Human Rights, Crimes Against Humanity, Torture

**Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2023**

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Is there enough money in the world to solve and repair all the sins of the fathers of the past?

All the earthly extraction of finite resources, plants, and animals.; the genocide and brutality and neglect of human rights?

There probably isn’t.

So how do we pool our funds and develop and prioritize a global plan when so many financial demands loom on the horizon:
– War
– Critical Infrastructure
– Reparations
– Climate change preparedness
– Other existential risks

All of the gray hairs who know that these problems were caused by their generation and generations before them know that they can run out the clock on this problem, and it will not be solved in their lifetime.

So we can choose to either stick our heads in the sand and leave it up to our kids, grandkids, great grandkids and all future generations; or, we can try to do something about it.

Where do we (you) stand?
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Big Questions

What is a war crime, and who gets held accountable?

The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World by Oona A. Hathaway

Should the world’s moral responsibility to stop human atrocities rise above national sovereignty?

Argentina, 1985
The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang by Perhat Tursun
Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations

Did America commit genocide by the forced separation of Native American children from their families?

Is the collateral damage to innocent civilians from autonomous drone attacks a Crime Against Humanity waiting to happen?

Alpha: Eddie Gallagher and the War for the Soul of the Navy SEALs by David Philipps

Is “enhanced interrogation” a bunch of military-industrial-political bullshit that no moral American should support?

The Costs of Unlawful U.S. Detentions and Interrogations Post-9/11 by Human Rights Watch, 2022
Do you believe in (Former) President Trump’s position that “torture works” such that it justifies its use by the United States during war?
If evidence extracted by torture is inadmissible in court, why the heck are we spending billions of dollars at the Guantánamo black-site prison?

Was America abusing children at the southern border?

Were we in violation of International Human Rights Law?

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Break the Chain of Torture & Execution

What everyday horrors of our world will our descendants look back on with disgust, and wonder how we could have been so blind as to condone such transgressions against humanness and humanity?
Dorfman

Is the United States (CIA) guilty of a massive violation of human rights by exploiting torture interrogation techniques (in the name of national security) at its black site prisons? Are death-penalty states’ botched executions in-effect torturing death-row prisoners in slow motion?

The Black Banners by Ali Soufan

If we rationalize torture in the name of war and capital punishment, then WE become the barbarians and in so doing, we write a blank check to our enemies and violent criminals to retaliate with the same barbaric behavior.

Much like child abuse which propagates from generation to generation, this vicious cycle of abuse and violence will only stop when someone has the courage and leadership to break the chain of torture, and that should be us.

Americanism

CIA black sites, “enhanced interrogation,” **torture**, coverup, no accountability. Not the America I thought we were. What are we today?

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Big Picture

Big Picture / Human Society / Politics & Government / Human Rights

The White Man

There never was and there never will be anything noble to celebrate or memorialize about (Civil War) slavery.

The White Man can celebrate his past exceptionalism and dominance all he wants, as long as he is honest with himself and accountable to those Native Americans, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans he has abused by,

his destructive racial supremacy targeting color, race, religion and sexual identity which has humiliated and psychologically damaged generations of peoples,

his enslaving millions of people,

his raping and torturing and genocide of millions of peoples,

his lying and deceiving and manipulating and outright stealing from millions of people, and

the centuries of physical and legal (and illegal) oppression to maintain and prolong the white man’s dominance and wealth.

BEWARE and be VIGILANT of the rumblings of the white evangelical christian nationalist, because

he can never again be who America is.
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Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America by Heather Cox Richardson
The Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones et al