Anti-Job Pro-Freedom Quotes Of The Week 130, 131, 132

…it helps to keep in mind the following about the daily horror that is life in Iraq: It did not exist before the US occupation.
The insurgency violence began as, and remains, a reaction to the occupation; like almost all insurgencies in occupied countries -- from the American Revolution to the Vietcong -- it's a fight directed toward getting foreign forces to leave.

The next phase was the violence of Iraqis against other Iraqis who worked for or sought employment with anything associated with the occupation regime.

Then came retaliatory attacks for these attacks.

Followed by retaliatory attacks for the retaliatory attacks.

Jihadists from many countries have flocked to Iraq because they see the war against the American Satan occupiers as a holy war.

Before the occupation, many Sunnis and Shiites married each other; since the occupation they have been caught up in a spiral of hating and killing each other.

And for these acts there of course has to be retaliation. The occupation's abolishment of most jobs in the military and in Saddam Hussein's government, and the chaos that is Iraqi society under the occupation, have left many destitute; kidnapings for ransom and other acts of criminal violence have become popular ways to make a living, or at least survive.
William Blum
Anti-empire Report, May 3, 2007






Zimbardo's message to the tribunal and to his readers is clear: Even you might behave tyrannically and violently if you were in a situation that encouraged such behavior. The experiment "has emerged as a powerful illustration of the potentially toxic impact of bad systems and bad situations in making good people behave in pathological ways that are alien to their nature."
Zimbardo does not believe that those bad situations reveal that we aren't such good people after all. For all his knowledge of the power of social context to determine who we are and what we do, he retains an even deeper faith that most people really are good and could prevent the distortion of personality by avoiding poisonous roles and institutions. He does not think he discovered that our innate sadism and love of tyranny are uncovered by situations that allow us to behave violently. His is the more comforting view that we can maintain our moral standards as true expressions of who we really are by creating more consistently moral or just institutions.
Zimbardo's video testimony (he did not want to go to the very bad situation of Iraq) did not have much effect on the Military court.
Michael Roth

Friends, I do not need to remind you of the importance and benefit of campaigns such as the Basic Income Movement that are designed to enhance the dignity, well-being, and inclusion of all people, and to move us closer to our vision of social equity.
Bishop Desmond Tutu