The Inhumanity of War

Editor's Note: I originally had this article published by Global Research on March 23, 2011




The world is engulfed in wars, now in Libya, where the US and its allies have begun bombing a sovereign country, as well as in the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

While there are those who condemn the use of violence on all sides and stress the need for dialogue, it seems that world leaders do not realize just how inhumane war is.

Wars are detrimental to everyone involved.

Our servicemen and women suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and are sometimes physically scarred as well, while civilians are often killed, sometimes brutally and without remorse. In these killings, the soldier becomes deeply damaged on a psychological level because in order to kill someone, one must first detach themselves from the situation and see the person or people he is killing as ‘the enemy’ and herein lies the danger. To see certain people as ‘the enemy’ is essentially dehumanizing them and thus relieving yourself of any wrong doing.

This mindset extends not just to the people you are fighting, but to the entire population at large, then it is not difficult to understand just how easy it is for people to massacre civilians indiscriminately.

Yet, in this dehumanization of other human beings, soldiers also dehumanize themselves. By killing others, the soldier allows his/her empathy, compassion, and value of human life to slowly erode.

This dehumanization continues when it comes to the situation of civilian deaths.

The political and military elite use such terms like ‘collateral damage’ to describe the situation. In reality, what they are saying is that civilians don’t matter and they, like the soldiers, detach themselves from the situation.

This is only made worse when soldiers commit war crimes and the elite act with haste to produce a coverup story. One recent incident being a so-called NATO (so-called because whenever civilians are killed, the US likes to say that it was a NATO weapon, when, more likely than not, it was an American weapon) helicopter killed nine Afghan boys, they are complicit in the destruction of their own morals by protecting what is wrong.

What needs to occur so that this will end, is that the public at large needs to see the inhumanity of war and this is not meant just for the United States, but for the world at large.

If the masses see how inhumane and wrong war is, they will be more likely to demand the need for dialogue between parties. Also, we need to change the thinking of the military and political elite so that everyone realizes exactly what they are doing when they declare war on another country or launch Tomahawk missiles into a country- killing people, whether they have a uniform on or not. If we do not do this, the cycle of inhumanity will continue and so will the moral destruction of our soldiers and politicians.

We must realize the inhumanity of war, for only then will it be stopped.

What About Peace?

In times of deceitful wars and engineered democratic revolutions, it seems that there is no time at all to talk about peace.

We talk about terrorists, wars, conflicts, and wars to be, yet we never talk about what truly matters: education, eliminating poverty, social and societal understanding, and justice. We are so preoccupied with the forces of destruction that we never are able to foster the forces of peace and understanding. The world has become caught up in wars, spending $1.63 trillion on military spending alone last year, all while global food prices continued to rise.  We consistently ask ourselves if we are safe or not, without realizing that the money we spend on weapons helps to make us unsafe, as they are sold around the world and then we must build new weapons to counter them.

The world promotes capitalism, an economic system that promotes competition and damages the environment  ignoring the fact that humans are hard-wired to cooperate, empathize, and care about the environment. 

Humanity has become so war-driven that the internet, a tool that has been and should be used to foster democracy, peace, and understanding, has instead been turned into a tool of war with the US leading the way by creating its Cyber Command, using its Echelon system for corporate espionage, and in general aiding in other nations such as the UK and China to all engage in cyberwarfare.

There is much discussion today about terrorism in the West and especially in America. However, what we ignore is that much of US foreign policy promotes terrorism and that in many of these countries where there are terrorists, there are "political, economic, and social conditions [that] foment radicalism." 

There is also much worry about the climate change, seeing as how the ice caps are melting at a much faster rate and over time this may very well put several nations underwater. This is a global problem and the only way it will be solved is if humanity as a whole works together, not if we blame one another for the emitting greenhouse gases.

The world needs to rethink its position on war, economics, and social justice. If we can spend so much money on preparing to kill one another and consistently ask who will be our next enemy, then we can ask the simple question: What about peace? and start planning to make a more peaceful world in which we can all live, thrive, and prosper together in a beautiful world, rather than fighting over what remains.

American Corpocracy: Verizon Strikes

The American Corpocracy is coming even further into fruition as the government becomes involved with the Verizon workers strike.

For the past two weeks approximately, Verizon workers have been striking ever since Verizon

laid out its intention to rein in pensions, require workers to contribute at least $100 to their health-insurance premiums and make it easier to fire members of the CWA [Communications Workers of America] and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which together represent about 45,000 Verizon workers, mainly in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. [1]

Verizon wants to do this even though they pay no taxes at all and the fact that "the company's revenue rose 2.8 percent to $27.5 billion in the second quarter [of this year]." [2] This is a blatant crackdown on unions in the name of profit

In response to the striking, Verizon has accused strikers of sabotage, saying that "wires had been cut in some places, causing the loss of phones and Internet service for residences and businesses" [3] and decided to bring in the FBI, with Special Agent Bryan Travers stating that they were "'looking into the matter from a security standpoint'" since critical infrastructure had been damaged. However, CWA spokeswoman Candice Johnson "accused Verizon replacement workers and managers of driving vehicles into picketing crowds, striking more than a dozen pickets" and also noted that in the past, Verizon has been known to "order replacement workers to commit acts of sabotage on their own infrastructure to frame strikers and curry favor with the public." [4]

At the heart of this, Verizon is having workers suffer for the effects of the free market. Overall Verizon's "profitability had been declining for a decade, along with the number of landline customers." This decrease in the amount of landline customers is due to

the simple fact is there are fewer and fewer landline customers. The industry says 27 percent of Americans no longer have landline phones -- a number that has jumped in the past few years. They've moved solely to cellular service, a booming business for Verizon and other market giants. [5]

The landline business means a lot to Verizon as they invested more than $626 million in landline infrastructure in Maryland and Washington D.C. last year [6] and they want to keep it profitable. 

It has been reported that the New York Police Department "is using crucial anti-terror resources to protect Verizon workers and equipment during a massive strike against the telecom giant." [7] Which must lead one to ask the question: Exactly why is the NYPD using anti-terror resources to make protect loyal Verizon workers and Verizon equipment? It very well may be that just like the FBI, the NYPD is now being used as a tool of the corporate elite to protect their interests.


Endnotes
 
1: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904480904576496661280595564.html 
2: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/07/verizon-workers-strike_n_920354.html
3: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/12/verizon-strike-fbi-union_n_925159.html
4: http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/12/technology/verizon_strike/index.htm?iid=HP_LN
5: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/verizon-strike-2011-landline-workers-asked-concessions-wireless/story?id=14257451
6: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/01/idUS239209+01-Feb-2011+PRN20110201
7: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/terror_cops_aid_verizon_jkHbyPAKaEDEFXFEeNWEUN

Violence Spreads Beyond London

NATO War Crimes

Korean Artillery DIspute

Two days ago it was reported that South Korea "said North Korea fired artillery salvos near a disputed sea border" and that in response South Korea returned fire two times, once at about 1pm and again "around 7:46 p.m. when two more shells landed in the ocean." In response to the shootings, South Korea increased surveillance and air patrols, while US forces began to closely monitor the situation.

However, North Korea denies firing at South Korea, saying that "what South Korean military personnel and islanders heard was actually construction blasting inside North Korea." One anonymous North Korean military official went so far to say that what South Korea was arguing was nothing but 'sheer fiction.' There is speculation that the reason North Korea fired at South Korea was "because relations with the South are not progressing as Pyongyang desired, they want to raise tensions to put themselves in a more advantageous negotiating position."

The South Korean president threatened "to respond forcefully to provocations from the country's prickly northern neighbor." This attack comes only "after the shelling last November, which killed four people" and "the sinking of a   South Korean warship in March 2010, widely blamed on the North's navy."

What is also important to include is that this dispute "occurred barely a fortnight after the two Koreas’ nuclear envoys met for the first time in over two years" and a week after "a leading North Korean diplomat travelled to New York for talks with Washington’s top official on North Korean affairs." Even though all parties involved said that the talks were 'constructive,' this incident may at best, put the talks on hold for a while and at worst, end them entirely for quite some time. 


The talks raised hopes for the restart of the six-party talks over North Korea's nuclear weapons program, yet they may potentially crumble entirely as things heat up on the peninsula, with neither side wanting to look weak.

Bureau Of Investigative Journalism: Drone War Exposed

Yesterday the Bureau Of Investigative Journalism released a "comprehensive study of US drone strikes in Pakistan."


Analysis: The Covert Drone War by Iain Overton


Drone War Exposed – the complete picture of CIA strikes in Pakistan by Chris Woods 


Interactive timeline of all recorded CIA drone strikes


‘You cannot call me lucky’ – drones injure over 1,100