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The Raelian Movement
for those who are not afraid of the future : http://www.rael.org
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The Collapse Of Western Morality
http://www.rense.com/general92/collapse.htm
By Paul Craig Roberts
10-20-10
Yes, I know, as many readers will be quick to inform me, the West
never had any morality. Nevertheless things have gotten worse.
In hopes that I will be permitted to make a point, permit me to
acknowledge that the US dropped nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities,
fire-bombed Tokyo, that Great Britain and the US fire-bombed Dresden
and a number of other German cities, expending more destructive force,
according to some historians, against the civilian German population
than against the German armies, that President Grant and his Civil War
war criminals, Generals Sherman and Sheridan, committed genocide
against the Plains Indians, that the US today enables Israel's
genocidal policies against the Palestinians, policies that one Israeli
official has compared to 19th century US genocidal policies against
the American Indians, that the US in the new 21st century invaded Iraq
and Afghanistan on contrived pretenses, murdering countless numbers of
civilians, and that British prime minister Tony Blair lent the British
army to his American masters, as did other NATO countries, all of whom
find themselves committing war crimes under the Nuremberg standard in
lands in which they have no national interests, but for which they
receive an American pay check.
I don't mean these few examples to be exhaustive. I know the list goes
on and on. Still, despite the long list of horrors, moral degradation
is reaching new lows. The US now routinely tortures prisoners, despite
its strict illegality under US and international law, and a recent
poll shows that the percentage of Americans who approve of torture is
rising. Indeed, it is quite high, though still just below a majority.
And we have what appears to be a new thrill: American soldiers using
the cover of war to murder civilians. Recently American troops were
arrested for murdering Afghan civilians for fun and collecting
trophies such as fingers and skulls.
This revelation came on the heels of Pfc. Bradley Manning's alleged
leak of a US Army video of US soldiers in helicopters and their
controllers thousands of miles away having fun with joy sticks
murdering members of the press and Afghan civilians. Manning is cursed
with a moral conscience that has been discarded by his government and
his military, and Manning has been arrested for obeying the law and
reporting a war crime to the American people.
US Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, of course, from Michigan, who is on
the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, has called for Manning's
execution. According to US Rep. Rogers it is an act of treason to
report an American war crime.
In other words, to obey the law constitutes "treason to America."
US Rep. Rogers said that America's wars are being undermined by "a
culture of disclosure" and that this "serious and growing problem"
could only be stopped by the execution of Manning.
If Rep. Rogers is representative of Michigan, then Michigan is a state
that we don't need.
The US government, a font of imperial hubris, does not believe that
any act it commits, no matter how vile, can possibly be a war crime.
One million dead Iraqis, a ruined country, and four million displaced
Iraqis are all justified, because the "threatened" US Superpower had
to protect itself from nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that
the US government knew for a fact were not in Iraq and could not have
been a threat to the US if they were in Iraq.
When other countries attempt to enforce the international laws that
the Americans established in order to execute Germans defeated in
World War II, the US government goes to work and blocks the attempt. A
year ago on October 8, the Spanish Senate, obeying its American
master, limited Spain's laws of universal jurisdiction in order to
sink a legitimate war crimes case brought against George W. Bush,
Barack H. Obama, Tony Blair,and Gordon Brown.
The West includes Israel, and there the horror stories are 60 years
long. Moreover, if you mention any of them you are declared to be an
anti-semite. I only mention them in order to prove that I am not
anti-American, anti-British, and anti-NATO, but am simply against war
crimes. It was the distinguished Zionist Jewish Judge, Goldstone, who
produced the UN report indicating that Israel committed war crimes
when it attacked the civilian population and civilian infrastructure
of Gaza. For his efforts, Israel declared the Zionist Goldstone to be
"a self-hating Jew," and the US Congress, on instruction from the
Israel Lobby, voted to disregard the Goldstone Report to the UN.
As the Israeli official said, we are only doing to the Palestinians
what the Americans did to the American Indians.
The Israeli army uses female soldiers to sit before video screens and
to fire by remote control machine guns from towers to murder
Palestinians who come to tend their fields within 1500 meters of the
inclosed perimeter of Ghetto Gaza. There is no indication that these
Israeli women are bothered by gunning down young children and old
people who come to tend to their fields.
If the crimes were limited to war and the theft of lands, perhaps we
could say it is a case of jingoism sidetracking traditional morality,
otherwise still in effect.
Alas, the collapse of morality is too widespread. Some sports teams
now have a win-at-all-cost attitude that involves plans to injure the
star players of the opposing teams. To avoid all these controversies,
let's go to Formula One racing where 200 mph speeds are routine.
Prior to 1988, 22 years ago, track deaths were due to driver error,
car failure, and poorly designed tracks compromised with safety
hazards. World Champion Jackie Stewart did much to improve the safety
of tracks, both for drivers and spectators. But in 1988 everything
changed. Top driver Ayrton Senna nudged another top driver Alain Prost
toward a pit wall at 190 mph. According to AutoWeek (August 30, 2010),
nothing like this had been seen before. "Officials did not punish
Senna's move that day in Portugal, and so a significant shift in
racing began." What the great racing driver Stirling Moss called
"dirty driving" became the norm.
Nigel Roebuck in AutoWeek reports that in 1996 World Champion Damon
Hill said that Senna's win-at-all-cost tactic "was responsible for
fundamental change in the ethics of the sport." Drivers began using
"terrorist tactics on the track." Damon Hill said that "the views that
I'd gleaned from being around my dad [twice world champion Graham
Hill] and people like him, I soon had to abandon," because you
realized that no penalty was forthcoming against the guy who tried to
kill you in order that he could win.
When asked about the ethics of modern Formula One racing, American
World Champion Phil Hill said: "Doing that sort of stuff in my day was
just unthinkable. For one thing, we believed certain tactics were
unacceptable."
In today's Western moral climate, driving another talented driver into
the wall at 200 mph is just part of winning. Michael Schumacher, born
in January 1969, is a seven times World Champion, an unequaled record.
On August 1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, AutoWeek Reports that
Schumacher tried to drive his former Ferrari teammate, Rubens
Barrichello, into the wall at 200 mph speeds.
Confronted with his attempted act of murder, Schumacher said: "This is
Formula One. Everyone knows I don't give presents."
Neither does the US government, nor state and local governments, nor
the UK government, nor the EU.
The deformation of the police, which many Americans, in their
untutored existence as naive believers in "law and order," still think
are "on their side," has taken on new dimensions with the police
militarized to fight "terrorists" and "domestic extremists."
The police have been off the leash since the civilian police boards
were nixed by the conservatives. Kids as young as 6 years old have
been handcuffed and carted off to jail for school infractions that may
or may not have occurred. So have moms with a car full of children
(see, for example,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AaSLERx0VM ).
Anyone who googles videos of US police gratuitous brutality will call
up tens of thousands of examples, and this is after laws that make
filming police brutality a felony. A year or two ago such a search
would call up hundreds of thousands of videos.
In one of the most recent of the numerous daily acts of gratuitous
police abuse of citizens, an 84-year-old man had his neck broken
because he objected to a night time towing of his car. The goon cop
body-slammed the 84-year old and broke his neck. The Orlando, Florida,
police department says that the old man was a "threat" to the
well-armed much younger police goon, because the old man clenched his
fist.
Americans will be the first people sent straight to Hell while
thinking that they are the salt of the earth. The Americans have even
devised a title for themselves to rival that of the Israelis'
self-designation as "God's Chosen People." The Americans call
themselves "the indispensable people."
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WARNING FROM RAEL: For those who don't use their intelligence at its full
capacity, the label "selected by RAEL" on some articles does not mean that I
agree with their content or support it. "Selected by RAEL" means that I believe
it is important for the people of this planet to know about what people think or
do, even when what they think or do is completely stupid and against our
philosophy. When I selected articles in the past about stupid Christian
fundamentalists in America praying for rain, I am sure no Rael-Science reader
was stupid enough to believe that I was supporting praying to change the
weather. So, when I select articles which are in favor of drugs, anti-semitic,
anti-Jewish, racist, revisionist, or inciting hatred against any group or
religion, or any other stupid article, it does not mean that I support them. It
just means that it is important for all human beings to know about them. Common
sense, which is usually very good among our readers, is good enough to
understand that. When, like in the recent articles on drug decriminalization, it
is necessary to make it clearer, I add a comment, which in this case was very
clear: I support decriminalizing all drugs, as it is stupid to throw depressed
and sad people (as only depressed and sad people use drugs) in prison and ruin
their life with a criminal record. That does not mean that there is any change
to the Message which says clearly that we must not use any drug except for
medical purposes. The same applies to the freedom of expression which must be
absolute. That does not mean again of course that I agree with anti-Jews,
antisemites, racists of any kind or anti-Raelians. But by knowing your enemies
or the enemies of your values, you are better equipped to fight them. With love
and respect of course, and with the wonderful sentence of the French philosopher
Voltaire in mind: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death
your right to say it".
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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