Valentinos Ghost, Why We (USA) Hate Arabs

Valentino's Ghost: Powerful Documentary Explores How US Foreign Policy in the Middle East Drives Islamophobia at Home.
Experts ranging from Robert Fisk to John Mearsheimer and Melani McAlister explain how the U.S. media and government are the source of fear and loathing of Arabs, Muslims and Islam. 

This updated version of Valentino’s Ghost addresses four current topics that weren’t in existence at the film’s premiere in 2012, offering radically different views from those of our national narrative, addressing such questions as: were the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists engaging in cultural bullying of the weakest ethnic minority in France? Did the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza seriously damage Israeli’s image abroad when Palestinians were able to upload phone videos of the bombings to the Internet? Are American Armed Forces’ killings and torture more barbaric that that of groups like ISIS? Is the movie American Sniper’s inherent racist viewpoint one reason for its phenomenal popularity?

Symbols of an alien skies, 3 parts [electric Universe]

EPISODE 1. Symbols of an alien skies.

Based on more than two decades of systematic research and cross-cultural comparison by comparative mythologist David Talbott reconstructs a cosmic drama when planets hung in the sky close to the earth--an epoch of celestial wonder giving rise to time-honored symbols.

Symbols of an Alien Sky will introduce you to celestial spectacles and earth-shaking events once remembered around the world. Archaic symbols of these events still surround us, some as icons of the world’s great religions, though the origins of the symbols appear to be lost in obscurity.

Cultural history seems fragmented and contradictory. But as demonstrated in this introductory episode, there are also levels of deep agreement between the cultures. According to David Talbott, these “archetypes” allow for a radical reinterpretation of both human and planetary history. Competing regional symbols are aspects of “one story told around the world,” a story both awe inspiring and terrifying.

Perhaps the most compelling discovery comes from the sciences. Independent investigation over the past 12 years has confirmed that the celestial formations Talbott reconstructed—all from historical evidence—precisely match the behavior of electric discharge in the plasma laboratory and in remote space. A convergence of historical evidence and plasma science has occurred. The converging research points to planetary instability and intense electrical events in ancient times. a challenge to some of the most cherished assumptions in today’s theoretical sciences.

This highly visual presentation takes an in-depth look at origins of our symbolic archetypes, and offers new answers to questions about the role of the planet gods in pre-historical times. Why did every ancient civilization celebrate a former "Age of the Gods", an age claimed to have ended in earth threatening disaster? What was meant by the lost "Golden Age?" Why did ancient sky worshippers refer to Saturn as "the sun?" Why was Venus worshipped as the "Mother Goddess?" And why did both Old and New World astronomers celebrate the planet Mars as a great warrior whose battles shook the heavens? And a thousand other intriguing "Whys"

EPISODE 2. The Lightning Scarred Planet, Mars

In Episode 2 Symbols of an Alien Sky: The Lightning Scarred Planet, Mars, David Talbott takes the viewer on an odyssey across the surface of Mars. Exploring feature after feature of the planet, he finds that only electric arcs could produce the observed patterns. The high resolution images reveal massive channels and gouges, great mounds, and crater chains, none finding an explanation in traditional geology but all matching the scars from electric discharge experiments in the laboratory.

As a scientific follow-up to Symbols of an Alien Sky, this documentary provides a definitive answer to the question: was Mars carved from pole to pole by intense interplanetary discharge?

EPISODE 3. : The Electric Comet

We believe that this critical analysis of textbook comet theory can have a major impact on human understanding of these remarkable bodies. It can also reach well beyond the specialized science of comets to provoke a reconsideration of the Sun, planetary history, and a good deal more. We live in an Electric Universe, and the enigmatic behavior of comets provides unique insights into the role of charged particles and electrified plasma throughout the Cosmos.



More info : https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/

The Shadowside of the UN Peacekeepers: A story of structural sexual abuse and global human trafficking

Haïti  [2015]   Now:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Members of a U.N. peacekeeping mission engaged in "transactional sex" with more than 225 Haitian women who said they needed to do so to obtain things like food and medication, a sign that sexual exploitation remains significantly underreported in such missions, according to a new report obtained by The Associated Press.

 

 

 

The draft by the Office of Internal Oversight Services looks at the way U.N. peacekeeping, which has about 125,000 people in some of the world's most troubled areas, deals with the persistent problem of sexual abuse and exploitation.

The report, expected to be released this month, says major challenges remain a decade after a groundbreaking U.N. report first tackled the issue.

 

Among its findings: About a third of alleged sexual abuse involves minors under 18. Assistance to victims is "severely deficient." The average investigation by OIOS, which says it prioritizes cases involving minors or rape, takes more than a year.

And widespread confusion remains on the ground about consensual sex and exploitation. To help demonstrate that, investigators headed to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

 

A year ago, the report says, investigators interviewed 231 people in Haiti who said they'd had transactional sexual relationships with U.N. peacekeepers. "For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication and household items were frequently cited as the `triggering need,'" the report says. Urban and suburban women received "church shoes,' cell phones, laptops and perfume, as well as money.

 

"In cases of non-payment, some women withheld the badges of peacekeepers and threatened to reveal their infidelity via social media," the report says. "Only seven interviewees knew about the United Nations policy prohibiting sexual exploitation and abuse." None knew about the mission's hotline to report it.

 

Each of those instances of transactional sex, the report says, would be considered prohibited conduct, "thus demonstrating significant underreporting." It was not clear how many peacekeepers were involved.

 

For all of last year, the total number of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation against members of all U.N. peacekeeping missions was 51, down from 66 the year before, according to the secretary-general's latest annual report on the issue.

 

The draft report doesn't say over what time frame the "transactional sex" in Haiti occurred. The peacekeeping mission there was first authorized in 2004 and, as of the end of March, had more than 7,000 uniformed troops. It is one of four peacekeeping missions that have accounted for the most allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation in recent years, along with those in Congo, Liberia and South Sudan.

 

One of the U.N. staffers who produced the report would not comment Tuesday, saying it was better to wait until it was released publicly. A spokesman for the peacekeeping office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

The U.N. doesn't have a standing army and relies on troops contributed by member states. The states are responsible for investigating alleged misconduct by their troops, though the U.N. can step in if there's no action.

 

In their response to the report's findings, which is included in the draft, U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous and field support chief Atul Khare point out that while the number of peacekeepers has increased dramatically over the past decade, the number of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation have gone down.

 

The U.N. prohibits "exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex," and it strongly discourages sexual relationships between U.N. staff and people who receive their assistance, saying they are "based on inherently unequal power dynamics" and undermine the world body's credibility.

 

But that has led to some confusion on the ground, the new report says, with some members of peacekeeping missions seeing that guidance as a ban on all sexual relationships with local people.

The report says the guidelines need to be clarified.

 

"Staff with long mission experience states that was a `general view that people should have romantic rights' and raised the issue of sexuality as a human right," the report says.

Source : http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_UNITED_NATIONS_PEACEKEEPERS_SEXUAL_EXPLOITATION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT





The report, which should be released this month, makes no reference to the time frame of the alleged violations, but the 7,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti started in 2004. The investigation also does not mention the number of peacekeepers involved.


The report says that the lack of any clear action is "demonstrating significant underreporting," while noting that assistance to those that suffered is "severely deficient." The average investigation by OIOS takes more than a year, according to AP.


Sexual abuse by peacekeeping troops, some 125,000 of which are currently deployed around the world, has undermined the credibility of their missions. A rapid increase in prostitution and abuse in Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Sudan and Kosovo were documented after UN peacekeeping forces moved in.

Earlier this year it was revealed that UN peacekeepers raped and sodomized starving and homeless boys in the Central African Republic, some as young as nine.

However, the number of documented cases of sexual abuse and exploitation by members of UN peacekeeping missions was 51 in 2014, down from 66 the year before, according to the secretary-general's latest annual report on the issue.

Source : http://rt.com/news/266179-un-peacekeepers-haiti-sexual/



Then:

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/mar/25/unitednations


The reputation of United Nations peacekeeping missions suffered a humiliating blow yesterday as an internal report identified repeated patterns of sexual abuse and rape perpetrated by soldiers supposed to be restoring the international rule of law.

The highly critical study, published by Jordan's ambassador to the UN assembly, was endorsed by the organisation's embattled secretary general, Kofi Annan, who condemned such "abhorrent acts" as a "violation of the fundamental duty of care".

The embarrassment caused by the misconduct of UN forces in devastated communities around the world - including Haiti, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Cambodia , East Timor and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - has become an increasingly high profile, political problem.

Allegations have recently surfaced that troops sent to police Liberia were regularly having sex with girls aged as young as 12, sometimes in the mission's administrative buildings.


In the DRC, peacekeepers were said to have offered abandoned orphans small gifts - as little as two eggs from their rations, says the report - for sexual encounters.

Kosovo&Bosnia [1999]

The presence of peacekeepers in Kosovo is fuelling the sexual exploitation of women and encouraging trafficking, according to Amnesty International.

It claims UN and Nato troops in the region are using the trafficked women and girls for sex and some have been involved in trafficking itself.

Amnesty says girls as young as 11 from eastern European countries are being sold into the sex slavery.

A Nato spokesman said some details of the report seemed out of date.

Lieutenant Colonel Jim Moran said some policies had changed. Peacekeepers were "not allowed" off base in civilian clothing or to go to bars and nightclubs, he said.

"Each nation is responsible for the conduct of their soldiers, and if they find a soldier that is breaking the law, it is up to them to bring them to justice," he added.

There has been no comment from the UN.

Trading houses

Amnesty's report, entitled "So does that mean I have rights? Protecting the human rights of women and girls trafficked for forced prostitution in Kosovo," was published on Thursday.

It is based on interviews with women and girls who have been trafficked from countries such as Moldova, Bulgaria and the Ukraine to service Kosovo's sex industry.

They are said to have been moved illegally across borders and sold in "trading houses," where they are sometimes drugged and "broken in" before being sold from one trafficker to another for prices ranging from 50 to 3,500 euros ($60 - 4,200).

The report includes harrowing testimonies of abduction, deprivation of liberty and denial of freedom of movement, torture and ill-treatment, including psychological threats, beatings and rape.

Instead of getting a proper job the women and girls find themselves trapped, enslaved, forced into prostitution.

The report condemns the role of the international peacekeepers.

Slavery

It says that after 40,000 K-For troops and hundreds of Unmik personnel were sent to Kosovo in 1999, a "small-scale local market for prostitution was transformed into a large-scale industry based on trafficking run by organised criminal networks".

The number of places in Kosovo where trafficked women and girls may be exploited, such as nightclubs, bars, restaurants, hotels and cafes, has increased from 18 in 1999 to more than 200 in 2003.

The report claims international personnel make up about 20% of the people using trafficked women and girls even though its members comprise only 2% of Kosovo's population.

read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3686173.stm

Dynocorp. & The "Kathryn Bolkovac" case


A former United Nations police officer is suing a British security firm over claims that it covered up the involvement of her fellow officers in sex crimes and prostitution rackets in the Balkans.
Kathryn Bolkovac, an American policewoman, was hired by DynCorp Aerospace in Aldershot for a UN post aimed at cracking down on sexual abuse and forced prostitution in Bosnia.

She claims she was 'appalled' to find that many of her fellow officers were involved. She was fired by the British company after amassing evidence that UN police were taking part in the trafficking of young women from eastern Europe as sex slaves.
She said: 'When I started collecting evidence from the victims of sex trafficking it was clear that a number of UN officers were involved from several countries, including quite a few from Britain. I was shocked, appalled and disgusted. They were supposed to be over there to help, but they were committing crimes themselves. When I told the supervisors they didn't want to know.'


DynCorp sacked her, claiming she had falsified time sheets, a charge she denies. Last month she filed her case at Southampton employment tribunal alleging wrongful dismissal and sexual discrimination against DynCorp, the British subsidiary of the US company DynCorp Inc.
DynCorp has the contract to provide police officers for the 2,100-member UN international police task force in Bosnia which was created to help restore law and order after the civil war.


Bolkovac has also filed a case against DynCorp under Britain's new Public Interest Disclosure Act designed to protect whistleblowers.
As well as reporting that her fellow officers regularly went to brothels, she also investigated allegations that an American police officer hired by DynCorp had bought a woman for $1,000.
 
Bolkovac's British lawyers say her evidence will highlight how the underground sex trade in Bosnia is thriving among the 21,000 Nato peacekeepers and thousands of international bureaucrats and aid workers.

Read more : http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jul/29/unitednations


Congo [1999]

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 26 -- Sexual exploitation of women and girls by U.N. peacekeepers and bureaucrats in the U.N. mission in Congo "appears to be significant, wide-spread and ongoing," according to a confidential U.N. report that documents cases of pedophilia, prostitution and rape.


The report by a U.N. peacekeeping official who recently visited Congo says that some U.N. personnel paid $1 to $3, or bartered food or the promise of a job, for sex. In some cases, U.N. officials allegedly raped women and girls and then offered them food or money to make it look as if they had engaged in prostitution.


read more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15363-2004Nov26.html



and a lot more cases:

source: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/30/nine-times-peacekeepers-have-sexually-abused-those-theyre-supposed-to-protect/

Haiti: U.N. peacekeeping troops have been present in Haiti in some capacity since 1994, and they returned in 2004 to aid in suppressing violence on the island nation. In 2011, a video surfaced of Uruguayan U.N. soldiers seemingly raping a Haitian teenager. In 2012, a court martial convicted three Pakistani peacekeepers serving in Haiti for sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy.

Ivory Coast: According to a 2008 BBC report, a 13-year-old girl told the news network that she was gangraped by 10 peacekeepers in a field near her home. In 2009, Save the Children conducted a poll of ten underaged children, and found that eight had exchanged sexual favors for food or housing with U.N. peacekeepers there.

Burundi: Two U.N. peacekeepers were repatriated after being accused of having sex with prostitutes, one of whom was a minor. U.N. regulations prohibit peacekeepers from patronizing sex workers.

Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone: Interviews with community members in these three neighboring countries revealed that peacekeepers had withheld medical supplies, food, and water from desperate civilians until they offered them sexual favors.

Cambodia: During a mission to Cambodia in 1992 and 1993, U.N. peacekeepers frequented brothels with such frequency that the number of prostitutes there increased from 6,000 to 25,000. This incident gained particular notoriety after a U.N. official defended the peacekeepers’ behavior, saying "boys will be boys."

East Timor: Human rights groups have documented cases of abuse of children and at least 20 babies left behind by peacekeepers who impregnated local women and then left them without financial support, often ostracized from their communities.

Central African Republic: Leaked U.N. documents show that French forces serving in a peacekeeping mission in Bangui — prior to the establishment of a U.N. peacekeeping force there — sexually exploited children living in the camps for orphans and displaced civilians. They offered food and small amounts of cash in return for sex, sometimes with children as young as nine.

Also Watch :



The Whistleblower is based on the experiences of Kathryn Bolkovac, an American police officer who in 1999 was assigned to serve as a peacekeeper with the United Nations in post-war Bosnia. While there, she reportedly discovered a sex-trafficking ring which served and was facilitated by other peacekeepers. Bolkovac was fired after trying to investigate the ring, but she later won a wrongful-dismissal lawsuit.

British Media Acknowledges Toxic Impacts of Vaccines. MSM Censorship on Behalf of Big Pharma is Crumbling?

The censorship Berlin Wall on vaccine injuries is starting to crumble… in the UK, at least, where mainstream media outlets there are suddenly covering the thousands of young girls and boys who are routinely damaged by toxic vaccines.

The pharma-controlled, vaccine-worshipping U.S. mainstream media, of course, hilariously pretends vaccines cause no damage to anyone. That’s part of the reason why no one believes the mainstream media anymore, which explains why mainstream media readership is plummeting while New Media readership is exploding. (Our new GoodGopher.com search engine for the New Media has already received over 4,500 new site submits from webmasters.)


Junk science media outlets like the Washington Post — now entirely controlled by Monsanto – attack vaccine skeptics as anti-science people for pointing out that children are being maimed and sometimes killed by vaccines. See Hundreds of children brain damaged by the swine flu vaccine to receive $90 million in financial compensation from UK government.
It makes me wonder: Will the junk science mainstream media in the United States now ridiculously condemn the UK mainstream media as “anti-science” for reporting on the thousands of children being neurologically damaged by vaccines? Does the lamestream media in the USA even remember what journalism is in the first place?


Major media outlets across the UK now practicing actual journalism on the vaccine issue
Check out what’s happening in the UK press now all of a sudden. No doubt the vaccine industry is pushing hard to censor all these stories, so you might want to check them quickly while they still exist online: (h/t to Health Impact News for pointing these out)

EXPRESS.CO.UK: Tens of thousands of teen girls suffer serious illnesses after HPV cervical cancer jab

• “TENS of thousands of teenage girls have fallen seriously ill and even been left wheelchair-bound after taking the routine cervical cancer vaccination.”
• “…the number is estimated to be only ten per cent of the true number of teens struck down with severe side effects after taking the vaccine.”
• “In more than a quarter of the cases, the effects have apparently been so severe that they were considered ‘life-threatening’ and required immediate medical treatment.”

The Independent: Thousands of teenage girls enduring debilitating illnesses after routine school cancer vaccination

• “Emily is one of the thousands of teenage girls who have endured debilitating illnesses following the routine immunisation. She is yet to recover and has no idea when her health will return to normal.”
•  ”In the 10 years to April this year the agency received almost 22,000 ‘spontaneous suspected’ adverse drug reaction (ADR) reports in 13 routine immunisation categories including flu, MMR, tetanus, diphtheria and polio, according to a Freedom of Information response released earlier this month.”
• PoTS and fibromyalgia are among the diseases he believes have developed after HPV vaccination, and that clinicians should be aware of the possible association between HPV vaccination and the development of these ‘difficult to diagnose’ painful syndromes.”

The Daily Mail (UK): Tens of thousands of teenage girls believed to have fallen ill with debilitating illnesses after routine HPV cervical cancer jab

• “Side effects including chest and abdominal pains, exhaustion, breathing difficulties, fibromyalgia and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.”
•  ”Some have been left wheelchair-bound by apparent effects of vaccine.”
• “Worried mothers have told how their previously healthy daughters have suffered fits, extreme tiredness and even been left wheelchair-bound after being vaccinated in their early teens. In some cases, the girls started to feel ill on the day they were vaccinated. Others became sick several weeks later.”

Even France is now covering the vaccine debate with a sense of logic
 
Check out this story: Mainstream media vigorously debates vaccine safety — in France. It explains:
In the US, Canada and the rest of the English-speaking world, questioning vaccine safety is a taboo subject, one the mainstream press fears to touch, let alone to debate. Not so in France…
 
 
“Should we have doubts about vaccines?” asked a popular radio program last month, marking European Immunization Week. The program, which ran on France Inter, a major public channel that is part of Radio France, introduced the subject by acknowledging the “doubts and concerns about the usefulness of vaccines” that have led the French to have “less and less confidence in vaccines.” France Inter then held a no-holds-barred debate between a controversial proponent of increased vaccine use…
 
 
[Another] example comes from Le Figaro, France’s second largest daily. After the French press last month reported that two infants died and hundreds had been injured after receiving rotavirus vaccines, Figaro examined the various issues at play, including conflict of interest — government regulators have had pharmaceutical industry ties — and the wisdom of having these vaccines recommended by public health authorities.
 
Vaccine violence against children totally ignored by the pharma-controlled U.S. media
 
 
All this vaccine violence being committed against children worldwide is purely imaginary, according to the U.S. mainstream media.
 
 
Anyone even citing such statistics is automatically labeled “anti-science” by pathetic vaccine pushers who profit from the continued medical mutilation of innocent children.
I’ve even heard the idea of vaccine damage being labeled a “conspiracy theory” by the pro-pharma media — the same media that conducted a total nationwide news blackout on the public admission of a CDC whistleblower scientist who admitted that he took part in a CDC cover-up to hide links between vaccines and autism.
 
 
That’s how loony the corporate-controlled media has become: They label you a “conspiracy theorist” if you practice good science and good medicine by observing biological reactions to a routine medical intervention. Meanwhile, what they report as “facts” are actually fairytale delusions… such as the idea that vaccines harm no one and can be safely given to children in essentially unlimited quantities.
 
 
The real anti-science kooks, it turns out, are the blindly obedient vaccine pushers! (They also happen to be extremely angry egomaniacs who reek of vile hatred for humanity… and of children specifically.)
 
 
UK media has realized journalistic integrity requires the practicing of actual journalism
 
 
While tens of thousands of injured young children is no laughing matter, it is rather hilarious that the U.S. mainstream media’s obedience to the total quackery of “vaccine safety” is causing its own rapid loss of credibility, readership and revenues. That’s why the value of old media publishers is rapidly collapsing while, at the same time, alternative media websites are exploding in popularity.
THANK YOU, lamestream media, for creating the journalism vacuum now being filled by independent media outlets like Natural News — websites that never would have grown at all if the media had been doing its job in the first place.
 
 
And what do we want to see with vaccines here in the New Media? We’re not opposed to the theory of immunization, and we most certainly aren’t opposed to good science (I’m the science lab director of the Natural News Forensic Food Lab, conducting PhD-level atomic spectrometry analysis and original research on heavy metals in foods). We merely want to see all toxic chemicals and heavy metals removed from vaccinesand for government to respect parents’ rights in deciding what medical interventions are best for their own children. It doesn’t sound like much of a demand, really. It’s just a demand for protecting children and respecting fundamental civil rights.
I never thought I’d see the day that demanding we stop poisoning children with mercury in flu shots is called “anti-science.” But here we are, and that just tells you how insane the monopoly-run, criminal-minded vaccine industry has become these days. No wonder the public craves truthful reporting on this subject!
 
BOTTOM LINE: Any media outlet that tells you vaccines are safe is knowingly committing journalistic malpractice and lying to your face. They are paid by Big Pharma to tell such lies, and they knowingly put children in harm’s way for their own selfish profits. Even the ethically challenged vaccine pushers they roll out to push vaccines — people like Paul Offit — totally abandon ethics by failing to disclose their own financial ties to the vaccine industry when they’re interviewed on TV.
 
Don’t get your news on the USA from mainstream media within the USA
 
 
Here’s an important takeaway point on all this: Never read the U.S. mainstream media for any purpose other than tabloid entertainment. Most mainstream outlets are totally clueless, compromised and corrupted. Although there are intelligent reporters who work inside the U.S. media, they are handcuffed by censorship and editorial directives that prevent them from reporting the truth on GMOs, vaccines and other important topics. (I know this because many of them have come to me asking for work and explaining the kind of Orwellian censorship under which they operate. You would not believe the number of formerly mainstream media reporters who now work for Natural News… and the number is growing by the week right now as we keep expanding…)
 
 
If you want news about the USA from a mainstream source, start reading the Daily Mail (UK). Or check out Der Spiegel, Al Jazeera, RT, Sputnik News or The Intercept. You’ll never get accurate news about the U.S. vaccine industry from the U.S. sellout media. They are just propaganda tools of the drug makers, and they’re more than willing to see children harmed and even killed as long as they get their precious ad revenue from Big Pharma.
http://www.naturalnews.com/049961_vaccine_injury_media_coverage_real_journalism.html

How Sports, Military, Police and the Security Industry, Mixed with Trauma, Creates Modern Dangerous Macho Men

American society doubles down on early socialization to create hyper masculinity.

 

 

We live in a society of striking extremes of wealth and poverty. Increasingly our social polarization is overseen by a massive apparatus of army, police, prison and security guards, all operating in a subculture where violence is bred and some of the worst aspects of hyper masculinity are protected and reinforced, making millions of people fearful and vulnerable.

 

As Kali Holloway powerfully deconstructs, in her article, "Masculinity Is Killing Men: The Roots of Men and Trauma," the early socialization process of boys into men often results in maladaptive and self-destructive behavior that is dangerous to men’s health and to the well being of their families and communities. Masculinity then, in general— and violent masculinity in particular—is not just a byproduct of early socialization, though that is obviously a contributor. It is also influenced by several environmental factors: childhood trauma; the overwhelming role of competitive sports for boys 5 and up; the tremendous influence in American culture of the military, itself a highly top down, authoritarian operation; and the unprecedented number of people, overwhelmingly male, now working in the security field.

 

While many men are both overtly and subtly directed to aspire toward the upper class of masculinity, where viciousness is often admired and rewarded, the majority of men are locked out of that system. These men are limited by any number of factors, including class, race and sexuality, to reaching the higher echelons of masculinity. They often experience the trauma of being subjected to indignities such as stop-and-frisk, income limitation and job loss, causing debt and other forms of powerlessness. They also incur the anger and rage bred by exclusion and systemic oppression.

American capitalism has created a multi-tiered system of masculinity. At the top are the dominant power players and opinion shapers who essentially control our society— a cruel machismo, often accompanied by wealth, that is frequently focused on making deals, being ruthless and the acquisition and exercising of power. Far below sits a subservient masculinity that often suffers under the exploitative yoke of the rich and powerful. The dominant masculine powers at the top repress not just most men but the rest who are less powerful, heightening the vulnerability of women and children.

What’s more, our racial and cultural diversity lends itself to different themes of masculinity. In black, Latino and Asian communities, the idea of masculinity takes various and differing culturally informed shapes. The same is also true of the LGBT community, where male roles include an array of tops and bottoms, along a continuum that runs from macho to effeminate, and in some cases genderqueer and gender non-conforming. Masculinity is further shaped and defined by class, and the myriad and complex attendant issues around access and opportunity—and lack thereof—that accompany existence within various strata of class hierarchies.

 

Competitive Sports

 

The detrimental impact of competitive sports as a masculinizing force, one that privileges certain forms of masculinity as elite, and even above the law, has recently become a topic of national conversation, in large part due to domestic abuse, sexual assault and other scandals involving violence committed by players of both collegiate and major league sports. It’s disingenuous for the media to sell the narrative that what many researchers call the “toxic hypermasculinity” created by competitive sports is somehow an unintended consequence. The historical role of sports has always been to make men—and in particular, heterosexual men—out of little boys, and to separate the “weak” from the “strong.” A 2013 article from the legal blog Verdict traces how we got here:

“Sports were introduced in American schools out of fear that boys were becoming too womanly when the shift from an agrarian to an industrial labor force, along with limits on child labor, left them at their mothers’ apron strings rather than their fathers’ boots. For athletic boys, sports are a path to success and popularity. Conversely, too, boys who lack athletic interest or ability risk remaining on the periphery of masculinity....The message is endemic to American boyhood: an athletic boy is a real boy.”

We should not be surprised, then, when boys who are indoctrinated into the world of sports, where masculinity is defined by the number of hits you can give and take, becomes integral to their definition of masculinity on and off the field. The National Coalition Against Violent Athletes cites a study finding that male student-athletes comprised 3.3 percent of college students, but were 19 percent of the perpetrators of reported sexual assaults and 35 percent of those who committed domestic violence. The same study, which looked at “30 major Division I universities over a three-year period in the 1990s” found that student athletes committed one-third of collegiate sexual assaults. As the researchers behind a 2010 study on the intersection between masculinity and sports writes:

“[M]en compete for hegemonic dominance by showing overt physical prowess, using sexism and femphobia to distance themselves from association with femininity, deploying homophobia to distance themselves from homosexuality, and committing physical violence against themselves and others, all in order to raise their masculine capital among peers. Sport has traditionally served as a socially esteemed institution where boys formally learn these attitudinal components, something [researchers] describe as 'toxic practices' of masculinity.”

This is to say nothing of the fact that researchers have linked football (often called “America’s game”) and to an even greater degree, boxing, to numerous neurological issues, the inarguable result of men's brains and bodies being violently battered.

The Military and Our Security State

As income inequality grows, and the haves become ever more wary of the have-nots, we have become a nation increasingly on lockdown. The militarization of the police, like suburban gated communities, is just one byproduct of our growing security state, which is now larger than ever. As Sam Bowles and Arjun Jayadev noted in their 2014 New York Times Opinionator piece, One Nation Under Guard, there are now more than one million people working as private security guards in America, a figure that eclipses the number of people teaching high school. As of 2011, the “guard labor” force in the U.S.— which includes cops, prisons, military, security guards and other figures whose job is to control the rest of us—stood at an unprecedented 5.2 million. The number is likely far higher today. The U.S. has much more guard labor than countries where income inequality and economic stratification are less severe. The authors write:

“For the same countries, guard labor is also more common where those starting out in life face a sharply tilted playing field, such as America, Britain and Italy. These are countries in which the income of a father is a good predictor of the income of his adult son. The countries with the least guard labor are those in which there is greater equality of economic opportunity by this measure: These are Denmark and Sweden, countries in which knowing the father’s income does not enable a very accurate guess of the son’s income when he grows up., male college student athletes, compared to the rest of the male population.”

And in states where the gulf between rich and poor is widest—the authors cite New York, where the most super-rich in the country live in close proximity to some of the U.S.’s poorest residents, and Louisiana as examples—there are “twice as many security workers (as a fraction of their labor force) as less unequal states.”

Addiction

 

Gabor Maté, a doctor who works with addicts in Vancouver and the author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, argues that most addicts and alcoholics have suffered childhood trauma. Maté makes the case that drugs and alcohol are painkillers in both the literal and figurative sense. For millions of Americans who grew up with or bore witness to physical, emotional or sexual abuse or neglect, drugs and alcohol are a way to escape the deeply painful emotional wounds incurred in childhood. And in a country that does an abysmal job of providing mental health to anyone but its wealthiest citizens, drugs and alcohol are often the only source of mental relief for the most vulnerable and traumatized.

 

Poverty itself can also become a site of trauma for many children. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 22 percent of children (16 million) in the U.S. live in families trying to make do on incomes beneath the federal poverty level, which is only $23,550 for a family of four. An even greater number of kids, 45 percent, live in what the NCCP calls “low-income families,” or those living at twice the poverty level, which allows them to meet the most basic of living costs. In urban areas, 49 percent of kids live in low-income families. For these households and the children growing up in them, the constant and sustained instability and stress of basic survival translates into a pervasive and unstinting trauma. The added issues of crime and violence in many low-income neighborhoods further traumatizes those who live in them. NCCP studies find that an incredible 83 percent of children living in low-income, inner-city neighborhoods have experienced one or more traumatic events. This process begins early, with 10 percent of children younger than the age of six who live in major American cities having already witnessed a stabbing or shooting.

 

It makes sense that children living in constant low-grade terror, in homes and neighborhoods where the conditions can be similar to a war zone, complete with militarized police presences, would manifest the same conditions as soldiers who have endured combat or victims of war. Almost all anger is part of the fight side of the fight-or-flight response to fear and trauma being triggered in the amygdala, where it sparks an almost instant, no-thought response.

 

Psychology Today notes that, "It has long been established that stress-related illnesses, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) trigger changes in brain structure, including differences in the volume of gray matter versus white matter, as well as the and size and connectivity of the amygdala.” Chronic stress affects the brain by “decreas[ing] the number of stem cells that mature into neurons and might provide an explanation for how chronic stress also affects learning and memory.”

 

It also raises the level of cortisol, dubbed the stress hormone. Researchers indicate this can lead to a “domino effect that hardwires pathways between the hippocampus and amygdala in a way that might create a vicious cycle by creating a brain that becomes predisposed to be in a constant state of fight-or-flight.”

 

When these issues intersect with tenets of masculinity, which treats domination and violence as core to true manhood, it seems obvious that addiction and violence would be the end results.

Race and Class

 

When you carry this argument further, taking a class and a race perspective, it is safe to assume that people in poverty and people of color, who are disproportionately affected by poverty, are often the most victimized by trauma, the result of broken families, drug addiction, bullying, gangs, etc. The powerlessness of men who are revictimized by the state, and further marginalized by racism, adds to the complexity of masculinity.

Some of these men escape to sports where the masculinity model plays out as previously discussed. Or they may enter the military, where the whole notion of bullying is baked into the process. Aside from lifers and the college-prepared who enter the military as officers, there is an overrepresentation of men from poor and working-class families, along with women, minorities and immigrants. It is an institution that oppresses the rank and file under the rules of war and security. Many may go through the military suffering some level of PTSD, often doubling down on early life trauma. Fraternities, borrowing lessons from both institutions, do this as well.

The Oppressive Masculinity of the Powerful

There is, undoubtedly, a masculine problem in the early socialization process. But that problem is exacerbated many times over in the way it is exploited and applied in so many levels by people in power. And one of the reasons for the masculinity socialization problem is that most fathers— and mothers—know full well how the brutal world works, and they want to make sure their kid has the tools to survive. Unfortunately, that means there is little or no incentive to change things.

 

The byproducts of masculinity—violence, addictions, jail and the rest—are the result not just of the social construct of masculinity, but the imposition of an oppressive patriarchy rendering many men powerless, traumatized and most likely to act out the most negative aspects of masculinity. Millions of men are either oppressed or crushed by the system, leaving them acting out extreme forms of masculinity, often out of desperation and feeling no sense of agency in their lives. Or it is leveraged to oppress the others in the system by preparing millions into police forces, security jobs, and the rest.

 

A good number of these men are prone to violence, suffering from PTSD, poorly trained, and insular, so they can inflict cruel hazing and other forms of brutality within, for example, the silent blue wall of law enforcement.

 

Masculinity must address issues of class, trauma, race, sexual orientation, the military, sports, the wrecking of unions, the loss of jobs, the changing role of women, and much more. The story of masculinity in America is the story of the oppressors and the oppressed, where you find the real psychopathology and the worst acting out. Are educated and upper-middle-class men sexist and violent? Absolutely. But for the most part they are not the addicts, the murderers, the 2.3 million people sitting in jail. Because those people are the real victims of the dominant controlling masculinity.

 

http://www.alternet.org/gender/how-sports-military-police-and-security-industry-mixed-trauma-creates-modern-dangerous-macho