Anthony J. Marsella – Page 2

Remembering

Posted on November 28, 2019December 3, 2019 by kathiemm

by Anthony J. Marsella

I send this reminder of our commercialized Turkey Day celebration, based on myths regarding the Pilgrims and the Native American Indians, and the subsequent exploitation and destruction of American Indian nations.

Legends say colonists were warmly welcomed, and American Indians appreciated their presence. Over time, actual events of those fateful days have been rewritten many times, each time suggesting the virtues of colonization, commercialization, and corruption, from the point of view of the colonizers. Missing, of course, are the related truths: “exploitation, destruction, and genocide.”

Some have even proposed “Turkey” replace the Bald Eagle as our national bird, in honor of the myths of Pilgrim and American Indian celebration. White-farmed turkey, of course. How easily we fall into the propaganda!

Change is in the air! Amidst the agonizing recognition and struggles against “genocide,” Native American Indian voices have come together with a profound and an undeniable power at “Standing Rock” and other emerging abusive locations. If there is to be another “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” it will not be without a gathering of Native American Indian resistance.

Native American Indian voices are now joined by the voices of people of all ethnic, racial, and cultural groups, conscious of the suffering Native American Indians have had to endure.

I do not wish to romanticize the ensuing struggles between colonists, pioneers, homesteaders, cowboys, and Native American Indians. The violence was appalling for all sides. But in the end, Native American Indians have been the lasting victims!

Victims they will be no longer! No more myths, no more cowboy and Indian shootings, no more blue-clad horse-soldiers, to the rescue, bugles blowing, sabers drawn, rifles against arrows; no more forts, no more sinister half-breeds, no more drunken Indians hooked on firewater, no more passive squaws, no more White-man schools shaming and traumatizing students, invalidating their heritage and being! No more! Never again! Not in my house!

Colonization cannot be undone! Colonization decimated Native American Indian populations across the land. It was, in every sense of the word, genocide! Through the uses of infectious disease, relocation, tragic marches, blatant murder, massacres, and treacherous compacts ands promises, Native American Indians now find themselves victims once again to a government willing to continue the assault upon their lives, their life-affirming culture, traditions, and identity.

“Wounded Knee” will be replaced by “Standing Rock!” Not as a tragic location, but as an assertion and recovery of identity. The United States government must apologize and withdraw the 3.7 billion-dollar Dakota Access Oil Pipeline routes. Canada must also agree human rights “trump” oil! Oil pipelines must be re-routed because of their disastrous risks to polluting the Missouri River: “Native American Indian Lives Matter!” Already more than 200 oil spills have already occurred. Genocides stop here today!

I visited the Pine Tree Sioux (Lakotah) Reservation years ago! I was stunned by what I saw! I was stunned by the words of government officials when I questioned the obvious poverty and destruction. I recognized I had contributed to the entire tragedy as I played cowboys and Indians in my childhood. I bought into the John Wayne mentality! I always took the part of the Indians, and I always lost. Toy rifles against bows and arrows! I recall the words legitimizing our play: “Whiteman speaks with forked tongue. “Soon Iron Horse come! Kill many buffalo! My people will pass.”

Childhood play, modeling TV and movies, affirming and endorsing a harsh and enduring reality for a time. No longer! This destructive affront to American Indians across the land must end.

The Society of American Indian Psychologists (SIP), under leadership of Art Blume and colleagues have challenged the American Psychological Association administration to speak out against the APA Code of Ethics and its implication for abuse. The choice is clear and unambiguous! Standing-Rock Water Protectors are just in protest!

How blind can anyone be to their request? Water is sacred in so many ways, and yet we despoil it and toxic it with impunity and abandon. But more than “water” is at stake. For a people and a government that have abused Native American Indian rights and survival for more hundreds of years, there are the issues of dignity, integrity, and morality. There are issues of priorities: consumerism, materialism, commodification, greed, profit, pollution, crime, corruption, violence.

I say: Help the Native American Indians win when cowboys and Indians is played. Read the plaque. Ring the bells! It’s a new day! And we are moving on!

Doing the right thing

Posted on October 11, 2019October 11, 2019 by kathiemm

Mohave Indians; Indians of North America; Military personnel. Around 1868. Author: Gardner, Alexander, 1821-1882 (photographer). In the public domain.

by Anthony J. Marsella

Let’s change October 11 to Indigenous Peoples’ Day!

In our Global Era, we need to move away from Euro-American domination–including domination of history and the historical record.

It’s time to look at that record honestly. Reminders of genocides, enslavement, exploitation, repression of identity, and destruction of cultures can lead to opportunities for understanding, respect, and justice.

Columbus’ voyage had monumental consequences for indigenous people.. Even now, in the Amazon, as well as in Alaska, Hawaii, and other parts of the USA indigenous people struggle for human rights denied them by colonial and imperialistic powers. Time for change! There must be place and privilege for all.

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., ProfessorEmeritus, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822

Republished, with light editing, from the Psychologists for Social Responsibility discussion group, 10-11-19.

“Omnipresent surveillance:” Dystopian society in our global era, Part 4

Posted on August 16, 2019September 13, 2019 by kathiemm

by Anthony J. Marsella, PhD

There have been many suggestions about what is needed in response to the growing national security state of the United States. Responses have come from around the world, and many names are now familiar (e.g., Noam Chomsky, Mairead McGuire, Amy Goodman, Johan Galtung, Chris Hedges). Here are some options for building a more enduring and effective response:

Become informed: Become informed and educated about the scope and sources of the national security state threats to privacy and behavior control. This can only be done by reading credible sources, reading beyond popular media, and questioning sources with specific hidden agendas (i.e., corporate, military).
Engage in activism: Become as active as your circumstances permit in peaceful protests that may include opinion writing, letter writing, petition signing, phone calls to elected representatives, and joining discussion groups via the internet or in real time. Become as active as your circumstances permit with regards to supporting alternative information sources (e.g., Transcend Medial Service, Truthout, Guardian, Engaging Peace), and supporting pathways to prosecution for those violating Constitutional and civil rights.

Commit to non-violence: Be committed to non-violence and non-killing as viable pathways for bringing about change. This may well make change a slow and arduous process, and it may never be completely successful. Yet the course of violence, insurgency, and revolt can only lead to destruction and death, as we are witnessing in the United States and around the world.

The challenges are many and complex; there is little reason to believe citizens can easily reduce or eliminate the massive national and international surveillance network. If change is to occur, it will be because hope as an essential enduring human virtue can inform action and that non-violent action will be undertaken.

Footnote 1: The term “omnipresent surveillance” is taken from John W. Whitehead’s recent article, “The Omnipresent Surveillance State: Orwell’s 1984 Is No longer Fiction.” Information Clearing House. June 11, 2019. See also Rutherford Institute, Virginia, USA

References:

Bacevich, A. (2012). The short American century: A post-mortem. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chumley, C. (2014). Police State USA: How Orwell’s nightmare is becoming our reality. NY: WND.

Deneys-Tunney, A. (July 12, 2012) Rousseau shows us there is a way to break the chains from within. The Guardian, London, UK.

. Harris, S. (2010). The watchers: The rise of America’s surveillance state. NY: Penguin Group.

Hedges, C. (2015). A nation of snitches.

Mills, C. W. (2000). The Power Elite. NY: Oxford University Press

Priest, D., & Arkin, W. (2011). Top secret America: The rise of the new American Security State. NY: Little Brown.

Slavo, M. (July 31, 2019). Satellites Have Already Started Watching Your Every Movement.

Taggart, D. (2019). Americans Don’t Trust the Govt, the Media, or Each Other: Fading Trust is “Sign of Cultural Sickness and National Decline.”

Unger, D. (2012). The emergency state: America’s pursuit of absolute security at all costs. NY: Penguin Press

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Emeritus Professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa Campus in Honolulu, Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 21 books and more than 300 articles, tech reports, and popular commentaries. His TMS articles may be acessed HERE and he can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.

This article, lightly edited and abridged, originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 5 Aug 2019. TMS: “Omnipresent Surveillance:” Dystopian Society in Our Global Era .

“Omnipresent surveillance:” Dystopian society in our global era, Part 3

Posted on August 14, 2019August 14, 2019 by kathiemm

by Anthony J. Marsella, PhD

What Government Agencies and Organizations are Involved?

According to Wikipedia,

“The United States Intelligence Community (IC) is a federation of 17 separate United States government intelligence agencies, that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities to support the foreign policy and national security of the United States. Member organizations of the IC include intelligence agencies, military intelligence, and civilian intelligence and analysis offices within federal executive departments. The IC is overseen by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) making up the seventeen-member Intelligence Community, which itself is headed by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who reports to the President of the United States.[1][2]”

There are, as documented in this Wikipedia excerpt, an extensive number of “intelligence” gathering and utilization organizations, involving thousands of employees and an unknown, but obviously considerable, amount of money. All of this in the name of domestic and national security. There are numerous issues regarding duplication, competition, communication, hierarchies, strengths and weaknesses, and costs among these known groups. There is reason to believe there are also unknown groups that function independently.

There is irony and paradox here! The approved protectors and guardians impose constraints and abuses on citizens in the name of national security; however, in doing so, they impose control and domination.

This is a bewildering anomaly, and one from which there may never be an escape, given the secrecy and depth of penetration of governance and private surveillance groups. Can we really expect military intelligence to give up its roles and its methods, and its ties to weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and others in the war industry? Of course not!

There are powerful connections among Silicon Valley corporations, military weapons manufacturers, and the Defense Department. They support one another in a “silent” conspiracy of financial relations and ties. Numerous retired military officials and officers go to work for Silicon Valley and weapon industry corporations as consultants and executives. The fix is on! Will this system harvest what it sows? The fabled Military-Industrial-Congressional-Academic Complex lives . . . at least for now; too many on the take, too few guided by an essential conscience!

Foundations of the National Security State

The USA’s national “security state” and its impositions are possible for a number of reasons:

Technological developments (e.g., big data) permit mass surveillance, monitoring, and archiving of information on all citizens;
Suppression and condemnation of protests, including harassment, persecution, and prosecution of those speaking out against the national security state;
Collaboration and cooperation of a biased and compromised media, which is, arguably, the most important societal check and balance against the abuses, violations, and identification of government and private criminal actions;
Location and control of power within a small group of individuals (oligarchy) who by stain of temperament, disposition, position, and financial interests seek to increase, sustain, and protect USA state terrorism policies, actions, and organizational structures;
Development of a vast complex of “escape” clauses within our executive, judicial, and congressional systems permitting individuals to lie, distort, misrepresent, and speak with impunity without fear of prosecution. In brief, a privileged and oligarchic “group” is “free” to engage in illegal actions without accountability, transparency, or risk;
Lust for power, wealth, position and the domination and control accompanying these impulses. Selfish motives from troubled minds.
Use of Congressional acts and secret agreements to justify and protect abuses, including The Patriot Act, The Department of Homeland Security and Fusion Center authorizations, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF).

Marc Slavo (2019) points out the nefarious cooperatives among countries with mass surveillance systems. He writes:

“Many countries have surveillance systems, but the countries in the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes and 14 Eyes alliances work together to share data on a massive scale, according to a report by Cloud Wards. Innocent people are spied on every day. The Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes groups are big players in the global surveillance game. Each country involved can carry out surveillance in particular regions and share it with others in the alliance.
The Five Eyes are the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The Five Eyes alliance, also known as FVEY, was founded on Aug. 14, 1941, and can be traced back to the WWII period. During the second world war, the exchange of intelligence information between the UK and the U.S. was important, and the partnership continued afterward.
The Nine Eyes alliance consists of the Five Eyes countries, plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway. Though there’s evidence that the Nine Eyes and 14 Eyes exist, little is known about what they can and can’t do.
The 14 Eyes alliance is made up of the Nine Eyes countries, plus Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden. It’s an extension of the Five Eyes and Nine Eyes alliances, but its actual name is SIGINT.

A recent CIA sponsored Bill, the “Intelligence Authorization Act” (SB: 3153; HB 3194) garnering Congressional support would criminalize whistle blowers and reporters. Imagine, citizens are to be criminalized and punished for engaging in citizen expected responsibilities of complaint.”

Daniel Schuman (July 25, 2019), policy director of DEMAND PROGRESS, writes:

“House Intelligence Committee Chair expansion of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act beyond all reason will effectively muzzle reporting on torture, mass surveillance, and other crimes against the American people — all at the request of the CIA.”

Dagny Taggart (a pseudonym for a seasoned reporter fearful of retaliation), based on Pew Survey, results, writes (2019): “Americans Don’t Trust the Govt, the Media, or Each Other: Fading Trust is “Sign of Cultural Sickness and National Decline.”

Is this any wonder? Years of corruption, cronyism, and crime by government, private corporations, military, and other societal institutions make “trust” a foolish and unwarranted action. This is nothing new!

[Note from Kathie MM:The conclusion of this series will be published on EP Friday August 16, with some recommendations for addressing the problems described here. Don’t miss it!]