Carl, I think the key word in what you said is power. Of course, people
who are in power or have power are a lot better at getting what they
want by trampling on the people who do not have power. Unless you are
talking about physics that is what power is. And that is why those of us
who do not have power, at least individually, need to combine our
collective power to take the power away from those who do possess power
over the rest of us.
___
Carl Sagan
“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind
and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says
everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the
fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
― Carl Sagan
On 12/13/2019 11:24 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
I don't know if those in power do a better job of plundering, raping
and torturing, but since they are in control they can pour more
resources, time and energy into their cruel acts. But I've heard and
read about plenty of roving bands who are as cruel and heartless as
any Tyrant ever in power. And of course we all can point to examples
where the "People" rose up, overthrew the cruel Masters, and began
their own reign of terror. Maybe it's ingrained in our DNA, or we've
been so battered by the constant propaganda of thousands of years that
we can no longer think straight. Whatever the case, we are rushing
along, like a herd of Bison being driven to the edge of a high cliff,
to meet our own demise. It may simply be beyond our Human brains to
do other than what we've done since before written history. There are
times when I wish that there really were some all powerful, fair and
caring power. But if such did exist, It would have stepped in
hundreds of years ago and done a bit of Smiting, Itself. Remember,
our true history is one of the Masses suffering in poverty, and under
the control of a few powerful Masters. All of Man's great physical
achievements came by way of Common Men straining and dying as they
built mighty edifices honoring their Masters. Those Masters who
seldom ever lifted a finger toward active participation.
And after we have been used up and cast aside, we write down in our
history books the praises of those Drones.
Carl Jarvis, still searching for those Great days Donald Trump is
taking us back to.
On 12/13/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I realize that it is flying in the face of accepted orthodoxy on this list,
but haven't there always been some people in every class who have been
willing to rape, plunder, and kill to get what they want? It's just that the
people with power and control do a better job at it.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2019 9:39 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: JOHN KIRIAKOU: Those Torture Drawings in the
NYT
There is a sickness abroad in the Land.
It fly's in the face of that Land where Freedom ringsBut the Truth is, that
Land where Freedom rings never did exist. Our Ruling Class has always been
willing to rape, plunder and torture in order to get what it wants.
Return America to her former greatness? Sorry Mr. president, those days
never existed.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/12/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
JOHN KIRIAKOU: Those Torture Drawings in the NYT
December 12, 2019
In 2002, John Kiriakou captured the Guantanamo prisoner who drew those
sickening pictures. Abu Zubaydah has a constitutional right to face
his accusers in court, or be released, Kiriakou says.
Entrance to Camp 1 in Guantanamo Bay's Camp Delta, 2005. (Kathleen T.
Rhem.
Wikimedia Commons)
By John Kiriakou
Special to Consortium News
The New York Times last week published shocking drawings by Guantanamo
prisoner Abu Zubaydah showing in graphic detail the types of tortures
he endured at the hands of CIA officers and contractors at secret
prisons around the world. The drawings were sickening. With a
child's simplicity, they showed the irrational cruelty of the CIA's
torture program, which weakened our country, violated domestic and
international law and ended up saying so much more about us, as
Americans, than it did about the terrorists who wished us harm.
The Times did its duty of reminding us what monsters the CIA produced
in the early years of its so-called war on terror, people introduced
to most Americans in the Senate's torture report. These are people
such as the CIA's former Director George Tenet and Deputy Director
John McLaughlin.
They include unapologetic torture proponents such as former Deputy
Director for Operations Jose Rodriguez and current CIA Director Gina
Haspel. They are the creators of the torture program: psychologists
James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. And in the photos of Abu Zubaydah's
drawing that the Times ran, the CIA dutifully blacked out even the
stick-figure sketches of the actual torturers, those CIA officers who
sold their souls to break the law, all in honor of that false god called
"national security."
Woefully Inadequate Article
With that said, the Times article, although revelatory in terms of Abu
Zubaydah's personal story, was woefully inadequate. It never
mentioned, for example, how the Obama administration did literally
nothing to make any of this right. Remember former President Barack
Obama's decision to hold no one accountable for the torture program
and instead "look forward, not backward?" That didn't serve justice.
It just protected the torturers and the criminals who supported them.
Remember the promise to close Guantanamo?
It never happened.
Please Make Your End-of-Year Donation Today
And what about that Senate torture report? We talk about "the Senate
torture report" like we actually know what was in it. We don't. The
5,500-page report was never released. Instead, after a battle royal
with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), Obama finally
allowed only a heavily redacted version, less than 700 pages, of the
report's executive summary to see the light of day. And all of that
happened after then-CIA Director and Obama loyalist John Brennan
ordered CIA officers to secretly hack into the SSCI's computer system
to see what committee investigators were up to. Of course, no charges for
that were ever filed.
Guantanamo Bay prisoner Abu Zubaydah.
Abu Zubaydah has been in U.S. custody for a long time. It's already
been nearly 18 years. I know. I captured him on the night of March
22, 2002, in an al-Qaeda safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan. We were
convinced at the time that he was the third-ranking person in al-Qaeda.
That was wrong.
He was certainly a bad man. He had founded both of al-Qaeda's
training camps in southern Afghanistan and he had also created an
al-Qaeda safe house in Peshawar, Pakistan, called the "House of
Martyrs." Want to go to Afghanistan to make jihad? Call Abu
Zubaydah. Already in Afghanistan and you want to go home? Call Abu
Zubaydah. But he was not the No. 3. He had never even joined
al-Qaeda. And he had never pledged fealty to Osama bin Laden.
A Pakistani policeman shot and severely wounded Abu Zubaydah on the
night we captured him. He was then transported to a secret CIA prison
to recover and to be tortured. As you can imagine, he confessed to a
wide variety of terrorism-related crimes, whether he had actually
committed them or not. A torture victim will tell his torturer
literally anything just to make the torture stop. None of that
information, because it was collected illegally, is admissible in a
court of law.
And so, Abu Zubaydah, like every other Guantanamo detainee with the
dubious exception of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Muhammad,
sits in solitary confinement year after year without ever having been
charged with a crime.
There is only one way out of this national embarrassment. Abu
Zubaydah has a constitutional right to face his accusers in a court of
law. He has a right to be tried by a jury of his peers. If he is not
charged - if he cannot be charged - with a crime, he must be released.
That's the law.
It's
the American way.
Former President George W. Bush got us into this situation by allowing
the likes of his Vice President Dick Cheney to run the country. Barack
Obama did nothing to improve the situation. Indeed, he sided with the
CIA at every opportunity. President Donald Trump (who has publicly
supported torture), well. it's not even worth having that
conversation. But the bottom line is that what Abu Zubaydah and
others have endured in secret prisons and at Guantanamo is not the
American way. It's not constitutional. It's not legal. We have to
correct this immediately.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former
senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John
became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration
under the Espionage Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23
months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush
administration's torture program.
