The U.S. Empire: Mass Murder and Cultural Coercion

What follows is created with the assistance of AI and to get to this point of clarity took more than 20 iterations with a system that understands my political knowledge. I have edited heavily as I post it here. The outcome is one that reveals what I want to say not what a machine has dictated to me.  I’d like to verify every fact, but the overall picture would remain despite of possible errors.

Summary

Since 1947, the United States has organised a global system of power routinely described as aid. (It is not called that under the current fascist turn.)

That word “aid” used for decades conceals the formation of empire.

The empire operates through three interlocking mechanisms

The result is mass death, shattered societies ruled by gangsters, and long-term political dependency, all while the violence is narrated as benevolence.

The three pillars of the system

1. Military

  • Arms, intelligence, training, logistics.
  • Used overwhelmingly against domestic populations.
  • Outcome: killing, torture, mass imprisonment.

2. Direct killing

  • Bombing campaigns.
  • Invasions and occupations.
  • Napalm, chemical agents, siege, starvation.

3. Financial corruption (purchase of people i.e. slavery)

  • Bribes, military budgets, development funds.
  • A cultivated slave mentality: compliance in exchange for protection.
  • Fund the local capitalists and their parties
  • Supply CIA intelligence

Selected cases: deaths enabled by U.S. power

Country / Conflict Dates Estimated deaths U.S. role (plain language)
Greece – Civil War 1946–1949 ~100,000–150,000 Money, arms, advisers; napalm via client state
Turkey 1947–present ~0 (direct) Militarisation, coups, repression without civil war
Guatemala 1954–1996 ~200,000 Coup, death squads, counter-insurgency training
Chile 1973–1990 ~3,000 killed; ~30,000 tortured Coup backing, economic warfare, regime support
Vietnam / Laos / Cambodia 1955–1975 ~2–4 million Direct war, saturation bombing, napalm, chemicals
Indonesia 1965–1966 ~500,000–1,000,000 Green light, kill lists, logistics, diplomatic cover
Palestine / Israel 1948–present ~30,000–40,000 killed (pre-2023); far higher incl. Gaza 2023–25 Arms, funding, vetoes, impunity
Korea 1950–1953 ~2–3 million Direct war; systematic bombing of civilian cities
El Salvador 1980–1992 ~75,000 Death squads, military funding
Nicaragua 1981–1990 ~30,000 Proxy war, terror, economic strangulation
Congo (post-Lumumba) 1960–1965 tens–hundreds of thousands Assassination, managed chaos
Iran (post-1953 coup) 1953–1979 thousands imprisoned/killed Coup, secret police, dictatorship
Iraq 2003–2011 ~150,000–600,000+ Direct invasion and occupation
Afghanistan 2001–2021 ~170,000–240,000 Direct war, drone warfare
Panama 1989 ~500–3,000 Direct invasion

Figures are conservative historical ranges. They exclude wider demographic loss from displacement, famine, and long-term infrastructural collapse. I checked one figure and found this: The Costs of War Project at Brown University

An estimated over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Of these, more than 432,000 were civilians. The number of people wounded or ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who died “indirectly,” as a result of wars’ destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure and the environment. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.

The Indonesian example.

See the 2012 documentary The Act of Killing and the book by Vincent Bevins  The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World 

Half a million to one million people were murdered.

Extermination by United States owned elites

The term Jakarta Method later circulated in:
• Latin America
• Central America
• The Philippines

It meant:
Mass killing of the left enabled by the US.

The Indonesian massacre was described at the time (if at all) as a success.

You do not need to invade a country to destroy a million people. You coerce and own people to do it for you.

The whole thing is covered up. See  red with blood.

The American capitalist system and its empire is a killing machine

The US Empire is a  coherent post-1945 system.

It kills directly.

It buys people to kill others.

 

 

 

 

Marx in Moreno’s Writing

Karl Marx: A Singer to the Hammer and Sad Eyes

I’ve been writing here about my close reading of Moreno’s writing on Marx and revolution.  I’ve been reading Who Shall Survive and other sources.

I’ve stopped posting chapters here as I’m editing in Google Drive

See my whole effort here. 

That link is auto updated with every edit!!

 

 

 

Journal Writing

I’m active in Obsidian. My journal is in Obsidian. everything goes there – it is one glorious mess of tags and wikilinks. I love it. Most of what I write is related to getting stuff done. But occasionally write posts that might well go public, on art, philosophy, psychodrama, and glimpses of my life.

Anyway, there is a plugin to WordPress – that might help me write here a lot more “here” is WordPress, with Obsidian as an editor and PKM.

OK, testing!

Five minutes later

I have a draft in WordPress

I feel like celebrating as I pus the Publish button!

Playing with AI & Poetry

This poem by Joyce Kilmer came to mind.  It led to the prompt to the AI and the result…  I then edited the hell out of it. Leading to a little poem ‘I see a rose’

Trees

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
___________________________________________________________
Write a simple poem about poetry using nature as a metaphor.

A rose by the side of the road
Is all it takes to make me feel whole
All the colors and scents
Nature has to offer
Take me away to a place where I can be free
And the world is my oyster

This is what poetry does for me
It takes me away to a better place
And fills me with hope and beauty
When I am surrounded by nature
I feel at peace, and everything makes perfect sense

Thank you, dear poet, for giving me this gift
For opening my eyes and my heart
And transport me to a world of your own

Where the only thing that matters
Are the words that we write
And the feelings they inspire

 

I see a rose

I see a rose
& I feel whole.

Your words invite
my heart to open,
thank you.

GPT-3

I logged into Open AI and asked the the machine to improve the quality of our blurb for the workshops Kate and I run.  Here is the question and the result.

My prompt

Can you improve the following description of a workshop:

Love. Living life to the full. Finding meaning. Global and spiritual matters. Conflict, grief and illness. Examine and be challenged by matters of importance to you in these evening workshops. You can expect to gain a deeper awareness of yourself and others. Learn to be spontaneous, courageous and effective in relationships. We will use psychodrama to explore themes relevant to you and the group. If you are in a couple relationship you are both invited to attend. No previous group experience is necessary.

AI response

If you‘re looking for a workshop series that will help you explore deep, personal themes and improve your relationships, this is the one for you. Using psychodrama, participants will be challenged to examine their own lives and beliefs, and to learn to be more spontaneous, courageous, and effective in their interactions with others. Whether you‘re single or in a relationship, this series is open to anyone and no previous group experience is necessary.

What do you think?

 

Instant Outlining, Instant Gratification

O’Reilly Network: Jon Udell: Instant Outlining, Instant Gratification [Apr. 01, 2002]

“When I turned in the first draft of my book, my editor, Tim O’Reilly, said: “This is great, but you ask too much from people.” And he was right. I was advocating not just a communication tool, but a way of using it to optimize collaboration. That meant asking people to narrate their work, but also to think carefully about the attention demands they placed on their coworkers, and to label, structure, and layer their communications accordingly. Most people didn’t want to do these things, and most people still don’t.

“What does all this portend for instant outlining? There’s reason to hope. It’s been clear to me for a long while that the only thing that might displace email would be some kind of persistent IM. That’s exactly what instant outlining is. If it catches on, and it’s buzz-worthy enough to do that, we’ll have a framework within which to innovate in ways that email never allowed.”

Interesting article – but I think that it still won’t catch on… persistent internet messageing, nice idea but email remains king IMO. ANY method of collab requires either dumbing the tools right down and working ad hoc OR education in a series of rules and protocols OR human facilitation and email groups + the GroupSense approach to their design and facilitation is a real world solution combining what people know already and do now with gentle nudges to a saner world. Well managed email groups have benefits over the Outlined approach in Radio. Threaded email IS outlined. It is persistent (locally and/or on the web). It is instant when needed, asynch when needed, groups can be defined and structured as needed and you can filter out certain users if you need to!

Why can’t these guys use email + mailinglists?

I am cross posting here – originally sent to Dan’s Online Group Weblog.