10 Life Lessons I Learned as a Psychiatric Nurse – and Patient

Posted on May 14, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By Cortland Pfeffer

Over the past 25 years, I have been immersed in the mental health and addiction system as a patient, later as staff, as a Registered Nurse (RN), and eventually as a supervisor. My time in the mental health system officially began at age 17 when I was first hospitalized in a psychiatric unit. This preceded further hospitalizations, a number of treatment episodes for alcoholism/addiction, along with multiple stints of incarceration in jails. Eventually, through this experience, I was able to embrace recovery and ultimately gain employment at some of these same facilities in which I was treated.

Often I am asked about how I went from being a psychiatric patient and homeless drug addict to being a registered nurse and a supervisor at some of these facilities. While there is no magical answer to that question, there certainly have been some valuable life lessons learned along the way. These are 10 of the life lessons I have learned over time, which allowed me to continue on this journey.

1. If you are naturally different than the majority, you will be labeled.

It is our nature to want to try to fit in with the tribe. It can be lonely when you feel like you are different from other people. When you are not like the majority, others will notice this and try to get you to fit in to this box of normality. But defining “normal” is an impossible task. It is defined as conforming to a standard. However, this standard changes with different cultures and time periods. What was once normal, is now insane. Today we clearly live in an insane society – one in which we favor materialism over that of our fellow man; one in which there is more public uproar over a sporting event than the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo. To be “normal” in this type of society would actually make one insane. Yet, when you don’t follow the mold of a brainwashed culture you get labeled as different.

This can be quite destructive as Erich Fromm points out in his 1941 book “Escape from Freedom” as he highlights how people are drawn to authority as it is safer to go along with the pack than to think independently.

We go along with the societal norms for harmony, acceptance, and belonging – which are also innate human desires. Each human has a desire to feel a sense of community and purpose. However, when we go along with the group – even when it is violates our personal beliefs just for acceptance – it causes us to believe that something is wrong with us for thinking differently.

Solomon Asch tested human’s conformity in an experiment in 1951. Over the 12 critical trials approximately 75% of participants conformed at least once; and 25% of participants never conformed. In the control condition, the participants were asked to write down the correct match between the lines without sharing their answers with the group. The results showed that the participants were very accurate, giving the correct answers 98-percent of the time. This is one of many studies that show most people will go along with a crowd, even if it is not what they believe. So what happens if the tribe has decided that there is something “wrong” with you? Science will show that most of us will go along with that.

However this is a mistake. Take a look at the bell curve, which is used to show “normality distribution.” The bell curve is used in many areas of life and can be used here. In many bell curves, you see that 95-percent are within two deviations from the mean, or average. On the very end you will always see 5-percent of people. They are at the extreme end and do not fall inside the box of “normal.” It doesn’t make you bad to be outside the norm, and it also doesn’t make you crazy or sick. In fact, I would argue that those on the extreme ends are the ones that have changed the world.

For example, Mahatma Gandhi did not fit inside that box. The “norm” of his time was to accept the British imperialism in his home country of India. He saw the injustices and spent his life trying to free his people from oppression. He was imprisoned and survived many assassination attempts (although one finally killed him). Likewise, Martin Luther King Jr. also saw the injustices of African-Americans were facing in the United States and stood up to the oppression. They both went against the norms, were labeled, judged, and eventually lost their lives for speaking against the status quo. They both ended up dead, but years later we realized they were speaking the truth against an insane society.

Other people’s labels of you are just that — other people’s labels. It is out of fear and ignorance. Do not adapt to other people’s expectations. The world needs people of all sorts. We need diversity.

If you closely take a look at the criteria for someone who is gifted versus someone who has ADHD, Bipolar, Aspergers, and many other mental health diagnosis you will see that they are almost identical. So whether you are called bipolar or gifted doesn’t depend on you, but rather on the so-called expert assessing your life. It is all about perception and none of it matters. All that matters is that you are your most authentic and true version of yourself.

2. We as a society create mental health and addiction.

There have been numerous studies that have exposed the fact that trauma as a child leads to neural chemistry changes in your brain. Childhood trauma has been called the smoking of mental health. The same way smoking can cause or invoke many physical diseases, childhood trauma and maltreatment does the equivalent for mental health and addiction.

There are higher relapse rates for hypertension and heart disease than there are for addiction and mental health. However, we often treat the addict like they are a bad person or making bad choices. So we are taking someone who has been traumatized and often did not receive treatment for their trauma and we punish them by locking them up. This creates more shame, exasperating the trauma and causing the cycle to repeat itself. Additionally, the patient is not going to be readily willing to seek help in the first place due to the aforementioned shame.

What if we had a cancer drug that works 10-percent of the time and made people sicker? We would throw the drug away! However if a treatment center has a 10-percent success rate for addiction or mental health they’re considered successful. What other business could be 10-percent successful and would continue to exist?

The addiction and mental health industry continue to grow, despite this complete lack of success. There are extremely high rates of recidivism in these fields. Speaking from personal experience, more often than not the patients get sicker while in treatment.

The staff then blames this lack of success on the patient. They point fingers and say that the patient “was not ready” or that they have “poor insight.” The site that failed to provide adequate treatment blames the victim and takes no responsibility for their failure.

This system only continues because too many people are making too much money off keeping people sick. The staff tends to be undertrained, under-qualified, and lack any meaningful or diverse life experience. They are trained to believe that their patients are bad people that are making bad choices instead of a sick person who has been traumatized. This obviously results in receiving much different treatment.

Now there are some absolutely wonderful people in this field. That is a fact. However, in general there is an overall lack of humanity and compassion in the way this population has been treated. We are the most incarcerating society in the history of mankind and most of these prisoners are there for harmless drug offenses. Due to this influx of incarcerations, we have created for-profit prisons which rely on mass incarcerations for profit. They set up contracts with governments to guarantee high occupancy rates and spend millions of dollars lobbying to congress to make tougher prison laws to ensure they stay profitable. In turn, members of congress then hold stock in these private prisons – meaning that the people that make the laws are making money off the laws they sign into action.

We are locking up people who have a disease to profit the rich. Punishment does not work for this disease – it never has and it never will. If it did work, we would not have a this astronomical recidivism rate in jails for drug offenses.

3. Be true to who you are.

We run from who we truly are because we are told to by our environment. We are told that it is not okay to be our true self from the time we are young and we begin to believe it to be true. We spend our whole lives living for other people and living based on other people’s expectations. We eventually lose ourselves and create a false persona (or false self) – This is what I refer to as “The Mask”.

The longer we wear the mask, the more we forget who we are underneath. We start to think that we are our masks – the character that we present to the world for acceptance. As this continues, we grow to dislike our mask because it is not our true self. This leads to depression, self-hate, or even suicidal ideation. We think we hate ourselves, but in reality we hate this false self that we have created. When we go against our own nature, it will always create depression.

If you have forgotten who you are, it’s easy to remember. You know the truth by how you feel. If you want to remember what that feeling is like, simply go do something that is pure, genuine, and has good intentions and see how that feels. If you can do something for somebody that can never repay you, you will remember this feeling – that is the feeling you are seeking.

Some of us may not even know who we really are because we’ve been wearing this mask for so long. In that case you get to explore and try new things. You get to discover who you truly are and what makes your soul feel alive. This can be viewed as an obstacle or an opportunity. You can now try everything – writing, dancing, singing, etc. – try anything you desire and you will find your true self in the process.

You will find out who you were, before the world told you who you were supposed to be.

This concept can be frightening, especially if we have become too accustomed to the mask. Some will do anything and everything to put the mask back on for safety, security, and possibly they are benefiting from pretending to be their false self. Although, in the long run it will create more inner dissent.

The world needs you to be you. Your true self fits into the world exactly how it should. When we go against this, we are robbing humanity of the gifts our true selves possess. Albert Einstein said, “great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

It can be scary to finally be yourself. You will likely start feeling rejected and you will lose some people. But those are the people that you want to lose. You will also gain people in your lives – the ones that love the true you and not the false you.

This is a change that is painful and it causes most people to go back into their false self (ore put their mask back on). However, this is an essential struggle that you will encounter on your way. It will turn your world upside down and your relationships will change. But as the old saying goes, “it is better to be hated for who you are than to be loved for who you are not.”

You are only doing a smidgen of what you are capable of doing by being your true self. You have no idea what you’re capable of until you embrace who you are and you will be blown away by the results.

4. Fear destroys us; and makes others money.

When we are not ourselves, then our lives are being lived and based on fear. When we are always afraid, it is from remembering pain or trauma. Just like any animal, when we are afraid we will hide. We live in a society in which many people benefit of us being afraid.

We are evolutionarily programmed to remember the negative experiences at a much higher rate, more clearly and more intensely, than positive experiences.

Many businesses profit off of our fear. The news gets higher ratings when they show fights, violence, and all the things that are wrong with the world. So that is what they show and that is what we see. They are not showing a true representation of the world, but a sample size that spreads fear and increases ratings. This is paid for by commercial advertisements that spend millions of dollars by spreading fear into your mind in an effort to buy their product. They will tell you might get bitten by a snake, so you need to buy a fence to keep the snakes out. They tell you to buy material items to fit into society or you will be left out and not included. When the fear does not go away, we continue to consume more. And it never goes away until we realize that we are being played.

“If tomorrow, women woke up and decided they really liked their bodies, just think how many industries would go out of business?” – Dr. Gail Dines

Our insane society has created these masks and then they profit off these masks they created. Then you are labeled as insane if you don’t want to wear your mask anymore. Because when we take off our masks, they lose business.

What goes into your brain will affect your subconscious mind. If you feed it with fear, it will seek fear. If you feed it with love, it will find love. The opposite of living in fear is living with love. Love is the antidote to fear.

When you live with love, you will be faced resistance from those still guided by fear. But remember, in the end, throughout history, every single time love always wins. There may be a time it seems this is not true. But it becomes a crucial point in your recovery when you decide to choose love over fear if you are going to succeed. Every person going through a true recovery will come to this stage and it is scary, it is lonely, and it is supposed to be. It takes immense strength to love when everything inside of you tells you to run away. Once you make it through this stage, you have reached a turning point and the mask begins to crumble.

5. Love, acceptance, and truly listening is far more powerful than any advice you can ever give someone.

We have all seen someone struggling and we want to fix it. Usually we want to fix it the way we would fix it for ourselves if we were in the same struggle. We tend to go in and tell people how to change. Although well-intentioned, when we do this, we begin to lose them. Everyone is different, and every recovery is different. Every mask is unique, and therefore every mask removal must be unique.

Relationships are the single most important thing to someone going through a recovery. You can have the cure for them, but if they do not trust you, they will not hear it. They do not care how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Accepting people for who they are and where they are at in their life will go further than any piece of advice you can ever give them. Giving someone love and a hug when everybody else is kicking them is what I call “psychological life support.”

I had two people that did this for me and they saved my life. Not those who criticized me and tried to force me into treatment. It was those who offered unconditional love and acceptance who kept me alive. Unconditional, meaning without conditions/judgments, but just loving them and accepting them in their entirety with no desire to change or point out their flaws. When I was ready to change, I went to the same people because I had gained their trust.

Relationships come first. If you cannot build a relationship, a trusting relationship, then you will only do damage. I believe many staff in this field are well-intentioned, however they make these problems much worse and the patients get much sicker simply because there is a lack of acceptance, love, and an overabundance of advice giving and fixing.

Trust me, if there was an easy-fix, the person would have already done so. In rushing to fix a person, you are sending the message that they are incompetent and could not think of this on their own. A broken person doesn’t need to be fixed, they need to be loved, then they are able to heal themselves.

When I say listening, I mean being present completely with that person. This means not checking your phone, not looking at the clock, and not even thinking about anything else. This is referred to as active listening. The ten people I think are the best in this field all do this. They make the person they are with feel like they are the most important person on earth in that moment. When the person can feel heard, the magic begins.

6. Embrace your struggles, they are gifts.

When I see a patient walking around a treatment center saying “everything is fine,” “everything is ok,” or “I’m doing great,” this becomes a giant red flag. You should be struggling. Muscles do not grow without struggle and the same goes for our soul.

Since we were young, we were trained to believe that admitting to a struggle is a sign of weakness, but in fact it is a great strength. We are all going through a struggle. We should be working on the thing that is the most difficult for us for optimum growth. The thing that you are most scared to do is probably the thing that is most essential to your recovery.

If you are in pain, if you are crying, if you are scared, then you are growing. If you are questioning why you are there, or why you are going through this, or questioning your own sanity, then you are growing. If you are angry, if you are tense, if you are isolating, then you are growing.

If there is no struggle, there is no growth. If there is no growth, there is no recovery.

Everything in my life in which I thought would be my demise, ended up being the very best things in the long run. We see a small portion of the big picture and act like that’s the reality, when it’s not. We must trust the process and trust in the bigger picture. Without the illusion, there would be no enlightenment.

There will come a time that you will think this is not worth it and feel like giving up. This means you are getting close to breaking through. We usually give up right before the miracle happens.

There is not one magical moment where you reach some mountaintop. It usually takes two steps forward, followed by one step back. It is a continuous, non-linear process. It is like a newborn baby deer trying to learn to walk. Their feet are wobbly and they fall down often. Falling down is not the issue, it is the learning process that makes you stronger and not having shame about the fall. It is about being around people that do not judge the fall.

The only way through the pain you have is to deal with it. There are many things we have hidden inside ourselves through the years because of fear and using the mask. Sometimes it may be for years, or decades, but all things eventually rise to the surface and all your pain is revealed. But that is the only way that it can be healed is for it to come to the surface. It cannot be healed when it is buried.

Let the storm come. After the storm comes the rainbow.

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s learning to dance in the rain.” – Vivian Greene

7. Our subconscious is what drives us.

We have two parts of our mind – the conscious and the subconscious. The conscious is all of which we are aware. The subconscious is the part that we are not aware, but all the millions of things we process daily and store away.

Our brain cannot tell if what is in our subconscious is true or not. It takes everything in as fact. It is like a hard drive that receives commands and stores everything as fact. It is built by other people and society – parents, siblings, teachers, television, pop culture, advertisements, etc. If we grow up being told that we are “bad,” our subconscious processes it to be true.

Everything is a perception and not reality. However, as different things start to play out in our conscious mind, then the subconscious files come to the surface to back it up as “evidence.” This creates stronger files in our subconscious mind. These files in our subconscious mind are what drives us; not what we are consciously aware.

As young children and even as adolescents, our brains are flooded with gray matter. This is the part of our brain that can be molded and create the person we are to become. This is what shapes the subconscious mind which will determine what drives us for a lifetime. If someone is told they are bad, lazy, incompetent, then they will be driven by this. If someone deals with pain, torture, trauma, and abandonment, they will be drive by this as well.

The good news is we can change the subconscious mind by implanting new messages. It is flexible, but it takes time, practice and patience.

Additionally, some of us will be more affected than others by these messages. Some people are naturally more sensitive, more prone to trauma, and more prone to take things too personally.

We are all born with an innate temperament that lasts our entire lives. That would be like if a couple people were eating a pizza. One person takes a bite and it tastes lukewarm to them; but the other person burns their mouth and complains as to how hot it is. The others would not believe it to be true. However when it comes to emotions, we can’t see anything, the scars or burns are invisible. So we are told that it is not real and our emotions are crazy, in which we believe to be true. This only further pushes our true selves down and creates more negative self-talk which creates files in the subconscious.

This leads to the most sensitive, warm, kind people in our society being invalidated and told they are “babies” for feeling and caring more than most. We tell them that they are not right when inside they are going through a trauma.

But if a young boy acts out in anger instead of crying, that is more acceptable in our society. That is one form of a mask that is created and is prevalent among young men. Then with this mask, and all masks, comes depression from not being your true self from going against nature.

That’s the inner voice, it is the subconscious. It is strong but it may not even be true. The only way to combat this is to start telling yourself positive things (affirmations), surround yourself with positivity, changing your perceptions of the world (cognitive behavioral therapy), focus on the positive things in life (gratitude). This starts to build more positive files in your subconscious which drives you out of despair and into a positive direction.

We all are born pure, and with nothing but love in our hearts. This is often taken from some of us by a combination of temperament, environment, society, and trauma. We eventually believe that we are not good at our core. But we are. We can change our subconscious by what goes into our brain daily. This takes persistence and daily practice, and it is hard when we are used to thinking negatively about ourselves. However, this out of everything is probably the key to sustained long-term recovery- dealing with that inner voice and changing our thoughts. It will seem foreign at first to say “I’m a good person.” If you are going to make it, you have to start doing on a daily basis. You can replace those files just like your body replaces every cell in the body every seven years. Soon those old files will be gone and the new positive files will be your subconscious.

8. Who you surround yourself with is one of the most important decisions you will make.

I have heard many wise people say that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. As I said above, that directly affects our subconscious and what we think of ourselves.

I remember years ago my oldest daughter enrolled in a private school. Everyone in the school was Catholic and she came home and believed in her inner core that the entire world was Catholic. She cried about it at night that she was different because she did not go up to get the fake bread at their ceremonies. Similarly, if you are around five people that smoke pot and you do not smoke pot, then you are the weirdo for not smoking pot. However, if you are with five people that do not smoke pot and you do, then you are considered strange for smoking pot.

At the end of the day, if you are around negativity — eg. those who consider you strange or different — it will eventually influence you.

Now some negativity can be good if you’re an overly positive person and turn a blind eye to all negativity because that is also unrealistic and can actually benefit the person. Also, being angry can help mobilize and motivate you to change. People who are totally happy and content at all times are never the ones that change the world – see Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. It is those that are healthy discontents that create change.

On the flip side, if you only are surrounded by negativity it will suck the life out of you. Likewise if you are around a bunch of people who believe that you are a bad person, be that your family, friends, or relatives, then that’s going to creep right back into your subconscious and you creep right back into old patterns. Soon you believe that pattern as real.

You cannot do this alone. It took many others to help us put the mask on, and it will take others to help remove the mask as well. I came across five amazing people that helped change my life and save it.

Part of recovering is making the effort to be true to yourself. Once you can do this, you will find yourself in others. You start to see that all of life is a synchronicity. You will suddenly be around people who can help you and you have to be willing to accept help and make yourself vulnerable. If you cannot expose yourself and be vulnerable to these good people, then you will fall.

Vulnerability allows others to lift the mask.

You have to start all over sometimes; that may even mean leaving your family and lifelong friends. It is terrifying, but you will find new people that embrace your true self, whereas your friends and family have only got to know your mask and are not ready for your true self. You’ll find that people who you thought were close friends really were not; and people who you thought were not your friends actually were. You find out everybody’s true character when you go through this. It’s a gift in that way as well. Someone you may not have associated with five years ago, you’ll love them when you are your true self. This just means that the transformation is happening.

9. You must learn to truly love yourself or you will not make it.

I wrote earlier about being your true self and that is completely different from loving your true self. There is a reason we wear these masks and have these false selves. It is because we think that at our core, we are not OK. Then we start to be ourselves, but also seek to make changes. We have to 100-percent, truly, genuinely love our true self and embrace it or we will eventually slip back on our masks.

This is the often overlooked Steps Six and Seven of the 12-Steps. We are removing the parts of ourselves that are not true and keeping those that are. However, we get confused at this point because we feel that part of ourselves is flawed.

But, that is impossible! Every single person is perfect at their core. You do not have any flaws. That is a lie created by society. Every person is perfect and once you find your true self you will see this to be true.

Which is why, when you are finally being yourself you are likely going to be mocked, ridiculed, and teased. It begins to seem much easier to revert back to old ways (the mask). It is hard when you have run your whole life and been afraid. Then you start to be yourself and people start teasing you or pushing you away. You must realize that this has nothing to do with you and has everything to do with them. If somebody loves you that usually has more to do with them than you; and if somebody hates you that has more to do with them than you.

I remember when I had to have a psychological test done, I had to have my four closest people fill out a form and I figured it would all be the same answers that they gave. I got four completely different forms with four completely different sets of answers. Others love us based on their perception of us or they hate us based on their perception of us, none of this is reality – but it is reality to them.

What matters is what we think of ourselves. If we love ourselves, we will glow and other people will be drawn to us and some will be drawn away from us.

“The ego says, ‘Once everything falls into place, I’ll find peace.’ The spirit says, ‘Find your peace, and then everything will fall into place.’” – Marianne Williamson

10. Whatever you do, if you do it with love in your heart as your intention, you cannot go wrong.

The world is full of opinions. Everyone has the answers. You can’t do this, or you shouldn’t do that. People can show you evidence about why they are right and why you are wrong. Everyone will tell you how to handle your recovery and how to handle every situation in life. When we are listening to other people instead of our true selves, we are going against our own truth and against our own nature.

There is no right and wrong. We used to think smoking was okay for you and doctors advertised it. We used to think the world was flat. We used to think Columbus discovered America. There is no truth, there is only perception. You must do what your true inner self believes. Your mask is unique so your mask’s removal is going to be unique. The one thing that is common for all mask removals is connection and love. Science and studies have found out that we are breathing the same air that people breathed in and breathed out thousands of years ago. The air we breathe is composed of mainly nitrogen, gas, and oxygen gas. Very little is lost in space, and only occasionally is there a new source of carbon or oxygen introduced into this planet. So every breath you take has atoms that have been here for billions of years.

There was a computer program set up in various spots around the world. It would shoot off random numbers, there was no pattern ever seen for years. This is called a Random Number Generator. However when the September 11th attacks happened, or other moments that human consciousness became coherent, things changed. For instance, in the case of a severe tragedy in which all humans are thinking about similar things and having similar emotions, all the numbers become structured and organized. They show an unpredictable sequence of ones and zeroes. The odds of this happening by chance is one in a trillion. How is this possible?

Every single thing you can see around you — the rocks, the birds, and the trees — all are comprised of the same atoms. They are just expressed differently — yet intricately interconnected. Whatever you do and whatever decisions you make, if you do it with love as your motive and if your intentions are pure with love you cannot be wrong. So know your intentions and know your truth and embrace it. You were born with a light that others have tried to dim with a mask, let your light shine again and take your mask off. Humanity needs the gift that your true self possess.

Taking the Mask Off: Destroying the Stigmatic Barriers of Mental Health and Addiction Using a Spiritual Solution

“Taking the Mask Off” is the new book by Cortland Pfeffer and Irwin Ozborne. Cortland Pfeffer spent years as a patient in psychiatric hospitals, treatment centers, and jails before becoming a registered nurse and working in the same facilities. Based on his experience, this story is told from both sides of the desk. It offers a unique and valuable perspective into mental health and addiction, revealing the problems with the psychiatric industry while also providing the solution – one that brings together science, spirituality, philosophy, and personal experience.

“Taking the Mask Off: Destroying the Stigmatic Barriers of Mental Health and Addiction Using a Spiritual Solution” is available on Amazon, and Balboa Press.

Saturday Matinee: Summer Wars

Posted on May 13, 2017 by Reid Mukai

“Summer Wars” (2009) is a sci-fi anime directed by Mamoru Hosoda (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) and animated by Madhouse studio. The film’s plot follows Kenji Koiso, an eleventh-grade math prodigy who, while visiting his friend Natsuki’s great-grandmother, is falsely implicated in the hacking of a virtual world by a rogue AI called Love Machine. With the help of his community, Kenji must undo the damage and prevent the AI’s spread into the real world.

Watch the full film here.

DISMISSED: Trump Fires Scandal Plagued FBI Director James Comey – What Does It Mean?

Posted on May 12, 2017 by Reid Mukai

Image (from Land Destroyer Report): The FBI has an impressive portfolio of intentionally created, then foiled terror plots. Its methods include allowing suspects to handle both real and inoperable weapons and explosives. These methods allow the FBI to switch entrapment cases “live” at any moment simply by switching out duds and arrests with real explosives and successful attacks. Because the FBI uses “informants,” when attacks go live, these confidential assets can be blamed, obfuscating the FBI’s involvement.

By Shawn Helton

Source: 21st Century Wire

US President Donald Trump has accepted a recommendation to ‘dismiss’ FBI director James Comey. Was this a reprisal for the suddenly widened Russia-gate probe into the White House or was there something else at play within the operations of the deep state?

Comey was at the center of a political controversy over much of the last year during the US presidential election cycle in 2016, and well into 2017. Throughout 2016, the former FBI director opened, closed and reopened (only to close again) a probe into Hillary Clinton, her email server and looking into accusations leveled at the Clinton Foundation, while also entertaining a dubious Russian probe into the Trump administration alleged ‘connections to Russia’ that helped mine various stories, including a so-called ‘dossier‘ regarding the newly elected president in early 2017.

In recent years, there have been many highly questionable actions under Comey’s leadership at the FBI, such as the Orlando nightclub shooting incident – who’s main suspect was previously interviewed by the FBI, as well as a highly questionable ‘ISIS inspired’ shooting event in Garland, Texas linked to an FBI informant case run out of Phoenix, Arizona, and the federal agency’s dramatic encroachment on public privacy following a suspicious San Bernardino mass shooting. These are only just a few examples…

Grabien News highlights a list of scandals that were either attached to Comey or perpetuated under his watch:

“Here are 10 of Comey’s biggest embarrassments at the FBI:

1. Before he bombed the Boston Marathon, the FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev but let him go. Russia sent the Obama Administration a second warning, but the FBI opted against investigating him again.

2. Shortly after the NSA scandal exploded in 2013, the FBI was exposed conducting its own data mining on innocent Americans; the agency, Bloomberg reported, retains that material for decades (even if no wrongdoing is found).

3. The FBI had possession of emails sent by Nidal Hasan saying he wanted to kill his fellow soldiers to protect the Taliban — but didn’t intervene, leading many critics to argue the tragedy that resulted in the death of 31 Americans at Fort Hood could have been prevented.

4. During the Obama Administration, the FBI claimed that two private jets were being used primarily for counterterrorism, when in fact they were mostly being used for Eric Holder and Robert Mueller’s business and personal travel.

5. When the FBI demanded Apple create a “backdoor” that would allow law enforcement agencies to unlock the cell phones of various suspects, the company refused, sparking a battle between the feds and America’s biggest tech company. What makes this incident indicative of Comey’s questionable management of the agency is that a) The FBI jumped the gun, as they were indeed ultimately able to crack the San Bernardino terrorist’s phone, and b) Almost every other major national security figure sided with Apple (from former CIA Director General Petraeus to former CIA Director James Woolsey to former director of the NSA, General Michael Hayden), warning that such a “crack” would inevitably wind up in the wrong hands.

6. In 2015, the FBI conducted a controversial raid on a Texas political meeting, finger printing, photographing, and seizing phones from attendees (some in the group believe in restoring Texas as an independent constitutional republic).

7. During its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified material, the FBI made an unusual deal in which Clinton aides were both given immunity and allowed to destroy their laptops.

8. The father of the radical Islamist who detonated a backpack bomb in New York City in 2016 alerted the FBI to his son’s radicalization. The FBI, however, cleared Ahmad Khan Rahami after a brief interview.

9. The FBI also investigated the terrorist who killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Fla. Despite a more than 10-month investigation of Omar Mateen — during which Mateen admitting lying to agents — the FBI opted against pressing further and closed its case.

10. CBS recently reported that when two terrorists sought to kill Americans attending the “Draw Muhammad” event in Garland, Texas, the FBI not only had an understanding an attack was coming, but actually had an undercover agent traveling with the Islamists, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi. The FBI has refused to comment on why the agent on the scene did not intervene during the attack.”

It’s important to remember that Comey is not the only FBI director who bears responsibility for the controversial aspects of 2013’s Boston Bombing. Under FBI director Robert Mueller “Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to the attention of the FBI on at least two occasions” prior to allegedly being involved in what many researchers have described as a false flag terror event in Boston. A questionable event that has arguably been used as a pretext to further clamp down on individual rights in the US.

We should also be reminded that the FBI has been routinely caught foiling their very own ‘terror plots’ over the past several years.

In recent years, the investigative tactics of various intelligence agencies have come into question, none perhaps more dubious then the Newburgh FBI sting that involved entrapping four men to participate in a fabricated event created by the bureau. Here’s a 2011 passage from The Guardian describing how an FBI informant named Shahed Hussain coerced four others into a fake terror plot:

“The “Newburgh Four” now languish in jail. Hussain does not. For Hussain was a fake. In fact, Hussain worked for the FBI as an informant trawling mosques in hope of picking up radicals.

Yet far from being active militants, the four men he attracted were impoverished individuals struggling with Newburgh’s grim epidemic of crack, drug crime and poverty. One had mental issues so severe his apartment contained bottles of his own urine. He also believed Florida was a foreign country.

Hussain offered the men huge financial inducements to carry out the plot – including $250,000 to one man – and free holidays and expensive cars.

As defence lawyers poured through the evidence, the Newburgh Four came to represent the most extreme form of a controversial FBI policy to use invented terrorist plots to lure targets. “There has been no case as egregious as this. It is unique in the incentive the government provided. A quarter million dollars?” said Professor Karen Greenberg, a terrorism expert at Fordham University.”

The reputation of the FBI has suffered greatly in the recent past as well as over the past couple of decades. Incidentally, the FBI is on record as ‘handling’ Emad A. Salem, a former Egyptian army officer who was a prized undercover operative thrust into confidential informant status and person who played a key role in the 1993 WTC bombing.

All of this has happened under the watchful eye of the FBI…

Over last summer, 21WIRE observed some curious connections between the Clinton Foundation and FBI director James Comey, as well as his questionable handling of other cases related to the Clinton family. Here’s the following passage to consider in light of the new information related to the Clinton investigation:

“Many will also be unaware that before Comey was installed by the Obama Administration as FBI Director, he was on the board of Director at HSBC Bank – a bank implicated in international money laundering, including the laundering of billions on behalf of international drugs and narcotics trafficking cartels.Forbes also points out where Comey was also at the key choke-point during the case involving dodgy auditor KPMG which followed on by the HSBC criminal case:

“If Comey, and his boss Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, had made a different decision about KPMG back in 2005, KPMG would not have been around to miss all the illegal acts HSBC and Standard Chartered SCBFF +% were committing on its watch. Bloomberg reported in 2007 that back in June of 2005, Comey was the man thrust into the position of deciding whether KPMG would live or die for its criminal tax shelter violations.”

Is this just a surface effort by the White House to clean the slate for an agency perpetually embroiled in controversy?

More from RT below…

Trump fires FBI Director James Comey

President Donald Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey at the recommendation of US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, according to a White House announcement.

“The FBI is one of our Nation’s most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement,” said President Trump.

“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau,” Trump told Comey in a letter.

The letter announcing the termination was hand-delivered to FBI headquarters by Keith Schiller, a Trump security aide, according to several reports citing a White House official.

A search for a new permanent FBI Director will begin immediately.

The firing of Comey comes days after he testified to Congress on investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.

RT continues here…

Jiddu Krishnamurti, the Inner Revolution, and Why We Don’t Really Love Our Children

Posted on May 11, 2017 by Reid Mukai

(Editor’s note: on this anniversary of the birthday of Jiddu Krishnamurti [born May 11, 1895] please read and share this excellent overview of some of the key principles of his philosophy.)

By Matt Karamazov

Source: High Existence

“The mind must be utterly silent. Not asking, not hoping for experience. It must be completely still. Only then is there a possibility of that light which will dispel our darkness.”

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

IS FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE POSSIBLE?

In a collection of talks given throughout the 1950’s and gathered together in the book, The Revolution From Within, Jiddu Krishnamurti stressed the urgency of staging a revolution in our thinking.

Our habitual ways of thinking have led us to where we are now, he says, and nothing less than radical, fundamental change has any hope of remaking our thoughts, attitudes, and ultimately the societies in which we live. Anything less than fundamental change is a mere modification of what has come before, and key aspects of what has come before has in turn failed a large proportion of our population.

The paradox that Krishnamurti relentlessly demands us to consider, however, is that nothing we can DO can bring about this change. We can only observe the operations of our own mind, and ask questions about everything that we think we know.

Consider the question, “Is fundamental change possible?”, the jumping-off point leading to the multitudinous questions that Krishnamurti is asking us to examine deeply.

It’s where we have to begin if we want to observe the functioning of our own minds on a level that will have real significance with respect to the outside world, and how we live our lives.

So let’s go into this question, friends, with an open mind, a mind that is open to revelation.

If we go into it with the idea that we already know the answer, then we won’t turn up anything worthwhile. This is a question with real consequences for the way we organize our societies, parent our children, and direct our lives.

We must pursue the idea of fundamental change in the same way that Jiddu Krishnamurti relentlessly posed questions to his listeners.

You’ll notice, if you read the transcripts of some of his greatest talks, that Krishnamurti asks multiple questions for every single ‘answer’ that he gives. He might answer one, only to pose three others that each attempt to get at the original question in a more nuanced way.

Krishnamurti does this because life’s biggest questions have no final answers.

Given the asymptotic nature of perfect Truth, we can only approach it by negation; by discarding what isn’t true or helpful, in an effort to move past our conditioned thinking and to achieve radical, fundamental change.

But is such a change indeed possible?

This is something that must be gone into, and not just accepted because someone has said it. It has no meaning if you just merely accept it. Arguments from authority, that common logical fallacy, have no essential relationship to perfect Truth.

Truth needs no defenders or justification.

Rather, you must ceaselessly question what you think you know, and approach life’s biggest questions from the viewpoint of someone who knows nothing. And it really is clear that we do know nothing, in an absolute sense, as we will discuss later in more depth.

If I were to ask you who you are, where you came from, where you’ll ultimately end up, and where you are right now, you would have no satisfactory answers to any of these questions. There would always be a deeper level of Truth that you could never penetrate with your limited, conscious mind.

So let’s start from the beginning…

WHAT IS FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE?

What exactly is it that we can point to as evidence that a revolution in the mind has taken place that is not simply a modification of what was there before?

It’s clear that anything that can be incrementally added is not fundamental change. It’s a modification, and it’s improvement, but it is not the fundamental change that we are seeking.

This “adding to” the mind, such as one can achieve by reading books or watching documentaries or listening to talks is simply an incremental increase of knowledge. No matter how compelling or insightful, this newfound knowledge will always be an addition to what was there before.

While learning is important, and proper education is never a waste of time, it’s merely representative of change on the surface, and change on the surface can never lead to radical, fundamental change. What we’re really after is meaningful change.

What kind of change IS meaningful? Is only fundamental change meaningful? How do we get closer to understanding what it might look like?

Let’s first take a look at a few examples of surface change, or simple modifications, in order to get an idea of what radical change is NOT. Thereby, we can approach the idea of fundamental change via negation.

For example:

If you are unhappy, and you are trying to BECOME happy, then you have instantaneously DEFINED YOURSELF as an unhappy person struggling to overcome his or her unhappiness.

You can become MORE happy, sure, but you will always be an unhappy person, always in the process of becoming slightly more happy, adding to your happiness, instead of experiencing the radical, fundamental change that brings with it a revolution in the mind.

Happiness will always be somewhere ‘over there’ and you will always be struggling to arrive there.

That can never be said to be true happiness and fulfillment, and it is certainly not what we mean by fundamental change.

In the same way, trying to become virtuous, we never acquire virtue, but rather expand our Self in the ‘guise’ of virtue.

Simply, a man who cultivates virtue ceases to be completely virtuous, because there is a part of him that is not, a part of him that is increasing his virtue. Likewise, a man who practices humility is no longer completely humble.

And further:

When violent, the mind has an ideal of non-violence which is ‘over there’ in the distance. It will take time to achieve that state, and in the meantime, the mind can continue to be violent.

This, too, is not the radical, fundamental change which we are seeking to illuminate.

So now that we know what fundamental change is not, do we know any more about what it is?

Is it not instantaneous, unconditional freedom in the here and now? Is it not timeless, in that we don’t have to wait for it to appear?

Are there any preconditions that have to be met?

I think that we can conclude, provisionally, that we have the freedom to drop our resentments and sadness at any time we so choose.

Easy for me to type, extremely difficult for you to do. I get that.

But from our current position, we can see that it is our mind, this thing that we call the self, that is preventing fundamental change from occurring. As we get further into our discussion, we’ll have a better handle on whether or not we can discard the restraints of the self, and realize radical, fundamental change.

THE NECESSITY OF FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE

Assuming that we can become radically different than we are today, we must ask ourselves:

Is this a pursuit that’s worthwhile?

Is it necessary?

Do we need to change at all?

I think it would be obvious to many people that we DO need to see fundamental change in our societies and our patterns of social interaction.

A world in which billions of people currently live on less than $2.00/day is crying out for change.

And to be clear, that figure is, shockingly, adjusted for purchasing power. It’s not what $2.00 would buy you in a developing country, although that would be bad enough; rather, billions of people are living on what you could buy for $2.00 a day in a country like Canada or the US.

Aside: There is commendable, although insufficient, progress being made by extremely committed individuals and organizations all over the world. In fact, the World Bank recently predicted that global extreme poverty will soon fall to under 10%. To make matters more complicated, there is an ongoing debate concerning what exactly constitutes “extreme poverty.”

To say that fundamental change isn’t necessary in a world like ours is akin to being in a sinking ship and saying: “I’m sure glad the hole isn’t in OUR end!”

However, we can state rather confidently that trying to change society, while leaving the individuals who constitute that society unchanged, is a dangerous error.

Simply put, we cannot afford to be “ordinary” any longer; the challenge of the world is too great.

We are the world; we are not on the sidelines. What we are, of that we make the world, and everywhere we face real problems that demand our urgent attention.

Thus, we return to the question at hand: Is fundamental change necessary?

I think it’s clear that it is necessary, if by fundamental change within our societies we mean implementing societal structures that would do better in meeting the needs of all our world’s inhabitants.

Obviously, this is a vastly more complex problem than it even may seem at first. It has many moving parts, but we can only begin where we are. A total revolution of the mind has to start from within. Society is comprised of individuals, and radical societal change starts at the level of the individual.

Yet, most of us are so eager to reform others and so little concerned with the transformation of ourselves.

Can we not see that this whole attitude is very confused?

We often look up to those who can help us or who can do something for us, and look down on those who cannot. So we are always looking up or looking down. Cannot the mind be free from this state of contempt and false respect?

Is it even possible to look through the lens of our own confusion and get a clear picture of the idea of radical, fundamental change?

It is to this question that we now turn.

WE ARE ALL CONFUSED

“There is a path to the known, but not to the unknowable. Thus every system of finding truth breaks down.”

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

Before going further in our discussion, I think it’s helpful to take a look at our own confusion when confronted with the problem and necessity of fundamental change.

We’ve asserted that it’s both possible and necessary, but what are the impediments to action? Why are we not all enlightened already? If it’s supposed to be instantaneous, why is it so difficult for us?

The answer has to lie somewhere within our own confusion.

It’s very difficult to admit to yourself that you are confused, but clearly, we are all confused.

And, truth be told, those who say they aren’t confused, are the most confused of all.

In order to be free from confusion, we would have to know that which it is impossible to know. We’d need to know where the universe in its totality is headed, we’d need to know our precise place within it, who we are fundamentally, and what we need to do with our lives.

Philosophers are good at coming up with “-isms” that seek to explain the world and its direction. We can look for answers in logical positivism, consequentialism, possibilianism, dialectical materialism, populism, liberalism, empiricism, and every other kind of ‘-ism’ that we can conceive of, but we are still going to remain confused. Every book and every teacher is only going to add to this confusion that prevents us from knowing what life is all about.

It may be that we do not know what living is about at all, and that is why death seems to be such a terrible thing. Obviously, everyone is confused about death, and many more things besides.

The whole totality of the mind is confused, and there simply isn’t a higher part of the mind which isn’t.

So how are we supposed to make sense out of all this confusion?

Is it possible to bring clarity to our naturally disordered minds?

Is there a method we can follow, or a path we can take towards clarity?

Krishnamurti explains that whenever one is confused, one must stop all activity, psychologically. Otherwise, anything new is just translated according to our own confusion.

If I’m confused, then I may read, or look, or ask, but my search, my asking, is the outcome of my confusion, and therefore it can only lead to further confusion.

We know this, but is there anything we can do about it?

The problem is not the real issue; rather, it is the mind which approaches the problem.

So, again we return to the necessity of radical, fundamental change.

We can’t keep incrementally increasing our store of knowledge and, at some distant point, realize fundamental change. So we have to drop down to the level of the mind, and see if we can’t somehow bypass the problem of incremental change altogether.

So, you see how our desire for the resolution of our confusion can never lead to fundamental change.

All solutions are based on desire, and the problem exists BECAUSE of desire.

Basically, thought is not the way out. All of our thought is conditioned, and a confused mind cannot resolve its own confusion.

You have chosen your political leaders, your religious leaders, out of your confusion.

You have chosen your career, your friends, your daily activities out of your confusion.

The books you’ve read, the experiences you’ve had, the lessons you’ve learned, have all been assimilated according to the confusion that already exists in your mind.

Collectively, we’ve established our social order based on our confusion. Our efforts to help the poor are based on our confusion. Our educational institutions are based on our confusion.

We don’t even know what we don’t know.

But…

When you realize that you don’t know, then you are beginning to find out.

THE FUTILITY OF SEEKING

“If we take this journey together, and simply observe as we go along the extraordinary width and depth and beauty of life, then out of this observation may come a love…which is a state of being free of all demand…and we may perhaps be awakened to something far more significant than the boredom and frustration, the emptiness and despair of our daily lives.”

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

How do we escape our confusion?

How can we even tell when we’re not confused any more?

Is there an end to our confusion while we are still alive?

Krishnamurti’s prescription is as follows:

“Observe the activities of the mind without trying to change them or put a stop to them, because the moment you seek an end, you are back in the ‘me, not-me’ duality.

It’s the mind that is unaware of its own activities that sets up as the authority someone or something external to which we go for help, and we therefore become slaves.”

He is saying that we can bring about a transformation in ourselves only when we understand the process of our own thinking.

What is important is to understand the whole field of thought, and see if the mind can go beyond all that.

He asks, “Is thought somehow different than the mind?”

This in turn leads us to the question of, “What is the ‘self’, the center of the ‘me’ from which all activity seems to spring?”

The self for most people is a center of desires, manifesting itself through various forms of continuity.

We ceaselessly desire to perpetuate ourselves, to satisfy our cravings, and to set ourselves up as an object of specialness in a world of meaning.

None of these desires are permanent except in the memory of what we have been and would like to be, although we try to make them permanent through clinging to various ideas, perceptions, and relationships.

For those who want more, more, more, life is an everlasting struggle.

Life is one thing, and what we want is another. We get what we want, only to discover that it’s not ultimately what we wanted at all. We wanted some other thing, tantalizingly just a little further up the road.

Can we live in this world without any effort to be or become something, without trying to achieve, to reject, to acquire?

I mean, of course, without trying to become something other than your authentic self?

Can the mind cease to think in terms of continuing, of the “me”?

The concern to become something more, to become something others want you to be, is the constant preoccupation of the mind and the primary cause of its superficiality.

That much is clear. Which leads Krishnamurti to say:

“It is my mind that creates the problem, my mind being the result of time, of memory, the seat of the ‘me’, which is everlastingly craving for the ‘more’, for immortality, for continuity, for permanency here and in the hereafter. It is this uncertainty within ourselves that leads to the outward manifestations of personal ambition, the desire to be somebody, the aggressive attitude towards life.”

What we are, of that we make the world. So in order to avoid superficiality and meaninglessness, there must be ceaseless questioning.

Any conscious effort on my part to become something other than what I am, or other than what I consciously want to become, only produces still further suffering, sorrow, and pain.

A man like Jiddu Krishnamurti would never tell his listeners that education was a waste of time. However, we must never believe that our education is over, or that we have somehow reached the end of our confusion.

Everything around us tells us what to think, books and teachers included, and we must continually renew our freedom from traditional and historical thinking in every moment.

Linear thinking and the all-too-human propensity to settle for easy answers has failed the bottom 40%. It even plagues those in the so-called ‘developed’ nations who are today stricken by existential anxiety.

At bottom, acquisitiveness and greed have destroyed our potential for gratitude.

Nationalism and eschatological certitude have crippled our capacity for understanding and reconciliation.

A radical, fundamental revolution from within can restore the unrestrained lust for life that gives us our reason for being. We can revive our capacity to greedily enjoy our friends, instead of our possessions.

But so long as there is the idea of the “me” or the “I”, then there must necessarily be loneliness.

And you can’t seek the immeasurable because you don’t know what it is; hence the futility of seeking.

But, can we give up seeking? Just like that?

Can we overcome our self-directed focus and do what is just and fair? Can we live with uprightness in a world often bereft of such character?

Or, even more basically, can we love our children?

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI SAYS WE DON’T REALLY LOVE OUR CHILDREN

“If we did love our children, we would stop all wars tomorrow, obviously. We would not condition our children. They would not be English children or American children, they would just be children.”

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you have been following what has been discussed so far, you will see that fundamental change is absolutely critical to the dissolution of the threats to our continued existence.

Violence and suffering on a global scale can be reduced to the individual. It is the mind of the individual that approaches the problem that needs to change, and the world is made up of individuals.

Society is based on violence and comparisons, and as long as it is so, there will always be struggle within that society, not to mention all the struggles, pains, and difficulties that naturally accompany human existence. That is what Krishnamurti is driving at here.

Everything that we do is based on striving, ambition, success, achievement; but none of it is the abandonment of the self.

Granting that everyone is doing the best that they can, the best that they know how to do, how can it be otherwise that our toxic thoughts and undisciplined habits are being passed down to our children?

Our own confusion, with which we are now hopefully becoming intimately aware, cascades downward to future generations.

Parents want their children to conform to meet the demands of their insane societies, but is that education?

Since our society is not yet what it should be, why encourage our children to stay within its destructive pattern?

We are currently dependent on this pattern, but can we live without this dependence?

The insistence on one’s nationality, on race, on religious belief or any other idea, obviously separates. All of it represents the activities of the self, and its insistence on continuity and self-perpetuation. That much is clear.

We submit to authority because all of us have this inward demand to be safe, to feel secure. We have enough to think about with respect to our survival and to the “success” of our children, that we can easily settle into the acceptance of easy answers handed down to us from above. Whether that means from the state or from some religious authority.

This safety, so it seems to many, must be defended at all costs, because we have so much invested in it.

So much of our identities and our feelings of assurance of our continued survival rest on the perceived strengths of our existing institutions.

It’s here that Krishnamurti steps in with the bold and incendiary claim that we don’t really love our children.

You don’t really love your children, he says, so you sacrifice them to protect your property, to defend your State, or the church, or some other organization which demands of you certain things.

Organized religions don’t really insist that you step out of greed, envy, ruthless ambition, and cruelty. They are far more concerned with what you believe, with rituals and the rest of the confusion.

In contrast, righteousness of behavior is not something to be gained, to be arrived at, but must be understood from moment to moment in the actuality of daily living.

It requires a fundamental change in our approach to life, and constant awareness of how our actions impact others.

Krishnamurti’s own phrasing is as such:

“The man who is ceaselessly questioning, who has no authority, who does not follow any tradition, any book or teacher, becomes a light unto himself.”

Perhaps it’s radical, fundamental change that’s required to shake us out of our collective stupor and restore to us our humanity.

THE REVOLUTION

“Sirs, life is something extraordinary, if you observe it. Life is not merely this stupid little quarreling among ourselves, this dividing up of mankind into nations, races, classes; it is not just the contradiction and misery of our daily existence. Life is wide, limitless, it is that state of love which is beauty; life is sorrow and this tremendous sense of joy. But our joys and sorrows are so small, and from that shallowness of mind we ask questions and find answers.”

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

If there can be any conclusion at all, it’s that freedom is not at the end; it is at the very beginning, the now.

The end is at the beginning, which lies outside of time.

Radical, fundamental change does not come at the end. Rather, it’s our starting point. If we’re not happy now, then we never will be. If we don’t remake our societies now, then we never will.

Fundamental change doesn’t occur across time, but rather it is available to us at every moment.

Revolutions of the mind occur instantaneously, at the very moment when we cease our anguished searching.

And that is what our lives often are, correct?

We say: “I am ‘this’, and I would like to be ‘that,’” but the struggle to be something different is still within the pattern of our desire.

All suffering comes from desire, and so any incremental change that we pursue throughout our lives is not only going to be fraught with confusion, but will carry with it all the attendant suffering and anguish which it necessarily implies.

So where can we find relief for this condition of the mind?

Where can we go for some form of final answer to our continued searching and relentless questioning?

In the end, we must realize that life’s biggest questions have no definite answers. Indeed, the right question has no answer.

We must also conclude that a mind that seeks peace will never find it, and thought is not the way out.

When you see that fundamental change is instantaneous, and is a function of observing the workings of your own mind, you can break free of your past at any moment, and start to unravel your own conditioning.

It’s simple: The mind can never free itself through some system or method. Anything that your mind DOES can never bring about this kind of radical, fundamental change that we are discussing.

Anything that can be KNOWN is not what we’re looking for.

All that can be left to us is to observe the functioning of our own minds.

When we realize this, we also realize the truth of Krishnamurti’s words when he says:

“To have that inward fullness of life, which includes death, the mind must free itself from the known. The known must cease for the unknown to be.”

When you don’t know what it is that you’re looking for, and you don’t know what it’ll look like when you find it, all that remains to you is to examine the operations of your own mind.

Naturally, this leads to the falling away of every answer that has been and could be given concerning happiness and fulfillment, and concerning how we should govern our societies.

Since we see that the ideas of happiness and fulfillment are constantly changing, we must ask ourselves if there really is such a thing.

We’ve been discussing the necessity and possibility of fundamental change for some time now, and if you have been following the logical progression of our discussion, you can see that observing the function and operation of your own mind without judgement is the only way out of our collective confusion.

I can also assume that you WANT to love your children, that you WANT to overcome the destructive patterns of society, and that you WANT to affirm the meaningfulness of daily life.

So what’s stopping you?

What’s holding you back from experiencing this revolution of the mind?

In the final analysis, there is nothing to do, and nothing to attain.

“When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you”

— Lao Tzu

There is no set of rules or precepts that you are required to follow, nothing that you are being asked to believe.

Rather, fundamental change is ready and waiting.

What are YOUR answers to these questions that we have been discussing? How will they impact you on the concrete level of your daily existence? Will you change?

If you don’t change now, then you never will.

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

Comey’s Quixotic Quest to Prove Russian Involvement in Elections

Posted on May 10, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By Wayne Madsen

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey may be physically imposing at 6 feet, 8 inches tall. However, when it comes to his oratorical skills, or, in his case, the lack thereof, Comey is nothing more than a «snake oil» salesman trying to market fanciful conspiracies masked as fact. Trying to emulate one of his predecessors, J. Edgar Hoover, Comey said that when it comes to protecting the democratic process, Russia is «the greatest threat to any nation on earth, given their intention and their ability». Comey’s rhetoric is right out of the pages of the Cold War and Senator Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communist «witch hunts». Comey engaged in McCarthyite tactics by referring to WikiLeaks as «a conduit for the Russian intelligence services».

It is hard to tell whether President Trump agrees with Mr. Comey. Trump has indicated that it is within his power to fire Comey, but has given no further indication as to whether the FBI director will serve out the traditional ten-year term. There is one thing for certain. Comey may not want to appear as a right-wing, Cold War-mentality neoconservative, but his professional and personal history indicates that when it comes to Russia-bashing, it is in his blood. Comey supported and donated to the presidential campaigns of the psychotically anti-Russian John McCain, as well as the neocons’ darling Mitt Romney.

After leaving the Justice Department in 2005, Comey became General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s largest contractor. When it comes to war-making, Lockheed Martin has profited handsomely from ensuring that military tension remains a hair-trigger from war from the Baltic region and the Balkans to the Korean peninsula and the Middle East. Feeding the «war-porn» addicts in the U.S. Congress, including the likes of Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas, improves the bottom line of Lockheed Martin, a firm in which Mr. Comey likely still has a significant personal financial stake.

Comey and his neocon friends have decided that the best way to challenge the anti-globalist populist wave that is sweeping the world is to deploy a wide brush and paint every sovereigntist political campaign and leader – both left and right – as Russian «tools» and Kremlin «agents». It worked for Hoover during the Cold War when he decided that the best way to avert the attention of the American public away from his friends in organized crime and his own well-known homosexuality was to claim that «Communists» had infiltrated every sector of American society. In his attempt to fill Mr. Hoover’s high-heeled shoes, Comey accuses Russia of being the greatest threat to free elections on earth.

One only need examine the record of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency since its creation in 1947 to find out that it has been the United States that has been the greatest threat to free and fair elections around the globe. When it comes to election interference, no country – Russia, China, the former Soviet Union, apartheid South Africa, or North Korea – holds a candle to the boys at Langley. In 1948, a CIA full-court press of bribes, threats, and infiltration ensured the defeat of the Communist Party by the U.S.-supported Christian Democrats in the Italian general election. This same template was used again and again by Washington in countries ranging from Chile and Nicaragua to Australia and Russia.

Now, the CIA, headed by the neo-Cold Warrior and right-wing religious extremist Mike Pompeo, and its allies, are trying to turn the tables in suggesting that Russia has been able to almost singlehandedly affect the U.S. presidential campaign, the «yes» vote in the European Union Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, the French presidential election, and the «no» vote in the Italian constitutional reform referendum. There is a major problem with this thinking. If Russia were as powerful as claimed by the Comey, Pompeo, and others, Austrian nationalist Norbert Hofer, not the anti-Russian emigré from Estonia, Alexander Van der Bellen, would have won the Austrian presidential election. And it would have been the Dutch Freedom Party nationalist Geert Wilders, not the globalist Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who would have been the victor in the Netherlands election.

If Russia’s intentions were as malignant as claimed by the neocons and the Cold Warriors, a dubious Russian-backed coup operation in Montenegro would have been successful and not a failure. When it comes to coup-making and putsches, it is Langley that excels, especially with its own unlimited funds, coupled with those of international hedge fund tycoon George Soros, at its disposal. It is American fingerprints that have been found in successful and aborted «color revolutions» in Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia, Macedonia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Armenia, and the Srpska Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was joint CIA-Soros funds that gave rise to the bloody «Arab Spring» uprisings in Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen. The Arab Spring template has been moved by the globalist power centers to create havoc in socialist Venezuela, with their eyes soon to be set on Bolivia.

The strategy of the globalists and their puppets, such as Comey, Lindsey Graham, and others, is to demonize as «Russian agents» those who pose a threat to the «world order» fashioned by the CIA, Wall Street, and the Pentagon. Therefore, leftist anti-globalists like British Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, French leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and U.S. Independent Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders are given the same McCarthyite «Russian agent» labels, as have Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Alternative for Germany leader Frauke Petry.

Globalist politicians – left and right – now routinely engage in claims of Russia involvement in their nations’ political processes to mask their own ineffective leadership. In January of this year, Swedish Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said he could not rule out «Russian interference» in Sweden’s 2018 general election. There is little doubt that if Löfven loses, he will blame it all on «the Russians».

The New York Times suggested that Russia was financially backing Mr. Wilders in the Netherlands election but the paper paid scant attention to the fact that Israel is the Dutch opposition leader’s biggest financial «sugar daddy». It is amazing that the tools of the globalists, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, did not claim that Russia interfered in the February 5, 2017 general election in the Principality of Liechtenstein, because an anti-EU and anti-migrant party, «Die Unabhängigen», («The Independents»), came in third, beating a traditional third party.

Mr. Comey testified about intelligence proof he has confirming Russian interference in the U.S. election. Let’s examine the history of U.S. intelligence «proof». It includes intelligence reports from a phony Iraqi defector named «Curveball» that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, fake signals intelligence intercepts on a non-existent North Vietnamese naval attack on the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy in 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, phony intelligence reports on Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi committing mass executions of Libyans in 2011, fake reports on Iranian nuclear weapons development after it ended its weapons program in 2003, and, more recently, a dubious intelligence dossier from a mid-level former British MI-6 employee who successfully shopped «dirt» to the Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton campaigns on Trump and «golden shower» parties in Moscow. The dossier, embraced by Comey, is said to «prove» Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election. British «dossiers» on just about everything, from the Number 10 «dodgy dossier» on Saddam Hussein’s weapons to the «dirty dossier» on Trump, are about as credible as everything else in the British tabloids. Comey should read Harry Potter books, not FBI and CIA intelligence reports, if he wants to wallow in fiction.

Two for Tuesday

Posted on May 9, 2017 by Reid Mukai

Hasan Salaam

The Government Is Still the Enemy of Freedom

Posted on May 9, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter. Sooner or later, the people in this country are gonna realize the government … doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety… It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing. Keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.”— George Carlin

My friends, we’re being played for fools.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

We’re in trouble, folks.

Freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from soldiers invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

The unspoken freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the right to think freely and openly debate issues without being muzzled or treated like a criminal.

In other words, if we no longer have the right to tell a Census Worker to get off our property, if we no longer have the right to tell a police officer to get a search warrant before they dare to walk through our door, if we no longer have the right to stand in front of the Supreme Court wearing a protest sign or approach an elected representative to share our views, if we no longer have the right to protest unjust laws by voicing our opinions in public or on our clothing or before a legislative body—no matter how misogynistic, hateful, prejudiced, intolerant, misguided or politically incorrect they might be—then we do not have free speech.

What we have instead is regulated, controlled speech, and that’s a whole other ballgame.

Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors are conspiring to corrode our core freedoms purportedly for our own good.

For instance, the protest laws being introduced across the country—in 18 states so far—are supposedly in the name of “public safety and limiting economic damage.”

Don’t fall for it.

No matter how you package these laws, no matter how well-meaning they may sound, no matter how much you may disagree with the protesters or sympathize with the objects of the protest, these proposed laws are aimed at one thing only: discouraging dissent.

In Arizona, police would be permitted to seize the assets of anyone involved in a protest that at some point becomes violent.

In Minnesota, protesters would be forced to pay for the cost of having police on hand to “police” demonstrations.

Oregon lawmakers want to “require public community colleges and universities to expel any student convicted of participating in a violent riot.”

A proposed North Dakota law would give drivers the green light to “accidentally” run over protesters who are blocking a public roadway. Florida and Tennessee are entertaining similar laws.

Pushing back against what it refers to as “economic terrorism,” Washington wants to increase penalties for protesters who block access to highways and railways.

Anticipating protests over the Keystone Pipeline, South Dakota wants to apply the governor’s emergency response authority to potentially destructive protests, create new trespassing penalties and make it a crime to obstruct highways.

In Iowa, protesters who block highways with speeds posted above 55 mph could spend five years in prison, plus a fine of up to $7,500. Obstruct traffic in Mississippi and you could be facing a $10,000 fine and a five-year prison sentence.

A North Carolina law would make it a crime to heckle state officials. Under this law, shouting at a former governor would constitute a crime.

Indiana lawmakers wanted to authorize police to use “any means necessary” to breakup mass gatherings that block traffic. That legislation has since been amended to merely empower police to issue fines for such behavior.

Georgia is proposing harsh penalties and mandatory sentencing laws for those who obstruct public passages or throw bodily fluids on “public safety officers.”

Virginia wants to subject protesters who engage in an “unlawful assembly” after “having been lawfully warned to disperse” with up to a year of jail time and a fine of up to $2,500.

Missouri wants to make it illegal for anyone participating in an “unlawful assembly” to intentionally conceal “his or her identity by the means of a robe, mask, or other disguise.”

Colorado wants to lock up protesters for up to 18 months who obstruct or tamper with oil and gas equipment and charge them with up to $100,000 in fines.

Oklahoma wants to create a sliding scale for protesters whose actions impact or impede critical infrastructure. The penalties would range from $1,000 and six months in a county jail to $100,000 and up to 10 years in prison. And if you’re part of an organization, that fine goes as high as $1,000,000.

Michigan hopes to make it easier for courts to shut down “mass picketing” demonstrations and fine protesters who block entrances to businesses, private residences or roadways up to $1,000 a day. That fine jumps to $10,000 a day for unions or other organizing groups.

Ask yourself: if there are already laws on the books in all of the states that address criminal or illegal behavior such as blocking public roadways or trespassing on private property—because such laws are already on the books—then why does the government need to pass laws criminalizing activities that are already outlawed?

What’s really going on here?

No matter what the politicians might say, the government doesn’t care about our rights, our welfare or our safety.

How many times will we keep falling for the same tricks?

Every despotic measure used to control us and make us cower and fear and comply with the government’s dictates has been packaged as being for our benefit, while in truth benefiting only those who stand to profit, financially or otherwise, from the government’s transformation of the citizenry into a criminal class.

Remember, the Patriot Act didn’t make us safer. It simply turned American citizens into suspects and, in the process, gave rise to an entire industry—private and governmental—whose profit depends on its ability to undermine our Fourth Amendment rights.

Placing TSA agents in our nation’s airports didn’t make us safer. It simply subjected Americans to invasive groping, ogling and bodily searches by government agents. Now the TSA plans to subject travelers to even more “comprehensive” patdowns.

So, too, these protest laws are not about protecting the economy or private property or public roads. Rather, they are intended to muzzle discontent and discourage anyone from challenging government authority.

These laws are the shot across the bow.

They’re intended to send a strong message that in the American police state, you’re either a patriot who marches in lockstep with the government’s dictates or you’re a pariah, a suspect, a criminal, a troublemaker, a terrorist, a radical, a revolutionary.

Yet by muzzling the citizenry, by removing the constitutional steam valves that allow people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world, the government is deliberately stirring the pot, creating a climate in which violence becomes inevitable.

When there is no steam valve—when there is no one to hear what the people have to say, because government representatives have removed themselves so far from their constituents—then frustration builds, anger grows and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation.

Then again, perhaps that was the government’s plan all along.

As John F. Kennedy warned in March 1962, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

The government is making violent revolution inevitable.

How do you lock down a nation?

You sow discontent and fear among the populace. You terrorize the people into believing that radicalized foreigners are preparing to invade. You teach them to be non-thinkers who passively accept whatever is told them, whether it’s delivered by way of the corporate media or a government handler. You brainwash them into believing that everything the government does is for their good and anyone who opposes the government is an enemy. You acclimate them to a state of martial law, carried out by soldiers disguised as police officers but bearing the weapons of war. You polarize them so that they can never unite and stand united against the government. You create a climate in which silence is golden and those who speak up are shouted down. You spread propaganda and lies. You package the police state in the rhetoric of politicians.

And then, when and if the people finally wake up to the fact that the government is not and has never been their friend, when it’s too late for peaceful protests and violence is all that remains to them as a recourse against tyranny, you use all of the tools you’ve been so carefully amassing—the criminal databases and surveillance and identification systems and private prisons and protest laws—and you shut them down for good.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, once a government assumes power—unconstitutional or not—it does not relinquish it. The militarized police are not going to stand down. The NSA will continue to collect electronic files on everything we do. More and more Americans are going to face jail time for offenses that prior generations did not concern themselves with.

The government—at all levels—could crack down on virtually anyone at any time.

Martin Luther King saw it coming: both the “spontaneous explosion of anger by various citizen groups” and the ensuing crackdown by the government.

“Police, national guard and other armed bodies are feverously preparing for repression,” King wrote shortly before he was assassinated. “They can be curbed not by unorganized resort to force…but only by a massive wave of militant nonviolence….It also may be the instrument of our national salvation.”

Militant nonviolent resistance.

“A nationwide nonviolent movement is very important,” King wrote. “We know from past experience that Congress and the President won’t do anything until you develop a movement around which people of goodwill can find a way to put pressure on them… This means making the movement powerful enough, dramatic enough, morally appealing enough, so that people of goodwill, the churches, laborers, liberals, intellectuals, students, poor people themselves begin to put pressure on congressmen to the point that they can no longer elude our demands.

“It must be militant, massive nonviolence,” King emphasized.

In other words, besides marches and protests, there would have to be civil disobedience. Civil disobedience forces the government to expend energy in many directions, especially if it is nonviolent, organized and is conducted on a massive scale. This is, as King knew, the only way to move the beast. It is the way to effect change without resorting to violence. And it is exactly what these protest laws are attempting to discourage

We are coming to a crossroads. Either we gather together now and attempt to restore freedom or all will be lost. As King cautioned, “everywhere, ‘time is winding up,’ in the words of one of our spirituals, corruption in the land, people take your stand; time is winding up.”

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at http://www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

Imperialism and the Logic Of Mass Destruction

Posted on May 8, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By Carl Boggs

Source: CounterPunch

As throughout much of its war-obsessed history, the United States is currently engaged in military conflict – or threatening such action – across a broad contested terrain. In the cases of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, Washington has resorted to its familiar global modus operandi: sending off barrages of missiles and bombs, much of it hitting civilian populations and resources needed for their survival. Death tolls mount, the largest numbers lately in the protracted battle for Mosul. Heavier casualties are being visited upon non-combatants in Yemen, thanks to U.S.-backed Saudi aerial savagery.

We have been told by the media that President Trump has apparently relaxed the rules of warfare, thus allowing civilians to be more easily victimized the midst of armed conflict. Innocent noncombatants are being made increasingly vulnerable to ravages of the largest and most aggressive war machine in history. That, however, would be a serious misreading of the situation: Trump, like Obama, the Bushes, and Clinton before him, is simply operating within an historical pattern of imperial war making for which rules of engagement matter little, if at all. There is no deviation from the norm.

In fact Pentagon elites insist nothing has changed in their methods of warfare – and they are right. While the U.S. accuses, threatens, and attacks others for their (real or imputed) transgressions, its own apparatus of mass destruction continues with few legal or moral constraints. In particular, Washington long ago turned aerial terrorism into a normalized mode of technowar that reduces civilians to dispensable objects.

In recent weeks U.S. aerial bombardments in Syria alone have reportedly killed several hundred people, mainly civilians. Daily raids in Iraq, mostly targeting ISIS in Mosul, have accounted for more than 3000 civilian deaths, according to AirWars sources. To believe this is a departure from the past – or that civilian casualties are simply an inevitable by-product of combat – is to ignore the American history of savage warfare, which since World War II has meant bringing horrendous death and destruction from the skies.

There is actually nothing “indiscriminate” about this savagery: all too often it has been planned, deliberate, systematic – and discriminate. Moreover, the U.S. has far surpassed any other nation in the production, deployment, and use of WMD, its military doctrines now as in the past embracing the virtues of weaponry designed to bring mass destruction. Consider that WMD comes in four distinct types: nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional (mainly saturation bombing). We could add to this list economic sanctions of the sort the U.S. (through the United Nations) imposed on Iraq during the 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. As the U.S. resorted to sanctions continuously in the postwar era – targeting Iran, Cuba, Yugoslavia, North Korea, and Russia as well as Iraq – the civilian death toll (well past a million) has far exceeded that from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons combined.

Yet it is conventional warfare that has brought the greatest destruction, for both combatants and civilians – and it remains the most imposing threat today. The WMD threat arrives in the form of strategic (alternatively saturation, area, carpet, or scorched-earth) bombing, introduced by the British and Americans during World War II and refined across the decades. Worth noting is that the U.S. is the only nation to have manufactured, stored, deployed, and used all five types of WMD.

In densely-populated centers like Mosul and Raqqa – and where hundreds of drone strikes are carried out – efforts to distinguish between combatants and civilians are virtually impossible; large numbers of civilian dead and wounded tolls are inevitable. That has never deterred U.S. military decision-makers at the Pentagon or in the field, whatever “rules” are set forth in the Universal Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) or international statutes. From World War II to Korea, Indochina, Iraq, Yugoslavia, and beyond, this carnage is alternately blamed on mistakes, inescapable “collateral damage”, intelligence failures, enemy use of “human shields” – all while boasting of the latest “precision weaponry”. Unfortunately, the U.S. military rarely conducts genuine investigations into the devastation it produces, and for good reason: it does want to come face-to-face with its flagrant war crimes.

Since late 2014 U.S. (or Coalition) planes have carried out more than 20,000 strikes in Iraq and Syria, resulting in an estimated 70,000 “militant” deaths – a number that surely includes civilian losses that will never be known and based on a calculus that is routinely understated. According to AirWars, at least 3325 civilians were killed from a total of 566 air strikes in the region, but that is only where evidence is clearly available. Meanwhile, recent non-combatant deaths in Mosul alone have reached more than 2500, as reported by AirWars. Important civilian objects – residences, public buildings, markets, etc. – have been repeatedly hit with high-explosive weaponry. The bombing raids have only intensified.

What is taking place in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria replicates a familiar disregard for long-established international law, as even the corporate media unwittingly acknowledges by attributing a “loosening of rules” to the out-of-control Trump. California Representative Ted Lieu recently sent a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis seeking clarification of American global behavior: “The substantial increases in civilian deaths caused by U.S. military force in Syria and Iraq brings into question whether the Trump administration is violating the Laws of War.” Trump is indeed violating such laws – specifically the 1949 Geneva Protocol prohibiting wanton attacks on civilians – but, as noted, he is simply following deeply-entrenched American practices.

For more than a century American imperialism has been fueled by a combustible mixture of national exceptionalism, militarism, racism, and pursuit of global supremacy. Civilian inhabitants and their necessary supports have never stood in the way of these powerful forces, even where it has meant resort to WMD. Demonized Asian populations have been mercilessly targeted, with impunity – and unbelievably savage consequences. Looking at the apparent willingness of the Trump administration to consider nuclear warfare on the Korean peninsula, with its unthinkable horrors, we can readily see that little has changed over the decades.

As Washington looks to reassert economic, political, and military leverage in the Asia-Pacific region – the so-called “Asian Pivot” to contain China – escalating U.S. threats should be taken seriously. Whether conventional or nuclear, the Pentagon is poised to strike first against North Korea. For several months, indeed years, the U.S. has done everything short of all-out war to intimidate and subvert the Kim Jung Un regime: large-scale military exercises, economic sanctions, cyberattacks, new troop deployments, constant threats of attack. There is much talk in Washington and the media of “preemptive war”, including efforts to “decapitate” the regime. A supposedly impenetrable missile-defense system (THAAD) is being installed across South Korea.

Koreans already know far more than they would prefer about the horrors of mass destruction emanating from the U.S. What can only be called a war of annihilation, carried out by the U.S. to secure battlefield victory over endless stalemate, in the face of strong Chinese and North Korean forces, left a death toll on the peninsula with estimates reaching as high as five million, nearly 80 percent civilian. Political, legal, and moral constraints were routinely tossed aside, as American military culture eagerly took up the World War II code that mass killing of civilians was legitimate – actually vital – to the kind of war of attrition the U.S. had waged against the Japanese.

When the U.S. Army was forced into a perilous retreat in fall 1950, General Douglas MacArthur ordered his air force to destroy “every means of communication, every installation, factory, city, town, and village” in Korea. Food sources and water facilities were systematically targeted and obliterated. Nonstop raids, employing napalm and other incendiary devices, left the main centers of human life (including the capital Pyongyang) in smoking ruins. Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, in their eye-opening book The United States and Biological Warfare, write: “As it had been in World War II, strategic bombing was extended to the mass destruction of civilian populations, and as in World War II the reservations that the U.S. had about saturation bombing of Europeans in that earlier war were not extended to Asians.”

In December of 1950 the Joint Chiefs of Staff endorsed President Truman’s readiness to use atomic bombs in Korea to avoid further stalemate or defeat. This “option” was retained throughout the war, finally to be jettisoned by President Eisenhower in 1953. White House and Pentagon officials also favored employing both chemical and biological weapons in a theater where mass destruction was already far advanced.

In fact the U.S. did launch a phase of biological warfare in Korea, a criminal project the warfare state has tried to keep secret. Evidence uncovered by the Koreans and Chinese revealed a U.S. military campaign to disseminate a wide variety of deadly biological agents, hoping to create epidemics, panic, and social breakdown in the north. In late 1950 large outbreaks of plague, cholera, smallpox, and encephalitis were reported in Pyongyang and several provinces, according to Endicott and Hagerman. This was part of a scorched-earth policy U.S. troops employed as they retreated southward throughout 1950 and 1951.

Endicott and Hagerman add: “The U.S. had substantial stocks of biological weapons on hand. Moral qualms about using biological or atomic weapons had been brushed aside by top leaders and biological warfare might dodge the political bullet of adverse public and world opinion if it were kept secret enough to make plausible denial of its use.” Moreover, Washington had not signed the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning such weaponry. Later investigations and reports found the U.S. guilty as charged, a finding naturally dismissed by Americans as “Communist propaganda”.

The Pentagon’s biological program was kept intact until early 1953. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force was busy destroying every Korean target in sight, including agricultural fields and hydroelectric dams, dropping an endless supply of fragmentation bombs, napalm, and high-explosive devices. In August 1952 Pyongyang was leveled by a series of saturation-bombing raids. Still unable to break the military stalemate, the USAF transferred a large stock of atomic weapons to Okinawa as it prepared for a new phase of warfare that, fortunately, was never set in motion.

Embracing the great benefits of WMD, the U.S. military was able to revitalize its strategy of total war, understood by many at the summits of power as God’s work. General Matthew Ridgway, Eighth Army commander, could say in 1951: “The real issues are whether the power of Western civilization, as God has permitted it to flower in our own beloved lands, shall defy and defeat Communism . . . [and] whether we are able to survive with God’s hand to guide and lead us, or to perish in the dead existence of a Godless world.” Before Korea, the God of a privileged imperial nation had similarly blessed the American takeover of the Philippines at a cost of several hundred thousand lives – and before that the massacre of Indian tribes (by Andrew Jackson’s troops) at Horseshoe Bend and (by Colonel John Chivington’s marauders) at Sand Creek, among many other atrocities.

An imperialist ideology that embellished, even celebrated, warfare against civilians reached its first methodical expression during World War II. In the Pacific, this meant a war of annihilation against the Japanese, who at that time stood for the “Asian masses” or “hordes”. In such a war everything was permissible, starting with the deliberate and ruthless obliteration of entire cities, including those with little or no military significance. Saturation bombing launched by waves of the most technologically-developed warplanes raised barbarism to new levels. Admiral William Halsey, U.S. Pacific Fleet commander, vowing revenge for Pearl Harbor, promised that Japanese would henceforth be spoken only in hell while ordering his personnel to “kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs.” (Worth noting: only military targets were hit at Pearl Harbor.) The remarkable American hatred of Japanese was destined to produce, in John Dower’s words (War without Mercy “a spellbinding spectacle of brutality and death.”

On March 9-10, 1945, U.S. planes dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo, with the aim of destroying the city; at least 100,000 civilians were instantly killed. Aerial terrorism then turned to Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, and more than 60 other cities, targeting mostly defenseless civilian areas with vengeful frenzy. A few cities remained – Hiroshima and Nagasaki among them – until they were obliterated by the new superweapon developed at the Manhattan Project, leaving another 150,000 dead amid unimaginable mass destruction.

There could be no justification for such criminality. A.J. Grayling, in his book All the Dead Cities, surveyed the history of strategic bombing and concluded that World War II pilots should have refused orders to carry out such raids. (None in fact did.) General Curtis LeMay, architect of the firebombing attacks on Japanese cities, later conceded: “If we had lost the war we would all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” Allied prosecutors at the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals moved to exclude that very possibility, so aerial mass murder was exempted from wartime culpability.

World War II set in motion an elevated trajectory of imperial atrocities that would continue throughout the postwar years. While nations were generally expected to follow international law and wartime rules of engagement, and the vast majority have chosen to do so, the U.S. simply took another path: contempt for the norms of universality. To this day Washington steadfastly refuses participation in the International Criminal Court (ICC), understandably fearing prosecution of its own government and military personnel for war crimes. The plain fact is that American elites can routinely launch wars against peace and target civilian populations without even the pretense of any legal rationale.

Less than a decade after the Korean War the U.S. commenced a new phase of barbarism in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, dropping eight million tons of bombs compared to the two million tons dropped on all countries in World War II. This was equivalent to 640 Hiroshimas. Saturation bombing was perfected beyond its usage against Japan and Korea: B-52s systematically carpet-bombed large zones, followed by a torrent of anti-personnel weapons including cluster bombs, white-phosphorous, and a specially-upgraded napalm. By 1974, the U.S. military had dropped seven bombs for every person in Indochina. As for napalm, a staggering 373,000 tons was unleashed in Vietnam, compared to 32,000 tons in Korea.

In Vietnam, the Pentagon relied heavily on chemical warfare: roughly 6500 flights to spray Agent Orange and other toxic agents were carried out between 1962 and 1971, the intent being to destroy crops and foliage. Operation Ranch Hand contaminated more than 31,000 square kilometers, poisoning at least four million people and leaving hundreds of thousands afflicted with cancer, lung diseases, and birth defects. Such warfare could never distinguish combatants from civilians, nor did the U.S. military command make any real efforts to do so.

In more recent decades, civilian death tolls resulting from U.S. military operations in the Middle East and beyond have easily surpassed one million. Harsh economic sanctions imposed on Iraq, Yugoslavia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and others could have reached that same figure. Aerial bombardments have devastated large, densely-populated areas of Iraq, Panama, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libra, and Syria. Weapons “upgraded” with depleted uranium (DU) have left a toxic legacy in Iraq and Serbia, overwhelmingly harming civilians.

Back to Korea: the Trump administration says it has “lost all patience” with North Korean leaders and their “reckless behavior”, and has (again) “opened the door” to military attack while seemingly holding out prospects of diplomacy that, however, depend on rigid stipulations. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that for any talks to occur North Korea would first have to “exhibit good faith commitment” by jettisoning its nuclear program – a complete non-starter. Given such imperial arrogance, can mounting confrontation be avoided?

With all that is at stake – perhaps one million people killed within the first day or so of a new Korean War, vast urban centers decimated, a potential nuclear exchange – rational leadership might be expected to retreat from such a nightmarish scenario and consider a more peaceful modus vivendi. (For the U.S., a peaceful option is exactly what is “off the table”.) From the standpoint of Washington, “rational” pursuits are also imperial pursuits and imperial pursuits generally lead to military pursuits, as history demonstrates. Technowar managers are not especially sensitive to the prospects of massive civilian losses. Normal behavioral assumptions therefore do not apply to U.S. war calculations, whoever occupies the White House.

Carl Boggs is the author of The Hollywood War Machine, with Tom Pollard (second edition, forthcoming), and Drugs, Power, and Politics, both published by Paradigm.

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After the Crash

Dispatches From a Long Recovery (Est. 10/2024)

Yearly Archives: 2017