Forum Post: Hiding America's Recent History

Hiding America's Recent History

Thursday, 02 August 2012 13:59 By Danny Schechter, Consortium News | Op-Ed

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10666-hiding-americas-recent-history

Some years ago, I meet a major in American intelligence, a member of the "Red Cell Unit." As he explained it to me, his unit was actually charged with assessing other spy shops by offering other views, critiquing intelligence estimates and perhaps even evaluating security systems like the specialists who test airport systems by probing for their soft spots and vulnerabilities, and seeing if they can beat them.

This officer had been sent as one more gung-ho officer into the war in Iraq only to return, like many, if not disillusioned, aware that all was not working well. He was actually involved in guarding so-called HVT's (imprisoned High Value Targets) including Saddam Hussein himself. The officer came to respect Hussein for his intelligence before his untimely demise with a rope around his neck. Saddam's many crimes and errors were often dwarfed by our own.

The United States today has a vast intelligence apparatus on the ground, in the sky and even in space. Technically, it puts to shame the old Soviet Union's ability to monitor what people are doing and saying. The U.S. system sucks up millions of terabytes of data daily. But, that doesn't mean that what is reported is understood. The analysts seek to make sense of it, but the policy- makers are often so locked into templates of action and pre-formulated strategies that insure the input doesn't lead to course corrections or changes in direction. The policy-makers operate with a kind of intellectual "locked-in" disease that freezes out new ideas.

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The American Way of Massacres

[col. writ. 7/23/12] © ’12 Mumia Abu-Jamal

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MumiaEssays/message/93

And here we go again.

A man armed with semi-automatic weapons unleashes his pent-up rage and alienation on his fellow Americans. He kills nearly a dozen people – men, women and babies – and wounds scores of others.

It need not be said that he is American. That is presumed. And while events such as these occasionally occur in other lands (as in Norway a year ago), they are most often an American expression.

Now, Aurora, Colorado joins the parade of death, of Columbine, of Virginia Tech and other points of massacre.

According to police accounts, the accused dyed his hair red, and called himself “The Joker”, a mad villainous character from the comic book-made-movie series figure, “Batman”.

“The Joker” slays a dozen people.

What next, the Penguin?

How utterly American!

There is something dark and foreboding in the American soul. A lust for violence that has not been sated by the genocide of Indian tribes, nor centuries of the legalized terrorism waged against Africans; nor the numerous wars waged abroad.

It is in our religious hymns, our national anthem, our entertainment and in our psyches.

War

Violence

Death

Destruction

It is in our Imperial foreign policy, and in our domestic policy (think prison industrial complex), as well.

And now, like a tennis championship title, a new name is etched on the memory of millions of Americans.

Aurora, Colorado.

Score: 12 and 59.

We’re No. 1!

Again.

-© ’12 maj

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Chinese teen kills nine in knife attack: reports

AFP – 4 hrs ago

http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-teen-kills-eight-knife-attack-reports-102629246.html

A teenager has been arrested after killing nine people and wounding four others in a knife attack in northeast China, state media reported Thursday.

The 17-year-old, who was identified only by his surname Li, barged into the home of his girlfriend armed with a knife following an argument and killed two relatives of the girl, the Legal Daily said.

As he left his girlfriend's home in Liaoning province's Xinbin county, he stabbed six more people to death and wounded five, it said.

One of the injured died Thursday in hospital, the paper said.

Li was arrested near the scene of the attack, late on Wednesday night, and was taken into custody, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Police had nabbed him as he was preparing to jump from a building in an apparent suicide attempt, it added.

No other details were immediately available. Calls made to local authorities and police in Xinbin county went unanswered.

Violent crime has been on the rise in China in recent decades as the nation's economy has boomed and the gap between rich and poor has expanded at an alarming rate.

Experts say the increase in assaults shows that China is paying the price for focusing on more than 30 years of economic growth while ignoring problems linked to rapid social change.

Studies have described a rise in the prevalence of mental disorders in China, some of them linked to stress as the pace of life becomes faster and socialist support systems wither.

However, authorities stress that murder, which carries the death penalty, remains far less common than in most Western countries.