Protecting Our National Parks for Another 100 Years

By Jillian Mackenzie, Natural Resources Defense Council

27 August 16

urope has cathedrals. We have national parks," said Stephen Saunders, president of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, neatly capturing the significance of these 59 national treasures, which include important monuments as well as parklands. But as we honor their majesty on this 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, we must also recognize and address the biggest threats to our natural versions of Notre Dame.

"We have never before lost a national park," Saunders said. "But we are on track now to lose some to higher seas."

New York's Ellis Island, part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Dry Tortugas, the 100-square-mile national park off Key West, are just above sea level. Thanks to heat-trapping pollution, which warms and expands ocean waters, "these parks are at risk of being submerged and disappearing—not just in storm surges, but entirely," Saunders said.

That pollution also puts our parks at risk for uncharacteristically fierce wildfires.

"Hotter, drier conditions mean more intense fires that can permanently change forest to scrubland in beloved landscapes like Yosemite," noted Niel Lawrence, the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) senior expert on federal forestlands.

Funding Struggles

The enjoyment of national parks is at a record-breaking level, with a predicted 315 million visitors this year (up from 307 million in 2015). While that seems like happy news, the parks are straining under the pressure.

"There is a $12 billion backlog of unfunded projects," said Ani Kame'enui, director of legislation and policy at the National Parks Conservation Association. "There are cracks in the Washington Monument, potholes at Glacier National Park, nonworking faucets at the Grand Canyon—the list goes on."

On the surface, the most recent government spending bill, passed by the House this summer, seems like an environmental win. It proposes a $2.9 billion budget for the National Parks Service for 2017, which is $79 million more than the previous year's allocation. But look closer, Kame'enui said and you'll see not only that the money is shy of the funds needed to address the backlog, but that tacked on to the bill are a pile of policy riders that undermine the natural resources national parks aim to protect. "For instance, the bill includes provisions to prevent implementation of the Stream Protection Rule, a measure to improve the health of communities near streams from the mountains of West Virginia to the valleys of Tennessee," she said.

Fossil Fuel Extraction

Areas near national parks are continually subject to the pollution and environmental damage that comes with dirty energy projects, such as oil drilling in the Bakken formation near North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt National Park; a large coal mine outside Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park; and oil and gas drilling around the boundaries of Canyonlands, also in Utah. Big Cypress National Preserve, which recharges aquifers that supply drinking water to much of southern Florida and serves as a watershed for Everglades National Park, is facing threats from extensive oil and gas exploration in pristine wetland areas in the preserve.

"Oil exploration has historically happened in Big Cypress preserve," said Alison Kelly, a staff attorney with NRDC. "But now an oil company is starting one of the largest explorations ever proposed in a national park unit." The first phase of the four-phase project was just approved, though it is being contested by a lawsuit filed by NRDC and other environmental groups.

Antigovernment Extremists

Long-standing disputes over whether the federal government has the right to own and manage land in the West have boiled over in recent years. In 2014, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy led an armed standoff against Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officers; they were trying to confiscate his cattle because he'd refused to pay BLM fees dating back to 1993 for illegally grazing the animals on protected land.

In 2015 his son, Ammon Bundy, led a 40-day occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, in support of ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, a father and son who were convicted of arson for lighting fires on BLM-managed land where they had leased grazing privileges for their cattle. The Hammonds' attorney said the Bundys did not speak for them, but regardless, the standoff seemed aimed to galvanize opposition to federal control of land. As the local sheriff said in a statement at the time, "These men had alternative motives, to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States."

Sharon Buccino, director of NRDC's Land and Wildlife program, fears that national parks could be the next targets. "Our public lands are a place for us to unite and connect," she said. "Extremists like the Bundys seek to monopolize what belongs to us all for their own individual profit and glorify their own freedom at the expense of the freedom of others."

The Bloody Legacy of American Exceptionalism

By Vanessa Beeley, American Herald Tribune

27 August 16

Exceptionalism: the condition of being different from the norm; also: a theory expounding the exceptionalism especially of a nation or region.

here are many theories surrounding the origin of American exceptionalism. The most popular in US folklore, being that it describes America’s unique character as a “free” nation founded on democratic ideals and civil liberties. The Declaration of Independence from British colonial rule is the foundation of this theory and has persevered throughout the often violent history of the US since its birth as a free nation.

Over time, exceptionalism has come to represent superiority in the minds and hearts of Americans. Belief in their economic, military and ideological supremacy is what has motivated successive US governments to invest in shaping the world in their superior image with little or no regard for the destruction left in the wake of their exceptional hegemony.

In considering itself, exceptional, the US has extricated itself from any legal obligation to adhere to either International law or even the common moral laws that should govern Humanity. The US has become exceptionally lawless and authoritarian particularly in its intolerant neo-colonialist foreign policy. The colonized have become the colonialists, concealing their brutal savagery behind a veneer of missionary zeal that they are converting the world to their form of exceptionalist Utopia.

Such is the media & marketing apparatus that supports this superiority complex, the majority of US congress exist within its echo chamber and are willing victims of its indoctrination. The power of the propaganda vortex pulls them in and then radiates outwards, infecting all in its path. Self-extraction from this oligarchical perspective is perceived as a revolutionary act that challenges the core of US security so exceptionalism becomes the modus vivendi.

Just as Israel considers itself the chosen people from a religious perspective, the US considers itself the chosen nation to impose its version of Democratic reform and capitalist hegemony the world over. One can see why Israel and the US make such symbiotic bedfellows.

“The fatal war for humanity is the war with Russia and China toward which Washington is driving the US and Washington’s NATO and Asian puppet states. The bigotry of the US power elite is rooted in its self-righteous doctrine that stipulates America as the “indispensable country” ~ Paul Craig Roberts: Washington Drives the World Towards War.

So why do the American people accept US criminal hegemony, domestic and foreign brutal tyranny & neo-colonialist blood-letting with scant protest? Why do the European vassal states not rise up against this authoritarian regime that flaunts international law and drags its NATO allies down the path to complete lawlessness and diplomatic ignominy?

The psychological term “Gaslighting” comes from a 1944 Hollywood classic movie called Gaslight. Gaslighting describes the abuse employed by a narcissist to instil in their victim’s mind, an extreme anxiety and confusion to the extent where they no longer have faith in their own powers of logic, reason and judgement. These gaslighting techniques were adopted by central intelligence agencies in the US and Europe as part of their psychological warfare methods, used primarily during torture or interrogation.

Gaslighting as an abuser’s modus operandi, involves, specifically, the withholding of factual information and its replacement with false or fictional information designed to confuse and disorientate. This subtle and Machiavellian process eventually undermines the mental stability of its victims reducing them to such a depth of insecurity and identity crisis that they become entirely dependent upon their abuser for their sense of reality and even identity.

Gaslighting involves a step by step psychological process to manipulate and destabilize its victim. It is built up over time and consists of repetitive information feeds that enter the victim’s subconscious over a period of time, until it is fully registered on the subconscious “hard disk” and cannot be overridden by the conscious floppy disk. Put more simply, it is brainwashing.

“Overall, the main reason for gaslighting is to create a dynamic where the abuser has complete control over their victim so that they are so weak that they are very easy to manipulate.” ~ Alex Myles

Victims of Gaslighting go through 3 stages, disbelief, defence and depression.

The first stage depends upon trust in the integrity and unimpeachable intentions of the abuser, a state of reliance that has been engendered by the abuser’s artful self-promotion and ingratiating propaganda.  Once this trust is gained, the abuser will begin to subtly undermine it, creating situations and environments where the victim will begin to doubt their own judgement.  Eventually the victim will rely entirely upon the abuser to alleviate their uncertainty and to restore their sense of reality which is in fact that of the abuser.

The second stage, defence, is a process by which the abuser isolates the victim, not only from their own sense of identity but from the validation of their peers.  They are made to feel that their opinion is worthless, discredited, down-right weird.  In political circles they would be labelled a conspiracy theorist, a dissident, a terror apologist.  As a consequence, the victim will withdraw from society and cease to express themselves for fear of ridicule, judgement or punishment.

This stage can also be compared to Stockholm Syndrome where a hostage or captive is reduced,by psychological mind games, back to infantile dependency upon their captor.  Narcissistic abuse bonds the victim to the aggressor via trauma.  Stockholm Syndrome bonds the victim to the aggressor via regression to an infantile state where the abuser/aggressor becomes the “parent” who will rescue the victim from imminent annihilation.  Both methods tap into the victim’s survival mechanisms to gain and maintain control.

The final stage is depression.  A life under the tyrannical rule of a narcissist drives the victim into a state of extreme confusion.  They are stripped of dignity & self-reliance.  They, ultimately exist in an information vacuum which is only filled by that which the abuser deems suitable or relevant.  This can eventually invoke symptoms of PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder]. Flashbacks, constant apprehension, hyper vigilance, mind paralysis, rage and even violence.  The process is complete and the victim has been reduced to a willing accomplice in the abusers creation of a very distorted reality.

We are currently seeing the transformation of US exceptionalism into an abusive Narcissism.  The gargantuan apparatus of mind bending and controlling is being put into hyper drive by the ruling elite.  We are inundated with propaganda that challenges our sense of reality but only after being “tenderized” by the fear factor.  Fear of “terror”, fear of war, fear of financial insecurity, fear of gun violence, fear of our own shadow.  Once we are suitably quaking in our boots, in comes the rendition of reality that relieves our anxiety.  If we challenge this version of events we are labelled a conspiracy theorist, a threat to security. We are hounded, discredited, slandered and ridiculed.  We are isolated and threatened.

Wars are started in the same way.  Despite the hindsight that should enable us to see it coming, the process swings into motion with resounding success. The ubiquitous dictator, the oligarch who threatens to destroy all that the US and her allies represent which of course is, freedom, equality & civil liberty all wrapped up in the Democracy shiny paper and tied with the exceptionalist ribbon.

Next the false flag to engender fear, terror and to foment sectarian strife. The support of a “legitimate” organic, indigenous “revolution” conveniently emerging in tandem with US ambitions for imposing their model of governance upon a target nation. The arming of “freedom fighters”, the securing of mercenary additions to these manufactured proxy forces.  All this is sold in the name of freedom and democracy to a public that is already in a state of anxiety and insecurity, lacking in judgement or insight into any other reality but that of their “abuser”.

Then in addition, the Humanitarians are deployed.  The forces for “good”, the vanguard of integrity and ethical intervention.  The power that offers all lost souls a stake-holding in the salvation of sovereign nations that have lost their way and need rescuing.  A balm for a damaged soul, to know they can leave their doubts and fears in such trustworthy hands as HRW, Amnesty International, they can assuage their deep sense of guilt at the suffering being endured by the people of far flung nations because they can depend upon the NGOs to provide absolution with minimal effort on their part.  They don’t realise that NGOs are an integral part of their abuser’s apparatus, operating on the leash of neo-colonialist financing and influence.  NGOs provide the optic through which the abuser will allow the victim to perceive their world and once absorbed into this flawed prism the victim’s own cognitive dissonance will ensure they do not attempt a jail break.

In this state of oppressed consciousness the victim accepts what they are told.  They accept that the US can sell cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia that obliterate human beings and lay waste to essential civilian infrastructure in Yemen.  They accept that the US financially, ideologically & militarily supports the illegal state of Israel and provides the arsenal of experimental weapons that maim and mutilate children and civilians on a scale that is unimaginable.  They accept that a crippling blockade of the already impoverished and starving nation of Yemen is “necessary” to resolve the issues of sectarian divisions that only exist in the minds of their Congressional abusers.

The majority of Americans accept mass murder under the pretext of the right to protect, because their ability to form rational and reasoned opinions has been engineered out of them.  This is now the definition of US exceptionalism.  It is their ability to manipulate the world into accepting their lawlessness and global hegemony agenda.  In seeking to impose its own image upon our world the US has drifted so far from its founding principles, one wonders how they will ever return to them.  They have employed a recognised form of torture to ensure capitulation to their mission of world domination which entails the mental, physical and spiritual torture of target civilian populations. 

In conclusion, the US has indeed achieved exceptionalism.  The US has become an exceptional global executioner and persecutor of Humanity.  Imperialism is a euphemism for the depths of abuse the US is inflicting upon the people of this world.

Our only hope is to break the cycle of abuse with empathy for the victim and with appreciation for the years of brainwashing that precedes their agonizing passive-aggressive apathy towards crimes being committed in “their name”. 

This was an email I received recently from one courageous young American girl whose epiphany is testament to the resilience and survival instinct of the human spirit. 

“My name is Caroline and I am a 22 year old US citizen. I only fairly recently discovered the truth about Empire/NATO's activities in Syria and Libya and so many other countries (thanks to writers like Andre Vltchek, Cory Morningstar, Forrest Palmer). I am sickened when I remember that I signed some of those Avaaz petitions and I feel horrified at knowing that I have Syrian and Libyan blood on my hands. I want to believe that I'm not "really" guilty because I really thought (as I had been told) that I was not doing something bad at the time, but still, what I did contributed to the suffering of those people and I want to do something to atone in at least some small way, even though I probably can't "make up" for what I did or erase my crime.

If it's not too much trouble, could you please tell me what you think I should do, if there is anything?”

She deserves an answer…