By M.K. Styllinski
“A couple of days ago I went out on a foot patrol in Sadr City with a young a soldier and noticed the tattoo on his arm, featuring a rosary and the words ‘Forgive Me.’ I asked him what the story behind it was. He said, ‘After my first tour in Iraq, I went back home to the states and all my friends called me a murderer and killer. I guess I started thinking a lot about all the things I had done over here…you know.'”
– ZORIAH, photojournalist
It’s never a bad thing to remember how we came to this point; how we let a minority of evil men and women turn our world inside out, with the once fine nation of America serving as the central nexus of pathological extremes.
In 2001, due to the hypocrisy of its own actions, the United States lost its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Commission after a vote by the UN Economic and Social Council. The US has long since taken on the mantle of accuser while ignoring the mounting violations of human rights abuses in its own back yard, firmly believing that its record is beyond reproach. The reality is somewhat different.
The US has only 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of its prisoners at almost two million. Excessive force, torture and sexual misconduct is an increasing problem. This is a clear reflection not only of a society in decline but the governing structure upon which it is based. [1] A discriminatory or excessively violent death penalty and unlawful judicial practices; police brutality and disputed police killings; the implementation of draconian laws and a systematic dismantling of the constitution is common place. The invasion of Iraq provides an instructive insight into the underbelly of the US bodypolitic.
© infrakshun
Between 2002 and 2004 the slaughter of civilian Iraqis reached initial estimates of 300, 000 to over 655,000 of total civilians murdered by US forces, most of whom were children. [2] According to the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB) over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 war, these numbers indicating: “that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century—the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous ‘Killing Fields’ during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.” [3]
The figures remained contentious, especially to now retired Lieutenant General Tommy Franks, one time head of US Central Command, who once barked in response to a question about civilian casualties: “We don’t do body counts.” [4] This appears to be the dominating consensus within US government circles. The absence of civilian death toll records suggests a preference for silence on this issue that can only benefit an invader. A lesson learnt from Vietnam and numerous other invasions inflicted on vulnerable nations?
What makes the carnage in Iraq even more ironic is the standard tactic of using “humanitarian intervention” as a pretext for colonial invasion which inevitably exacts a massive humanitarian toll. There is also no doubt that there US soldiers who have fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan who were unaware that they were merely being used as pawns on a chessboard. Perhaps they really believed they were protecting America’s idea of democracy. In the end, many of the military ended up helping their brothers in arms to survive the tours of duty – nothing more. There were and are acts of heroism in this context and where many began to question why it was they were in Iraq at all. If the jingoism and warfare did not attract a high quota of psychopaths within the US military then it certainly created psychopathic tendencies in many young soldiers, not just due to the horror of war that favours the erosion of conscience but the importation of a ponerised American culture that so willingly believed the sales pitch delivered by the Neo-Conservative hawks.
The symptoms of psychopathy infecting so much of the US military at that time brought to us the torture and sexual abuse of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib jails. This led to the incarceration of a “renegade gang” of abusers who were clearly and weakly following orders from high. Unfortunately, this was no exception. It was systematic and carefully mandated.
Amongst the 1,800 pictures taken by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib, there were also examples of female torture and rape. While these were seen by Congress they were not released to the public. What is worse, the women prisoners – if and when they were released – suffered the spectre of “honour killings” by some Iraqi families where sexual dishonour is viewed as a fate worse than death, the latter often being chosen for the wife or daughter.
Bandits and criminals were dominating the public spaces in Baghdad since the “end” of the war. In mid-July 2003, there were over 25 rapes and kidnappings of women in the city from the end of May to the end of June 2003. This was in marked contrast to the average of one a month before the war. Since then, there have been over 400 women in Baghdad alone who have suffered rape, kidnapping and the growing victimization of being sold and trafficked overseas. [5] As of 2012, the kidnapping, rape and murder of children in Iraq’s second largest city Basra – an otherwise relatively peaceful city – has become so bad that parents are leaving having lost faith in the security forces to protect their children. [6]
The Real Statue of “Liberty”
On the right, Staff Sgt. Ivan “Chip” Frederick clips his fingernails while Satar Jabar, imprisoned for carjacking, is wired up for electrocution at Abu Ghraib prison,November 4, 2003.
To cap it all, children, are still subject to abuse while being detained in U.S. prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, with the Pentagon lowering the cut-off for incarceration to 16 instead of 18. A June 2005 article in The New York Times reported that the International Committee of the Red Cross registered: “‘…107 detainees under 18 during visits to six prisons controlled by coalition troops. Some detainees were as young as 8. Since that time, Human Rights Watch reports that the number has risen.” The article furthered reported: “… Juvenile detainees in American facilities like Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base have been subject to the same mistreatment as adults.
The International Red Cross, Amnesty International and the Pentagon itself have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, bolstered by accounts from soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse. A memo addressed to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shortly after the 2001 invasion reported ‘800-900 Pakistani boys 13-15 years of age in custody.’” [7]
The atrocities which took place at the Abu Ghraib prison are still seen by many as a momentary aberration rather than a standard procedure used by CIA and the MOSSAD. Indeed, many believe that such photos were leaked precisely because it served as a warning at a deep, unconscious level that anyone daring to cross the might of American Empire would have this in store for them. As such, it could represent a branch of psychological operations designed to place fear in the enemy whether civilian or soldier, government or media.
The iconic hooded figure of prisoner Satar Jabar with wires attached to his person and described by many Iraqis as the “Statue of Liberty” was done so for good reason. So too, the alleged acts against children surfacing in July 2004 had a disturbingly authentic ring of truth. For a military that uses napalm, microwave weaponry and black ops against civilians defending themselves against an invasion force, with the commensurate targeting of journalists which continues to this day, it comes as no real surprise that children are at serious risk in one of the most dangerous places on earth. (In 2015, the legacy of American imperialism is the transference of Al-Qaeda proxy terrorism to another Frankenstein creation of ISIS/ISIL by Western intelligence agencies in order to rout President Al-Bashir Assad of Syria. Iraq is now dominated by Islamic State militants and their reign of terror.
infrakshun notes 2011
The investigative journalist Seymour Hersh was largely responsible for bringing to light the atrocities of the US military and their total disregard for the Geneva Convention protocols. Most of us saw the photos and the actions of some rather disturbed people. Of course, these lines of inquiry led nowhere and those in the photos carried the can for the higher-ups once again. But more was to come. Hersh, speaking at an ACLU event in the same year said the US government had videotapes of children being raped at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq:
‘Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.’
As Republican Senator, Lindsay Graham remarked: “The American public needs to understand, we’re talking about rape and murder here. We’re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We’re talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.” It seems that Hersh’s allegations were borne out by the Taguba Report which gave detailed witness statements and interviews in over 6.000 pages which dwarfed the 50 page excerpts in the media. Excerpt from statement provided by Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, Detainee #151108, on January 18 2004:
‘I saw [name deleted] fucking a kid, his age would be about 15 – 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name deleted] who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid’s ass. I couldn’t see the face of the kid because his face wasn’t in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures. [name deleted], I think he is [deleted] because of his accent, and he was not skinny or short, and he acted like a homosexual (gay). And that was in cell #23 as best as I remember.’
Another testimony alleging abuse of minors from a statement provided by Thaar Salman Dawod, Detainee #150427, on January 17, 2004:
‘I saw lots of people getting naked for a few days getting punished in the first days of Ramadan. They came with two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and Grainer was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures from top and bottom and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners. The prisoners, two of them, were young. I don’t know their names.’
One report from the UN Office of humanitarian Affairs’ Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) shows prison abuse is just another indicator of a wider form of exploitation. With official government figures putting youth employment at almost 50 percent with poverty continuing to spiral, this undoubtedly helps to feed the rising commercial sex trade. Many children are forced into prostitution by criminal gangs through threats and violence and intimidation. New prostitution rings of every variety have sprung up all over Iraq since the fall of Saddam. Girls below the age of 16 are a prize commodity for the gangs with up to 70 percent of girls being sold and around 30 percent of boys. Street children are most at risk from sexual abuse and have no protection. A spokeswoman for Women for Peace, a local NGO devoted to women’s issues, reports: “‘We have at least one case of a girl raped per week and one boy every two weeks,’…’The most worrying thing is that they’re afraid their fathers will kill them because of a perceived loss of honour.’” [8] As well as girls, gay adolescents are threatened both from the sex trade and later from their families.
Former high-ranking Baathists from Saddam’s regime have been rumoured to be behind some of the criminal gangs abducting, raping and selling young girls in Iraq. The Mukhabarat (secret police) often rounded up Kurdish women in the 1980s and sold them to clubs in Egypt. This is all the more believable when the Mukhabarat’s old identification actually said “Profession: rape.” The Major Crimes Directorate of the Iraqi Police has recently been set up under the supervision of U.S. Army Military Police. Yet there is no framework or persons responsible for dealing with cases of rape or sexual violence.
No one really knows how many young women have been kidnapped and sold since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The U.S. State Department’s June 2005 trafficking report says the extent of the problem in Iraq is ‘difficult to appropriately gauge’ but cites an unknown number of Iraqi women and girls being sent to Yemen, Syria, Jordan and Persian Gulf countries for sexual exploitation. The US military will not be the one to address the crimes, judging by its current record it is one of the primary reasons why such crimes continue.
In late September 2005, the following story surfaced. The U.S. military claimed it was investigating reports that soldiers based in Iraq were posting photographs of dead Iraqis, including explicit shots of severed body parts and internal organs on a Florida-based, amateur porn website. American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan took photographs of dead bodies, many of which were in states of decomposition and horribly mutilated and send them to Chris Wilson, owner of the site. On receiving these images Wilson allows soldiers free access to his site. In other words, the US military were using dead Iraqis to buy porn.
According to one article: “Some of the graphic website images are accompanied by openly racist comments from the soldiers who posted them. “What every Iraqi should look like,” is the commentary next to a picture of a corpse whose brains and entrails are spilling out. In another image, six men wearing US Marine uniforms are smiling for the camera as they point to a burned body at their feet. The caption: ‘Cooked Iraqi.’” Elsewhere, site visitors are invited to guess which body part is being depicted.” As the site is registered in the Netherlands the US legal system had no jurisdiction.
What is more disturbing is that there is a demand for such images. As a litmus test for the severe ponerisation of a society, this would have to be a “code red” indicator.
In 2008, CNN revealed that four in 10 women at a veterans’ hospital reported being sexually assaulted while in the military, alongside a government study concluding that figures could be much higher. [9] By 2012, a new documentary film entitled Invisible War reiterated the findings in a more comprehensive investigation, exposing the inaction and apathy by authorities regarding what appears to be an epidemic of rape in the Army.
Director Kirby Dick interviewed victims from the Navy, Marine, Coast Guard, Army and Air Force veterans who were assaulted by fellow officers, supervisors or recruits, all of whom recount their experiences in shocking detail. What we discover is that these are not isolated incidents but a long-standing “tradition” of violence and rape accepted as part of military milieu. The victims who chose to take part in the film had all suffered greatly from their attacks and had their lives virtually destroyed. This was in part, due to the indifference and prejudice meted out by the US military authorities and the denial of justice these women so desperately deserved. All the women felt they had no choice but to leave the military.
According to a report in the Chicago Tribune:
“One Marine, Ariana Klay, was raped by a fellow officer in the elite Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C. A Navy officer, Trina McDonald, was drugged and raped repeatedly by fellow officers on a remote base in Alaska. Coast Guard recruit Kori Cioca was raped and then assaulted — smacked so hard in the face that it dislocated her jaw, causing her permanent damage and pain for which the Veterans Administration declines to provide medical coverage. […] Almost none of the alleged perpetrators were brought up on charges or punished in any way.” [10]
The Invisible War
Whether the act of rape takes place in a state of “blind” panic, of conquest, or sadist aggression, they all express this essential exploitation towards the weak; the rapist often turning himself in knots to avoid culpability or to claim diminished responsibility – the exact dynamic we see in the geo-political world today, where sex is still used as a weapon of control.
Psychologist Dr. A. Nicholas Groth, Director of the Sex Offender Program for the State of Connecticut’s Department of Corrections, separates rape into three distinct types: anger, power and sadistic rape. In the case of anger, the rape is a discharge of intense resentment which may include revenge and the subsequent degrading treatment towards the victim:
The anger rapist’s relationships to important persons in his life are frequently fraught with conflict, irritation and aggravation. The anger, resentment, hostility and frustration engendered in this relationships is often displaced onto other individuals, and, therefore the victim may be a complete stranger to the offender, someone who has been unfortunate enough to be in his presence at the point at which his controls begin to fail and his rage erupts. Although she has done nothing to warrant it she becomes the target of his revenge – not revenge in a calculated planned fashion but, instead, the recipient of an impulsive action precipitated by a situation she has no part in. [11]
Here we can see the decline of America and the impulsive projection from much of the American electorate to blame Muslims and Islamists for an essentially fake democracy. We can also transpose the psychopathology of the Bush Administration and the Iraq invasion which used the promotion of a Jihad against America as the means to garner global support. Hot on the heels of 9/11 this conveniently led to the bogus “War on Terror” designed to maximize geostrategy and financial leverage. The “calculation” has its place in sadistic and power rape. Conquest is the primary drive, which includes the capture and control of the victim while compensating for a deep inadequacy. To do this, physical force and threats play the dominant role though manipulation towards the peak moment of domination may be used:
Physical aggression is used to overpower and subdue the victim and its use is directed towards achieving sexual submission. The intent of the offender is to usually achieve sexual intercourse with his victim as evidence of conquest, and to accomplish this, he resorts to whatever force he finds necessary to overcome his victim’s resistance and to render her helpless. Very often the victim is kidnapped all held captive in some fashion and she may be subjected to repeated assaults over an extended period of time.
Such offenders entertain obsessional thoughts and masturbatory fantasies about sexual conquest and rape. The characteristic scenario is one in which the victim initially resists the sexual advances of her assailant; he overpowers her and achieves sexual penetration; in spite of herself, the victim cannot resist her assailant’s sexual prowess and becomes sexually aroused and receptive to his embrace. […] In reality, the offender tends to find little sexual satisfaction in the rape. The assault is disappointing, for it never lives up to his fantasy. [12]
The compulsive nature of the power rapist means that nothing can fill the emotional void other than the acts of violence, the only measure of a primal excitement that is very quickly dissipated and thus “He may commit a whole series of rapes over a relatively short period of time.” [13] This may also increase aggression as the satisfaction wanes, thus building to more extremes which are both opportunistic and premeditated.
The above can be transposed once again, towards the dynamics of the US role in Iraq. The former attacks a weaker smaller country as a suitable victim with which it can satisfy an ideological and material hunger. (“‘As one rapist said: I always looked for a victim that was smaller than me’”) This hunger or drive to feel power has consumed anything resembling emotional reciprocity or the capacity to feel empathy for another. The actions are the drives of the addict seeking a fix, a quest based on a wholly subjective appraisal of reality and relationships and an inability to acquire the attributes of conscience.
The September 11th attacks were an opportunistic event or a well-organised conspiracy to ensure a constant supply of victims – a state of perpetual war. [14] This is the prelude and excuse for legitimized rape of conscience on a grand scale. Others who dissent and are “different” also become targets of the power rapist as they remind them of what they lack and what they covet. The power rapist needs to believe the victim enjoyed it. Just as the US military, much of the American public needs to believe they are bringing democracy to Iraq instead of the obvious rape of a nation.[15]
There is the rare form of rape expressed through sadism, where sex and aggression become fused and expressed violently. This violence is then laced with a false eroticism, where suffering and pain becomes sexually gratifying for the perpetrator:
The offender may subject his victims to curious actions….such as clipping her hair, washing or cleansing her body, or forcing her to dress in some specific fashion or behave in some specified way. Such indignities are accompanied by explicitly abusive acts, such as biting, burning the victim with cigarettes and flagellation. Sexual areas of the vicitm’s body (her breast genitals and buttocks) become a focus of injury or abuse. In some cases, the rape may not involve the offender’s sexual organs. Instead he may use some type of instrument or foreign object, such as a stick or a bottle, with which to penetrate his victim sexually. […]
Usually, he captures his victim and then works himself into a frenzy as he assaults her. The rape experience for the sexual sadist is one of intense and mounting excitement. Excitement is associated with the inflicting of pain upon his victim. Such abuse is usually a combination of the physical and the psychological. Hatred and control are eroticized, so that he finds satisfaction in abusing, degrading, humiliating and, in some cases, destroying his captive. [16]
Forensic psychologist Dr. Reid J. Meloy wrote that “Sadistic control is also an element of perversion and pathognomonic of psychopathic disturbance.” [17] There have been a number of studies that suggest that sadism is a strong component of psychopathy or is actually the same disorder, a variance stemming only from personality and socio-environmental preferences. [18] Sadists conform to the same trajectory of psychopathic needs and desires and also seek social openings where they can exert maximum control over others in exactly the same fashion as psychopaths. In other words, sadism could be viewed as another form of psychopathy alongside pathological narcissism, borderline and anti-social. [19]
The American oligarchy is busy doing what it does best: a power rape of humanity as an initiation to full blown pathocracy.
“One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror. ”
― George W. Bush
Dissenting voices who were against the lies, manipulations and propaganda circus by America and its allies knew exactly what the future would be. I was working in Madrid at the time and decided to join the tens of thousands of ordinary people who were protesting against the war in the strongest possible terms. We also knew that governments would likely ignore the will of people. This is what happens when those devoid of conscience inhabit our systems of government. The only way such protests can be effective is if they are underscored with knowledge of the psychopath in our institutions and backed up by civil action that paralyses the banking and corporate sector.
At the beginning of 2003, numerous accounts of abuse and torture of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq began to surface. Photographs of degradation and torture of a purposely sadistic nature were discovered. The acts were committed by personnel of the 372nd Military Police Company, with directives from CIA officers, and private contractors involved in the occupation. Far from being an accident or lapse in command procedures this was a systematic and conscious use of torture with the blessing of Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence. [20]
Far from introducing democracy they used gullible soldiers and willing psychopaths to invade a country and install US puppets to direct affairs that would profit military-corporate complex in the future. It is an outpost of updated colonialism intent on dominating the resources in the Middle East. While Saddam Hussein’s regime was certainly an example of extreme repression, members of the society in general were treated better with greater civil rights and a higher standard of living, than under the present US dominated government. Their culture and history and artifacts of an illustrious past was also intact. Not so after the invasion. With Iraq social services plummeting, healthcare system in deep crisis; torture and human rights abuses far worse than under Saddam; child malnutrition more than doubling and the economy wilting under a constant war-zone, it is little wonder that Iraqis are now 58 times more likely to die. [21]
The Bush-Cheney administration liked to trumpet the fact that it was the leading exemplar of a bonafide democracy. Yet what are we to make of statements like this from Bush in 1999: “One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.” A “successful presidency” for George Bush and his cronies was to murder, maim and kill thousands of defenceless women and children like all good psychopaths do when they indeed, have “the chance.” Which explains Dr. Hare’s own conclusion that psychopathic individuals’ favourite occupation is to target “The weak and the vulnerable — whom they mock, rather than pity…” [22]
And Iraq’s continuing chaos is the pure personification of social and cultural rape.
Photo taken on Jan. 15, 2014 shows the blast site in Kirkuk, northern Iraq. At least 24 people were killed and 55 others wounded in violent attacks across Iraq on Tuesday, most of them in and around the capital city of Baghdad, police said. (Xinhua/Dena Assad)
Lest we think this is strictly a Bush/Obama problem, the military are warming to their leaders’ ways with continuing sexual abuse at service academies, in units stationed abroad in Kuwait, Afghanistan Bahrain, and at military installations. Detainee abuse allegations have also included sexual assaults. As tools of the Pathocracy their pathogenic impulses cannot be confined to one outpost. If it occurs in one, it will occur in the majority. [23]
UK author and journalist Richard Webster wrote on the etymology of hatred and the underlying misogyny of those who loathe everything, including women and their bodies. He believes “sexual obscenities and war-mongering are intimately related” defining the same expression of insecurity, ignorance and aggressive projection. He then quoted the following email received from a journalist who criticised US Foreign Policy in the Middle East and immediately after September 11th: “how many dogs had to fuck your mom for you to happen?’… ‘I just don’t understand why you have a job in the free world,” said another. “You should slither on back into your sand-encrusted cunthole you ungrateful fuck.’” One can see the words of this individual are acting like indiscriminate bullets, spraying all with his invective. The target can be anyone, just as long as the expression is fulfilled.
Webster believes this kind of hatred is not a “hatred of peace, or hatred of the left, or hatred of Muslims, or even hatred of Guardian journalists. It is hatred of the body – and of the sexual bodies of women in particular, something which belies the schizophrenic nature of religious authoritarian personalities which make up so much of the social landscape of the United States and its military.
It is not only angry American readers of the Guardian who sometimes imagine war as a form of intimate violence directed against a hated human body. At the outset of the 1991 Gulf War the late General Norman Schwarzkopf said: ‘I want every Iraqi soldier bleeding from every orifice.’” [24] More accurately, this would suggest severely damaged individuals who are reflecting their own self-loathing on the one hand and on the other, damaged individuals giving vent to their cravings to abuse and defile the body and human sensibilities. Or, those for whom the use of biological metaphor simply reveals their primary focus: the God of the material world.
Individuals harbouring such tendencies seem to rise to the surface whatever the authoritative system, be it regional council, military division or department. Even a whole nation can convince itself through paramoralistic assertions that another nation is not suffering from their blatant acts of aggression, and even that such a nation wants it to happen; to have a form of exquisite, inquisitorial conversion. All those who gravitate towards the front line of inquisitors have an array of suitable weapons to do “God’s will,” and naturally occupy the positions in the army and government that best service their brand of pathology.
When we think of the genocide committed by troops in Iraq is it so different, this “service”? How can we reconcile the fact that there is an element of pure sadistic psychopathy in the micro and macro-social phenomena of hate that we are witnessing, and which justifies the sexual exploitation and destruction of innocent lives for money and power? Granted, not all are sadists, but if psychopaths are not present the shortfall of soldiers are damaged at best, and made sociopathic at worst. That is the nature of 21 century warfare.
Ponder this confession from a serial sadistic rapist of children and transfer the description to the civilians in Iraq or the plight of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation:
If a child was screaming, I would tell myself – you know – the child’s not really hurting because I know that in reality I was hurting the child. But the only way I could continue the act was to tell myself I wasn’t hurting the child…I found the more I told myself that the more I believed it. And then I found it the child tried to pull away, or screamed, hollered, cried, then all my lying to myself would enhance it and made it more arousing to me. […] After a while I could actually take it and turn it around. Because the child was screaming that he wanted more – actually because they liked it. The child was screaming because he wanted me to continue. [25]
With the exception of Israel, nowhere can we see this kind of pathology more clearly than in the United States of America, the self-proclaimed exemplar of democratic and humanitarian ideals forged in the Statue of Liberty for all to see. Unfortunately, psychopathy nests itself in seemingly elevated ideals until the truth of the situation becomes more and more difficult to mask. It is then that the full force of ponerogenesis becomes known and expresses itself via various forms of fascism most often via the liberal back door.
Creating law enforcement agencies which use sexual humiliation as a way to control society is now a reality. In 2012, the US Supreme Court decided that that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time. Add to this the NDAA which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time; the “trespass bill” HR 347 which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting anywhere near someone with secret service protection and the Obama administration’s decision to activate an assassination team to murder American citizens if they are suspected of being a terrorist. These rulings alone indicate an inverted totalitarian government masquerading as a democracy. As journalist, author and activist Naomi Wolf states regarding invasive x-ray scanning at US airports: “Believe me: you don’t want the state having the power to strip your clothes off. Yet that is exactly what’s happening. History shows that the use of forced nudity by a state that is descending into fascism is powerfully effective in controlling and subduing populations.” [26] So, what are the symptoms of this fascistic infection? In her recent book The End of America, She has pin-pointed the 10 key signposts of a country’s descent into fascist control:
1) Invoke an External and Internal Threat
2) Establish Secret Prisons
3) Develop a Paramilitary Force
4) Surveil Ordinary Citizens
5) Infiltrate Citizen’s Groups
6) Arbitrarily detain and release Citizens
7) Target Key Individuals
8) Restrict the Press
9) Cast Criticism as “Espionage” and Dissent as “Treason”
10) Subvert the Rule of Law
All the above examples are occurring in the United States and are serious enough to eclipse the positive actions on the part of groups and individuals attempting to address these iniquities. However, it is the recognition of the depth of pathology that now exists and how it functions within our own lives that will determine the future. The greater awareness of the root courses of endemic lies and manipulation can ultimately create conditions favourable for resisting state-sanctioned behaviour.
It is said that victims of rape need to understand exactly why the rape happened in order to facilitate healing. Gaining knowledge about the attack to reduces the shock of the inevitable reaction of “why me”? Similarly, as we are all, in one sense, “victims” of a collective “mind rape” we too must address the causes that we have grown up with in order to fully appreciate the implications of our thoughts and actions which may not be our own. Otherwise, we will forever remain prey for the pathocratic rapist that lives in the shadows of our ignorance. We must understand that the nature of evil is just as much a reality as the possibility of love and goodness. Author and child advocate, Andrew Vachss discusses this very point:
“Evil is a choice. What distinguishes evil is that it is a decision. It’s not in any way involuntary conduct. What Americans do, and this is completely understandable, is they confuse “sick” and “sickening.” So if something is sufficiently repulsive to them, the response is, “That’s sick!” So if you’re trying a case, and the accused has sexually assaulted twenty-five little boys, tortured them, taken photographs of them, sold the photographs —the more gross, the more grotesque, the more bizarre, the more reprehensible the conduct, the more likely the jury is to conclude that only a sick person would do that. Well, nothing could be further from the truth.
I know people don’t like the word “evil,” because, to them, it has a religious context. And also it’s overused. But you have to distinguish from “sick,” because a sick person doesn’t plot and doesn’t plan and doesn’t profit. Plot, plan, profit. If you see those words, you’re not dealing with somebody who’s sick. You’re dealing with somebody who’s evil. And that distinction has habitually been lost on Americans, because the media has muddled it so much. [27] [Emphasis mine]
The psychopath does know the difference between right and wrong. He chooses “wrong” because it is his nature to embody the opposite of those with conscience. And the plotting, planning and profiting from the most extraordinary suffering is routinely rationalized as somehow essential to the survival of democracy, when in fact, what we consider to be an inevitable trade-off to secure all our freedoms is simply another ruse in the well-oiled machine of pathocratic rule. We must un-muddle our ideas about good and evil, and unravel the knots we have created regarding their influence.
Now that we have the patterns of pathology firmly in our minds we can turn to some of the specific causes and their recurrent effects within contemporary society in Europe and America.
Notes
[1] ‘The US has only 5% of the world’s population, but almost 25% of it is in prison’ The Economist, May 19 2012. | http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/03/currency
[2] Though originally reported by The Lancet almost two years ago, the figure of 100,000 is obviously out-of-date. This estimate was before many of the crimes committed by US troops, the Iraqi so-called Army and the Government militias. The number could easily be at least 200,000. According to the UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) humanitarian news agency reported on April 26 that “More than 90 women become widows each day due to continuing violence countrywide, according to government officials and non-governmental organizations devoted to women’s issues.” The Ministry of Women’s Affairs says that there are at least 300,000 widows in Baghdad alone. There may also be as much as eight million throughout the country. | ‘2,660 Iraqi Civilians Killed in Sept.’ By Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Lee Keath Associated Press, October 11, 2006. “…a controversial new study contends that nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died in the three-year-old conflict in Iraq — more than 10 times higher than other independent estimates of the toll.”
[3] ‘Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation’ – ‘Projected Censored top 25 media stories of 2009.’
[4] ‘Counting the civilian cost in Iraq’ BBC News, June 6, 2005.
[5] ‘Iraqi Women Kidnapped, Raped,’ Agence France Presse, August 24, 2003.
[6] ‘Child rapes, killings terrify parents in Iraq’ USA Today, November 9, 2012.
[7] ‘Arrested Development’ By Arlie Hochschild, The New York Times, June 29, 2005.
[8] ‘Street children face hunger and abuse,’ (IRIN) 26 December, 2006.
[9] ‘Sexual Assault In Military Jaw Dropping’ CNN.com July 31, 2008.
[10] ‘’Invisible War’ exposes widespread rape in U.S. military’ Chicago Tribune, January 22, 2012. | See also the 2012 film at http://www.invisiblewarmovie.com/
[11] p.16; Men Who Rape – The Psychology of the Offender by A. Nicholas Groth with H. Jean Birnbaum. Published by Basic Books, 1979. | ISBN 0-7382-0624-5.
[12] op.cit. Groth (pp.26-27).
[13] Ibid.
[14] ‘In Iraq: The Neo-Con Perpetual War Policy’ by Carl Osgood, October 1, 2004 issue of Executive Intelligence Review: [The Perpetual War policy] “…was elaborated in the now-infamous ‘Clean Break’ document in 1996… authored by former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and a team of fellow neo-cons, [who] called for: 1) the destruction of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority,…2) inducing the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq; 3) launching war against Syria after Saddam is overthrown; 4) parlaying the overthrow of the regimes in Syria and Iraq into the ‘democratization’ of the entire Muslim world,…blaming them for every act of Palestinian terrorism, including the attacks from Hamas; including further military actions against Iran, Saudi Arabia, and even Egypt.”
[15] A Harris Poll® #57, July 21, 2006: “Seventy-two percent believe that the Iraqis are better off now than they were under Saddam Hussein.” In reality, they are worse off in almost every aspect of the occupation see: ‘Blix: Iraq Worse Off Now Than With Saddam’ Associated Press, April 6, 2004; ‘U.N.: Iraq kids suffer from malnutrition’ – “Almost twice as many Iraqi children are suffering from malnutrition since the US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein” USA Today, March 30, 2005; ‘Iraq death toll “soared post-war”’ BBC News, 29 October, 2004.
[16] op. cit. Groth (pp.44-45)
[17] p.338; The Psychopathic Mind: Origins, Dynamics, and Treatment by Reid J. Meloy. Published by Jason Aronson, Inc.; 1 edition, 1988. | ISBN-10: 0876683111.
[18] Holt SE, Meloy JR, Strack S: Sadism and psychopathy in violent and sexually violent offenders. J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 27:23–32, 1999.
[19] Murphy C, Vess J: Subtypes of psychopathy: proposed differences between narcissistic, borderline, sadistic, and antisocial psychopaths. Psychiatry Q 74:11–29, 2003.
[20] ‘How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib’ by Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, May 24, 2004. “…the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.”
[21] ‘Iraq economy falls below pre-war levels’ By Guy Dinmore, February 16, 2006. “The Bush administration on Thursday conceded that key sectors of the Iraqi economy had fallen below pre-war levels because of the insurgency, but insisted it was making enough progress on the political and security fronts to press ahead with reductions in US forces.” | See also: Iraq death toll ‘soared post-war’ BBC News, 29 October 2004.
[22] op. cit. Hare (p.44) | See also: ‘Bush’s Iraq WMDs joke backfires’ BBC News, March 26, 2004: “US President George W Bush has sparked a political row by making a joke about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. At a black-tie dinner for journalists, Mr Bush narrated a slide show poking fun at himself and other members of his administration.One pictured Mr Bush looking under a piece of furniture in the Oval Office, at which the president remarked: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere.”After another one, showing him scouring the corner of a room, Mr Bush said: “No, no weapons over there,” he said. And as a third picture, this time showing him leaning over, appeared on the screen the president was heard to say: “Maybe under here?”
[23] ‘Military Sexual Assault Reports Up 40 Pct’ By Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press, March 17, 2006.
[24] ‘Of love, war and obscenity: a perspective on the fall of Baghdad’ by Richard Webster, The Guardian, April 12, 2003.
[25] op. cit. Salter (p.109-110)
[26] ‘How the US uses sexual humiliation as a political tool to control the masses’ By Naomi Wolf, The Guardian, April 5, 2012.
[27] ‘The World As They See It: Andrew Vachss’ by Ken Kesegich, Case Magazine, Autumn, 2004.
INFRAKSHUN 