Surviving Capitalism (Not) : WH forces P.J. Crowley to resign for condemning abuse of Manning

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, March 14, 2011

WH forces P.J. Crowley to resign for condemning abuse of Manning

by Glenn Greenwald from Salon.

Believe it or not, there are some decent people in government. Here I am referring to US State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley, who resigned in protest over the abusive treatment of Bradley Manning. Unlike our beloved President Obama who was satisfied with the assurance given him by the Pentagon that Manning was being treated appropriately, Crowley could no longer stomach it.

So, in Barack Obama's administration, it's perfectly acceptable to abuse an American citizen in detention who has been convicted of nothing by consigning him to 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement, barring him from exercising in his cell, punitively imposing "suicide watch" restrictions on him against the recommendations of brig psychiatrists, and subjecting him to prolonged, forced nudity designed to humiliate and degrade.

As I have argued many times before, Obama is merely a figurehead like all recent Presidents. He was carefully selected and groomed because ruling class operatives saw in him a person with weak moral principles and someone who would be perfectly willing to make a Faustian bargain in order to gain a little fame and likely fortune. He was the perfect candidate: having been raised by a white banker grandmother who probably worked for the CIA in Indonesia and who instilled in him the corresponding values of serving power. See this for the details of Obama's family connections with the CIA.