri, 08/19/2016 - 1:38am

Ayuh, deviate too much

and you could be the target. If you Don't believe that 's where this will go, then I don't know what to tell you.

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

Submitted by Alex Ocana on Fri, 08/19/2016 - 7:34am

Dystopia Now!

It is not just the murder of targeted people and any civilians that may be in the way... deviance has taken control of the group think in USA domestic policing.

https://photographyisnotacrime.com/2016/03/24/graphic-california-cops-ki...

And jurisprudence:

https://www.rt.com/usa/monsanto-patents-sue-farmers-547/

And entertainment:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870984/ (There are a multitude of even worse examples).

And "elections" and corruption: (Just Google "Clinton")

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From the Light House.

Submitted by dancingrabbit on Fri, 08/19/2016 - 8:40am

This is such an excellent article, Meteor Man.

Thank you for bringing it to our attention, because it explains so well what has gone so very badly awry with the United States.

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Only connect. - E.M. Forster

Submitted by Meteor Man on Fri, 08/19/2016 - 10:37am

New Video of Another LAPD Homicide by Cop

Jesus fucking Christ. LAPD cops deviant sociopath bastards. I guess homicide has become standard operating procedure.

The videos capture Howard in an agitated state on the station house bench. They show the officers shooting him with a Taser while simultaneously tackling him to the ground. For four minutes, six officers are either on top of or surrounding Howard, handcuffing his hands and feet. One officer is atop him, with a knee in his back. Another, at least briefly, can be seen with his arm around Howard’s neck and shoulders. Officers and medical personnel slowly come to realize Howard is in distress.

Good thing we have the Police Commission keeping an eagle eye on cops:

On April 16, 2013, it reviewed the Howard case and subsequently issued an 18-page summary of its findings. Its detailed analysis noted that some things might have been handled differently — the decision to remove the handcuffs from Howard among them — but determined that, as a matter of policy, only Romero’s chokehold amounted to a violation.

The family was awarded a $3 million settlement, but the LAPD and the judge initially refused to release the tapes.

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/lapd-laugh-video-man-dies/

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Submitted by RantingRooster on Fri, 08/19/2016 - 4:01pm

If the Nuremberg laws were applied,

then every post-war American president would have been hanged. Just take a stroll through William Blum's book, "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II", and one can see how each successive president has engaged in activities that would have landed anyone else on a platform, with a hangman's noose around their neck.

We have become adept a masking criminal behavior under the guise of a "mythical" responsibility to do something, that, in reality, only benefits a few and not the very people it was intended to help, at least publicly.

I think this goes to a much deep psychological under current that Gustave Le Bon touched on in his book from 1896, The Crowd (The Psychology of the Crowd), and his subsequent work The Psychology of Revolution in 1913, that uses the French Revolution for analysis.

I think Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) pretty much despised the Revolution and the revolutionary legacy because he so distrusted the common people, particularly when making collective decisions. His analysis of revolutionary crowds seem to pain them as primitive animals devoid of good decision–making abilities who had to be reigned in by a "strong man" or dictatorial figure.

On some level, watching the other side and a big patrt of the deocratc fall on themselves to elect Hillary, are, in my analysis, engaging in a similar physiological and rhetorical behavior that help Hitler and Mussolini become the dictators they did. This crowd psychosis, better know today as group think, echo chamber, the beltway consensus, just has an updated name and shiny new office, and has new big mouth named Donald Trump spouting it's tenants like it's the gospel, to the pissed off white horde that adulates at his every utterance of nonsensical gibberish.

This little documentary on the The Psychology of Power makes a good case why it is so. (at least to me...)
[video:https://youtu.be/p8ERfxWouXs]

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C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

Submitted by Alligator Ed on Fri, 08/19/2016 - 8:31pm

This video is downright scary

The Council on Foreign Affairs appears, at least on this video, to be a most malign organization. The part where Hillary says she has come the the CFA "to learn" is even more scary. I wonder why the many presidents, starting with Eisenhower have had advisors who are/were members of the CFA.

Submitted by TheOtherMaven on Fri, 08/19/2016 - 4:54pm

It goes back way before le Bon

Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds was first published in 1841. Back in the day they used to call it "mass hysteria".

Since the book is public domain, it is of course available at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Submitted by RantingRooster on Sat, 08/20/2016 - 10:12am

thanks

for the link.

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C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

Submitted by QMS on Fri, 08/19/2016 - 9:02pm

grafitti scrawled inside a trans-continental train, US 1977

Mind your wants cause something wants your mind