Anthony J. Marsella – Page 3

“Omnipresent surveillance:” Dystopian society in our global era, Part 2

Posted on August 12, 2019August 12, 2019 by kathiemm

by Anthony J. Marsella, PhD

II. National security abuses and excesses

“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.”
— Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) , The Spirit of Laws, 1748

A. Technologies for omnipresent surveillance

Bill-Board photography and monitoring of automobile drivers
Airport body scans [“Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you. And without you knowing it.” (Gizmodo, July 10, 2012).
Brain wave (EEG) readers
Bugs (intrusive car, phone)
Bugs (intrusive computer)
Collaboration between massive corporations (e.g., Amazon, Face Book, Google) and government agencies (algorithms for sharing information)
Drones (Used to photograph, monitor house odors, disable equipment)
Facial recognition
Finger prints, hand prints, footprints
Genetic DNA sampling
House-Air Sampling (Drones)
Monitoring, copying, and retaining all phone, email, texting communications:
- Source number,
- Target number,
- Time of communication,
- Date of communication,
- Precise location of source and target numbers,
- Record conversation,
- Archive data in Fusion Centers

Neuroimaging technologies (e.g., CAT, PET, EMR, SPECT, X-Ray) [Medical imaging information gathered via CAT scans, nuclear magnetic resonance, SPECT, and other methods reveal the distinct and unique pattern of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from your various organs. Everyone has a distinct pattern, and knowing that pattern makes one vulnerable to specific controls using low radio wave frequencies and other invasive technology methods. This is especially a source for abuse using brain information.]
Radio-Frequency Identification Inserts (RFID)
Satellite monitoring
Vision data [Vision identification is more accurate than fingerprints. Thus, when you stare into optometric equipment to determine both your visual equation and your eyes disease, a permanent record is photographed and maintained. Whether access to this record can be gleaned or shared willingly remains a question.]

Cameras at traffic intersections [The ubiquitous camera at many traffic intersections has already recorded your face and upper body for security reasons. If you wear sunglasses, efforts will be made to affirm your visual identification.]
Wire taps (proximal and distal)

B. Sources of information

Brain wave (EEG) readers
Catholic confessional (bugging & taping)
Medical information (EKG, blood tests)
Facebook data
Fake photos and videos
False accusations, requiring court and legal responses
Finger print data base
Foreign nation surveillance (e.g., USA, UK, China, Russia, Israel)
Garbage analysis
Google, Amazon, Facebook monitoring
License plates readers on streets and highways
Neighbor & friends as informants (Project InfraGard)
Photographs
Political ideology organization surveillance (e.g., AIPAC, Anti-Defamation League, Southern Poverty Legal Fund, Anti-Boycott Laws https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/04/23/us-states-use-anti-boycott-laws-punish-responsible-businesses, White and/or Black, Latino, and Islamic extremists and radical groups)
Private Investigators (PI can be ruthless and relentless in acquiring data, bugging cars and phones, planting rumors, calling police, eluding laws.)
Project ImfraGardarted by FBI, 1997, Cleveland, Ohio. Involves recruitment of stores, malls, professions, etc. to report on targets.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfraGard Expands FBI data-gathering system. Numerous sources of information regarding individuals or groups are now available to local, national and foreign security groups via (1) shopping expenditures, (2) restaurant preferences and expenses, (3) hair stylists/barbers conversations, (4) grocery purchases, (5) gasoline purchases, (6) automobile information, (7) travel information, (8) hotel records, (9) publishers, and (10) medical/mental health services. Yes, what you say to your physician and/or therapist is grist for the mill that has been created.]

Pupillometry (eye parameters)
Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID)
Records acquisition: HIPAA, medical, schools
Records: family history, pedigree, family tree mapping
Smart and interactive TVs
Smart medicines (Track Use)
Smart meters (Utility Usage)
Store security officials [While you shop, photos are taken, your preferred products identified, your shopping behavior; recall FBI Project InfraGard.]
Stingray computer email monitor.. [btains your email from a close distance. Illegal but used by authorities, foreign nations, and suspicious neighbors]
Subliminal perception on TV and EMR messages (Can also be used for behavior control)
Television program monitoring
Use of consultants, collaborators, cooperatives, cronies, informants, plants, shils, and other forms of collusion to gather info, and to assess or create risk for investigation and persecution/prosecution [Think East German STASI.]
Use of law (e.g., Section 215 of Patriot Act authorizes FBI to interview friends, family, professionals, and to swear all parties to silence)
Video records
Window vibration decoding of conversations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone

C. Behavior control and harassment methods

Make annoyance phone calls
Engage in baiting [monitoring open purses, money on floor, wheel-chair elderly, flirtations to facilitate arrest]
Exercise behavior control (Think Manchurian Candidate)
Control brain waves
Develop and foster hostility for certain groups (e.g., Target Muslims, African-American protest groups, drug cartels)
Develop “pseudo” Face Book, Twitter, and other social network services to entrap individuals or groups
Distribute drugs (e.g, LSD) causing depression, mania, confusion, dulling, feeling stoned, amnesia
Engage in defamation of character
Entrap [e.g., use promises of reduced prosecution to get desired information]
Abuse the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) system. [e.g., Designate critics of government or political candidates as individuals warranting FISA Court listing as terrorist, criminal, or spy.
Harassment—e.g., planting false evidence to facilitate arrest
Harassment, abuse, and/or prosecution of whistleblowers
Hypnosis
Identification implants
Infiltration of listservs, media services, groups
Informants (e.g., use of prior offense people to entrap)
Microwave stun gun (proximate & distance)
Rumor planting and monitoring with friends, neighbors
Use of paid private investigators to stalk and harass individuals
Use of citizens as research subjects (injections, drugs, sprays) without consent (hundreds of examples by government agencies)
Use of toxins (e.g., spraying toxic substances)
Use of spoiled or toxic foods when shopping. Exchanging similar foods in shopping carts with toxic foods.
Misuse of voice recognition systems (e.g., monitoring, samples and recreating offensive messages)

Data from mass-surveillance technology methods and techniques are distributed to DHS/NSA State Fusion Centers, and a Computer System named AQUAINT, standing for “Advanced Question Answering for Intelligence.”

“Omnipresent surveillance”: Dystopian society in our global era, Part 1.

Posted on August 9, 2019August 10, 2019 by kathiemm

by Anthony J. Marsella, PhD

Imposing Authoritarian Control, Domination, and Rule: Strategies, Methods, Techniques, Tactics ¹

“Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains.”
— Jean Jacques Rousseau (28 Jun 1712 – 2 Jul 1778), Social Contract, 1762

I. Authoritarian Control, Dominance, Rule: Course of Human History

Fictional accounts of compelling dystopian societies, including, Brave New World, 1984, The Handmaiden’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, The Matrix, and scores of apocalyptic movies, are proving prescient.

Once confined to popular reading, entertainment, and college seminars, fictional accounts of dystopian societies have assumed a frightening reality as government, military, corporate, and private sectors impose oppressive surveillance strategies, methods, techniques, and tactics on citizens. These impositions are destroying the last semblances of legal and moral individual “privacy,” freedoms, civil rights, and USA Constitution First and Fourth Amendment rights, especially those guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. ²

Citizen fears for personal safety and security are encouraged and promoted by media collaborators with governments, military, and corporate beneficiaries of violence and war; a pervasive sense of peril, danger, and jeopardy is now normal. This sense of fear both sanctions and authorizes authoritarian national security sectors to impose egregious abuses of citizen rights and privileges with oppressive and punitive measures.

Playing upon Western nations fears of being overrun by invasions, occupations, and exploitations by international migrants, especially from Islamic, Sub-Saharan African, and Central American nations, citizens in many European countries have elected right-wing populist governments determined to implement draconian immigration and refugee policies, limiting or blocking immigration to selective groups and conditions.

USA President Donald Trump announced all “illegal” resident immigrants will be expelled form the USA beginning June 24, 2019, under the auspices of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by the Department of Homeland Security. President Trump considers illegal immigrants to be a threat to national security as sources of violence, crime, disease, and competing cultural traditions.

A convincing xenophobia has found its way into minds and hearts of citizens and officials resulting in the emergence of widespread of “hate” cultures and outbursts of gun violence. “Our nation is under attack by dangerous foes seeking our demise and collapse!” This is the thematic cry of those seeking more power, control, and domination of citizen masses, an appeal to fear and heroic nationalism.

Condemnation of violations of citizen privacy and rights, guaranteed in the Fourth Amendment of the USA Constitution, is drawing urgent attention from legal and NGO sources, with little legal consequence. Government, police, military, and corporate and private agencies are supporting numerous laws and regulations legitimizing pervasive surveillance, monitoring, and storage of citizen information for potential prosecution.

Control, Domination, Rule of Citizens: An “Old” Policy and Practice

“Experience has shown that even under the best forms of government, those entrusted with power have in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Preamble to a Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, Fall 1778, Papers 2: 526-527.

Control, domination, and rule of citizen thought, behavior, and identity by authorities and ruling classes is the story of human history; it is the logical outcome when States, Nations, Empires, and Colonial Rulers, especially dictatorships, assume disproportional power.

Protests and rebellions are quelled by a variety of oppressive measures, including arrests, imprisonment, torture, as well as murder, beatings, and crowd control tactics. Assassinations and disappearance of rebel leaders is common, as desperate authorities oppress contention.

While inspirational stories of citizen uprisings protesting control, domination, and rule, including the French and American Revolutions, are celebrated each year as sacred holidays, the harsh reality emerging is “omnipresent-mass surveillance.” Past glories are diminished in the presence of new oppressions.

Never before in history have the vast means of citizen control, domination, and rule been as total and complete as they are now because of the uses and abuses of technology. Romantic notions of citizen heroes leading uprisings against abusive and corrupt governments and authorities are the stuff of past myths. Mass government surveillance and monitoring of citizens and groups has destroyed individual and group privacy and rights. Oppressive conformity, homogenization, and subjugation are now accepted goals for authorities claiming national security needs.

Tragically, continued use of effective media and propaganda has resulted in citizen concurrence and acceptance of oppression and violation of Constitutional rights and privileges. A tragic paradox! “Yes, oppress and control me; I need your protection in a dangerous world.” (“Escape From Freedom. . . . . .”)

Control, Domination, Rule . . .

Governance is needed! This reality cannot be contested! Contestations of abuses of power, however, omnipresent in the government-congressional-corporate-military-educational complex is required and essential. As elections approach, why are no candidates willing to risk the tolls of exposing the situation? Where are calls and accusations of encroaching oppression,

A challenge for citizens is the reality “society” often hides, distorts, and represses concerns for freedom. Openness, transparency, participation is required in a democracy. Past presidential candidates have won on a platform of these admirable goals, only to find upon election, they succumb to shadow powers, and conform to traditional agendas using war and violence to achieve unwarranted goals. Who controls the leaders? Hidden governments?

In the USA, most citizens never imagined government would “betray” citizens given the protections of the USA Constitution. Today, however, surveys indicate less than 10% of USA citizens trust the government, and often see the government as biased in favor of special interests via lobbyists.

“Secret State” and “Shadow State” groups of powerful and positioned individuals assumed power and control, betraying their oaths and loyalty in favor of personal agendas keeping them in power. Much of the “Secret State” individuals are ensconced in Justice Department offices and agencies (i.e., CIA, FBI, DHS, NSA). Crimes and abuses of these groups continue to unfold daily revealing a tragic story of corruption, collusion, and crime.

When societal institutions breakdown and collapse under pressures of corruption, cronyism, special interests, and inadequate funding, citizens are bereft of resources for protection and security. In an open and democratic society, transparency, social responsibility, and voting are keys to citizen awareness and empowerment. What happens, however, when these too are lost to political interests?

Tragically, many “secret state” societies around the world have already destroyed or denied citizen rights, enabling groups with special interests and concerns to exist and to exact their toll. Under these circumstances, citizen wellbeing and welfare yield to special interests and the advancement of control in favor of mega-groups pursuing their own interests. Citizens are no longer players, and when they attempt to act against control, they are promptly subdued as enemies of the State.

Citizens look to government to protect them, but corrupt governments are too closely linked and connected to secret and known “power” groups, to offer citizen protection. In the process, citizens lose trust in governments and societal institutions; this raises the threshold for both protests and repression.

Within this context of institution collapse, and the rise of special interest and concerns, citizens become identified with certain groups at the cost of a society’s democratic identity and membership. They seek the comfort and security of identity with fringe elements offering simple solutions and identification of obvious enemies among minorities, immigrants, and radical revolution members. Heroes, calling for change, become victims.

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.

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.

Artist in Agony: My Step-Father, Stefano, WWII “Survivor”‘

Posted on February 27, 2019February 27, 2019 by kathiemm

by Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.

He wanted desperately
To roar in laughter,
Hold his sides
Gasp for breath,
Experience glee,
Know sheer hilarity!
But all manners of pleasure,
All moments of happiness,
Eluded him!
His mind was sealed by trauma!
He knew loss!
He lived pain!
He witnessed horror!
He experienced terror!
He suffered misery!
Lifetime imprints!

He wondered:
How could others abandon control?
Escape past, feel joy?
He looked at them: bewildered:
How? Why?

No answers but “destiny” came!
He recalled Verdi’s opera:
La forza del destino!
Aria: Morir! Tremenda cosa!
(“To die, a momentous thing!”)
He knew death: seen it, smelled it, touched it!

II.
Exuberance . . . impossible!
He was confined to slight smiles,
An occasional toss of the head,
“Sniffs of the nose!”
No intentional mirth.
Somberness!
Laughter with cynicism!
“What do you know?”
Do you know what I have seen?
Momentary pleasures:
Painting with oils,
Carving wood,
Sculpting clay!
Crafting a delicate rosewood mandolin!
Making guitars with no training.
An artist absent agony,
Passing quickly!

Amusement!
Sinful!
Disrespectful!
Insulting!
Demeaning,
Do they not know?
Have they not seen?

He forced a grin
For sake of others,
Nodding!
Unspoken acknowledgement!
Others tried to please him!
A good meal!
A good cigarette!
What do you need Stefano?”

Dark humor was worse!
A meeting place for pain and pleasure!
No Schadenfreud for him,
No satisfaction from someone’s pain.
Who benefits from suffering?

Empathy, sympathy, sorrow!
These he knew well,
He lived amidst them!
Images returning with ease,
Overwhelming him!
No satisfaction in revenge,
No consolation!

He tried to survive!
Sought refuge in a new land!
It was impossible!
Lived experience sealed his fate,
No changes with time or place.
Torment omnipresent!
Inscribed, carved, painted,
In body and mind!

His life caught in time:
Fixed in an artist’s fragile imagination,
Sensations crying for release,
Redemption from sorrow’s grip!
War, poverty, hunger,
Starvation, poverty, death,
Demons!

III.
He walked:
From Torino to Messina — 1943:
1381 kilometers by air!
2000 kilometers on swollen feet!
Avoiding roads,
German troops!

He pondered:
War over for Italian soldiers,
Partisans fighting!
Germans contemptuous!
Firing squads!
Sites before him engraved!
Life intaglios!

He walked:
Rome spared,
Even Nazi Generals understood:
“Do not destroy eternity.”
Destroy only human lives!
They are expendable
For grand designs!

He walked:
Before him destruction, deprivation,
Disgrace, dishonor!
Open-mouth corpses,
Sagging buildings,
Dust in every breath
Children begging,
Women – young and old –
Offering emaciated bodies,
Lira! Lira!

He walked:
With each step,
Memories!
Soldier!
King Victor Emmanuel’s Italian Army!
Spain, Libya, Italy!

He walked

Sopportare!
Bear the unbearable!
Smirk!
Hell is life!
Life is hell!
Fire and brimstone!
No escape!
No sanctuary!

He walked:
Is this what Dante understood?
Where is Beatrice?
How prophetic: “Inferno!”
Poetic words from Petrarch,
Paintings from Leonardo!
Sculptures from Michelangelo!
Carvings from Cellini!

He Walked:
Preoccupations!
What matters beauty?
What matters heritage?
What matters time,
If time can be erased in moments.

Chest-thumping dictator in balconies,
“Better one day as a lion,
Than a lifetime as a lamb!”
Ancient Rome restored.
Metaphors?
Meaningless!

IV.
He welcomed death!
Not for a glorious cause,
But to flee life!
His thoughts went beyond impulse:
He considered place, means, time!
Somber detachment essential!

He went to confession:
Begged for forgiveness,
From God,
From priests,
From self!
Why was he begging?

Priests!
Agents of god . . .
Why does god need agents?
Whose side are priests on?

Priests share confessions with bishops,
Bishops share with Vatican,
Vatican stores secrets for posterity!
Know the truth!
Hide the truth!
Vows cast aside!
Betrayal!

V.
Spanish Civil War:
Two years, 8 months, 1 day:
A lifetime of scars!
Barcelona, Madrid, Guernica:
An enduring legacy!

Prelude to WWII!
Cold-War harbinger!
Middle-East omen!
Ideologies, prophecies, grand designs!

Global military-industrial-banker complexes,
Vultures feasting on death and destruction!
New nations, faces, places,
Old wine in new bottles!
New wine in old bottles!

Factions:
Republicans! Popular Front!
Stalinists! Communists! Unionists! Socialists!
Latvian, Polish, Czech, Garibaldi, Soviet brigades!
Most volunteers, Jewish idealists!
Lincoln Brigade!
Hemingway!
Did he grasp for whom bells toll?

Nationalists! Monarchists! Dictators!
Franco! Carlists! Fascists! Falangists!
Catholicism at stake . . . in new ways!
Opus Dei! A rebirth!
Godless communists!
Jews seeking revenge!

Germans! Italians! Spanish Armies!
Ideologies!
Nations!
Countries!
Fatherland!
Motherland!
Homeland!
No Land!
Why?

Modern War:

Statistics! Maps! Reports!
Dead, wounded, MIA,
Symbols, songs, words:
INTERNATIONALE:
Stand up! All victims of oppression,
For tyrants fear your might,
Don’t cling to your possessions,
For you have nothing,
If you have no rights!

HORST-WESSEL LIED!

Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles!
Sieg Heil! Bloodlines protected!

GIOVINEZZA!

Hail, People of heroes!
Hail, Immortal Fatherland,
Your sons were born again
With faith and ideals!
Warrior values!
Youth, youth!
In the hardship of life!

Realities. . .
Idealism in an age of want!
Nobility in failure!
Romanticized war posters!
Dying for country!
Blood sacrifices!

Orders!
Vodka, wine,
Charge the hill!
Futility!
Potatoes, cabbage, rats!
Minds, bodies, souls, driven by madness!
Causes forgotten!
Amid stupor!
Claw, crawl, hide!
Cry!
Primitive survival!

Bandiera Roso!
Red! Blood Red!
Round Eastern-European faces,
Stop Fascism,
Stalin’s scourge!

Republican brigades in Red Bandanas!
Men . . . women . . . youth!
Standing nearby:
Staring, spitting,
Contempt-filled faces,
No tears!
Loyalists taking notes!

Spread the new Gospel of the Age . . . Communism!
How glorious to die for cause!
Do not hesitate!
Our cause is just!

(USA supported Franco silently:
“Fear of Communism!
No profit! No Investments!
Better dead than Red!”
It never ended!)

Bodies: Headless, limbless, blood-soaked!
Priests, nuns, altar boys . . . shot!
Churches filled with people praying!
Youth, women, old men!
Burned alive!
Statues shattered!
Myths broken!

Loyalists:
You want freedom?
You want equality?
We give you equality,
But for a price!
Your life!

Stukas! Tanks! Blitzkrieg!
Cold, mechanical, precision metal!
Ordered ranks!
Goosesteps! Boots! Helmets!
Ideology no match!
Lives inconsequential!

The Artist in Agony:
Confess!
Reality blurred! Unsure!
Confess for imagined sins!
Confess for sins of others!
Confess for being alive!
Unable to remember!
“Father, Forgive them . . . !”
Forgiveness . . . for what?

Confess . . . What?
For failing to shoot prisoners!
For refusing orders!
For witnessing firing squads!
For offering water to a dying woman,
Blood-saturated blouse,
Blue eyes, blonde hair,
Conscripted for cause!
“Gracias, Senor!”
Dying in your arms!

Confess . . . What?
Madness on all sides
Massacred nuns, priests in black,
Fascist soldiers in brown and grey!
Jewish zealots avenging history,
Still fighting Rome!
Religious fanatics, Loyalists,
Protecting God, Mary, Saints,
Statues, candles, incense, mea culpa!

Confess…What?

For living!
For turning from torture,
For wanting to breathe air free of dust and blood,
For chewing stale bread,
When bread no longer mattered;
For quenching thirst,
With mud-slaked water!

Confess…What?

Confess . . . What?
Once my Stepfather told me:
“Hunger does not know bad bread!
Fame no conosce pani malo.
Manga!”

“Finish your food!
Mama worked hard to cook it.
I worked hard to place it on the table.”
I nodded in agreement: “Si Padre!”
He was right!
How could I know sources of his words?

VI.
His mind began crumbling,
Years before,
An absence of hope!
Can tapestry be weaved
From broken strands, fibers . . . burned embers?

In his life:
Mother lost to war,
Sister to disease,
Father to work,
Home to bombs!

Brother, Prisoner-of-War:
Insults and humiliation,
Barbed-wire fences,
British guards pointing rifles,
Eager to shoot,
Taunting, mocking, insulting,
Daring prisoners to run,
For rifle practice!

Post-War Italy:

Chaos! Confusion! Deceit! Betrayal!
Communists, Fascists, Socialists, Anarchy!
Fifty governments in ten years!

And from America . . . Operation Gladio!

American CIA, Italian elites, Vatican, bankers:
Communism must be stopped in Italy,
At any cost! Blood in the streets!
Assassinations, beatings, torture, prison!

Choose sides!
Choose cronyism!
Choose evil!

Escape to America!
He wrote to his brother;
He came to America!
His new land, not what he expected,
Not what he needed,
Not what he wanted,
No respite offered!
Poverty!
No opportunity!
America: Illusion!

His hopes failing!
Every word an offense!
Every day a burden!
His wife and son . . . kind and caring;
He needed more!

Escape from past,
Freedom from present!
Renewal!
Return to place!
Comfort in old habits, reflexes, routines?

VII

I once saw him laugh . . . uninhibited,
Unrestrained!
Almost hysterical
Vino et veritas!
I welcomed his joy!
It never returned!

He was slightly inebriated,
Too much wine!
In our house
A dinner party, a small gathering,
My European friends!

He told a story of a night in Barcelona,
As a soldier in King Emanuel’s army,
Amid the horror of Civil War!
He was drunk – Spanish wine!
He was unable to walk!

To demonstrate,
He rose from his chair,
Got on hands and knees!
Mimicked crawling back to camp!
Saluting gate guards from a prone position!
He laughed hilariously!
All reserve gone.
How wonderful to see his laughter!

My guests laughed less!
They were from Eastern Europe,
Family members served
In Stalin’s Communist Brigades in Spain!
Relatives lived in Post-War Italy.

No word spoken!
Glances sufficient!
He did not notice!
I did!
Endless vengeance!

What does one do?
When suffering is daily fare?
Trauma sealed in mind, muscle, bone,
Images, sounds, smells!
Puncturing soul!
No respite! Again and, again!
Freud knew: Repetition-compulsion!

Distance, detachment, somberness!

Energy absent!
Frivolity foolish!
Happiness elusive!
Life questioned!
No escape!
An artist in agony!

Meditation . . .
In the years following WWII, the USA Government was obsessed with stopping the spread of communism Greece and Italy. The CIA invested billions of dollars in Operation Gladio, authorizing any method to halt Communist and Socialist rise to power.
More than 50,000 Italians were assassinated, murdered, or killed in open protests. Many were arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. There was total social and political upheaval and chaos. Scores of governments were formed and collapsed.
As in years before WWII, Italians fought against Italians. A government, favoring ties to the USA was sought, imposed, required. CIA efforts won. Italy became a puppet state for USA military forces.
I do not know my step-father’s experiences during this post-war period. He spoke little of them. He also spoke little of the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. He was a soldier in King Victor Emanuel’s Italian Army, a different army from Mussolini’s Fascist Black Shirts. For many, however, there were no differences!
He painted scores of oil paintings, giving almost all of them away as gifts. He sculpted with clay and plaster; no one in America wanted statues of saints. He also carved wood, turning wood scaps on a lathe he made from an old motor, automobile engine belts, and rusted iron, sanded and oiled to look new. He was a creative genius, a mechanical whiz, and an artist across mediums.
My step-father, Stefano, died in my arms at home at age 66. In the days before his death, he said to me: “The great tragedy of life is so few people have an opportunity to develop their talents.” He knew the agony!

Footnote 1:
This poem was originally written in 2014 and published in Anthony J. Marsella (2016): Gatherings: A Collection of Writing Genre. Mountain View Press: Alpharetta, Georgia. ISBN: 978-163183-023-5 Amazon Books.com
Some changes have been made in the original, but no changes in the intent and purpose: to honor respect, courage, and endurance in my step-father’s life.

Beside every great man is…

Posted on January 24, 2019January 23, 2019 by kathiemm

Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter sing with Andrew Young and Coretta Scott King, together with Martin Luther King, Sr and other civil rights leaders during a visit to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. In the public domain. Photographer: White House Staff Photographers

by Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.

Note from Kathie MM: In this month during which we honor Martin Luther King, Jr., it is a pleasure to honor also another wonderful role model for peace and social justice, Coretta Scott King–the great woman not behind but beside the great man.

A special word of praise and gratitude is deserved for Coretta Scott-King (April 27, 1927-January 30, 2006), wife and life partner of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., for 15 years, and an icon in her own right. Their partnership altered the history and future of the United States.

Coretta Scott-King was a tireless partner, and co-worker for civil rights and social change. She continued Reverend King’s work following his assassination, and assumed new responsibilities deserving recognition and honor.

A talented musical artist, Mrs. King graduated from highly respected Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she majored in music and education; she then went on to the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music, in Boston, Massachusetts, majoring in voice and violin. It was in Boston she met Reverend King, who was studying for his doctorate at Boston University. They were married on June 18, 1953.

Ms. King was active in developing many freedom music and poetry concerts; she was imbued with the spirit of human dignity, rights, and opportunities; she was a partner in Reverend King’s efforts. She joined Reverend King in national and global struggles for freedom, traveling with him on his many trips to Africa, Europe, and India. She was an international leader, organizing numerous international conferences, coalitions, and peace and human rights marches, gatherings, and demonstrations.

Throughout her marriage, Coretta Scott-King was an active partner with Reverend King in advancing the cause of racial justice and non-violence. Mrs.King was anointed with the calling to heal abuse, violence, and injustice in the USA and across the world. Following Reverend King’s death, Coretta Scott-King continued advocating for justice, equality, and freedom.

Coretta Scott-King is buried next to her husband in Atlanta, Georgia, in the national shrine which she helped develop: The King Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

Ms. King was the force behind the successful drive to declare Reverend King’s birthday a national holiday. Clearly, more should be done to honor Coretta Scott-King for her personal contributions, and for her many contributions to Reverend King’s efforts to create a more peaceful and just society.

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