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Archive for the ‘destruction’ Category

4 Chicago Thugs Torture Disabled Young Man on Facebook Live Stream (Video)

There is no excuse for violence against another for any reason, and should not be condoned by anyone. this whole 4 thugs torture a poor defenseless mentally challenged child” narrative is skewed. I read a lot of comments under the videos presented and news stories written about this event. It seems that folks can hardly wait to spew venom at the supposed perpetrators of a crime against someone they deem innocent, harmless and defenseless.
And then I remember. The innocents who were kidnapped, tortured, beaten,
starved and stuffed in the hulls of ships during the North Atlantic Slave trade. I remember the many who died and who still cry in the slave Castles of Elmina. I remember standing there and feeling the walls close in on me as their cries ripped my ears apart. I remember not being able to even read the entire book “Black cargoes.”
I remember Antoine Sterling, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland and many others who simply wanted to be able to be treated like human beings.
I remember the Palestinians, who face torture and trepidation every day as they watch home after home, community after community bulldozed to the ground and their guts squeeze in a vice grip, like a traffic jam.

I remember homeless veterans who fought for a cause not their own, but for a false system with the false belief that it is the protectorate of the world and the way to keep it safe from tyrannical leaders, is to drone democracy down its throat.

I remember the many traumatic false flags perpetrated by a thuggish system that only cares about the financial advantage of its escapades and not the hurt, trauma, guilt and deceit perpetrated on the masses who view this thuggishness.
I remember the many lost children, lost forever and barely recorded by the alphabet agencies, who thru their own complicity, cover up the many scandalous crimes perpetrated against the most vulnerable of our world, our children.
I remember how the churches, mosques and synagogues are filled with hate, deceit, anger, distrust, incest, rape and adultery, while their walls are painted in diamonds and gold.
I remember the buried bodies of aborted fetuses, silenced in the night by the desperation of ill-informed and frightened women, who see their bodies as property for someone else to use and discard of as they see fit.
I see, lost children, stuck in their devices, screaming and fainting when they don’t

get what they feel they deserve no matter how outlandish it may seem to their adult counterparts.

I remember men in dark cloaks, in dark rooms in the middle of the night, who plot and plan the annihilation of millions of people from the face of the planet by any means necessary.
I remember the destruction that is blasted through the media in movie after movie, video game after  video game where oversized imaginations struggle to believe it ain’t real, when, all the credits say is, “no animal was hurt in this film.”
I remember the cognitive dissonance.
And then I remember the litany all over again, the pain, hurt, distress, agony, abuse, etc. that one human being can impose on another, but then, somehow, it has to do with race or nothing at all to do with race, or maybe a little bit to do with race, or maybe it’s just ugly people doing ugly things.
And then I remember how fascinated we as humans become, to watch and engage in the total destruction of another human.

Maybe some of it is poor judgment, some of it nervousness, some of it voyeurism and some of it just incredulous, but all of it is us.
Every last one of us. All of it is in us.
And each of us, have the potential to be mean, cruel and despicable as the person we happen to be recently pointing our fingers at.
Cause I remember those cries for blood for the murderer. The lust and pleasure and joy in the eye when the verdict came down, “Execution” and the crowds that gather around to “watch” the “murdering thug” take his last breath. I remember the pleas for clemency from that murdering thug both behind bars and free .

I remember how quickly we are able to commit acts of violence, spanning a wide spectrum, against another human being and blame them for just being there, in the way.

So, yeah, those 4 young people, who lost their minds, lost their sensibilities, lost their empathy for another helpless defenseless one, were being insensitive thugs, they were committing a crime, and Facebook was complicit in this criminal act for allowing it to be aired and participating in the agenda of divide and conquer.
And yes, there is justice, and yes, there is truth, but in this reality, were we are all complicit, were we are all capable, so. Let us all remember, but for the Grace of God, go I.
Four Chicago Suspects Charged With Hate Crime After Broadcasting Torture of Special Needs Teen on Facebook Live

Category:

Alternative News, beheadings, Chicago, child abuse, CNN, destruction, ISIS, lynching, man's inhumanity to man, MSM, pedophilia, religion, thugs, torture, violence

Russian Air Forces destroy 500 terrorist oil trucks in Syria; disrupt oil sales channel

Russian Air Forces destroy 500 terrorist oil trucks in Syria; disrupt oil sales channel

Around 500 fuel tanker vehicles transporting illegal oil from Syria to Iraq for processing have been destroyed by Russia’s Air Forces, the General Staff said. “In recent years, Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and other extremist groups have organized the operations of the so-called ‘pipeline on wheels’ on the territories they control,” Russian General Staff spokesman Colonel General Andrey Kartapolov said. 

Hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel have been delivered to Iraq for processing by trucks and the revenue generated from these illegal exports is the one of the terrorists’ main sources of funding, he said. The spokesman displayed images showing convoys comprised of hundreds of vehicles transporting oil to back up his assertion. 


“In just the first few days, our aviation has destroyed 500 fuel tanker trucks, which greatly reduced illegal oil export capabilities of the militants and, accordingly, their income from oil smuggling,” Kartapolov stressed. The spokesman also said that the Russian military has begun developing proposals for joint military action with the French Navy against the terrorists in accordance with an order by President Vladimir Putin. “This joint work will begin after the arrival of aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Syrian shores,” Kartapolov explained. 

Russia has been bombing Islamic State and other terror groups in Syria since September 30 at the official request of country’s president, Bashar Assad. On Tuesday, Russia’s fleet of 25 long-range bombers joined Su-34, Su-25, and Su-24M warplanes conducting operations in Syria to double the number of airstrikes against the militants. Russian Air Forces destroy 500 terrorist oil trucks in Syria; disrupt oil sales channel — Puppet Masters — Sott.net: http://www.sott.net/article/306705-Russian-Air-Forces-destroy-500-terrorist-oil-trucks-in-Syria-disrupt-oil-sales-channel


How does ISIS earn $3 million a day? NATO helps them smuggle oil

Sputnik News
Sat, 15 Aug 2015 14:11 UTC

The terrorist network Islamic State (ISIL) is financed through illegal oil sales and makes a profit of about three million dollars a day. NATO members, including Turkey, the US and the United Kingdom tolerate the terrorists’ oil smuggling activities, DWN reported. 

Close allies of the United States and the UK secretly finance the terrorist group Islamic State (ISIL). The Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq and the Turkish military intelligence have supported ISIL’s oil smuggling activities and supplied the terrorist group with weapons and equipment, DWN reported. 

Oil smuggling is one of the main financial resources for ISIL. The terrorist group controls about 60 percent of Syria’s oil production and seven major oil fields in Iraq. 

ISIL managed to increase its production to 45,000 barrels of oil per day, supported by a network of corrupt officials in the Kurdish government and Turkey. With their help, the terrorist organization makes an average profit of about 3 million dollars a day, the newspaper wrote. 

However, both the Turkish and the Kurdish government officially deny any connection to ISIL’s oil smuggling activities.Both governments are said to have taken corresponding measures to stop oil smuggling, supported by the US and British governments. 

However, widespread corruption in political circles practically brought these efforts to a naught, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed reported to MiddleEastEye. 

Ahmed refers to statements of Turkish, Kurdish and Iraqi officials. An anonymous source in the ruling party of Iraq, the Islamic Dawa party, confirmed to him that “members of the Kurdistan Regional Government have tolerated ISIL’s oil sales on the black market.” 

According to the official, Turkey tolerates ISIL’s oil black market as well, with the US silently watching these activities. 

“The Americans know what’s going on. But Erdogan and Obama have a good relationship with each other. Erdogan makes basically what he wants and the United States has to agree with it,” the official said. 

Even British corporations are reported to be involved in the business of the Islamists. The Anglo-Turkish oil company Genel Energy closely linked to a group of British parliamentarians has reportedly received an order to supply the refineries for the Kurdish energy company Group Nokan. The latter is suspected of supporting ISIL’s illegal oil sales to Turkey, DWN reported.

Category:

$3million, bombers, chaos, destruction, illegal smuggling, ISIL, NATO, oil trucks, Russia, Turkey, US, War on Terror

Don’t Thank Me for My Service, by Camillo Mac Bica

Nana’s Commentary:

All my life I loved fireworks. I would go to the 4th of July display every year that I could. I would lie down on the ground and just take it all in. Then I read about the impact that they have on some veterans. I stopped going.

I think that veterans should be given every single thing they need to make it back to civilian life and then given anything they ask for. They go off and fight a rich man’s war and come back to very poor treatment and little consideration for their PTSD. High rates of domestic abuse, drugs and alcohol use, homelessness, poverty and suicide should not even be mentioned in the same sentence when speaking of a Veteran.

I am totally against the barbarism of war, but if these folks are going to go out there and cause all kinds of devastation to themselves and others for the benefit of the elite, then the elite should take care of them to the utmost degree!! Any country that does not take care of its veterans is truly degenerate and completely lacking of empathy, gratitude or compassion. And that’s what I have to say about that!!

 Don’t Thank Me for My Service

Sunday, 03 June 2012 08:23By Camillo Mac Bica, Truthout | Op-Ed
I do not want to appear disrespectful or ungrateful, but should we meet on the street one day, do say “Hello,” or “Fine day” or other such nicety, but please do not thank me for “my service” as a United States Marine. I make this request because my service, as you refer to it, was basically, either to train to become a killer or to actually kill people and blow shit up.
Now, that is not something for which a person should be proud nor thanked. In fact, it is regrettable, and for me a source of guilt and shame, something I will have to live with for the rest of my life, as the past cannot ever be undone. So, when you thank me for my service, it disturbs me … a lot. First off, it brings to mind my wasted youth and lost innocence, and the horrible and unnecessary deaths of good friends and comrades. Second, it reminds me of my responsibility and culpability for the pain and suffering I caused innocent people, again something I would rather forget, but cannot. Third, it reinforces my belief that you have absolutely no idea about the nature and reality of the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, because if you did, you would understand that thanks are inappropriate. Fourth, it reminds me that many of those who feel the need to offer thanks were apathetic about – or even supportive of – the war, while they refuse to participate themselves or did little or nothing to end it. And lastly, I have to admit that I doubt the sincerity of these expressions of supposed gratitude, as “Thank you for your service” is just something to say not because you care about what I did or sacrificed, but only to demonstrate your supposed good character, or patriotism and/or “support” for members of the military and veterans.

In making this request not to be thanked for my service, I am, of course, expressing only my opinion, and, perhaps, my idiosyncrasy, and I make no claim to be speaking for other veterans. I would wager, however, that many, perhaps even most, who have experienced the horror of war and have the courage and presence of mind to think about and evaluate what the war they served in was truly about would understand and probably concur with this request. Those veterans, however, who may not agree, who cling to the mythology of heroism, glory, honor and nobility of war, do so in large measure from fear that acknowledging war’s reality would somehow diminish their sacrifice and the sacrifices of those whose lives were lost. Perhaps understandably, they view such sacrifices and loss as difficult enough to live with when they had value and purpose, and as intolerable if they were misguided and unnecessary. To these brothers and sisters, I would offer the following questions and observations for them to ponder.

First, what was accomplished by your sacrifice and by the waste of lives and treasure in Vietnam, in Iraq and in Afghanistan? Where is the honor, glory and nobility in killing and dying for greed, incompetence, and paranoia? Second, the mythology you cling to for comfort is a tool of political leaders to make war palatable, to garner support for their militarism and abandonment of diplomacy. It is what motivates future idealistic, perhaps naive, young people to “heed the call,” to seek honor and glory, by enlisting in the military to fight for a cause they have been deceived into believing is right, just and necessary, but which is, in reality, a string of wars for corporate greed, power and hegemony. All who are touched by war are tainted and require readjustment, perhaps even rehabilitation, but in order to truly come home from war, to make the perilous journey of healing, one must face the realities of one’s own war experience head on, as no healing is possible from fantasy, myth, rationalization and distortion of truth.
So, in the future, if you really insist on thanking me for something, do not thank me for

the eight years I spent as a Marine, but for the 45 or so years following my discharge from the military that I have spent as an activist fighting for human rights and social justice and to end the insanity of war. Frankly, however, I would prefer that you just say hello, or fine day or other such nicety. You see, my activism all these years warrants no praise or merit, as it is not something I choose to do. Rather, I do it because I must, perhaps as penance for my culpability for the sacrilege of war. And if you truly want to demonstrate your good character, patriotism, and support for the troops and veterans, rather than merely mouth meaningless expressions of gratitude for something you don’t truly understand or care much about, do something meaningful and real. Do what is truly in the interest of this nation and of those victimized by war.

Make some demands.

“how can we still have troops in other countries and we celebrate with “bombs”… it would be lovely if we decided not to do them in honor to our troops… That would be a great way to say THANK YOU!”

Demand, for example, an immediate end to the corporate takeover of our “democracy” and to the undue influence of the military-industrial-Congressional complex. Demand sanity in Pentagon spending and a reallocation of finite resources to people-focused programs such as health care, education and jobs rather than to killing and destruction. Demand an immediate end to wars for corporate profit, greed, power and hegemony. Demand that we adhere to the Constitution and to international law. Demand accountability for those who make war easily and care more for wealth, profit and power than for national interest or for the welfare of their fellow human beings. And finally, demand the troops be brought home now, and that they be adequately treated and cared for when they return. So, should we meet on the street one day, do say Hello, or Fine day, and as you talk to me about your efforts to make this country and the world a better and more peaceful place in which to live, I would be happy to thank you for your service.

CAMILLO MAC BICA, PhD, is a professor of philosophy at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is a former Marine Corps officer, Vietnam veteran, longtime activist for peace and social justice, and the coordinator of the Long Island Chapter of Veterans for Peace.


Links: 
The Things They Cannot Say

More Than Human? The Ethics of Biologically Enhancing Soldiers

Fireworks, Triggers, PTSD, and Veterans

Category:

Afghanistan, constitution, democracy, destruction, devastation, dominance, Edwin Starr, heroism, International law, Iraq, NWO, service, soldiers, Veterans, Vietnam, war

The Economic Destruction of Baltimore, by Rob Urie

    Baltimore, Police Violence and Economic Justice
    by ROB URIE
    “We need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders. The ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ for violent offenders has to be part of the plan. We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets.”
    Hillary Clinton 1994
    The Economic Backdrop
    American politics is the realm of Immaculate Conception where actual policies and accumulated history disappear behind a veil of personal characteristics and unrelated acts. The (mis)leadership class pretends that ruling class machinations— trade agreements, financial deregulation, imperial wars, surveillance and policing have no bearing on social outcomes. American cities bear the imprint of these policies plus the residuals of slavery, genocide and the particulars of Western capitalism that have embedded history into current social relations. This is to argue that the individualist explanation of Western history may be interesting for those so-inclined, but it fails as description in every conceivable dimension.
    Freddie Gray. Original Image source: cnn.com
    Political explanations of public policies like trade agreements and financial deregulation put a political face on fundamentally economic arrangements. When Bill and Hillary Clinton instituted the ‘tough-on-crime’ policies that so exacerbated mass incarceration there was a political explanation— pandering to White suburban voters’ manufactured fears of a Black urban underclass to garner votes, but the policies tied closely to American economic history as well. From slavery to convict leasing to urban dispossession, racial repression has produced economic value that has been expropriated. The Clinton’s neoliberal trade policies exacerbated the urban industrial exodus while deregulation of finance ‘monetized’ Black wealth for the taking. Seemingly unrelated ‘political’ policies often have economic explanations.
    Economic history ties America’s cities to political and economic hierarchy through the dimensions of this hierarchy. Washington to Baltimore to Philadelphia to New York was the land route North for Southern Blacks fleeing slavery. This was also one of the routes to industrial jobs following WWII. Sequential (engineered) oil crises in the 1970s roiled industrial America. In the late 1970s and early 1980s Federal Reserve policies decimated the industrial economy by increasing the value of the U.S. dollar. Bill Clinton passed NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and his deregulation of Wall Street provided the money needed to finance the relocation of a large portion of the U.S. industrial base overseas. None of these policies were crafted by the inner-city residents.

    Modern day Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago have neighborhoods left behind by policy decisions that decimated the economic bases that once supported them. When there were jobs people worked. When the jobs left people either stopped working or found other, less remunerative work in the service sector. The housing boom and bust monetized inner-city houses until the bubble burst. Rather than forcing Wall Street to clean up the mess inner city residents were left with their former wealth in the hands of bankers and an economy that imploded in the Great Recession. While this story is full of malefactors, Bill Clinton has major policy responsibility for mass incarceration, for neoliberal trade deals and for bank deregulation.
    The bankers who destroyed Baltimore discuss their bonuses
    with Congress. Image source: google images.
    The Murder of Freddie Gray
    The wholly implausible storyline that Freddie Gray severed his own spine being put out by the Baltimore police is a Rorschach test for social accountability. The political strategy of officialdom is to peel away those who will accept any explanation in favor of police actions, no matter how implausible, to marginalize protestors. That a significant portion of the population, both Black and White, wants to believe that the police always act in good faith illustrates a preconception that will only be effectively challenged through political estrangement. The fabrication adds insult to Freddie Gray’s murder and as such, to the conduct that the Baltimore police department needs to be held to account for. Freddie Gray was murdered in police custody. Technocratic explanations of the particulars only serve to obscure this basic truth.
    When videotape revealed the brutal beating the Los Angeles police inflicted on Rodney King the defense was able to convince a jury and a substantial portion of America that Mr. King had assaulted the police ‘batons’ with his head. One might wonder how graphic footage of a group of cops beating Rodney King within an inch of his life in plain public view could be construed otherwise. The tactic used was similar to the comments from officialdom, including the Black (mis)leadership class, toward protestors in Baltimore. Mr. King was alleged to have been in an angel dust rage that made him impervious to pain and to rational thought— he was an ‘out-of-control’ Black man. Likewise the protestors in Baltimore were deemed irrational ‘thugs,’ criminals with no legitimate right to political action.

    Graph (1) above: the official storyline has unknown forces producing intractable poverty in American cities when many of the forces are quite visible. Mass incarceration is racially targeted and causes wholesale immiseration by precluding meaningful employment. Wall Street’s subprime lending fiasco racially targeted neighborhoods and emptied them of residents as local wealth was transferred to the bank accounts of the already wealthy. It is paradoxical that public discussion of ‘looting’ in Baltimore has focused on angry citizens without deep discussion of what they are angry about. Home foreclosures in Baltimore (Graph (1) above) have followed the national housing boom – bust because Wall Street made predatory mortgage loans targeting neighborhoods of color. Rather than charging bankers with making fraudulent, predatory loans the citizens of Baltimore were forced to bear the consequences of banker malfeasance. Source: Baltimore Homeownership Preservation Coalition.

    In telling form, officialdom’s concern for property overshadowed care for the life of Freddie Gray and the many other Black, Brown and poor White youth and men murdered by the police. These misplaced priorities are thinly veiled socio-cide, concern with what can be replaced in place of what can’t be. The rapid vilification of protestors was accompanied by Immaculate Conception politics, denial of responsibility for the circumstances being protested. However, made apparent by events in Baltimore is that police murders only enter the American consciousness when buildings and police cars burn. Assertions that peaceful protests are the only legitimate form face the burden of history and official hypocrisy. Moral suasion through peaceful protest assumes a capacity that divergent class interests render improbable.
    Democracy Now! illustrated one such experiential divide when a Baltimore mother refused to join local youth who had volunteered to clean a burned CVS store because, as she put it, the police need to be made to understand that they can’t murder Black youth with impunity. Left unexplored, and apparently unconsidered by the youth who saw the local CVS outlet as ‘their’ store, is that through direct purchase and their Caremark consulting business CVS has put hundreds of locally owned pharmacies in inner city neighborhoods out of business and replaced them with minimum wage jobs and extractive economic practices. Likewise, the Ace Cash Express that was burned is a payday lender whose business model is to make usurious loans in poorly banked communities under terms that lead to permanent debt servitude.
    State police or police state? Original image source: spaulforrest.com.
    National Mis-Leadership Meets Local Mis-Leadership
    When President Obama called protesters in Baltimore ‘criminals and thugs’ he neglected to mention the class divisions that have as his major campaign contributors the Wall Street bankers who engineered the housing boom – bust still devastating Baltimore and whose subsidiaries are the payday lenders who destroy lives and neighborhoods there. Some fair portion of these campaign contributors would have been ‘criminals’ if Mr. Obama’s Justice Department had not shielded them from prosecution for their crimes. The term ‘thugs’ is widely used as racist code for Black and Brown youth and could be more appropriately applied to American drone operators so regularly slaughtering wedding parties across the Middle East. And the term most certainly applies to the police who murder Black and Brown youth with alarming regularity and officially sanctioned impunity.
    Much of the reaction to events in Baltimore harkens to the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s quip that “justice is incidental to law and order.” Implied is that justice may be set to the side if order can be maintained through systematic injustice. The conceptual problem is that, as with President Obama’s and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s slander of protestors as ‘thugs,’ class interests lie behind class-based policing. Heavily armed, militarized police could storm Wall Street (as metaphor for geographically dispersed finance) and corporate executive suites kicking in doors, handcuffing everyone they meet and opening fire on those who aren’t immediately compliant under the same theorized justification they have for doing so in Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia or Los Angeles. That they don’t is evidence that neither law nor justice is behind police actions in poor communities.
    If peaceful change is possible, why have the police been militarized to prevent it?
    The Department of Homeland Security calls protestors ‘terrorists’
    and the Ferguson, MO police department calls them ‘the enemy.’
    Original image source: google images.
    The economic crises affecting communities of color in Baltimore and elsewhere tie directly to government policies like trade agreements that benefit financiers, upper class ‘professionals,’ industrialists and the owners of capital. Official indifference to the social consequences of industrial relocation has produced economic dead zones in major cities since the 1960s. Wall Street’s predatory mortgages decimated black wealth in cities like Baltimore and with it the capacity for economic investment. Elite chides that citizens are destroying their future prospects through rebellion provide cover for the economic forces they control for their own benefit. In the last decade Wall Street has destroyed more of urban America than citizen rebellions ever could.
    The problem of the economic capture of the mis-leadership class suggests that political resolution is unlikely to come through the ballot box. Blacks have joined this mis-leadership class with co-optation being the singular result. American political economy is set up to perpetuate existing class relations with the racial residual of history as a component. Martin King began addressing economic justice with the understanding that it is a prerequisite to social justice. He was murdered shortly thereafter. The interest in ‘property’ in the face of the loss of life at police hands is clear indication of what drives official concerns. Therein lies the political paradox— economics is the more dangerous dimension of social injustice to address but it is also the most necessary. The U.S. has subverted democratic movements and invaded countries to prevent implementation of a minimum wage. But how is life possible without a living wage?
    Rob Urie is an artist and political economist.  
    Weekend Edition May 1-3, 2015

Category:

Baltimore, bankers, Clinton, Congress, criminal justice system, destruction, economic, foreclosures, Freddie Gray, neoliberal, Obama, outsourcing, rioting, violence, wall street

STOP THE KILLING TRAIN!

STOP THE KILLING TRAIN

author unknown

Published 8 August 2014

The killing train transcends each separate war, inequity, and injustice, and ultimately, and this is, of course, the point – so must our opposition. The killing train is fueled by poverty, disease, starvation, indignity, death squads, racism, sexism, class division, bombs, and more bombs.

Many years back, moved by the first Gulf War, I wrote a piece with the above title, Stop the Killing Train. I am revisiting the same subject because, regrettably, the topic remains at the forefront even if the precipitating violence is different.

For the purpose of the exercise, please use your imagination.

Suppose a hypothetical god got tired of what we humans do to one another and decided that from January 1, 1991 onward all corpses unnaturally created anywhere in or by the hand of the “free world” would cease to decompose. Anyone dying for want of food or medicine, anyone hung or garroted to death, shot or beaten to death, raped or bombed to death, anyone dying unjustly and inhumanely for want of clean air or water or other necessities of life, would, as a corpse, persist without decomposing. The permanent corpse would then automatically enter a glass-walled cattle car attached to an ethereal train traveling monotonously across the U.S., state by state, never stopping. The hypothetical God would tirelessly display our achievements for us all to see.

One by one the corpses would divinely load onto the cattle cars. After every thousand corpses piled in a car, a new car would hitch up and begin filling in turn. Mile after mile the killing train would roll along, each corpse visible through the train’s transparent walls. We can suppose it fills at the rate of 200 new corpses a minute, or one new car every five minutes, day and night, without pause.

By the end of 1991, on its first birthday, the killing train would easily measure over 2,500 miles long. Traveling at 20 miles an hour it would take about five days to pass any intersection across the U.S. Imagine you are sitting at a railroad crossing. You watch this horror go past, 24 hours a day, for five full days. Every car contains 1,000 corpses, all clearly visible. This hypothetical God knows how to communicate so we can’t ignore reality.

By the year 2000, assuming no dramatic change in institutions and behavior, the train would stretch from coast to coast about seven times. It would take about six weeks from the time its engine passed the Statue of Liberty to when its caboose would go by. Would the God still wonder when pitiful, aspiring humanity would get the message?

By 2014 – you can safely just double the ugly statistics. Deaths accelerate, unless, of course, we had gotten the message. So, coast to coast it would stretch, about 14 times. Every corpse an indictment.

Think how a young child sometimes points to a picture in a book or magazine and asks for an explanation, “Tell me about a tree?” A car? A boat? Or a train? A big train? The killing train? Go ahead, try to answer that one. Perhaps that explains why this image isn’t, in fact, a common one on our TVs and in our never-ending streams of information.

Bad enough, way worse than bad enough, it could even get worse. Consider that climate change will before long start to wrack up even larger kill lists. But, of course, those dead would pile into the killing train too, since with only modest exceptions they too are preventable.

The killing train, in any event, no matter how each moribund commuter who need not have been on board got his or her ticket, is horrendous.

Imagine the lost opportunity and lost love. Imagine as well the network of negative influences that radiate from the unnecessary deaths displayed by the killing train stretching from coast to coast and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Consider the horrendous impact, not only on those on board, but on every person that any of those corpses ever loved or would have loved, fed or would have fed, taught or would have taught.

Who rides the killing train? 
Certainly citizens of the “Third World,” selling their organs for food, selling their babies to save their families, suffering disappearances and starvation. They live in Brazil, the Philippines, El Salvador, but also New York. They enter the killing train, every day. It isn’t a peace train. It isn’t a justice train. It isn’t a love train. It is a killing train. Its current most bloody loading platform: Gaza. But don’t forget those who starve and die of preventable diseases in the Third World and in the first world too. All are onboard.

Is the gigantic sprawling disgusting image exaggerated? 10 million kids die yearly for lack of basic medical aid that the U.S. could provide at almost no cost in countries whose economies Exxon and the Bank of America have looted. Preventable death fills the killing train. To the sane, it is mass murder. The grotesque image I offer is actually understated.

Bloated diseased bodies are victims of murder just as surely as bullet-riddled bodies tossed into rivers by death squads, or shrapnel shredded bodies prone in the piles of blasted hospitals and homes. Denying medicine by out of reach pricing or preventable shortages is no less criminal than denying medicine by blowing up pharmacies and demolishing hospitals is no less criminal than supplying torture racks, stealing resources, and paving roads with bomblets. Bombing electric power stations and pulverizing hospitals enlarges the train. Deaths by starvation and disease are no less unnatural than those by bomblet and bullet, and enlarge the train.   

Evolution has given humans the capacity to perceive, think, feel, and imagine. During war time—as now exists in so many places —if we get aroused to action we begin to see the whole train as it persists day in and day out. When this happens, what do we do about it? Do we become depressed? Cynical? Anguished? Cry? Daydream of Armageddon? Daydream of justice? Or do we hand out a leaflet?

Once we begin to see the killing train, how do we face the killing train? Part of me says these crimes are so grotesque, so inhumane, that the perpetrators deserve to die, now. A little tiny killing train for the killers and no more big killing train for everyone else. An eye for a million eyes. What other step makes more sense? Was this the hypothetical God’s plan?

But, of course, that’s not the way the world works. Yes, people give the orders. People wield the axes, withhold the food, pay the pitiful salaries, blow up the power stations, spew the garbage, lie, steal, cheat, obey – and produce corpses. But institutions create the pressures that mold the people.

When an institutional cancer spreads through the human patient, what kind of surgeon can cut it away? Is the imprint of accumulated repression so deep it can never be excised.

At first, becoming attuned to our country’s responsibility for the corpses stacked behind transparent cattle-car walls makes handing out leaflets, or writing essays, or arguing for peace with a co-worker, or urging a relative to think twice about paying taxes, or going to a demonstration, or sitting in, or doing civil disobedience, or even taking over a workplace, seem insignificant. But the fact is, these are the acts that the hypothetical God, tired of our behavior, would be calling for if she were to actually parade the “free world’s” corpses down our main streets in killing trains. These are the acts that can accumulate into a firestorm of informed protest that raises the cost of profiteering and domination, of war making and pollution so high that the institutions breeding such behavior start to buckle.   

The fact is, when fighting a behemoth, “You lose, you lose, you lose, and then you win.” Every loss, understood properly to learn its lessons, is part of the process that leads to transforming institutions so that there can be no people as vile as Hussein or Bush, as Netanyahu or Obama. No more “Good Germans” or “Good Americans.” No more incinerated Jews or decapitated, starved, poisoned, starved, bulleted Palestinians.   

War is invariably unjustly motivated. War is always horrendously harmful. War is an orchestrated atrocity that mandates our militant, unswerving opposition. But so too does exploitation, racism, sexism, the systematic deprivation of any one community at the hands of any other.

But even after the Gaza crimes of the little thug Israel and of its guardian angel the big thug, America, ends, the on-going U.S. war against “free world” people who it has consigned to ride the killing train will, if it continues, remain a enormous crime against humanity. The killing train transcends each separate war, inequity, and injustice, and ultimately, and this is, of course, the point – so must our opposition. The killing train is fueled by poverty, disease, starvation, indignity, death squads, racism, sexism, class division, bombs, and more bombs. The power plant of the death, destruction, and generalized deprivation is our basic institutions.

The institutions must become our target.

Category:

bombs, bombs deprivation, death, death squads, destruction, disease, Gaza, hospitals, institutions, Israel, killing, Obama, poverty, racism, schools, sexism, starvation, war, war crimes