How many people have been blown up and shot and otherwise violently killed in the American invasion and eight-year U.S. occupation of Iraq, so far? We know the exact numbers of U.S. military dead and injured (4,436 dead and 32,009 wounded) and have a vague idea of “reported Iraqi deaths” (between 100,000 and 109,000), and then there were who knows how many dead from the illness and malnutrition that comes from having an entire country’s infrastructure destroyed — water lines, health clinics, vaccines and common medicines, grocery stores, produce markets, dairies, etc.
A lot of military contractors died, too. But they were in it for the Big Money, so nobody really counts them. Also, America’s “reputation and standing” were destroyed, forever, and just like the British after the Suez Canal debacle, the world will never pay attention to the U.S. government again. We are done, finished, an international joke, 309 million slobs trying to shoplift flatscreens with our Personal Mobility Scooters before the batteries run out.
So, the Iraq Invasion/Occupation was good for something, right? Also, the Iraqi defector who gave the United States all that “intelligence” about Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction and all that? He just made it all up, because he wanted America to topple Saddam. It worked! Tell whatever lies you want for whatever ends you desire. That is the lesson.
This doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of play in the U.S. press today, does it? The Guardian reports:
The defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war.
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.
“Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right,” he said. “They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy.”
Haha, sure, you did great! Be proud. You easily tricked the former “superpower of the world” into a disastrous, eight-year nation-bankrupting nightmare fuckaround that resulted in the awful, violent, pointless death of at least a hundred thousand people. And you took down two countries in the process. Bravo, etc.
Remember that video from the White House Correspondents Dinner, of George W. Bush Junior comically looking around the White House for the make-believe WMDs he invaded Iraq to find, as a joke? We should watch that video, so everybody can laugh again.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
What is the United States infecting the world with today?
Now it seems the American people won’t even risk their credit ratings, student loans, the next piece of ass, or a sideways glance from people who look at them like AIDS patients for daring to deviate from the corporate, media-instilled norm. We have come a long way backward. Rodney King’s “Can’t we all just get along” has become the modern day theme song for the surrender of America’s character, and the L.A. Rebellion of 1992 was probably the last flame of will to fight injustice in American history.
This new quiescence comes at a time when US crimes are far worse and more far-reaching than they were in 1970; certainly in the eyes of the world. In 2001 the US government both facilitated and executed the attacks of 9/11 against its own people, killing thousands of its citizens as an excuse to launch a neo-imperial conquest for energy. A few Americans held small rallies, organized some ineffective groups, bought a few hundred thousand books and DVDs, listened to a few radio programs and lectures, and then quietly lined up to have their bags, emails, credit histories, minds and bodies searched. Critical mass was never achieved as Executive Orders along with the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts shredded the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments to our Bill of Rights.
After the 9-11 attacks the US government lied to create a war for profit in Iraq telling us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, almost-ready atom bombs, poison gas and deadly germs. We were told that he helped execute the 9/11 attacks. It was all lies, and no one has held the US accountable for the hundreds of thousands of deaths (murders) in Iraq and Afghanistan since then. Few have tried to hold the government accountable for 4,700+ Americans who have died needlessly, and those who have, have been remarkably ineffective.
US presidential elections were stolen in 2000 and 2004 through rigged electronic voting software and intimidation. Not one drop of blood was spilled anywhere, even as the US Supreme Court rendered an illegal decision supporting the overthrow of the Constitution and trampling the rights of individual states.
I never thought I would call the 70s and 80s “the good old days”. I would cry tears of joy today to see just one campus overrun by a modern equivalent of the Students for a Democratic Society. I would cheer to see a general strike paralyze a city. It would be living proof that American character had not been submerged, drugged, weakened, and rendered anemic beyond revival.
My country is dead. Its people have surrendered to tyranny, and in so doing, they have become tyranny’s primary support group; its base constituency; its chief defender. Every day they offer their endorsement of tyranny by banking in its banks and spending their borrowed money with the corporations that run it. The great Neocon strategy of George H.W. Bush has triumphed.
Convince the American people that they can’t live without the “good things”, then sit back and watch as they endorse the progressively more outrageous crimes you commit as you throw them bones with ever-less meat on them. All the while, lock them into debt. Destroy the middle class, the only political base that need be feared. Make them accept, because of their own shared guilt, ever-more repressive police state measures.
Do whatever you want.
No amount of mind control spin can absolve any of us from acknowledging this ugly truth about the US and its crimes today. It lurks invisibly behind every corporate news broadcast, every commercially-made television show, every infomercial, every new magazine ad, and almost every new popular song that leads Americans deeper into ever-less-satisfying consumption, self-indulgence and debt. It stands grinning behind every report on the world’s rapacious financial markets and every new automobile, shampoo, or other product that promises to give the world larger and more potent sexual organs, bigger (more ridiculous) breasts, a better love life, and peace of mind.
My life has always been full of ironies. I believed that the United States could be changed from the inside. I do not believe that today. I believe it will take a herculean effort on the part of someone to fix this infestation of insane psychopaths on this planet. We need someone along the lines of Huey Long. No matter when it starts, it is going to be ugly. It will be a global conflict like no other with ½ of the earth’s population wiped out. These people will not give up their power and wealth easily, so prepare for the worst. In the end, WE THE PEOPLE will prevail because we are fighting for our lives while the Elite fight for their possessions. We must fight because we have nothing left to lose and it is better to fight and die than to live as slaves.
In my earlier life I had chosen not to die a martyr’s death, although I would change that decision today. As I am learning every day, there are more difficult and demanding ways to write the final chapters of one’s life. I would rather die a martyr’s death doing something good for humanity than to die when I am 85 only to look back and say “I could have done more to fix the problem, but I was too selfish”.
Like all humans I want to hold on to dreams for as long as possible, even long after I know they will never come true. I have tried and sacrificed with every fiber of my being to change my country, but the plain fact is that the United States of America cannot and will never be changed from within.
Today the United States is the cause of ever-expanding wars (covert and overt), carnage, suffering, and political and economic exploitation –- even within its own borders against its own people –- that fill our corporate-issued headlines and TV shows. The US economy, the privately-owned Federal Reserve system, and the government which they operate like a franchise are the greatest enemies of the entire human race and especially the rapidly- deteriorating and fragile ecosystem which supports all life. U.S. citizens are slowly discovering that they are not immune because of their nationality. On our planet today, what happens to one must inevitably happen to all people.
The US economy, driven by a fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, debt-based financing –- and “doped” with the billions of dollars of drug profits laundered through its corporations and banks –- is a superheated pyramid scheme of infinite growth wherein 5% of the world’s population consumes 25% of the world’s energy and a totally disproportionate share of the world’s diminishing resources and commodities.
If Americans are using 25% of the worlds energy and resources, SOMEBODY is going without in order for us to keep this up. Someone is getting shorted and I dare say it’s not really a fair shake.
In their silence and acquiescence Americans have voted – even if by abstention – to stand on the shoulders of all drowning peoples in the vain hope that they will somehow be saved from a paradigm which they support and empower by obeying it; by endorsing it with their silence or knowingly impotent protests; by refusing to throw themselves against the gears of the machine. In this world, a protest which is allowed by permit and encouraged, corralled into free-speech areas, and then policed by the ruling government only to be ignored by the media is, by definition, meaningless. Americans are free to vote, but rank near the bottom in voter turnout by world comparisons.
The US is a nation where the “non-negotiable” and unsustainable “American” way of life is propped up by global conflict, out-of-control military spending, massive and unsustainable debt, and an increasingly-aggressive fascist police state. It is a nation where all US citizens who do not resist and disconnect from this paradigm enjoy their ever-diminishing privileges with the guilty knowledge that somewhere else, hopefully in some “other” country, others are paying the price for it.
The world is now my country.
With the passage of time, the degree of corporate oppression, the outrageousness of the cruelty, and the absurdity of the lies can only increase as dwindling resources diminish and desperation erupts. Ironically, the disappearing American middle class will still cheer at each new millionaire success story, even if they quietly understand that a hundred or a thousand of their kind had to disappear to create it. They chase illusions of hope rather than the real possibility of justice and change like lottery players with a one-in-a-billion chance of winning. They prefer that to hard work and sacrifice with much better odds where almost everybody can win something.
As the human race enters the first stages of inevitable collapse resulting from cheap oil and never ending wars, it does so ass-backwards, in complete denial, and in the one way most certain to guarantee the greatest amount of suffering and death for future generations. It does so because, for a time at least, U.S. foreign, military, and economic policy holds the steering wheel of human destiny through dollar hegemony, military force, technology and globalization.
This control is inevitably weakening, and other hands in other countries are successfully struggling for an ever-increasing measure of influence. The Empire is dying from within, and like all wounded beasts, it is becoming more vicious and dangerous in the process; its lies more transparent.
A different world is possible. A better world is possible. It took the imminent threat of my own life to make me fully admit to my innermost self what I have known for years. I had to stop living in the problem and start living in the solution. If I did not, my soul would have died just as surely as my body would have died.
I do not know where I will spend the rest of my days. Maybe in Venezuela, in Bolivia, maybe in France, Germany, or even Russia. But because Venezuela has become the singular world leader in resisting US domination under the courageous, intelligent, and inspired leadership of Hugo Chavez, I want to begin the rest of my days there.
I lived in Venezuela about 14 years ago and still have friends there and contacts that I know quite well. I also have a lot of good memories of Colombia and lots of good friends there, as well as a great friend that still lives in Iran. I am not concerned about making a living, I will be just fine. People like me always find a way.
Being freer to speak, to learn, to experience and to witness real solutions being discovered and implemented by people willing to take risks and who understand the challenges, I will be better able to live my life the way I always envisioned it: Free, not having to answer to anyone, raising our son and watching him grow up and teaching him good things and to be a better person.
One thing is certain about fascism and that is its behavior and evolution are remarkably predictable. Fascism always becomes more vicious as it evolves. It never retreats, and as with drug addition, larger and larger doses of oppression and violence are always required to sustain its inevitable path towards self-destruction.
As the great Cynthia McKinney said not long before her just-orchestrated ouster from the House of Representatives, “any fool can see it coming.”
Those who know history are not destined to repeat it.
This new quiescence comes at a time when US crimes are far worse and more far-reaching than they were in 1970; certainly in the eyes of the world. In 2001 the US government both facilitated and executed the attacks of 9/11 against its own people, killing thousands of its citizens as an excuse to launch a neo-imperial conquest for energy. A few Americans held small rallies, organized some ineffective groups, bought a few hundred thousand books and DVDs, listened to a few radio programs and lectures, and then quietly lined up to have their bags, emails, credit histories, minds and bodies searched. Critical mass was never achieved as Executive Orders along with the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts shredded the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments to our Bill of Rights.
After the 9-11 attacks the US government lied to create a war for profit in Iraq telling us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, almost-ready atom bombs, poison gas and deadly germs. We were told that he helped execute the 9/11 attacks. It was all lies, and no one has held the US accountable for the hundreds of thousands of deaths (murders) in Iraq and Afghanistan since then. Few have tried to hold the government accountable for 4,700+ Americans who have died needlessly, and those who have, have been remarkably ineffective.
US presidential elections were stolen in 2000 and 2004 through rigged electronic voting software and intimidation. Not one drop of blood was spilled anywhere, even as the US Supreme Court rendered an illegal decision supporting the overthrow of the Constitution and trampling the rights of individual states.
I never thought I would call the 70s and 80s “the good old days”. I would cry tears of joy today to see just one campus overrun by a modern equivalent of the Students for a Democratic Society. I would cheer to see a general strike paralyze a city. It would be living proof that American character had not been submerged, drugged, weakened, and rendered anemic beyond revival.
My country is dead. Its people have surrendered to tyranny, and in so doing, they have become tyranny’s primary support group; its base constituency; its chief defender. Every day they offer their endorsement of tyranny by banking in its banks and spending their borrowed money with the corporations that run it. The great Neocon strategy of George H.W. Bush has triumphed.
Convince the American people that they can’t live without the “good things”, then sit back and watch as they endorse the progressively more outrageous crimes you commit as you throw them bones with ever-less meat on them. All the while, lock them into debt. Destroy the middle class, the only political base that need be feared. Make them accept, because of their own shared guilt, ever-more repressive police state measures.
Do whatever you want.
No amount of mind control spin can absolve any of us from acknowledging this ugly truth about the US and its crimes today. It lurks invisibly behind every corporate news broadcast, every commercially-made television show, every infomercial, every new magazine ad, and almost every new popular song that leads Americans deeper into ever-less-satisfying consumption, self-indulgence and debt. It stands grinning behind every report on the world’s rapacious financial markets and every new automobile, shampoo, or other product that promises to give the world larger and more potent sexual organs, bigger (more ridiculous) breasts, a better love life, and peace of mind.
My life has always been full of ironies. I believed that the United States could be changed from the inside. I do not believe that today. I believe it will take a herculean effort on the part of someone to fix this infestation of insane psychopaths on this planet. We need someone along the lines of Huey Long. No matter when it starts, it is going to be ugly. It will be a global conflict like no other with ½ of the earth’s population wiped out. These people will not give up their power and wealth easily, so prepare for the worst. In the end, WE THE PEOPLE will prevail because we are fighting for our lives while the Elite fight for their possessions. We must fight because we have nothing left to lose and it is better to fight and die than to live as slaves.
In my earlier life I had chosen not to die a martyr’s death, although I would change that decision today. As I am learning every day, there are more difficult and demanding ways to write the final chapters of one’s life. I would rather die a martyr’s death doing something good for humanity than to die when I am 85 only to look back and say “I could have done more to fix the problem, but I was too selfish”.
Like all humans I want to hold on to dreams for as long as possible, even long after I know they will never come true. I have tried and sacrificed with every fiber of my being to change my country, but the plain fact is that the United States of America cannot and will never be changed from within.
Today the United States is the cause of ever-expanding wars (covert and overt), carnage, suffering, and political and economic exploitation –- even within its own borders against its own people –- that fill our corporate-issued headlines and TV shows. The US economy, the privately-owned Federal Reserve system, and the government which they operate like a franchise are the greatest enemies of the entire human race and especially the rapidly- deteriorating and fragile ecosystem which supports all life. U.S. citizens are slowly discovering that they are not immune because of their nationality. On our planet today, what happens to one must inevitably happen to all people.
The US economy, driven by a fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, debt-based financing –- and “doped” with the billions of dollars of drug profits laundered through its corporations and banks –- is a superheated pyramid scheme of infinite growth wherein 5% of the world’s population consumes 25% of the world’s energy and a totally disproportionate share of the world’s diminishing resources and commodities.
If Americans are using 25% of the worlds energy and resources, SOMEBODY is going without in order for us to keep this up. Someone is getting shorted and I dare say it’s not really a fair shake.
In their silence and acquiescence Americans have voted – even if by abstention – to stand on the shoulders of all drowning peoples in the vain hope that they will somehow be saved from a paradigm which they support and empower by obeying it; by endorsing it with their silence or knowingly impotent protests; by refusing to throw themselves against the gears of the machine. In this world, a protest which is allowed by permit and encouraged, corralled into free-speech areas, and then policed by the ruling government only to be ignored by the media is, by definition, meaningless. Americans are free to vote, but rank near the bottom in voter turnout by world comparisons.
The US is a nation where the “non-negotiable” and unsustainable “American” way of life is propped up by global conflict, out-of-control military spending, massive and unsustainable debt, and an increasingly-aggressive fascist police state. It is a nation where all US citizens who do not resist and disconnect from this paradigm enjoy their ever-diminishing privileges with the guilty knowledge that somewhere else, hopefully in some “other” country, others are paying the price for it.
The world is now my country.
With the passage of time, the degree of corporate oppression, the outrageousness of the cruelty, and the absurdity of the lies can only increase as dwindling resources diminish and desperation erupts. Ironically, the disappearing American middle class will still cheer at each new millionaire success story, even if they quietly understand that a hundred or a thousand of their kind had to disappear to create it. They chase illusions of hope rather than the real possibility of justice and change like lottery players with a one-in-a-billion chance of winning. They prefer that to hard work and sacrifice with much better odds where almost everybody can win something.
As the human race enters the first stages of inevitable collapse resulting from cheap oil and never ending wars, it does so ass-backwards, in complete denial, and in the one way most certain to guarantee the greatest amount of suffering and death for future generations. It does so because, for a time at least, U.S. foreign, military, and economic policy holds the steering wheel of human destiny through dollar hegemony, military force, technology and globalization.
This control is inevitably weakening, and other hands in other countries are successfully struggling for an ever-increasing measure of influence. The Empire is dying from within, and like all wounded beasts, it is becoming more vicious and dangerous in the process; its lies more transparent.
A different world is possible. A better world is possible. It took the imminent threat of my own life to make me fully admit to my innermost self what I have known for years. I had to stop living in the problem and start living in the solution. If I did not, my soul would have died just as surely as my body would have died.
I do not know where I will spend the rest of my days. Maybe in Venezuela, in Bolivia, maybe in France, Germany, or even Russia. But because Venezuela has become the singular world leader in resisting US domination under the courageous, intelligent, and inspired leadership of Hugo Chavez, I want to begin the rest of my days there.
I lived in Venezuela about 14 years ago and still have friends there and contacts that I know quite well. I also have a lot of good memories of Colombia and lots of good friends there, as well as a great friend that still lives in Iran. I am not concerned about making a living, I will be just fine. People like me always find a way.
Being freer to speak, to learn, to experience and to witness real solutions being discovered and implemented by people willing to take risks and who understand the challenges, I will be better able to live my life the way I always envisioned it: Free, not having to answer to anyone, raising our son and watching him grow up and teaching him good things and to be a better person.
One thing is certain about fascism and that is its behavior and evolution are remarkably predictable. Fascism always becomes more vicious as it evolves. It never retreats, and as with drug addition, larger and larger doses of oppression and violence are always required to sustain its inevitable path towards self-destruction.
As the great Cynthia McKinney said not long before her just-orchestrated ouster from the House of Representatives, “any fool can see it coming.”
Those who know history are not destined to repeat it.
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