COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS
JULY 21, 2008
BY ROBERTO DR. CINTLI RODRIGUEZ
THE CHUPACABRA PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR AGAINST MIGRANTS

Scapegoating appears to have become the U.S. national pastime. Despite the deaths of thousands of brown peoples on the border and despite the rise of draconian laws massive nationwide immigration sweeps that rip families apart, scoundrel politicians have been waging an intense psychological war that has managed to convince much of the nation that these invading "brown hordes" are the source of all of their problems.

Scapegoating against the most exploited sectors of society shouldn't work, save for this sophisticated war. They – whom have come here primarily to work – have been demonized and dehumanized and nowadays treated as a threat, both to national security and the American Way of Life.

The sophistication lies in the ability to create loopholes to the precept that all people are created equal. In the United States, this equality is nowadays reserved for citizens. While exceptions generally offend our moral compass, they are not new to this country. This helps to explain land theft, genocide and slavery, along with the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. It is thus not a difficult leap to condone periodic massive repatriation campaigns against millions of brown peoples.

In this psychological war, we are told that it is not brown people who are being targeted: Only the illegal ones (the ones not truly human).

What is it that permits people to spew out venomous hate and to orchestrate campaigns that call for the incarceration and repatriation of brown peoples and confuse it for law and order? For example, CNN's Lou Dobbs, commentator Pat Buchanan, Rep. Tom Tancredo and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio all share something in common; they are obsessed and have made a career of haranguing so-called "illegal aliens." If their focus were Whites, African Americans, American Indians or Jews, their careers would have rightly been over long ago. Yet, because their hate campaigns target "illegal" and "faceless" brown people, these hate-mongers convince themselves that they are not racists.

However, in this same psychological war, the words "racist" and "sexist" have also now been rendered meaningless. Some even take pride in being labeled as such. In part, this is because psychological warfare is aimed at destabilizing and subverting the meaning of the words and languages we speak. This is what permits right-wing talk-show hosts and politicians to call for what amounts to ethnic cleansing, while avoiding a negative stigma. They can do this because in their own minds, they are simply calling for the protection of the nation's borders, not advocating campaigns against legitimate human beings.

In part, they are able to get away with this precisely because they have carved out a moral exception for human decency. This is the same psychological device that continues to permit segregation and discrimination – this while continuing to proclaim that we're all the children of the same God (It is not an irony that their anti-immigrant messages are not preached anywhere in any mainstream house of worship. Quite the reverse. Neither is it an irony that their hate is closely monitored by the highly respected Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project: http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intpro.jsp).

The primary practitioners of psychological warfare that utilize the mis-use of language as a primary weapon are government, the military, global media giants and multi-billion dollar corporations (The president's butchering of the language does not count). Such warfare can result in the public coming to believe that wars are waged to bring about peace, that greedy and polluting corporations need to be given massive tax-breaks, that the Constitution is obsolete, that our privacy, rights and our freedoms are quaint and that the exploitation of human beings is part of a natural order.

It is what George Orwell warned about in his classic novel, 1984. Through psychological warfare, the world gets turned upside down. This is how bigots become patriots and how human rights champions become traitors. This is in full evidence everywhere, including Tucson, where Pima County Legal Defender, Isabel Garcia, is in danger of losing her job – over a piñata incident – in which she and many protestors urged Sheriff Arpaio to "get out of town." Rather than the nation's #1 racial profiler having to explain his policies, it is Garcia who is on the defensive. Phoenix Mayor, Phil Gordon, who also opposes Arpaio's racial profiling, has also been put on the defensive.

Ironically, there does not appear to be an adequate appellation for someone who does not recognize the humanity of millions. In English, there are no such words. The closest I can find is "a human Chupacabras" – a devourer of flesh, spirits and souls.

© Column of the Americas 2008
* Those wishing to express support for civil rights attorney, Isabel Garcia, contact Derechos Humanos at: P.O. Box 1286, Tucson, AZ 85702. Office: 520.770.1373 or 1.800.682.42802 www.derechoshumanosaz.net or write to kat@derechoshumanosaz.net

* Rodriguez can be reached at XColumn@gmail.com. Column of the Americas - PO BOX 85476 - Tucson, AZ 85754. Columns are archived at: http://web.mac.com/columnoftheamericas/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html

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WILPF Statement on the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki

6 and 9 August mark the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki by the United States. Two nuclear weapons, dropped
deliberately by the world's military superpower on these cities in Japan,
killed 200,000 civilians by the end of 1945 and many more through cancer,
mutations, and birth defects in the years that followed; sparked an arms
race of insane proportions; and helped shape the hyper-militaristic world
order with which we are now collectively plagued.

On 6 and 9 August, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
(WILPF) remembers with horror the destruction and devastation wrought upon
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And every day of the year, WILPF works to prevent
nuclear weapons from ever being used again through our project Reaching
Critical Will, which helps increase the preparation and participation of
non-governmental organizations in disarmament diplomacy by providing
information, analysis, and primary documents. Every day, WILPF works at
international, national, and local levels to foster the conditions, values,
and momentum necessary to eliminate nuclear weapons from our planet.

The development and maintenance of nuclear weapons have an ongoing legacy
of destruction, the burden of which has primarily been borne by
marginalized people around the world, especially indigenous peoples. For
example, from 1966-1996, the French carried out 41 atmospheric and 142
underground nuclear tests on Mururoa. US nuclear weapon tests conducted in
the Pacific between 1946-1958 unleashed the destructive power equivalent to
1.5 Hiroshima sized bombs per day during that 12 year period, leaving
behind radioactive contamination and the infrastructure for military
colonization. In 2008, US military realignment in the Asia-Pacific region
seeks to base 60 percent of its Pacific Fleet in and around Guam, in what
activists from that "unincorporated US territory" describe as a "storm of
US militarization so enormous in scope, so volatile in nature, so
irreversible in consequence," that it endangers the fundamental and
inalienable human right to self-determination of the indigenous Chamoru people.

Along with military bases around the globe, the expansion of the
military-industrial complex inhibits long-term, sustainable success in
nuclear disarmament. Trillions of dollars are invested every year on
militaries, equipment, advanced technologies, wars; much of this money is
embedded into the military and corporate structures that support the
maintenance and renewal of nuclear weapons. War profiteers-particularly
Bechtel, British Nuclear Fuels Limited, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi,
Raytheon, and the University of California-benefit from the ongoing
development and maintenance of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.

Today, approximately 27,000 nuclear warheads exist, most of them in the
arsenals of the permanent five members of the Security Council-China,
France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States-the countries
supposedly in charge of maintaining international peace and security. The
governments of most of these states have plans to modernize their nuclear
weapons or delivery systems, in continuing violation of Article VI of the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which says, "Each of the Parties to
the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective
measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date
and to nuclear disarmament." Three states outside of the NPT-India, Israel,
and Pakistan-also possess nuclear weapons, and five non-nuclear weapon
states-Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey-host
approximately 240 US nuclear weapons on their soil under the North American
Treaty Organization Strategic Concept, also in violation of the NPT.

WILPF works to expose the threat that the hypocritical policies of these
states pose to the world and to generate commitment to an alternative
future, a world without nuclear weapons. The only means to this end is the
full implementation of the first UN General Assembly resolution, adopted in
1946-the total and universal disarmament of all nuclear weapons. The world
needs verifiable, irreversible reductions of nuclear arsenals and the
negotiation of a nuclear weapons convention. WILPF urges all governments
and citizens to unconditionally reject all arguments put forward for the
continued existence of nuclear weapons and encourages everyone to work for
the elimination of all nuclear arsenals and for the redirection of nuclear
weapon expenditures to meet environmental, social, cultural, health, and
educational needs.

WILPF calls on all NPT nuclear weapon states to fully implement their
Treaty obligations and to cease modernizing their arsenals as a step toward
the good faith pursuit of nuclear disarmament and the ultimate goal of a
nuclear weapon free world. We also call on nuclear weapon states that are
not party to the NPT-India, Israel, and Pakistan-to verifiably disarm their
nuclear weapons and join the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states. We call on
these states to support in word and action the ratification and negotiation
of relevant treaties, including the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a
fissile materials treaty, and a nuclear weapons convention.

WILPF welcomes the recent withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from the United
Kingdom, which had been stationed there since 1954. We call on all
non-nuclear weapon states who currently host nuclear weapons on their
territories to demand their immediate removal and to prevent the stationing
of these weapons on any foreign soil. WILPF also calls on all states under
the US "nuclear umbrella" to reject the "security" offered to them under
such bilateral agreements with the United States in favor of fully
supporting the movement for nuclear abolition. WILPF calls on the Japanese
government in particular to renounce the US nuclear umbrella and to respect
Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which renounces war and the use or
threat of force as a means of settling international disputes. At the same
time, WILPF welcomes the announcement that former Environment Minister and
Foreign Minister Ms. Yoriko Kawaguchi of Japan will co-chair of the
International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.
WILPF also welcomes the establishment of this Commission by Australian
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who announced its formation after he visited
Hiroshima-the first Western leader to do so.

In her philosophical text On Violence, Hannah Arendt says, "The means used
to achieve political goals are more often than not of greater relevance to
the future world than the intended goals." No number of nuclear weapons in
the hands of any number or type of government or people can protect against
their use; the use of nuclear weapons cannot occur again without
catastrophic consequences for the entire human race. The promise offered by
nuclear weapons is not one of security but destruction, militarism, fear,
insecurity, and extinction. The only acceptable number is zero.

For more information about WILPF's work on nuclear disarmament, please go to
www.reachingcriticalwill.org.

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) is the
oldest women's peace organization in the world, established in 1915 to
oppose the war raging in Europe. It has been working ever since to study,
make known, and abolish the causes of war, and to support human rights and
general and complete disarmament.

Susi Snyder
Secretary General

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
1, rue de Varembe
Case Postale 28
1211 Geneva 20
Switzerland
Telephone: +41 22 919 7080
Fax: +41 22 919 7081
skype: susi_snyder

www.wilpf.ch
www.PeaceWomen.org

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