The Security Apparatus Loves White Supremacy

Related to my parents financially supporting an avowed white supremacist movement, $1 invested in the S&P 500 in 1970 instead of a racist embarrassment that rips off the Masons and has kooky rituals and costumes would be worth $300 now.  That's a much better investment than a failing marina and tire store.  Speaking of which, my parents technically had us kids own part of a tire store so they could avoid taxes that could help our nation and its people but paid 10% of the profits to an organization that openly practiced racial apartheid.  Of course, they also never contributed a dime to my higher education including that money either.   

The Security Apparatus Really, Really Can't Diagnose

The security apparatus really, really can't diagnose.  In addition to "Randy" Randy Canterbury's abject incompetence and thoroughgoing lack of professional ethics, my primary care physician insists on misdiagnosing my strabismus with consequent adjustment disorder as generalized anxiety disorder.  It makes no sense because there are obvious physical stressors due to my exotropia.  Moreover, adjustment disorder has long been shown to be associated with exotropia (p = .007) along with related conditions such as ADHD and learning disabilities by the fine people at the Mayo Clinic whereas there was absolutely no association with generalized anxiety disorder (p = 1.00).   

The Security Apparatus Loves White Supremacy

PBS is airing American Justice on Trial: People v Newton, an interesting documentary on the Huey Newton trial in Oakland.  My last year in Berkeley the bigoted security apparatus had me go down to the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland and spend three days listening to county residents express their opinions on marijuana laws, the Oakland PD, and all manner of other things in some supposed jury selection process.  It ended with a kind European immigrant from Livermore expressing her complete bemusement with the US system of criminalizing nonviolent drug addiction rather than emphasizing treatment.  The entire courtroom erupted in cheers and even the judge seemed amused. 

The entire time I had a strong sense of deja vu, the likes which I had never experienced, even though I had never been there before.  I finally realized that the courthouse had been the site of Huey's trial and was in the background of every black and white documentary I had seen growing up showing the Panthers marching and chanting "Free Huey!" on the courthouse steps.

Of course, some people like Ronald Demos Lee prefer to live in redlined enclaves and make a mockery of the sacrifices made by the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense to promote civil liberties and social justice.  Ron and Huey were the same age and yet, despite his immense character flaws, Huey Newton is viewed as an American hero whereas Genocide Ron is properly excoriated as a traitorous villain.

The Security Apparatus Loves Cameron's Atrocities

Duncan Hume Cameron (geez, really tripling down on the Scottish shtick) recently died in DC.  Good riddance.  We really don't need apologists for heinous torture.  Oh well, perhaps Mengele's kids thought he was a good dad too.

He seems like a real Establishment type.  Harvard and Columbia Law in the '50s and then corporate law.  He was also president of the board of trustees of Zamarano Pan-American Agricultural School in Honduras for many years.  There was some old gringo going there on my flight to Tegucigalpa.

The Security Apparatus Loves Bigotry

Other stupid and bigoted things my parents did - contributed money for the construction of multiple temples that the handful of Black LDS members couldn't even enter solely because of their skin color.  My father defiantly cited the handful of African-Americans who went west with Bigot Young (whom even the LDS Church acknowledges was a thoroughgoing racist) as justification for LDS bigotry.  One of them, Jane Manning James, lived with the Smith family in Nauvoo and had her request to receive her Temple endowment and sealing repeatedly denied.  Eventually, LDS leaders allowed her to be sealed to the Smith family as their eternal servant but didn't even let her enter the temple to attend the ceremony.

The Security Apparatus Loves Stupidity

Another bizarre thing that the security apparatus hated was that as a kid I had a naive interest in investing in the stock market.  Well, it looks like $1 invested in the S&P 500 in 1984 is now worth $90.  In other words, the $7000 that my parents were obsessively giving to a white supremacist hate group at that time is now worth $630,000.  Of course, that's literally what the LDS Church has been doing with the money all along, and never paying taxes on it or actually helping anyone to boot.

News flash:  It's dense that the security apparatus continues to support shameless profiteering off of white supremacy and genocide.  It's even uglier when these atrocities are justified as supposed religious activity.

The Security Apparatus Loves to Infantilize Women

Then again, my mother hated the brief period in which she was "forced" to live in Arlington.  I can see why she hated it - decent schools, public transportation, some educated people including women.  It was even near an actual city with a few cultural amenities - it must have been hell on earth for her!

The Security Apparatus Loves to Infantilize Women

Another thing my mother loved about Bremerton were all of the "interesting" people she met there.  In addition to her fellow white supremacists who taught kids that Black people were not deserving of full membership in their honky church because they inherited the Curse of Cain, she thought it great that my father once shared a hospital room with someone who had participated in the imperialistic and incompetent Bay of Pigs Invasion, one of the greatest injustices and most idiotic debacles in US history.  Harry S. Truman reasonably excoriated the CIA for their stupidity and hubris, and the debacle nearly led to the annihilation of humanity.

It's such a shame that my braindead mother never had a 2nd grade understanding of US history and/or common sense.

The Security Apparatus Loves to Infantilize Women

When I was a kid, my mother raved about how amazing Bremerton, Washington was, primarily because of its abundance of fast food restaurants and convenience to Seattle.  My only memory of the place is visiting when I was five years old and being told that our former LDS babysitter was upset because she had been married for a month and wasn't pregnant yet.

The Security Apparatus Loves White Supremacy

It's so horrific how the US government killed Jean Seberg for supporting civil rights groups such as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.

The Security Apparatus Loves Genocide

"The life expectancy among Native Americans in the western United States has dropped below 64 years, close to life expectancies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti....  Native Americans in the West - defined in the 'Ten Americas' study as more than a dozen states excluding California, Washington, and Oregon - were among the poorest in the analysis, living in counties where a person's annual income averages below about $20,000." 

It's so horrific that members of my family have relentlessly promoted white supremacy and genocide with such obvious horrible consequences.

The Security Apparatus Loves Fascism

It's hilarious that the bigoted morons in the security apparatus have always tried to disparage learning and rigor solely because they know that only ignorant morons support their atrocities.  Everyone knows that there are well established associations with authoritarianism.

From Hetherington and Weiler's Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, mean standardized authoritarian scores from national survey data by religious group -

                                                Evangelical Protestant                    0.709

                                                Catholic                                         0.571

                                                Mainline Protestant                         0.530

                                                Secular                                          0.481

                                                Jewish                                           0.383

And here are the scores by education -

                                                Less than High School Grad             0.754

                                                High School Grad                            0.657

                                                Some College                                  0.590

                                                College Graduate                             0.505

                                                Graduate Degree                              0.373

Gee, there are elective affinities between early socialization and adult voluntary association and pursuits and authoritarianism!  Who could have ever guessed apart from everyone but the bigoted and ignorant security apparatus?   

Remember the Wyoming 14

The eloquent statement of the Black Student Alliance at the University of Wyoming stands in complete contrast to the thoroughgoing racism of my bigoted parents.

"Blacks may join the church but cannot ascend to its higher offices (Priesthood).  He cannot pass the sacrament as the 12 and 13 year old boys can.  He cannot prepare the sacrament as the 14 and 15 year olds do, nor can he bless the sacrament or perform (baptisms?) as the 16, 17 and 18 year old boys do.  In each case the reason is the same -- he is Black and is hence under the curse of Cain, according to LDS Holy writ.  

Our position is that a practice and interpretation clearly racist, is no less so because it is couched in religious terms.  (emphasis added)

OUR HUMANITY DEMANDS

 1.  That University officials at Wyoming as well as other schools in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) not use student monies and university facilities to play host to and thereby, in part, sanction those inhuman and racist policies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS)...."

Remember the Wyoming 14

In the late 1960s, athletes in the western US were reasonably appalled by the personal and institutional racism they experienced at Bigot University in Provo.  African-American players and fans generally at San Jose State boycotted a game against Bigot U. in the fall of 1968, just a month after Spartan heroes Tommy Smith and John Carlos heroically protested US oppression at the Olympic Games in Mexico City.  In April 1969, Texas Western track and field athletes including Olympic hero Bob Beamon were kicked off the team and thus lost their scholarships for refusing to participate in a track meet at Bigot U.  In October, members of the nationally-ranked Wyoming Cowboy football team respectfully asked to be allowed to wear black armbands in a game against Bigot U. as a silent protest of their horrific beliefs and behavior.

"Our Humanity Demands:... That all people of good will - whatever their color - athletes included" protest this policy, the document noted.  Further, it called on UW and all WAC schools to stop using "student monies and university facilities to play host to [BYU and] thereby, in part, sanction those inhuman and racist policies...."

Their good ol' boy coached tossed the players from the team for being insolent and uppity without even allowing them to explain their request.  He later testified in federal court that he told them that "if the program at Wyoming was not satisfactory then perhaps they had better think about going to Morgan State or Grambling."

Losing their scholarships, many of the players had to drop out of school.

The following month, Stanford University announced an official policy that it would not schedule athletic competitions with institutions sponsored by the LDS church.  The statement referenced a NY Times article that stated that only 3 of Bigot U.'s 25,000 students were African-American. 

The Security Apparatus Loves Bigots

"Mitchell and Jessen's methods were so controversial that, among colleagues, the reaction to their names alone became a litmus test of one's attitude toward coercion and human rights.  Their critics called them the 'Mormon mafia' (a reference to their shared religion) and the 'poster boys' (referring to the F.B.I.'s 'most wanted' posters, which are where some thought their activities would land them)."

Katherine Eban, "Rorschach and Awe"

The Security Apparatus Loves Bigotry

It's such a shame that the bigoted security apparatus doesn't have a 2nd grade understanding of US history or civics.  As everyone else knows, the US Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that states can ban people from voting for belonging to a group that promotes antisocial behavior and beliefs. 

It's a national disgrace that the security apparatus has traditionally hired so many avowed bigots.  It's no wonder that these agencies constantly undermine US national security.

The Security Apparatus Hates the Middle Class

When I moved to Montgomery County in 2008, I was struck by how the middle class had largely been driven out and how the morons in Takoma Park drove everywhere.  Well, things have just gotten worse.  From 2005 to 2022, the county added 88,000 low-income residents and lost 26,000 middle class ones, with the middle class shrinking to 18% of the county's population.  Meanwhile, the median household income hasn't kept pace with inflation since 2005, and the county ranked dead last in income growth among 30 countries with similar population across the country.

The security apparatus hates a strong middle class because they know it is the foundation for a strong democracy that opposes their evil.  

"Former CIA Psychiatrist Testifies to Lasting Brain Trauma from Black Site Interrogations"

The bigoted spooks at the CIA love torturing people to undermine national security.  

"Guantanamo Naval Base, Cuba - a forensic psychiatrist testified this week that a 9/11 defendant's incriminating statements to FBI agents on Guantanamo Bay were the product of fear drilled into him by the CIA during years of prior harsh treatment and isolation....  

Morgan testified, however, that the CIA fear-conditioned al Baluchi into being compliant and that the detainee could not "meaningfully distinguish" between his new interrogators and prior ones.  

"At this point in time, he's already exhibited more than enough symptoms to have PTSD that caused him pain and distress and psychological despair," Morgan testified on Wednesday.  "They are interviewing a person who's been traumatized and a person who suffers from a significant mental illness...."  

Morgan testified this week that, as part of his research work, he began studying the effects of SERE training on participants in the late 1990s.  The data collected over many studies showed conclusively that the stressors in the SERE program led to dramatic impairments of cognition and memory, he said.  Under both direct and cross examinations, Morgan recounted warning Mitchell about using SERE-based methods when he encountered him at a CIA location in 2003.  

"Why in the world would you be creating false memories?" Morgan recounted asking Mitchell.  "Because once you do, it's a rabbit hole.  You can't tell the difference between a true or a false memory."  

Under redirect examination by Pradhan Thursday morning, Morgan also recalled a CIA employee involved in the RDI program expressing concerns to him at his office within the agency several years later.  He said the person was "terrified" and sat in his office "and cried."  

"These people are Nazis," Morgan testified the employee told him.  "I don't know how to get away from them because I'm afraid of what they will do...."

The Security Apparatus Loves Bigotry

The security apparatus, being bigoted morons, loves to project its thoroughgoing bigotry onto saintly types who properly oppose their atrocities.  For example, let us suppose that a neo-Nazi hate group sent tens of thousands of young people out to proclaim that "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" was not only an authentic historical document instead of an obvious malevolent fraud but also a divinely inspired work that confirmed that Nazism was God's one true religious and political movement.  Obviously, everyone would properly condemn such action as the most despicable atrocity imaginable and heinous anti-Semitism.  And yet, the incompetent and depraved CIA eagerly hires horrible bigots who have done far worse regarding the indigenous peoples of the Americas.  It's even more disgusting given that plenty of Mormon groups such as the Community of Christ have properly condemned such bigotry and that the US government itself committed genocide against indigenous peoples.

The Security Apparatus Loves Misogyny

I'm sure my mother is ecstatic that women in Utah and Idaho can no longer access basic health care.

"A woman experiencing dangerous bleeding was not admitted by doctors at an Idaho hospital until her fourth emergency room visit in one week, due to fear and confusion over the state's abortion ban, an Idaho doctor said in testimony on Tuesday.  

The "heavily bleeding" patient was told the pregnancy would not survive, but she had not been counseled on abortion, Dr. Julie Lyons, a family physician in Idaho and plaintiff in a lawsuit over the state's abortion bans, said on the stand....  

"I was working with some amazing nurses and we decided as a team that we were going to break our hospital's rules and admit her, even though she wasn't 20 weeks pregnant because I just couldn't send her home again and hope for the best," Lyons said."

The Charlottesville Episcopal Church Somehow Got Worse

In 1913, Charles Steele Davidson dramatically burned his Episcopal vestments and prayer book at the gates of Monticello to protest the spiritual corruption of the church there -

"I charge that the Episcopal Church is the gentleman's church in general, and in Virginia in particular.  It is powerful financially and socially, stupid intellectually, and spiritually dead.  It needs a change of heart, repentance or utter obliteration.  It favors the rich and the cultured and has no vital interest in the poor and the common.  It either segregates the poor in missions on the back streets or relegates them in churches to the back pews.  In Virginia, the Episcopal Church is a mere relic of the old social feudalism and stands for a dry-rotted conservatism that bars the progress of the kingdom.  Virginia, after her long depression, is aroused and is marching on, but the church is slowly retreating to the citadel of tradition and materialism.  

It is taking up the matter of physical uncleanness and is leaving vile the inner man.  It is wasting time on eugenics and putting no time on soul development."

The Security Apparatus Loves Bigoted Morons

Bruce Jessen, who co-developed the CIA's completely ineffectual and thoroughly unethical torture methods, went to Ricks College, the Mormon junior college in Rexburg, Idaho for LDS kids who couldn't even get into Bigot U.  His contractor company was paid $81 million by the spooks for techniques that acting CIA general counsel John Rizzo described as "sadistic and terrifying."

In 2012, he was called to be a bishop in a Spokane ward through prophetic inspiration.  He stepped down the following week.

The Security Apparatus Loves Genocide

Ante Pavelic was the fascist monster who led the Nazi puppet state of Croatia during World War II and committed genocide against Serbs.  He also exterminated Jews and Roma.  He fled to the Vatican after the war disguised as a priest and was given refuge there for several years.  He escaped to Argentina and served as a security advisor to Peron.

The Other Harvey Weinstein

It's really rather remarkable how Ronald Demos Lee completely destroyed the life's work and legacy of Harvey Weinstein by using NIH funding at Berkeley to ritualistically replicate the horrific medical atrocities and psychological torture of Ewen Cameron.  I hear the horrific movie producer tells people in prison that he's not that Harvey Weinstein!

"Panel speaks on psychological torture and 'Eminent Monsters' film"

Even people down on the Farm know that torture is bad -

"The Center for Human Rights and International Justice recently screened the film Eminent Monsters, a Hopscotch Films documentary tracing of Western psychological torture.  Eminent Monsters uncovers the roots of government-sanctioned torture practices, from the establishment of a human torture laboratory in Montreal in the 1950s and the terror of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, to the "Hooded Men" of Belfast seeking justice and reparations at the European Court of Human Rights.  The film sheds light on the failure of the international community to take action against the use of inhumane interrogation practices.  

The film was prefaced with a brief introduction from Dr. Harvey Weinstein, a Senior Research Fellow at UC Berkeley Law School's Human Rights Center and retired Clinical Professor in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.  Weinstein, who appears in the film, said, 'It's an important film because it's about what happened in the past and what's happening now.'  

The screening was followed with a discussion from a panel of experts who discussed the ramifications of psychological torture.  The discussion was moderated by Adam Kochanski, a Postdoctoral Fellow in International Relations at McGill University and a research fellow at Stanford's University Center for Human Rights and International Justice.  

Regarding the collusion of health professionals with governments, Weinstein described the role of psychologists in developing and participating in torture methods to be 'terrifying to me as a physician.'  He then explained how the authorization, routinization, and dehumanization of acts of torture have allowed individuals to justify torture despite the fact the practice 'has never been proved to be effective.'"

Eminent Monsters

 

Crackpot Science

When I was in grad school, over-the-hill professors wasted a lot of NIH funding trying to find evidence and claim that there were no limits to human life expectancy.  It obviously did not make a bit of sense and wasn't remotely true.  Twenty years later, still no one has come remotely close to Jeanne Calment's Beamonesque lifespan, so much so that Russian demographers have proposed fairly crackpot conspiracy theories to try to explain it.  And only four of the 100 oldest women ever (#21, 49, 51, and 100) and two of the men (#57 and 84) are currently living.

Maitland Baldwin, NIH neurosurgeon, branch chief, clinical director, and human and chimp torturer, would have been so proud.

Scotland's Mengele

The National on a film about CIA torturer Ewen Cameron -

Indeed, the film takes its title - Eminent Monsters - from that chilling nickname given to Cameron and those like him.  All were psychiatrists and psychologists engaged in experiments on patients that helped devise systems of torture employed by military and security services across the globe, from Northern Ireland and Guantanamo Bay, to the CIA's dark sites like that at Bagram. 

In the course of developing his own barbaric practices, Cameron would sometimes destroy the lives of his unsuspecting patients while changing the course of psychological torture forever. 

As has now been proven, Cameron's techniques were to have no therapeutic validity whatsoever, and often, following his "treatments", patients were unable to function, having been reduced to a state of infancy even years after the experiments were finalised. 

Given this horrendous impact on people, would it be accurate then to compare what the Scottish-born doctor did to that of Nazi medical atrocities during the Second World War, I asked Bennett? 

"Absolutely, Cameron was in effect a Scottish Mengele," he unstintingly replies, referring to the Nazi SS physician Josef Mengele, himself nicknamed the Angel of Death, who conducted inhumane medical experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz concentration camp.

The Security Apparatus Hates Intelligence and Ethics

The incompetent CIA completely screwed over saintly Jimmy Carter.  First, they pretty much caused the Iranian revolution by helping to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Iran because it wanted to share a portion of the country's oil wealth with its desperately-poor citizens.  They installed the venal Shah and helped his horrific SAVAK to terrorize and torture the people of Iran for decades.  Then they completely doomed the convoluted hostage rescue plan by having the US Army helicopters and cargo planes refuel next to a road instead of a deserted area because that's where they were familiar with from dropping off and picking up assets.  As if the people driving on that road wouldn't notice a major US military operation going on for hours at a time - classic CIA incompetence!

Then again, Carter was the last president to try to stand up to their terror and abuses, so perhaps it wasn't unintentional.

The Security Apparatus Loves Fascism

In contrast to Jerry Fogarty's greenface buffoonery, Marquette history professor emeritus Michael Phayer has written serious books about the Vatican's relationship with fascists -

"As a new world war loomed, the Vatican believed it had to make a choice between communism and Nazism.  Reluctantly, both Pius XII and his predecessor chose the Nazis as the lesser of two evils.  In the balance rested the genocide of European Jews.  As difficult as his wartime behavior is to accept, nothing demonstrates Pius's fear of communism more than his misguided and unethical attempt to thwart its growth in South America by abetting the escape of Nazis and Ustasi war criminals.  The story of these Vatican "ratlines" adds another facet to the complex picture of Pius XII and the Holocaust."

The Security Apparatus Loves Authoritarianism

I once took a mediocre class on US Catholic History at mediocre UVa.  The professor was a Jesuit and a buffoon.  He spent most of his time complaining about criticism of the church's actions, or lack thereof, during World War II, even though bishops and priests in the Vatican played the key role in helping Nazi and other fascist war criminals escape from Europe, often to Peron's Argentina.  He spent the rest of the semester boring undergrads by talking about obscure 19th century immigrant bishops while never once mentioning decades of abuse of children by clergy. 

The Security Apparatus Loves Exploiting the Uneducated

It's rather remarkable how the security apparatus always doubles down on glorifying anti-intellectualism, even though we all know it is the root cause of bigotry in the US.  David Masciotra on "Anti-intellectualism is back - because it never went away.  And it's killing hundreds of thousands of Americans": 

"If anti-intellectualism is a common characteristic of American life, it has mutated into a particularly asinine and lethal form in contemporary politics.  A majority of Republicans now believe higher education is "bad for America."  Suspicious of anyone with an advanced degree, they are increasingly likely to view anyone with academic credentials as alien from the "real America," where people work with "their hands," as conservative commentators often suggest from their computer terminals or talk-show studios, or to believe that reading books - other than unless the Good Book - is likely to turn true-believing patriots into "globalists" who hate God and love dark-skinned people."