Our Topsy-Turvy World
“I start with the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and wrong people are out of power” Howard Zinn. The problem is Civil Disobedience”, Nov. 1979.
CodePink: @codepink.
Why is there such a disparity between coverage of the war on Ukraine vs. the war on Yemen?
X Coverage of Yemen reveals the US and UK’s complicity in creating the humanitarian crisis.
X Coverage of Ukraine constructs the US, the UK & their allies as the ‘saviors of democracy’.
John McEvoy@jmcevoy_2 Mar 13.
The Guardian has published more stories about Ukraine just today than it has published about Yemen in all of 2022.
We live in an age of terror which seems headed to some cataclysmic catastrophe. Based on the justifications of the Catholic Papal Bulls of the mid15th century European civilization has systematically destroyed one culture after another enslaving and killing millions of people. Latin America, the genocide of indigenous Americans, slavery. The destruction of human beings has been perfected on an industrial scale. From concentration camps to the strategic bombing enunciated by Douhet technology has relentlessly been used to annihilate human beings.
The United States learned that fire was more effective than bombing. Although 70 cities were destroyed, Dresden and Hamburg produced self-sustaining fire storms. The torching of Japanese cities led to the firebombing of Tokyo, and the use of Nuclear Weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Evidence suggests this was unnecessary, but the generals had to see what nuclear weapons could do. After the war they exposed unsuspecting humans to nuclear chemicals without informed consent. Obama started a program of nuclear renewal and the Russians have followed.
After we achieved supremacy in N. Korea we flattened the country killing 1/3 of the 3 million inhabitants, they cheered as we destroyed their dams and agriculture.
We hypocritically condemn Putin’s illegal aggressive war (according to the Nuremberg Laws). What is happening in Ukraine is the work of a deranged mind. But, what he is doing mirrors what we did in Iraq. 650,000 children killed by the embargo. 950,000 killed in the war with millions displaced. We wanted Iraqi oil so we conjured up lies about WMD and al Queda connections as cause of 911. We leveled Falluja, a city the size of Cleveland because Blackwater contractors had been killed and their bodies desecrated. We have left the middle east and Afghanistan in rubble. We destroyed hospitals, power plants, water works and sewage treatment plants. What Putin is doing mirrors these atrocities.
This is a systematic problem allowing viciousness and mayhem to flourish.
We have emasculated the UN and ignored it when it fit our needs. Foolishly, we have ringed Russia by expanding NATO with nuclear weapons. (How did we react to missiles in Cuba?).
But pointing our the wickedness on both sides is irrelevant to what needs to be done. All the energies should be directed towards stopping the war. There are avenues for diplomacy. These must be pursued.
Resources must be freed up to address the existential threat of climate change.
Is it too late to expect things to change????
Howard P. Charman, MD 3-16-2022