Kenoli's Comments--long reply

[kenoli Oleari]

Paul

It is interesting that what you read in my message is antipathy
towards the United States.  The large part of what I said about our
country is the following:

"This is a nation that needs shocking.  Most of what it gets is
pablum, protecting it from the realities that we face on this planet.
The truth is that our government is a terrorist government and so is
our vice president Dick Cheney (as Boondocks implies).  It just
doesn't look like that because the actions of the victors and the
privileged never do, because they define the parameters of the game."

I made no comparisons between the United States and other countries.
One problem that I have is that the general response when someone
critiques America's role in the world is what sounds like a need to
make a case that America is actually a better country than most
others.  I think this is at the root of our problem in the world, our
national need to be "better", "stronger", "more just", etc.  I think
the truth is that we are not much better (or much worse) than other
countries.  There are exceptions, of course, in both directions.  But
until we can own the horrible (yes horrible) things we do in the
world we are going to keep doing them.  It is out of a love for this
country that I want us to be able to see these things.

Take for example the paragraph you wrote:

>This is not an exclusive province of the US govt., but of all governments and
>human beings the world over.  Great suffering is caused by all governing
>bodies the world over, many much more than ours by a great deal---I remind
>you of Cambodia, Kosovo, the Holocaust, Nigeria, Indonesia, in fact the whole
>subcontinents of Africa and central and south America.  Mexico, for instance,
>is only now beginning to emerge out from under the power of the oligarchs.

Do you realize how much the United States drove or was complicite in
many of these situations you site?  We carpet bombed Cambodia daily
until the infrastructure was in such shambles that there was nothing
to stop a coalition of guerrillas (the Kmer Rouge) from taking over
the country.  In fact, there are close parallels between the Kmer
Rouge and the Taliban.  We had been arming Laotian and Cambodian
Guerillas for years because we used them to make infiltrations into
Viet Nam.  Both the Kmer Rouge and the Taliban are largely groups of
youth who grew up in guerilla camps.  The conditions that cultivated
the Kmer Rouge were similar the those in Afghanistan.  The underlying
dynamic in each case was the years of war that were driven by the
cold war (between the US and Russia that was a hot war in many other
people's country), in the case of Cambodia, the war in Vietnam and in
Afghanistan the war with Russia.

I would argue that both the Kosovo situation and the Second World war
were greatly driven by a failure of the powerful western countries to
take on responsibilities in situations that needed earlier
intervention.  By the time we came in, war was about the only option.
The people in Paris used the general motors plant as a bomb shelter
because the Germans never bombed it since general motors was making
engines for their airplanes.  Nazism in Germany was strongly driven
by the humiliation Germany felt at they way they were treated by the
"victors" in the first world war at the treaty of Versailles (the US
was a key player in this).

The situation in Nigeria has been greatly exacerbated and supported,
if not driven, by American oil companies who have decimated segments
of that country environmentally and poured huge amounts of money into
horrible governments in order to support their oil profits there.
There was an incident in the last few years where Chevron flew in
national police to shoot down Nigerians involved in a peaceful
demonstration.  In the 1960s in Indonesia, it is estimated by
reliable sources that as many as one million people (supposedly
communists) were killed by militias financed, encouraged and
supported by the United States.  Over 100,000 were killed in Bali
alone.  The government printing office recently released a book
documenting this piece of history.  The state department immediately
ordered the printing office to retrieve every copy of the book and
retract the release. (How's that for freedom of speech)  The United
States fully supported (politically and financially) the recent
interventions in East Timor that resulted in at least 100,000 deaths
at the hand of a US trained Indonesia military.  In the 60s, the CIA
secretly poured money into the National Student Association in this
country to send students to Indonesia to connect with left wing
organizations.  When the students returned they unwittingly wrote
reports for their courses identifying organizations and individuals
they met and worked with.  These names were collected by the CIA and
turned over to the Indonesian government and the militias and many of
these people were killed.  A good friend of mine exposed this
relationship with the CIA and the National Student Association and
spent weeks being afraid he would be assassinated by our government.
A close friend of my uncle (who was president of the national council
of Churches) was killed and so was the head of the Taconic
foundation.  The connection?  They were collaborating to expose the
CIA funding of the World Council of Churches to do similar things in
Indonesia and other countries.  My uncle looked into the situation
and is convinced they were killed by the CIA.  Most of the money was
being "laundered" through the Taconic foundation.  Our government
murdered at least 28 Black Panthers in one month.  In response to the
exposure of these kinds of actions, our government was forbidden by
Congress to either assassinate people or work with people who are
criminals.  One of the things your government wants to do now is to
reverse this so it will once again be allowed to do these things.

I think it is not antipathy for America, but patriotism to know about
these things and expose them.  I think that most Americans have no
idea what their country does in this world and would be horrified and
refuse to support them if they did.  If we have to keep playing the
game that we are better than everyone else how will we ever become
the country we truly want to be?  It is not in anyones best interests
to "need" to see ourselves as "right".  What is all this disgusting
talk of "good" and "evil"?  We need to remove this vocabulary from
our language.  It is not a matter of good and evil.  It is a matter
of looking at what is happening and making conscious and
participatory (remember open space) choices carefully chosen to
create the kind of world we want to live in.  We need to be truthful
and honest as we do this and not be blind to our own complicity,
otherwise it will never change.  It will do us no good to externalize
our experience as a nation than it does to externalize it as
individuals.

Another thing bill Moyers said was:

If  I  sound  a  little bitter about this, I am; the President
rightly appeals every day for sacrifice.  But to these mercenaries
[he is speaking here of the wealthy and politically powerful]
sacrifice is for suckers.  So  I  am bitter, yes, and sad.  Our
business and political class owes  us  better  than this.  After all,
it was they who declared class war twenty  years  ago and it was they
who won.    They're on top. If ever they were  going  to  put
patriotism  over  profits, if ever they were going to practice  the
magnanimity  of  winners,  this was the moment.  To hide now behind
the flag while ripping off a country in crisis fatally - fatally!
-separates them from the common course of American  life.

[My note here:  Congress just appropriated 100 billion dollars of
your social security money to bail out failing corporations.  In this
country we privatize profits and socialize losses.  We pay for the
exhorbitant profits that corporations make and take home and then pay
again when their failed business policies cause a loss that is bought
out by your government.]

Moyers goes on:

Some things just don't change.  Once again the Republican Party has
lived  down  to  Harry  Truman's  description  of  the  GOP as
guardians of privilege. And as for Truman's Democratic Party-the
party of the New Deal and the fair deal-well, it breaks my heart to
report that the Democratic National  Committee has used the terrorist
attacks to call for widening the soft  money loophole in our election
laws.   How about that for a patriotic response  to  terrorism?

Moyers goes on to say:

But this  is  their  game.    They're counting on your patriotism to
distract you from their plunder.  They're counting on you to be
standing at attention  with your hand over your heart, pledging
allegiance to the flag, while they pick your pocket!

(I am attaching Moyer's talk so you can see it in its entirety.
Actually, this list won't let me do that, I'll see if i can find a
URL for it.)

He was talking about the oligarchs in America.

This country continues to be controlled by an oligarchy.  When was
the last time you saw a president, or a majority in congress that was
not put there by big money interests.  This is what an oligarchy is.
I want us, the people of the United States, to take back control of
this country so that it is a true democracy.  Who is working two jobs
to keep their heads above water? Certainly not the boards of
directors.

I think a vast majority of our population supports the global warming
treaty, the treaty against child labor, the treaty against land
mines, the ABM treaty.  Does our government represent that opinion in
the family of nations?  No it stands alone among other nations
against these treaties, representing the interests of the oligarchy
instead of the interests of the people or the world community.

I think there may be some Horatio Alger myth among the population,
but the United states has more poor people in prisons per capita than
any other country.  More than 1/4 of all Black males under 30 are in
prison or on parole (and that's not because blacks commit more
crimes).  We are debating whether or not to torture terrorists.  Well
in most big city police departments, police already toture blacks and
latinos.  There have been a number of incidents of this exposed in
the last few years in California and in New York and other places.
Those are the most flagrant examples.  A book has been published by
the October 22 movement that is about 2 inches thick documenting such
incidents nation wide.  Many mothers in this country are missing
innocent sons and husband at the hands of the police and many single
mothers are in jail because of things their boy friends did.

These facts are not caused by my antipathy, they just are.  My
concern and my reason for highlighting this reality is because I care
deeply about this country and am gravely concerned about many of the
things it does and what looks to me like a worsening situation.  My
fear is similar to Bill Moyer's, that this 911 experience will be
used to push through all kinds of draconian things (including a
patriotic call to pull back environmental controls on oil and gas
drilling) and release more constraints on our police departments
(when the existing constraints are already too weak to prevent
atrocities).  I was a member of groups in the 60s that were on the
attorney general's list, a list that was similar to the list that
will now be compiled under the new "anti" terrorism act.  You may
find an organization you are a member of on that list.  Neither I nor
any organization I have ever been a member of has ever done anything
or wanted to do anything to hurt this country.  What we did was
disagree.  Too often "disagreement" is seen by the oligarchy as
terrorism.

In the face of what we are looking at, I think dissent is the
patriotic act.  Silence and a compulsion to make America "right" is
the unpatriotic act which ultimated betrays the very values this
country was built on.

When I said this is my truth, I didn't mean to imply that my
perspective was "right" and others were "wrong".  I meant to say that
what I was saying was something that my heart insisted that I say.

Kenoli

>Kenoli, et. al.,
>
>Well, of course, we all have grief.  It's the existential condition of being
>human and on this earth plane.  Nothing to be done but to deal with it
>through friends, personal actions, counseling, living our lives, etc.
>Beneath grief is a deeper well called "shame."  It, too, is largely
>existential, often archetypal, and again part of the human condition.  All of
>us, if we get even slightly introspective, will discover that.
>
>The human condition arises from the fact that we aren't fully conscious (see
>next paragraph) but think we are.  Hence, as Ouspensky pointed out in his
>little tome "On the Possible Psychological Evolution of Man," we do not seek
>to achieve what we already think we are, viz., conscious.  He postulates what
>is called a state of "waking sleep," which is where most of us spend our
>lives.
>
>It may be that much of your antipathy towards our government comes from
>projection of your own issues, as well as your inherent human existential
>issues.  Some of it undoubtedly comes from actual actions by our government
>agencies, both intentional and unintentional.  Few are truly conscious, in
>the sense of Jesus or Buddha or Lao Tzu, etc.  Therefore, they make mistakes
>and do actions that are, and are seen as, reprehensible, causing suffering.
>
>This is not an exclusive province of the US govt., but of all governments and
>human beings the world over.  Great suffering is caused by all governing
>bodies the world over, many much more than ours by a great deal---I remind
>you of Cambodia, Kosovo, the Holocaust, Nigeria, Indonesia, in fact the whole
>subcontinents of Africa and central and south America.  Mexico, for instance,
>is only now beginning to emerge out from under the power of the oligarchs.
>
>Cultural customs and religions cause great suffering.  The caste system in
>India and other countries in that part of the world causes great suffering
>and loss.  My brother is an entrepreneur who raises money from wealthy people
>and goes to India to invest (always a minority investor) in companies who
>need help to become viable so as to help raise the economic level of that
>country and make money for his investors and himself.  He sees great
>suffering caused by the License Raj practices of the Indian government and
>the caste system.  They are endemic to the current cultural milieu.
>
>In my opinion, and I don't even dignify it by calling it my truth, because
>I'm really leery of anything with the word "truth" attached to it as I
>usually find out it isn't, our nation, governed by those we elect as well as
>the bureaucracy that we don't elect and the judges that are appointed, has a
>great mission in the world and that is to lead the way in showing how a group
>of wildly diverse people can live in relative peace and freedom, with
>economic security and opportunity for all.
>
>And, I mean all, despite the manifest discrimination we rail against and work
>against.  We have made great strides in the past 50 years.  WW II was a great
>benefactor in breaking our society up a bit so movement could occur.
>Discrimination is far less here than in most other parts of the world where
>the rule of law isn't even part of their consciousness, nor can you rise in
>that society without being born into the right class or caste or
>circumstance.  There is no nation on earth, and I've been in more than few,
>where I would rather live because conditions are "better."
>
>My good friend, a Ph.D. psychotherapist from France, came here and became an
>American citizen because "here I am allowed to think more freely than even in
>my own country."  (Remembering that the bureaucrats of France caused AIDS to
>be contracted from blood transfusions by hundreds if not thousands of their
>own citizens because they would not use a US invented way of testing blood
>but had to invent their own and it took more years, yes, years, before their
>blood supply could be tested.)
>
>Speaking about the archetypal natures of the two countries around wealth, he
>tells me that in France, if you lose your fortune, you will not be allowed to
>rise again because you have failed and that is unacceptable in that society.
>In America, if one makes and loses a fortune, that is, fails, we cheer them
>on to rise again and they often do.
>
>America is for the underdog.  Look at our movies, how they portray the
>Horatio Alger story all the time.  All the Rocky movies, the Karate Kid
>movies, all portray the underdog who triumphs in the end.  It's our
>archetypal story.  The only time when societal opprobrium will be heaped on
>your head is if you stop trying.  That's the great archetypal sin in America,
>not to try.
>
>So, we do have faults, we do make mistakes, but we have the biggest heart of
>any nation on earth.  I believe earlier in the OSList there was the editorial
>from Canada about who rushes to all the disasters of the world.  The US.  Who
>rushes to our disasters.  Virtually no one.
>
>So, my view is that we are under attack from these terrorists not only
>because of the Middle Eastern imbroglio and other real and imagined actions
>of our country, but also (and mostly) because we represent freedom to think
>our own thoughts, not just those of Christianity, or Islam, or Judaism, or
>Hinduism, or Buddhism or any other "ity" or "ism."
>
>Our women are relatively free--an anathema to these people.  WE ARE FREE,
>also anathema to many who want to have power over everything you do or say.
>How you live your life.  Where you can go, what you can say, what you can
>become, what you are to believe.  The Russian people are just now coming out
>from under that cloud of repression.  There are many, many places in the
>world where repression because of race or religion or caste or tribe
>(especially of tribe) is the norm, not the exception.
>
>I have a friend who ran a pulp and paper mill in South Africa.  All the
>hirees had to be from the same tribe.  If they weren't, the dominant
>tribesmen who worked in the mill would literally meet the new person hired
>from another tribe and kill him with spears.  That is a story he told me, I
>wasn't actually there.  It may not be true but I suspect it is.  Joe Paul, of
>Portland, OR, is going to Nepal? to consult because the business people there
>are stymied by the need to hire all from the same caste.
>
>So, we are imperfect.  I still celebrate this country, and choose to live
>here, because we are on the right path, which is freedom for all to become
>that which they choose to become.  In this process of living as a human
>being, we will injure others, either through action or inaction.  No help for
>it.  So, we should begin to forgive ourselves and others, work on our own
>consciousness, and try not to project our inner hostilities onto other
>systems, peoples and governments.  Unfortunately, no viewpoint is pure, free
>of projection, and neither are these writings of mine.  It is the existential
>human condition.  Free will is a boon and a curse!  :)
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Paul Everett
>
>*
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--
Kenoli Oleari, Horizons of Change, http://www.horizonsofchange.com
1801 Fairview Street, Berkeley, CA  94703   Voice Phone: 510-601-8217,
Fax: 510-595-8369, Email: kenoli at igc.org (or click on: mailto://kenoli@igc.org)

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