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TechnoratiMourn on the 4th of July
Liberals say that the United States is once again a "nation of moral ideals", but behind the façade little has changed. With his government of warmongers, Wall Street cronies and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, Barack Obama is merely upholding the myths of a divine America
The monsoon had woven thick skeins of mist over the central highlands of Vietnam. I was a young war correspondent, bivouacked in the village of Tuylon with a unit of US marines whose orders were to win hearts and minds. "We are here not to kill," said the sergeant, "we are here to impart the American Way of Liberty as stated in the Pacification Handbook. This is designed to win the hearts and minds of folks, as stated on page 86."
Page 86 was headed WHAM. The sergeant's unit was called a combined action company, which meant, he explained, "we attack these folks on Mondays and we win their hearts and minds on Tuesdays". He was joking, though not quite. Standing in a jeep on the edge of a paddy, he had announced through a loudhailer: "Come on out, everybody. We got rice and candy and toothbrushes to give you."
Silence. Not a shadow moved.
"Now listen, either you gooks come on out from wherever you are, or we're going to come right in there and get you!"
The people of Tuylon finally came out and stood in line to receive packets of Uncle Ben's Long Grain Rice, Hershey bars, party balloons and several thousand toothbrushes. Three portable, battery-operated, yellow flush lavatories were kept for the colonel's arrival. And when the colonel arrived that evening, the district chief was summoned and the yellow flush lavatories were unveiled.
"Mr District Chief and all you folks out there," said the colonel, "what these gifts represent is more than the sum of their parts. They carry the spirit of America. Ladies and gentlemen, there's no place on earth like America. It's a guiding light for me, and for you. You see, back home, we count ourselves as real lucky having the greatest democracy the world has ever known, and we want you good folks to share in our good fortune."
Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Davy Crockett got a mention. "Beacon" was a favourite, and as he evoked John Winthrop's "city upon a hill", the marines clapped, and the children clapped, understanding not a word.
It was a lesson in what historians call "exceptionalism", the notion that the United States has the divine right to bring what it describes as liberty and democracy to the rest of humanity. That this merely disguised a system of domination, which Martin Luther King described, shortly before his assassination, as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world", was unspeakable. As the great people's historian Howard Zinn has pointed out, Winthrop's much-quoted description of the 17th-century Massachusetts Bay Colony as a "city upon a hill", a place of unlimited goodness and nobility, was rarely set against the violence of the first settlers, for whom burning alive some 400 Pequot Indians was a "triumphant joy". The countless massacres that followed, wrote Zinn, were justified by "the idea that American expansion is divinely ordained".
Not long ago, I visited the American Museum of History, part of the celebrated Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. One of the popular exhibitions was "The Price of Freedom: Americans at War". It was holiday time and lines of people, including many children, shuffled reverentially through a Santa's grotto of war and conquest where messages about their nation's "great mission" were dispensed. These included tributes to the "exceptional Americans [who] saved a million lives" in Vietnam, where they were "determined to stop communist expansion". In Iraq, other true hearts "employed air strikes of unprecedented precision". What was shocking was not so much the revisionist description of two of the epic crimes of modern times as the sheer scale of omission.
"History without memory," declared Time magazine at the end of the 20th century, "confines Americans to a sort of eternal present. They are especially weak in remembering what they did to other people, as opposed to what they did for them." Ironically, it was Henry Luce, founder of Time, who in 1941 divined the "American century" as an American social, political and cultural "victory" over humanity and the right "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit".
None of this is to suggest that vainglory is exclusive to the United States. The British presented their often violent domination of much of the world as the natural progress of Christian gentlemen selflessly civilising the natives, and present-day TV historians perpetuate the myths. The French still celebrate their bloody "civilising mission". Prior to the Second World War, "imperialist" was an honoured political badge in Europe, while in the US an "age of innocence" was preferred. America was different from the Old World, said its mythologists. America was the Land of Liberty, uninterested in conquest. But what of George Washington's call for a "rising empire" and James Madison's "laying the foundation of a great empire"? What of slavery, the theft of Texas from Mexico, the bloody subjugation of central America, Cuba and the Philippines?
An ordained national memory consigned these to the historical margins and "imperialism" was all but discredited in the United States, especially after Adolf Hitler and the fascists, with their ideas of racial and cultural superiority, had left a legacy of guilt by association. The Nazis, after all, had been proud imperialists, too, and Germany was also "exceptional". The idea of imperialism, the word itself, was all but expunged from the American lexicon, "on the grounds that it falsely attributed immoral motives to western foreign policy", argued one historian. Those who persisted in using it were "disreputable purveyors of agitprop" and were "inspired by the communist doctrine", or they were "Negro intellectuals who had grievances of their own against white capitalism".
Meanwhile, the "city on the hill" remained a beacon of rapaciousness as US capital set about realising Luce's dream and recolonising the European empires in the postwar years. This was "the march of free enterprise". In truth, it was driven by a subsidised production boom in a country unravaged by war: a sort of socialism for the great corporations, or state capitalism, which left half the world's wealth in American hands. The cornerstone of this new imperialism was laid in 1944 at a conference of the western allies at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire. Described as "negotiations about economic stability", the conference marked America's conquest of most of the world.
What the American elite demanded, wrote Frederic F Clairmont in The Rise and Fall of Economic Liberalism, "was not allies but unctuous client states. What Bretton Woods bequeathed to the world was a lethal totalitarian blueprint for the carve-up of world markets." The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Bank were established in effect as arms of the US Treasury and would design and police the new order. The US military and its clients would guard the doors of these "international" institutions, and an "invisible government" of media would secure the myths, said Edward Bernays.
Bernays, described as the father of the media age, was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. "Propaganda," he wrote, "got to be a bad word because of the Germans . . . so what I did was to try and find other words [such as] Public Relations." Bernays used Freud's theories about control of the subconscious to promote a "mass culture" designed to promote fear of official enemies and servility to consumerism. It was Bernays who, on behalf of the tobacco industry, campaigned for American women to take up smoking as an act of feminist liberation, calling cigarettes "torches of freedom"; and it was his notion of disinformation that was deployed in overthrowing governments, such as Guatemala's democracy in 1954.
Above all, the goal was to distract and deter the social democratic impulses of working people. Big business was elevated from its public reputation as a kind of mafia to that of a patriotic force. "Free enterprise" became a divinity. "By the early 1950s," wrote Noam Chomsky, "20 million people a week were watching business-sponsored films. The entertainment industry was enlisted to the cause, portraying unions as the enemy, the outsider disrupting the ‘harmony' of the ‘American way of life' . . . Every aspect of social life was targeted and permeated schools and universities, churches, even recreational programmes. By 1954, business propaganda in public schools reached half the amount spent on textbooks."
The new "ism" was Americanism, an ideology whose distinction is its denial that it is an ideology. Recently, I saw the 1957 musical Silk Stockings, starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. Between the scenes of wonderful dancing to a score by Cole Porter was a series of loyalty statements that the colonel in Vietnam might well have written. I had forgotten how crude and pervasive the propaganda was; the Soviets could never compete. An oath of loyalty to all things American became an ideological commitment to the leviathan of business: from the business of armaments and war (which consumes 42 cents in every tax dollar today) to the business of food, known as "agripower" (which receives $157bn a year in government subsidies).
Barack Obama is the embodiment of the "ism". From his early political days, Obama's unerring theme has been not "change", the slogan of his presidential campaign, but America's right to rule and order the world. Of the United States, he says, "we lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good . . . We must lead by building a 21st-century military to ensure the security of our people and advance the security of all people." And: "At moments of great peril in the past century our leaders ensured that America, by deed and by example, led and lifted the world, that we stood and fought for the freedoms sought by billions of people beyond their borders."
Since 1945, by deed and by example, the US has overthrown 50 governments, including democracies, crushed some 30 liberation movements and supported tyrannies from Egypt to Guatemala (see William Blum's histories). Bombing is apple pie. Having stacked his government with warmongers, Wall Street cronies and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, the 45th president is merely upholding tradition. The hearts and minds farce I witnessed in Vietnam is today repeated in villages in Afghanistan and, by proxy, Pakistan, which are Obama's wars.
In his acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, Harold Pinter noted that "everyone knew that terrible crimes had been committed by the Soviet Union in the postwar period, but "US crimes in the same period have been only superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all". It is as if "It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn't happening . . . You have to hand it to America . . . masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."
As Obama has sent drones to kill (since January) some 700 civilians, distinguished liberals have rejoiced that America is once again a "nation of moral ideals", as Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times. In Britain, the elite has long seen in exceptional America an enduring place for British "influence", albeit as servitor or puppet. The pop historian Tristram Hunt says America under Obama is a land "where miracles happen". Justin Webb, until recently the BBC's man in Washington, refers adoringly, rather like the colonel in Vietnam, to the "city on the hill".
Behind this façade of "intensification of feeling and degradation of significance" (Walter Lippmann), ordinary Americans are stirring perhaps as never before, as if abandoning the deity of the "American Dream" that prosperity is a guarantee with hard work and thrift. Millions of angry emails from ordinary people have flooded Washington, expressing an outrage that the novelty of Obama has not calmed. On the contrary, those whose jobs have vanished and whose homes are repossessed see the new president rewarding crooked banks and an obese military, essentially protecting George W Bush's turf.
My guess is that a populism will emerge in the next few years, igniting a powerful force that lies beneath America's surface and which has a proud past. It cannot be predicted which way it will go. However, from such an authentic grass-roots Americanism came women's suffrage, the eight-hour day, graduated income tax and public ownership. In the late 19th century, the populists were betrayed by leaders who urged them to compromise and merge with the Democratic Party. In the Obama era, the familiarity of this resonates.
What is most extraordinary about the United States today is the rejection and defiance, in so many attitudes, of the all-pervasive historical and contemporary propaganda of the "invisible government". Credible polls have long confirmed that more than two-thirds of Americans hold progressive views. A majority want the government to care for those who cannot care for themselves. They would pay higher taxes to guarantee health care for everyone. They want complete nuclear disarmament; 72 per cent want the US to end its colonial wars; and so on. They are informed, subversive, even "anti-American".
I once asked a friend, the great American war correspondent and humanitarian Martha Gellhorn, to explain the term to me. "I'll tell you what ‘anti-American' is," she said. "It's what governments and their vested interests call those who honour America by objecting to war and the theft of resources and believing in all of humanity.
"There are millions of these anti-Americans in the United States. They are ordinary people who belong to no elite and who judge their government in moral terms, though they would call it common decency. They are not vain. They are the people with a wakeful conscience, the best of America's citizens. They can be counted on. They were in the South with the civil rights movement, ending slavery. They were in the streets, demanding an end to the wars in Asia. Sure, they disappear from view now and then, but they are like seeds beneath the snow. I would say they are truly exceptional."
83 Comments so far
Show AllI love this article and only hope its predictions come true. But ordinary Americans have to stop being so damned OBEDIENT if they are to ever take back power from the plutocracy. They have to start demanding that people like Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich get a voice in political campaigns. And they have to forget about democrat and republican labels and get off their butts and work and vote for candidates who will work for them.
That there are “millions of these anti-Americans in the United States” defined as “those who honor America by objecting to war and the theft of resources and believing in all of humanity”. I highly doubt that the millions of Americans who are deluging the capitol with angry emails are doing so because they object to war and theft of other people’s resources. Take for example the Iraqi war that was patently immoral and illegitimate in every sense. Majority of American people agreed with Iraqi war up to the point where it became unwinnable. They did not turn against it because it was unjust but because they were promised that it would be over in a few months. Likewise, I would argue that the so called millions of Americans who are angry and dejected are doing so not out of concern about unjust wars, neo-colonialism or degradation of earth’s sensitive biodiversity, but simply because their debt-infused consumerism has been obliterated!
As I was telling a friend who was outraged at the new AIG intent to provide millions of our tax money as bonuses for its top executives;
I'm starting to wonder if they are not doing their best to stir up a revolt so they can unleash NorthCom's combat brigades against We the People so they don't have to play these "democracy" games anymore and just become an outright and overt fascist nation. Remember, the concentration camps are built and just awaiting occupants. I'll bet that Homeland Security has already sub-contracted with Blackwater to supply the guards. Those guys know how to treat prisoners.
I have a copy of the army manual regulating the use of civilian forced labor on military installations. Read through the list of Executive Orders, someday and you'll see what awaits us, as soon as they get a chance.
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/FEMA-Concentration-Camps3sep04.htm
It just goes on and on, and the bought and paid for government just does as it is told. As I told somebody the other day,
"This is definitely not the nation I grew up in. We seem to have morphed into what we were fighting in the forties. Same way with Israel and Palestine. I sometimes feel that we are living in insane asylum run by the inmates.
"This Afghan/Pakistan thing is downright insanity. Except for the fact that, as we throw more of our kids into that meat grinder, the Carlyle Group et al., makes more profit. And that, I fear, is the name of the game. (This Iran thing is beyond insanity)
"As I said on another blog the other day, If we commit peace, they will have to make refrigerators. Guy buys a refrigerator, he keeps it for ten years. Where's the profit in that? Guy buys a thousand pound bomb, boom and he's gotta buy another. There is real profit! Until somebody kicks the moneylenders out of the temple, we aren't going to see much change, except for the worse."
And so it goes. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and I imagine the price of jackboots is going up.
"cynical July 9th, 2009 1:59 pm
...
And when the truth of 9/11 is revealed....and it will happen....these are the citizens that will be on their feet DEMANDING justice.
A recent, remarkably simple finding.....
http://www.twf.org/News/Y2009/0702-Flight77.html"
PROVIDE titles for url's to draw more attention to what they're for!
The title is, "Pentagon 9/11: Scientific Evidence Proves Official Account of 'Flight 77' Is Wrong".
It's by Enver Masud, TWF, which I've never heard or seen of before, means The Wisdom Fund, which sounds kind of cultish, but that should not turn anyone away without first carefully considering what Enver Masud has to say, and the page is dated July 2 2009, so it was recently posted.
VIDEO alert! The above TWF page is an intro. and it provides a link for reading the full article, as well as another link for listening to Enver Masud's presentation in video format; and the latter page has a link for excerpts from Enver Masud's book, "9/11 Unveiled".
I'll be checking that video out during the day, but will add a link to another video on Flight 77 and this is retired U.S. Army Major General Albert Stubblebine of 32 years active service, whose last assignment was top commander of all U.S. Army intelligence worldwide, and who clearly is very sound of mind, speaks very clearly; nothing in what he says can be mistaken in the following video interview. He was being interviewed by someone who's evidently a journalist, or maybe a member of a foreign 9-11 truth-searching or activism group; saying foreign, for he sounds Oriental, perhaps Japanese.
It's a very good and clear Q&A, while Maj. Gen. Stubblebine gives an evidently truly expert view and analysis, which very credibly concludes with, "NO PLANE HIT THE PENTAGON"!
"General of all American Intelligence: 911 was a fraud!" (5:16), posted by surgarpuddin88, Jun 28 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daNr_TrBw6E
Did he say anything about the WTC Towers, 1, 2 and 7? Yes.
He added, at the end, that the WTC Towers, 1 and 2, clearly were destroyed like WTC 7 was and which is by demolition. The latter bit is evidently not based on extensive analysis on his part, for he clearly seems to only or at least mostly express support (and respect) for the 9-11 truth researchers who have properly determined that towers 1 and 2 came down due ... not to the planes striking them; due ... not to the fuel of the planes that struck the towers burning; but because demolition explosives had been placed inside the towers in order to bring them down. Of course that would be intentional and pre-planned, and pre-implemented or -prepared.
For years, now, many first responders have said that they heard many explosions, "boom, boom, boom, ...", many of them going off or exploding in sequence, [inside] the towers; and civilians who were nearby also said they heard the explosions, with the blast sounds coming from [inside] the towers. This, btw, is not about the exploding tops of the towers, but explosions occurring far below where the planes struck the towers.
A lot of Americans may still not want to believe their government could have been responsible, but only irresponsibly "liberal" or immature, unwatchful, ... persons would refuse to [open] their minds for carefully considering the very careful and thorough, or extensive, research analysis performed by clearly honest people.
Not everyone who's pretended to contribute to 9-11 truth has done so; plenty were blatant clowns, and some definitely seemed to be deliberately malicious clowns only trying to discredit the real 9-11 truth researchers and supporters. And not all honest members of the 9-11 truth-search supporters, and researchers, claim to have the same beliefs in all respects of these events; but we all support the fact that the "official story" is [bogus], very bogus; full of unanswered critical questions, as well as containing proven falsehoods.
People who refuse to very carefully consider the research and the conclusions arrived at through it definitely need to grow up, to become mature, responsible, ... adults; and to make a national as well as world citizen's duty of this.
It [is] always a [duty] to be [vigilant], very watchful, ... about the people in positions of power; especially them!
Some additional videos that are certainly recommendable, and important:
"9/11 Forgotten Heros - Sierra Club Chronicles" (28:31), BraveNewFilms and Sierra Club Chronciles, posted June 7, 2006
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWJsn_ea6_k
That video is about the first responders who were and are, for those not yet deceased because of the toxic air at Ground Zero, that is; well, who were or are victims of the LIE the Bush administration literally had the EPA present to the public about the air supposedly being safe to breathe there, Ground Zero.
"Zero: An Investigation into 9/11" (1:44:54), produced by Telemaco of Italy
The official website is zero911movie.com and it provides a trailer, and the ability to purchase the film on DVD, while the 1:44:54 clip is at Google and I obtained that link at topdocumentaryfilms.com, which is good to check for other 9-11 documentary videos. I can't vouch for them all there, but some clearly are of real value; such as a couple of documentary videos from family members of 9-11 victims, f.e., but also others.
There's the full single clip at Google, and multi-part copies at Youtube, one apparently full set with 10 clips posted by Wakeymedia2 at Youtube. And I'll let people do the simple Web searches to get these links.
Zero... includes guest speakers; "Nobel Prize winner, Dario Fo, Lella Costa, Gore Vidal and Moni Ovadia" (quoted from the purchase webpage). On Feb. 26, 2008, "Europarlementarian Guilietto Chiesa invited his colleagues and the press to attend the screening and debate" of this documentary, Zero ... (noted from the official website)
It is my experience that virtually every claim made by the 9/11 "Truth" Movement has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked. The Truthers get around this fact by ignoring it. ;)
If you're being bothered by 9/11 Truthers, here are my three favorite 9/11 conspiracy debunking websites. They will have no effect on Truthers, but will cure a normal person in a matter of minutes. Many Truther forums won't even let you link to these websites--a fact which speaks volumes about just how interested in truth the Truthers are:
http://www.911myths.com/
http://www.debunking911.com/
http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/home
The conspiracy section of the JREF (James Randi Education Foundation) forum features debunking ninjas from around the world, who lay waste to "Truther" claims 24-7:
http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?f=64
"here are my three favorite 9/11 conspiracy debunking websites. They will have no effect on Truthers"
with respect, bullshit never does.
"In the late 19th century, the populists were betrayed by leaders who urged them to compromise and merge with the Democratic Party. In the Obama era, the familiarity of this resonates."
Well, yeah. It's called getting out in front of the issue in order to sabotage it through clever side tracking. You hear them yelling they are for health care reform. After a while the trial balloons start...it's complicated...we need bi-partisanship...it will suppress competion...it's anti-capitalist. The idea is to get us to compromise. Their problem now is the howls of people looking to government for decency and seeing the gall of MORE war spending and MORE money for wall street gamblers without one word about whether we can afford it until the subject turns to health care. The massive cognitive dissonance is too glaring. We aren't getting rolled. Pilger sees it. They won't game us this time. They can buy every progressive leader in congress and we'll KNOW to reject that leader the split second that he double crosses us with a turncoat vote.
Senator Sanders, we are watching you. Are you a principled socialist or a Brooklyn Blowhard?
"a unit of US marines whose orders were to win hearts and minds"
While all others on the planet are just trying to live their lives, provide for their families, and helping their local communities, the imperialists are out in force trying to "win hearts and minds". The advice I would give universally is that when someone comes to your village trying to "win hearts and minds", send him away immediately.
"Credible polls have long confirmed that more than two-thirds of Americans hold progressive views"
Why then do these USans vote elite?
I had a 'conversation' today at a pro national healthcare rally with a person who has vociferously opposed our anti-war events here in the Louisville for the past six years. He was saying he no longer "hates" us as he once did because he believes "we have been in Iraq too long". Not that we were wrong to go into Iraq, just that "something isn't right there now". Whatever his reasons for needing to be heard, it was an interesting experience talking 'sanely' with one who was once so opposed to our opposition to this nation's illegal invasion of another. It may not go any further, but it seemed at the time like a start.
The potential is out here as I said to this fellow. We have to as citizens, realize that WE are the government. Our 'representatives' are not the government. They are meant merely to be OUR mouthpieces. Until we can realize we have the power more than ever with electronic web communication, we will continue to be taken for granted. There is plenty of evidence that the web scares Congress and industry into nausea and actually shutting their doors to individuals and small focus groups.
Until we take the reins of government, as in increasing our voting percentage of those of age and eligible to something close to 90%, instead of around our embarrassing 50%, then we will not realize our power to democratize the system as it should be.
We have allowed ourselves to fragment so successfully that we cannot recognize our issues we have in common so that we can agree to differ on some points while working together to accomplish greater goals.
The Obama administration is attempting to demonstrate to Congress and us that this can be done as in Rahm Emanuel's demand of White House staff. His ultimate goal of the health care legislation is SUCCESS rather than any single element of the plan. After having succeeded in passage of a plan allows for change and improvements in it down the road with full continued attention to how those changes are made. Without the first step of an accepted plan with whatever flaws, then we are still back in the 1950's with nothing but rhetoric, argument and accusations and upon which to build or again waste what time we have left.
Most citizens have this idea of government reversed in that they expect 'representatives' to do it all. These 'citizens' have the idea they individually have no real responsibility for obtaining knowledge about issues, or providing answers and solutions rather than simple protests here and there, name calling and opting out because "they have no power anyway". Congress plays this for all it is worth to them and act as if they have all the answers, when too often they are merely playing political gamesmanship, veiled name calling and providing no real information to constituents for rational decision making on anyone's part.
The tide is surging among citizens due to our new found communication networks and it is truly frightening to those in government as evidenced by the Bush administration's bringing troops back from Iraq to stand ready to control unrest in this country. It will be most interesting to see who hits the right tone and keys to set the populace in motion.
We have seen it in Iran and Honduras already. Let us hope we can make the message clear that the only truly successful government changes have been peacefully achieved and that our obsession with military means has been a terrible failure for all concerned ( except for possibly the industrialists).
Keep sharing your peace and keep the discussions alive !
Thank you. It's good to hear that previously pro-war people are coming around to how they are being used.
Our children are taught that the United States of America is a democracy. As the tale is told, at the founding of the nation, a government “of, by, and for the people” was established. Four score and seven years later, a President Abraham Lincoln called the nation’s people to join and die in a great civil war that such a form of government might not perish from the earth and their eventual victory preserved American democracy into the future.
Those children can someday refer to the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for the full story. But aside from how closely this lesson is in accord with the historic truth, the idea has today become an outright lie and an utter absurdity. The United States of America is now better described as a corporate state. The government is owned and the people are dictated to by these capitalist creations whose God is Mammon. Ironically as Lincoln spoke his immortal words at Gettysburg, the Industrial Revolution had begun to generate these entities that would have completely removed any vestige of American democracy seven score and five years later.
Gee I wonder what it could be? Could it be? White supremacy!!! I'll be brief. White people have a mental disorder known as psychopathic racial disorder whereby everything that is physically different from them is interpreted as a threat so white people, males in particular, seek to either eliminate the threat or neutralize in some fashion. The problem with white supremacy is that white males gave themselves the "brains" which means the "brawn" was left for black males. In doing that they permanently emasculated themselves with their own women who now believe black males to be sexually superior. There is nothing most white women love more than a black man with money because he fulfills both of her needs, sexual and financial.
Simone Weil urged us to escape "the contagion of folly and collective frenzy..."
But Barack, Hillary and Richard fell to the swine flu or worse. That is why they speak of bad people who want to come and get us-- a superficially powerful argument in that some people did already come and get us, first when the Brits burned the White House and second when the terrists burned the Trade Center.
But how often do they offer their set-piece explanation of what the wars in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan are about? Not too. Unconsciously, perhaps, they feel ridiculous.
But suppose Chicken Little is right? Will the sky falling feel like a car collision, drowning, radioactive poison or smoking too much?
"Well we tried," the three ought-to-be-quarantined ones might say. "We tried to drone and shoot those terrists in the Afpak mountains. What did YOU do? Not our fault we didn't get the right ones."
It isn't?
John Pilger is the greatest investigative reporter in the world.2 things he does especially well are getting access to really high up officials,and then holding their feet to the fire, and on the other hand getting down with ordinary people who are caught up in whatever misery he is reporting, siting at their kitchen tables or down at the docks.
You could take a look at his book "Freedom Next Time" and also an older but really amazing exhibition of what real reporters can do, "Hidden Agendas"
Yes, I was impressed by his very candid interview with Nelson Mandela in "Freedom Next Time", which confirmed that there was a big 'ol sell-out that occurred to get Mandela out of jail.
His "The New Rulers of the World" is also an excellent read.
I rarely print out articles but I will this one. I wanted to say I enjoyed it but how can I really enjoy reading about the brutal truths of the US Empire. Maybe it was the upbeat ending about the anti-Americans waiting for the snow to melt. I think some of us must feel like the early spring crocuses, looking around wondering where everyone else is?
The last paragraph reminded me of a book I love by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh, called "The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic."
"Millions of angry emails from ordinary people have flooded Washington..."
And that's pretty much the total manifestation of anger a pacified people can produce. Yup - if I was a member of the 'elite,' I'd be shitting bricks... "Okay! Enough! Please - no more emails! I'll give back the 12 trillion I stole, I swear. Just MAKE THE EMAILS STOP!!!"
Meanwhile, I posit that, in fact, most Americans know we've been quite the asshole country since the beginning. And, since that's too difficult to admit, we instead hate one another and spend way too much time trying to find new and exciting ways to screw each other over.
"JUST MAKE THE EMAILS STOP!!!" LOL!!
All this tyranny could be over in a week. Just stop participating, everyone.
Apparently the simplest thing in the world has become the most difficult thing in the world.
Ghandighost July 9th, 2009 4:02 pm......You have said it exactly. But, the lethargy and arrogance of Americans will not even allow this passive step. Lawd forbid they we should inconvenience ourselves to regain this country (or GAIN it, for those who believe we never had it to begin with...myself being one).
And with that, I ask, "Do you see any chance?"...or do you have any ideas to get the average American on their feet?
I am betting that the truth of 9/11 will bring the outrage to a tipping point of massive protest...passive or agressive.
If it does not, we deserve what's coming down the pike.
"or do you have any ideas to get the average American on their feet?"
score a touchdown or hit a home run.
vdb July 9th, 2009 4:18 pm.....Unfortunately!
Oregoncharles
Don't you think there's a more direct way, besides emails, to get our message across?
Take for instance the growing movement to refuse to pay corporate health care premiums - the "burn your health card" movement. I've heard that some are considering a national strike - no one goes anywhere for a few days. The rationale for all this, I understand, is that we are running out of strategies as well as time. Once we're all in the poor house, we'll do anything for the empire as long as they feed us.
oregoncharles July 9th, 2009 3:30 pm...........An excellent beginning. BUT, it's always difficult to get citizens to agree on anything. One thing for damn sure...DO NOT depend upon THEM to feed you. Learn to provide for yourself.
Oregoncharles
I have a small farm so I'm not personally worried about feeding myself. But what about the millions of city dwellers who will become even more desperate and willing to take a job as a soldier in exchange for that bonus and health care for their families?
oregoncharles July 9th, 2009 4:33 pm...Some will go over no matter what. Others must be helped or taught to become self sufficient. It's a struggle for survival.and will not be easy. Change never is. Americans must wake up NOW. All we may do is help, inform and guide.
Oh, for a better answer! Most of all, we cannot become resigned....and I read and hear that so often. This plays into their strategy precisely.
cynical July 9th, 2009 4:49 pm
"Some will go over no matter what."
that reminded me of an interview kurt vonnegut did of susan sontag for the progressive.
he asked her what, if anything, she thought the holocaust had to teach us.
she said "10% of people will be kind no matter what.
10% will be cruel no matter what.
and the other 80% can be moved either way."
SPAD July 9th, 2009 5:37 pm ............... It has been said, that all we need for critical mass is 5% of that 80%....I figure that at about 12 million....Not going to be easy to get that many folks to wake the hell up. One can only keep spreading the truth.
"Don't you think there's a more direct way, besides emails, to get our message across?"
emails don't get read!
direct snailmail is more effective.
(they won't get read either but someone has to keep the USPS alive)
I was advised by a Congressman's local aide that, since 9/11, all snailmail to D.C. offices takes weeks to be screened before reaching those offices, so snailmail should be sent, instead, to the local offices of members of Congress, wher it is opened in a few days.
I still don't have much optimism that even these missives matter anymore, given the corrupt campaign/lobby bribery system in play.
frank1569 July 9th, 2009 2:24 pm...............Wow...and I thought I was cynical.
Excellent article, although Pilger might be just a bit too optimistic in his outlook for the near-term. I hope he is right and I am wrong on that however.
Much of what he describes is pure Nationalism:
we have oaths of allegiance "I pledge allegiance to the Empire..."
public nationalist holidays (pres. day; July 4th,)
one-sided exaggerated myths about "founding fathers" etc.
national monuments commemorating past leaders and events
propaganda spreading the belief that the USA is superior to all other nations
the belief that we have a right and duty to force our superior ways onto others with violence if necessary;
creating a lie that we are under attack and under constant threat from those that would attack us (politics of fear)
scapegoating "out groups" to mobilize the "in groups" (eg. Arabs, Muslims)
The loose descriptions listed above can also be viewed as borderline proto-fascism
"They are the people with a wakeful conscience, the best of America's citizens. They can be counted on."
And when the truth of 9/11 is revealed....and it will happen....these are the citizens that will be on their feet DEMANDING justice.
A recent, remarkably simple finding.....
http://www.twf.org/News/Y2009/0702-Flight77.html
And if you are in the Arlington area Saturday, .....
http://www.twf.org/News/Y2009/0711-Pentagon.pdf
Pilger reminds us with an important article that American exceptionalism thrives under Obama the Fraudulent just as it always has. He's going to sweep up the Taliban and bring toothbrush and party balloon freedom to Afghanistan. Whoever says Obama "knows his history" is as foolish as Joe Biden's parakeet. If he does know it, he fails to understand it. But that's a requirement for running this clueless country.
I am usually prone to point out the short comings of the USA in my postings, but will digress from that habit for just a moment.
The fact that the USA is a 'mess' is difficult to argue, no matter who you want to argue with on the subject.
The 'Conservatives' think that the 'liberals have taken control and will screw it all up'.
The 'progressives' think that the 'conservatives' screwed it all up and now its up to them the 'unscrew it up'.
To 'observers' like myself, we seee something else, but have no input (that would disqualify us as 'observers' wouldn't it) so we are just 'observers'----
I have studied history, that of cross cultural as well as cross 'national'--as in 'world history' and I am convinced of several things.
Humanity has the capacity to control their environment. Whether that environment is healthy is another matter.
Humanity has the ability to learn from its mistakes, but is not very practiced at it. However, to become truly 'good' at something, you need to practice----as is the discipline of many arts, and sciences, sports and many other endeavors.
Humanity now has the capability to destroy all life on this planet, with exceptional ease, in an amazingly swift manner.
In reality with just a 'flick of a switch'.
The USA was a 'good idea' that has never lived up to its full potential. It has fallen short many times of it's own personal ambitions most often as a direct result of the 'human factor'. It has also risen above many of the same conflicts that have destroyed others. The 'Civil War' is one excellent example. The Americans killed more of themselves than all of the other wars combined before or since then; over the right of one human being to own another human being. Those same 'freed slaves' after the bloodiest conflict America had known still did not receive their full rights for almost another century; but they did and a descendant of one of those slaves, is the wife of the current president. America has the potential to be a 'true world leader'. As soon as the American people (at least the '12 decent ones' I speak of often) decide that the "Plutocratic Oligarchy" only serves a few---at the top---then decide that a "democracy' is what will work for them; they can have a 'democracy'---but never until then.
The USA could make a drastic change and the world would step in and help. Humanity loves a 'reformed offender' more than anything else; and the 'bigger the offender and the more reformed---are loved the most. America could become a true world leader simply by 'living the example'--which takes true courage and strength.
With each passing day the world finds 'new'-- "news" that should scare the 'hell out of them' in regards to the USA and how they treat other nations and people as well as themselves. The world has every right to fear---and loath--the USA.
In fact, if America were 'another nation'---the 'Americans' would have invaded them years ago; as an act of self preservation.
History is specific in its record of how 'humanity' treats that or those that it fears ---they always destroy that which they fear. Always.
Good Luck America, you really need it.
If you recall, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves in the South - as a military tactic. He hoped they would make trouble for their 'owners'. It didn't free any slaves held in the north.
Lincoln, while possibly being somewhat more 'enlightened' as far as human rights (an arguable position) had little concern for slaves. His concern was maintaining the union. He had a typical attitude towards black folks at the time - that they were 'children' incapable of governing themselves - and wanted freed slaves shipped back to Africa, or kept separate from the 'white' nation he was maintaining by force.
sorry Son - but if you think the "Civil" War was fought to free the slaves you need to hit the books again.
Always a pleasure to read you.
Which 'books' do you recommend that I 'hit'?
If you will refer to many ---I think the one that would be most influential would be. "Robert E. Lee, by Douglas Southhall Freeman, Vol. 4. A letter from the "Gen" to his wife, Mary Custis Lee, where he refers to the "current war to free the Slaves that we depend upon for our wealth cannot go unanswered, even if needed with the necessary force to allow our separation from the former Union". Although Lee often refered publicly to the 'war' as one for 'states rights' he was ready to admit in 'private correspondence' that the 'war' was for the 'right to maintain slavery"---he owned none himself being an Army Officer, but his family owned almost one thousand---"our 'Negros---------with some Cherokee/Negro mixes' must remain in our control" (Letter to his son Custis Lee)-----------
Lee gave up his career as a very promising Army officer to fight for the South/Confederacy, and was never allowed to be a 'citizen' even when he was President of a College that later bore his name.
I would be happy to study any citation you wish to provide.
Thanks,
NativeSon
There's no silver bullet here. The Marxian tradition begun primarily by the Beards will say it was over capital. Incidentally, if you re-read teh Lee quote, there's a hint in there that it wasn't the slaves they were concerned with per se it was the "source of their wealth". Southern elites never bought into the idea that Unionists cared much at all about slaves outside of the hardcore abolitionists, who were loud but a small minority.
BUt I think the war was fought for more than one reason. Slavery was incompatible with democracy, so hardcore small d democrats hated it on that score. It was a religious abomination for many,so there was a strong moral objection from another minority. Industrialists hated it because slavery put them at a competitive disadvantage in the case that the SOuth could ever industrialize (one of the biggest reasons for the war) so many of them hated it. Ordinary workers, especially wage laborers (wage slaves) hated slavery because it a)depressed the value of labor in general, and b) a spread of slavery into the conquered territories would greatly reduce the opportunies for humble Americans to seek out new opportunities to raise their own status (this also applied to immigrants, many of whom hated slavery since it often reflected their own exploited status).
This doesn't even begin to address the complaints between north and south over the issues of a powerful heridatiry aristocracy in the South (after all, as Lee notes, the wealth is tied into agriculture, and land is inherited) which was at odds with the self-made man mythology of the new indutrial class of the North, so this was also, for them, a moral objection. Slavery reduced the incentive to create one's own fortune thorugh hard work.
A great book to catch most of these arguments is Foner's dissertation published as "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men". It's a leftist orientation that acknowledges a variety of viewpoints about the Civil War.
Excellent thread, everyone esp azjoe, kival, Native Son et al, superb writing from Pilger, thanks all, esp those gathering in the thousands, newsmen or no, if there were enough of us out there we could shut the whole thing down for a spell, wouldn't it be nice? That would certainly get the cameras' attention.
Right on the money, Skip. It was about economic hegemony. The "official" reason cited above from Gettell is about as true as bush's "WMD" or Wilson's "the war to stop all wars". If the South had been allowed to secede, they could have sold their cotton, etc abroad. The North, to keep their mills running, controlled the South through various tariffs, both on exports and imports. Not only did they need the cotton, but they needed the South as a market place for their industrial "goods". All the South produced was - produce. And that only through the abomination of slavery.
It would be nice to think, as Kagan holds in his Dangerous Nation, that the US only ever engages in hostilities for altruistic reasons. Spreadin' that old freedom and justice for all. That that's all the Republicans, from Lincoln on, ever really wanted.
From Raymond G. Gettell's History of American Political Thought (The Century Co. 1928):
In his inaugural address, Lincoln stated his intention to preserve the Union and to execute the laws of the United States in all parts of the country. He did not attack slavery or even the extension of slavery. He stated that he had no constitutional right to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed, and that he had no objection to a constitutional amendment prohibiting the United States government from ever interfering with slavery in the states...Lincoln believed, with Webster, that the Union was older than the Contitution, that it was not the creature of the Constitution, but was the result of historical development. Hence, he held that no state could legally withdraw from the Union, that secession ordinances were "legally void" and that acts of violence against the authority of the United States were "insurrectionary or revolutionary according to circumstances." He insisted that the Union was unbroken...and that he could protect the property of the United States and enforce its authority in all states.
...
In his message to Congress on July 4 (1861), after hostilities had begun, Lincoln definitely took his stand on the theory of national sovereignty. Defining sovereignty as "a political community without a political superior." he said: "Tested by this, no one of our states except Texas ever was a sovereignty. And even Texas gave up the character on coming into the Union . . . The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status... Originally some dependent colonies made the Union, and in turn the Union threw off their old dependence for them, and made them states."...To Licoln, secession ordinances were null and void. The destruction of the Union could result only from successful revolution, not from law...Congress accepted this doctrine, and resolved that the war was "not waged in any spirit of oppression, or for the purpose of conquest or subjugation, or for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of the states, but to defend and maintain the supremecy of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several states unimpaired."
pp357-9
(Raymond G. Gettell was Professor of Political Science in the University of California - Berkeley)
Our family and friends spent the 4th of July the same way other matriotic citizens of the earth did, by treating it exactly like any other day... except perhaps for that one rash purchase by my grampa of American flag-printed toilet paper.
WHERE!?
you can clean your butt on "old gory" by shopping here
http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/showthread.php?t=648733
Perhaps the only things that are true throughout human history are the bullet, the lie and the gold coin.
Mordechai-
You could have just stopped at Bullet!
All of human history has been written by the Atomic Bomb/bullet/sword/stoneaxe/wooden club/rock
it has been said that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
alas, it has actually been the hand that cradles the rock.
peace will be.
Almost that is, with Howard Zinn being the most famous historian who provides alternative views of history.
Mourn the 4th of July? Maybe, but it would be a great time to root out our traitorous elected officials and horsewhip the hell out of them.
A civilized society would...
Excellent summary of what I'm sure most CD readers already know. The only thing I'd disagree with is that Obama is just another politician going along with the myth. Maybe he is, maybe not. I think the jury's still out, though not for long.
Given the pervasiveness of the myth, any president, Nader included, would be savvy enough to know you have to outwardly support it. The question is, inwardly what do they do to overcome it. Bush did nothing, and in fact promoted it more. Obama, like I said, the jury's still out but not for long, and it's not looking good as each day passes. Kucinich in 2012!
"the jury's still out"
you sure let yourself be sold a load of bad hope there, friend.
Great article. There are an infinite number of ways to look at the world and at history, an infinite number of models of reality (hard science can narrow the range of logically and factually consistent models to some degree, though the soft sciences are generally too unreliable to narrow the range much further). For millions of people with different backgrounds and different positions and different interests to hold the same model, particularly a model that appears to primarily benefit one social class (the upper), it must be programmed, through propaganda or "public relations," usually by powerful elites in serving their own interests.
The only part of the article I would really quibble with: "the theft of Texas from Mexico." The US did not steal Texas from Mexico. The Mexicans were foolish enough to allow in settlers from the US who the Mexicans hoped would push out the Native American Indians and cultivate the land, providing tax revenue for the Mexican government. The US did steal California from Mexico, as the US-Mexican war was in response to Mexico's refusal to sell California to the US. The people whom Texas was actually stolen from were the Native American Indians living there at the time.
You know, kivals, if you look at history from the vantage point of the TRUTH you will have an effective remedy against this multitude of subjectivism and confusion.
I think it as likely that we would all agree on what is true with regard to human history and the present reality, without it being programmed into us, that a monkey operating under the British Museum Algorithm would get Hamlet right on the first try.
Replace "Hamlet" with "Baywatch" and we might have a ray of hope!
Pilger writes, not sarcastically
"There are millions of these anti-Americans ... They are the people with a wakeful conscience, the best of America's citizens. They can be counted on. ... Sure, they disappear from view now and then, but they are like seeds beneath the snow. I would say they are truly exceptional."
Well, the Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan war as been going on for some eight years now. I wonder how much longer we need to wait for these exceptional anti-Americans to surface.
Can anyone besides myself explain the vigorous civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements, cited by Pilger, and the lack of anything resembling an effective anti-Iraq war movement?
Not Allan, yes. The reason their were vigourous protests for civil rights and to stop Viet-Nam but there are none now is this=the difference several more decades of TV have made. Now a sophisticated propaganda thought molding tool, it pre-empts unrest, now young people have grown up from birth seeing Arab terrorists in movies and on TV. The US waging war on that part of the world is bang on in their usurped minds. In the 1960's and early 70's, actual news was still reported.
peace bro. see you at the Revolution
Video games have taught our youth to kill, to enjoy it and then to do it over and over again- sitting in front of a screen:
"It's fun to kill people who don't look like us!"
Have you ever strolled down the aisles of the gaming section of Toy's 'R Us?
Your local video/game store? Checked out the G.I. Joe "doll" equipment & armaments?
VERY scary what is being peddled to our kids.
So, yeah, TV, movies, video games (developed with help from the U.S. military)
and ever more sophisticated ad campaigns shoved at kids by Army & Navy recruiters, young people are being corrupted in ways we never even dreamed of 30-40 years ago.
Add to all of that our dumbed down, underfunded schools, where teachers can get fired for daring to suggest that diplomacy might be a good idea or that the Bible is not a scientific document: and here we are- reaping the tragic results.
OLD JOKE:
"I got the GI Joe Deserter for my birthday - it was an empty box."
Not Allan
Yes... it's: 1)crisis overload and fatigue, 2) MSM as Big Brother babysitter constantly droning maggot infested mush into the brains of the viewers, 3) grotesque diet of industrialized garbage turing 66% of population into undulating lardasses who can barely make it to the shitter to make room for the next load.
If anyone thinks this is "Revolution" material you'd best return to your daydreams.
Assuming your last question is not rhetorical, I think the essay answers your posit a few paragraphs back when Pilger quotes the late, great, Harold Pinter. To paraphrase, it's all hocus-pocus. America has merely improved upon its 'Public Relations' since the 60s. Back then we had a burgeoning middle-class, a draft 'lottery', and little debt.
The Ruling Class declared war and now we have a shrinking middle-class, a parallel 'invisible' mercenary army, and debt "from sea to shining sea".
When the Iraq war started, I went to a demo in DC, where the number of people reached close to 500 thousand. The next year, another... with demonstrators reaching near 300 thousand. I went to many more demonstrations as the war waned on, in DC and throughout the northeast, and each time there were less and less reporters. Finally in 2007 I went to a demonstration in Boston where there was not ONE reporter. We were all asking ourselves if it was worth the time and effort to make these trips if no one was listening. The corporate owned media has everything to do with the anti war effort. Im sure not many fox news fans realize that we spend almost a billion dollars every other day on the war machine, or more on our military adventures than the rest of the world combined.
I also attended all the rallies/protests in D.C., as well as in NYC. I even went to Boston and Philadelphia -- one time each. Each time, I traveled to D.C. the protesting crowds were larger.
There were hundreds of thousands of protesters, and we didn't even make the evening news.
But, I also know that rallies and protests were carried out in cities across this country -- in places you wouldn't expect. For instance, one of my friends who lives in Lincoln, NE, marched at least twice. There were also, in Lincoln, protests every Wednesday on the steps of the capital building. And, a friend of mine, who lives here in NYC, but is from Ohio, told me that his friends, in his hometown, marched and rallied. Those marches were sponsored by some of the churches.
I think, if we could add up the numbers, we'd all be surprised at how many people actually hit the streets to protest the invasion of Iraq, as well as other issues, such as education and health care.
There is no surprise that there were HUGE numbers and many small towns protesting the Iraq invasion back in 2003.
It is also no surprise that the numbers dwindled after the bombing began.
Organizing huge rallies and demos takes hard work, is expensive and after a while, the turn out is no longer what it was. Not many of us can constantly devote our days to organizing and attending these kinds of events.
There is a decided lack of imagination on the left.
We put together the same boring rallies, with too many speakers, at the same old locations (at least in my town) with little to no attention paid to coming up with strategies that might actually have an effect on reversing the war machine.
Until we get creative and start organizing something besides large rallies and learn how to be politically strategic, we will continue to be ineffective!
You wrote: "Im sure not many fox news fans realize that we spend almost a billion dollars every other day on the war machine..."
I bet that most of them do realize it, but they justify it as the necessary cost for securing "FREEDUMB!" I call it "FREEDUMB" because only the truly dumb can be truly free, as the rest of us through our use of knowledge and reason understand that we are all interconnected and our actions affect others in a myriad of ways, most of them unimaginable, and this understanding creates innumerable invisible chains that restrain us. And we understand that there are many versions of reality, and the mainstream US version that justifies and supports the imperialist adventures is contradicted by so many sources and in so many ways that we doubt it has much validity. But the Faux News crowd suffers from no such restraints and harbors no such doubts and they proudly support the military expenditures and want more, all in the name of FREEDUMB.
Yes, Kivals, yes! But as Pilger points out: "Credible polls have long confirmed that more than two-thirds of Americans hold progressive views."
Fox News and its 'constituents' are obviously still in the minority.
What worries me are the Obamabot 'liberals' who believe America has finally turned the corner. It used to be socially acceptable to 'Bash Bush' but now, mention O'bummer in a negative light and you can feel the blood pressure rising...
Corporate media serve their corporate masters, who are also the Masters of War.
Corporate "news", including the NY Times, is rarely worth paying much attention to anymore.
The Internet, as long as it is allowed to be relatively uncensored, is a better medium for news.
Infotainment and the increasing crush of economic disaster on most people have distracted and prevented many from being truly informed citizens, the essential requirement for a democracy (as a retiree on a decent pension, I have the time to keep informed. My still-working friends and colleagues cannot).
Re Not Allan July 9th, 2009 10:54 am, who asks
"Can anyone besides myself explain the vigorous civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements, cited by Pilger, and the lack of anything resembling an effective anti-Iraq war movement?"
The elites absorbed the lessons from the VietNam/civil rights protests, and fine-tuned the consent-manufacturing machinery accordingly. They have replaced war correspondents with "embedded journalists;" boonie-humping, lifer-fragging draftee grunts with the "all-volunteer Army;" and combat pilots, who sometimes got shot down and became POWs, with Predator drones piloted from thousands of miles away.
Anti-war protests, which once drew hundreds of thousands to DC---well, they still do, but they're not reported in the corporate media. Local demos don't even get coverage in the local media, which are increasingly owned by conglomerates like Gannett.
There's still a vast pro-peace, pro-environment, anti-corporate constituency in the US. Why it's ineffective is a separate question.
Your explanation?
There are 2 reasons that there is no effective anti-war movement now, while there was in the Viet-Nam era,
1. The mercenary, no draft, army. This way no one has any skin in the game.
2. The Jews have deserted the 'left'. Most of the focus and leadership of the Viet-nam anti-war movement was provided by Jews, with a few exceptions (Tom Hayden), and while many still pay lip service to the anti-Iraq war movement, the real drive to organize from the bottom up is missing.
careful, friend. your second point smacks of anti-semitism!
That was one of the best articles I have read here on CD. I have had the greatest respect for Pilger for years and have read all his books. This was a nice, concise summation of the things he has been writing about for quite awhile. We need more journalists like him. I plan on sending this out to everyone I know.
"Liberals say that the United States is once again a "nation of moral ideals"
I'm a liberal and I don't say that. Only self appointed hypocrites would say that. The ones that think only they have self defined morality while the masses are to stupid to have morals or think.
What Horsefeathers most of this article is.
Read Chalmers Johnson's trilogy: "Blowback", "The Sorrows of Empire", and "Nemesis"; Stephen Kinzer's "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq"; William Blum's "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" and "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II"; and Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance" and "Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the assault on Democracy".
Excellent references ED!
Henry IQ8... aka R wingnut Dbag
It's obvious to all that you are not only NOT liberal, but infact a RW troll out to stirr up shit. Why don't you just return to your Glenn Beck hour and bang your head repeatedly against the TV.
leave him be - he may learn something.
in the end we all have to pull together.
I get the impression that ole henry is simply a foil, a provocateur, spoiling for an argument just for argument's sake. Ever notice how his comments seem framed solely to incite knee-jerk reactions, with deliberate spite for any given opinion or observation or message the authors and commentors wish to impart? Avoid the bait and eventually he may grow tired of his games.
The Ugly Amerikan is back, alive and well, and bigger than ever in the 21st century.
Read books/articles by Chalmers Johnson on the modern Imperial Amerikan Empire.
Makes the British effort at empire look like rank amateurs.
I'm a liberal, card-carrying member of the ACLU and Vietnam Veteran Against the War(VVAW)
horsefeathers?...
"I once asked a friend, the great American war correspondent and humanitarian Martha Gellhorn, to explain the term to me. "I'll tell you what ‘anti-American' is," she said. "It's what governments and their vested interests call those who honour America by objecting to war and the theft of resources and believing in all of humanity...."
Henry8 is simply an example of the brainwashing and inability to remember History Mr Pilger alludes to.
The article is bang on.
i don't think it's only brainwashing, it feels like applied israeli hasbarah technique...
i don't think it's only brainwashing, it feels like applied israeli hasbarah technique...