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Seeing history from a different perspective is often an enlightening experience. Noam Chomsky is a excellent guide to a historical narrative that makes sense and fits the facts of the situation, as opposed to what we are told by approved sources. It is a long read, somehow sadly classified as a radical perspective, but well worth your time. The media in the US often do not publish Chomsky’s work despite its accuracy and veracity, because publishing it might actually stir public opinion and motivate people to get involved with their government. It is left to alternative media organizations and Al Jazeera to find insight on how the world really works without the usual mainstream blinders.
“Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated – Japan’s attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example. Others are ignored, and we can often learn valuable lessons from them about what is likely to lie ahead. Right now, in fact.
At the moment, we are failing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of President John F Kennedy’s decision to launch the most destructive and murderous act of aggression of the post-World War II period: the invasion of South Vietnam, later all of Indochina, leaving millions dead and four countries devastated, with casualties still mounting from the long-term effects of drenching South Vietnam with some of the most lethal carcinogens known, undertaken to destroy ground cover and food crops.
The prime target was South Vietnam. The aggression later spread to the North, then to the remote peasant society of northern Laos, and finally to rural Cambodia, which was bombed at the stunning level of all allied air operations in the Pacific region during World War II, including the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this, Henry Kissinger’s orders were being carried out – “anything that flies on anything that moves” – a call for genocide that is rare in the historical record. Little of this is remembered. Most was scarcely known beyond narrow circles of activists.
When the invasion was launched 50 years ago, concern was so slight that there were few efforts at justification, hardly more than the president’s impassioned plea that “we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence” and if the conspiracy achieves its ends in Laos and Vietnam, “the gates will be opened wide”.
Elsewhere, he warned further that “the complacent, the self-indulgent, the soft societies are about to be swept away with the debris of history [and] only the strong… can possibly survive”, in this case reflecting on the failure of US aggression and terror to crush Cuban independence.
By the time protest began to mount half a dozen years later, the respected Vietnam specialist and military historian Bernard Fall, no dove, forecast that “Vietnam as a cultural and historic entity… is threatened with extinction…[as]…the countryside literally dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this size”. He was again referring to South Vietnam.
When the war ended eight horrendous years later, mainstream opinion was divided between those who described the war as a “noble cause” that could have been won with more dedication, and at the opposite extreme, the critics, to whom it was “a mistake” that proved too costly. By 1977, President Carter aroused little notice when he explained that we owe Vietnam “no debt” because “the destruction was mutual”.
There are important lessons in all this for today, even apart from another reminder that only the weak and defeated are called to account for their crimes. One lesson is that to understand what is happening we should attend not only to critical events of the real world, often dismissed from history, but also to what leaders and elite opinion believe, however tinged with fantasy. Another lesson is that alongside the flights of fancy concocted to terrify and mobilise the public (and perhaps believed by some who are trapped in their own rhetoric), there is also geostrategic planning based on principles that are rational and stable over long periods because they are rooted in stable institutions and their concerns. That is true in the case of Vietnam as well. I will return to that, only stressing here that the persistent factors in state action are generally well concealed.
The Iraq war is an instructive case. It was marketed to a terrified public on the usual grounds of self-defense against an awesome threat to survival: the “single question”, George W Bush and Tony Blair declared, was whether Saddam Hussein would end his programs of developing weapons of mass destruction. When the single question received the wrong answer, government rhetoric shifted effortlessly to our “yearning for democracy”, and educated opinion duly followed course; all routine.
Later, as the scale of the US defeat in Iraq was becoming difficult to suppress, the government quietly conceded what had been clear all along. In 2007-2008, the administration officially announced that a final settlement must grant the US military bases and the right of combat operations, and must privilege US investors in the rich energy system – demands later reluctantly abandoned in the face of Iraqi resistance. And all well kept from the general population.
Gauging American decline
Poking wasps nests with chopsticks seems to be the motive behind much of US foreign policy. The cesspool that is Afghanistan needs only a couple of gentle stirs to spray its fetid lunacy and violence on everything and everyone. Case in point, burning paper turns the people bug-frack crazy:
“Afghan officials say at least two demonstrators have been killed in northern Afghanistan as protests over last week’s burning of Qur’ans turned violent.
It marked the sixth day of deadly protests over the burning of Qur’ans and other religious materials at a U.S. base. The White House has called the incident a mistake and apologized to the Afghan government but demonstrations have continued.”
The US relationship with Afghanistan seems to be suffering multiple personality disorder. Drone attacks that butcher civilians get little mention, but burning the Koran gets an official apology? It makes no sense. You don’t do PR in an occupied country, you just get the job done because by now any notion of good intent or nation building is long gone. All that remains is the national interest, the more discretely it is handled the better.
“The administrator of Iman Sahib district in Kunduz province says Sunday’s protest turned violent as demonstrators tried to enter the district’s largest city. He says people in the crowd fired on police and threw grenades at a U.S. base nearby. NATO said initial reports indicated no international service members were killed.”
Ignorant people with access to small arms and explosives, how could anything go wrong?
“A gunman killed two U.S. military advisers with shots to the back of the head Saturday inside a heavily guarded ministry building in Kabul, and NATO ordered military workers out of Afghan ministries as protests raged for a fifth day over the burning of Qur’ans at a U.S. army base.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack at the Interior Ministry, saying it was retaliation for the Qur’an burnings, after the two U.S. servicemen — a lieutenant-colonel and a major — were found dead on their office floor, Afghan and western officials said.”
Whoops. Underestimating the resolve of your enemy is always a recipe for trouble. U.S/NATO forces will be forced to reevaluate their security procedures after this incident.
“The two American service members were found by another foreigner who went into the room, which is only accessible by people who know the correct numerical combination, according to the Afghan official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose details about the shootings.
They were shot in the back of the head, according to Western officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the information. Authorities were poring over security camera video for clues, the Afghan official said.”
I wonder if the American Administration is getting the message? The slow-motion withdrawal is only going to cost more lives. Admit defeat, and get on with the program already, there are others in line just waiting to be invaded and oppressed.
So, is this how it must be?
I’m thinking that we get Anonymous when the structures of your democratic institutions are corrupted and ineffective. When the voice of the people is lost in the swirl of corporate dollars and lobbying, we get Anonymous. When the elites believe that they are truly untouchable and are a gift to the rest of us, we get Anonymous.
Do I agree with their all of their methods? No, but the message they broadcast has a certain resonance that I’m sure the power-brokers of the world detest and fear, and that, friends, is a good thing.
Watch, gentle readers, what happens when elite interests are not given priority. The outcry, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the injustice of it all. The MPAA CEO Chris Dodd called out the irresponsible websites – Wikipedia, Reddit etc on their egregious behaviour:
“A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals.”
Ah, so the authors and money men who sponsored and rammed through the DMCA legislation are back for more, and of course it is all just to protect American Jobs, Apple Pie and All that is What is Right in the World (aka profit). The MPAA and friends screwed up this time because they over estimated their purchase of the American Congress and grossly underestimated the will of the American people. I’m not a huge fan of the American body politic, but this time, for once, the good guys won. The corporate lobby and its billions just got rolled by a ground swell of people calling/emailing/tweeting etc their elected representatives and telling them in no uncertain terms that if this passed, so too would their comfy digs in congress. Huzzah!
It would be me remiss of me not to point out that similar elite interests have been much more successful in herding the American populace in other areas. Perhaps the MPAA and related corporate lobby should have declared a “War on Piracy”, as that seems (going to war on common nouns to be specific) to have a much better track record in press-ganging convincing the people of America to support their government when it does horrible things in their name.
The smiling face of your corporate sponsored disenfranchisement.
One of the instruments of douche that has been doing his very best to whip American into a blind frenzy just happens to be a representative of the Global Intellectual Property Center affiliated with, of course, the US Chamber of Commerce. Enter Steve Tepp. Steve Tepp, along with the US Chamber of Commerce is only interested in saving US jobs and making the world a better, safer place for Business Americans.
Steve was recently interviewed on CBC’s The Current by Mike Finnerty. It is a 20 minute interview, but I highly recommend you listen to the whole thing as Steve gets his ass handed to him by Rob Beschizza the managing editor from Boing Boing.net. I’ve transcribed and will reproduce some of the highlights from the interview. Watch closely how our boy Steve attempts to frame this issue:
“This issue is fundamentally about American Jobs and protecting consumers.”
Wow, the MPAA CEO and Steve are all about JOBS. Like holy-frack they are right there beside the rest of the 99% fighting just to make ends meet. They just want to protect the little guy! They certainly would not want to scaremonger or obfuscate what SOPA is really about.
“Criminals are abusing the internet to steal the most creative and innovative products that are out in the marketplace.”
I’m wondering if Steve said this with a straight face considering the creative output from Hollywood that enhances and enriches our cultural life.
” […] New twists, children’s toys, automobile parts, medicine its all fake, its all made in unsupervised facilities, it can be shoddy, people have died. This stuff can be extremely dangerous.”
This from the same people who regularly decry the EPA, food safety and consumer protection and worker health/safety legislation in general as ‘dirty socialism’ suddenly finds is voice and moral outrage at the very notion of Americans buying shoddy unsafe products. Profits Lives are on the line!
Steve tries very hard to be the good corporate PR flack but ultimately fails when confronted with the facts of the situation. SOPA like the DMCA act before it, exists only for business entities to consolidate and defend their ‘intellectual property’ in perpetuity. In essence they want a bigger stick to punish people who dare to mess with their profits.
Not this time Steve. The democratic spirit of America awoke for a little while and slapped you down. Hard. A small victory for internet freedom and expression, but the repressive forces of the corporatocracy have already fired back, taking down MegaUploads and charging people with copyright infringement and piracy. Anonymous fired back, taking down several government web sites as well as the MPAA’s own website.
This issue is not going away. The siren call of avarice is much to strong to let little things like freedom of speech and freedom from censorship to get in the way. Stay tuned for round 2.
*update* – Need Background on the issue? Check out the TED Talk.
Ethics are what make people stand against tyranny. Saying “no” to the crowd is one of the most difficult challenges we face as social animals. Bradley Manning had the courage to make an ethical stand, we all possess similar characteristics, we just choose to dismiss these ethical impulses. When we do so, our the moral fabric of our society degrades.
“Washington, DC – Private Bradley Manning was just 22 years old when he allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of US State Department cables and video evidence of war crimes to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. For that act of courage that revealed to the world the true face of the American empire, he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.”
Making an ethical stand always has consequences; I’m surprised Mr.Manning has not been executed yet for his actions. The international media, not heard in the US of course, is picking up the story and telling a significantly different narrative than what the White House would like you to believe.
“All one needs to know about American justice is that if he had murdered civilians and desecrated their corpses – if he had the moral capacity to commit war crimes, not the audacity to expose them – he’d be better off today.”
Not exactly good for the recruiting posters.
“Indeed, if Manning had merely murdered the nameless, faceless “other”, as his Army colleagues on the notorious Afghan “Kill Team” did, he would not have had his right to a speedy trial blatantly violated. If Manning had intentionally killed unarmed civilians, posed for pictures with their dead bodies and slashed their fingers off as souvenirs, he would not have had his guilt publicly pronounced by his own commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama, months before he so much as saw the inside of a military court. If he had killed poor foreigners instead of exposing their deaths, he might even stand a chance of getting out of prison while still a young man.”
War brings a different set of rules to the table, but we in the West would like to think that we possess some noble spirit that sets us apart from the rest. Yo-ho, it is they who are savages, the brutes who kill indiscriminately. What bullocks.
“This isn’t really a head-scratching development. While killing unarmed civilians for sport may not be officially sanctioned policy, it doesn’t threaten the functioning of the war machine as much as a soldier standing up and refusing to be complicit in mass murder. From the perspective of a Washington establishment much more concerned with maintaining hegemony than its humanity, the former – murder – is much less troubling a precedent than the latter.
And so the US government is making an example of Manning, lest any other cogs in the machine start thinking about listening to their consciences instead of their commanders.”
The mirroring of foreign policy onto this case bears further investigation. The bullshite you here about the domino theory and the various red-scares starts with the implicit assumption that the “threat of a good-example” must be quashed at all costs. The illegal terrorist war waged by the United States on Nicaragua is a prime example of a country using resources for its people instead of the multinationals. Raises the poor a few steps out of abject poverty is the “good example” that must be utterly destroyed so “stability” can be restored. Stability being shorthand for globalized corporate control. Focusing on the individual case of Mr.Manning we can observe the same pattern.
Manning’s actions speak of a human conscience, a sense that what was going on was horribly wrong and it needed to stop. Acting on his conscience as a decent human being, Manning took action. Having people empathically relate to official enemies is a big no no in the armed forces, you might start questioning the rational, as such, of what you’re doing there and that, gentle readers, is not allowed.
“Had Manning – instead of exposing the crime – been the one pulling the trigger in the US Apache helicopter that in 2007 murdered at least a dozen unarmed people in Baghdad, he wouldn’t be facing any legal consequences for his actions. Had Manning authorised a 2009 missile strike in Yemen that killed 14 women and 21 children, instead of releasing the State Department cable that acknowledges responsibility for the killings, we wouldn’t even know his name.
But Manning didn’t kill anybody. Rather, he was outraged by the killing he saw all around him and angered at the complicity of his higher-ups who weren’t prepared to do a damn thing about. So, the system having failed to ensure accountability, Manning took it upon himself to share the inconvenient facts his government was withholding from the world.
“I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy”, he explained in a chat with hacker-turned-informant Adrian Lamo. As an Army intelligence analyst, Manning witnessed firsthand the American empire in action – and it changed him. “I don’t believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore”, he lamented, “only a plethora of states acting in self-interest”.
Transparency, accountability, responsibility are all hallmarks of a functioning democracy. The people of a democracy have the right to know what is being done in their name.
“Confronted with the reality of institutional evil, Manning risked his career – and his freedom – in order to expose everything from mass murder and child rape in Afghanistan to US support for brutal dictators across North Africa and the Middle East. His actions were heroic, and Amnesty International has even credited them as the spark for with jump-starting the Arab Spring. And yet a president who proclaims his commitment to transparency while on the campaign trail is determined to go down as the one whose administration mentally tortured, prosecuted and jailed the most famous whistle-blower in half-a-century.”
Officially we want heroes from war, but what we really get are ‘made-men’ who, with the consent of the state, parrot the institutional truths back to the public to keep them in the dark. Outside of the borders of the USA, the notion of ‘defending freedom’ has a much different definition, one much closer to the harsh truth that Bradly Manning chose to share.
Manning said,”I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy”. – Perhaps if the American public could share a similar sentiment democracy might begin to flourish once again in the USA.
Before my libertarian friends get entirely up in arms I’d like to preface this article with a disclaimer. This is not a’ beat up on libertarian inanity’ post, I have plenty of those already, but rather an examination of the role of the state when it comes to managing the affairs of a country. Now as to what the optimal mix is between the public/private is, is quite contentious. In my opinion, the social democratic state a la Sweden or to a lesser extent Canada does the best at preserving choice and liberty while keeping its citizens safe from “free-market” discipline and providing the social services necessary for a smoothly running society. Unfortunately for Mexico, they have been herded far away from anything resembling a social democratic state.
Mexico, the biggest loser in the NAFTA free investors agreement has never recovered from the trauma. Local industry and manufacturing was gutted with the influx of tariff free American goods. Local agriculture was hollowed out as tariff free food-stuffs made farming unprofitable with people leaving the land en mass (Our churlish Canadian federal conservatives are dismembering our single desk wheat board, moving us merrily closer to the Mexico model, yaaaa!) . What was left intact in Mexico was drug cultivation and production, as illegal trade tends not to respect treaties or borders (kinda like a different shade of NAFTA, creepy eh?) While the Mexican economy is going on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, the government was forced to adopt many of the notorious structural adjustments that we tend to enforce on even poorer countries to cut the ‘fat’ out of government spending.
What constitutes “fat” are programs that strengthen the social fabric and cohesion of society: Health Care, Education, and Welfare. Obviously the state has no business in areas like these, and the inevitable cuts destroy the social safety net for a countries citizens. Another step toward that lovely Darwinian state of being that is so often bandied about by libertarians. Survival of the fittest, personal liberties and freedom from government interference. Most of the time, your freedom consists of choosing how you and your family can starve or how quickly you can be come destitute if your unlucky enough to get sick. As the structures of the state fall away society morphs closer to the “me first, once I get mine, fuck you” attitude that exemplifies the majority of libertarian thought. Altruism, community, social supports all decay as the struggle to survive quickly marginalizes these now luxurious concerns. “How can I help my community?”, is trumped by, “How can I feed my family?” and necessarily so.
The emergence of the Mexican Narco state is the response to “how can I feed my family?”. The Narcotics industry is profitable, and there are many jobs available, positions that need to be filled and are filled by desperate people who struggle to exist in Mexican state that has been economically and socially hollowed out by ‘market forces’. The violence continues as the Cartels struggle for territory and power while the enfeebled state attempts to maintain order.
“The bound and gagged bodies of 26 young men were found dumped in the heart of Mexico’s second-largest city, in what experts said could mark a new stage in the full-scale war between the country’s two main drug cartels.
The bodies were found early on Thursday in two vans and a pickup truck abandoned on an expressway near the Milennium Arches in Guadalajara, one of the most recognisable landmarks in the city, according to several local media.Most of the men died of asphyxia, according to officials in Jalisco state where Guadalajara is located, though initial reports indicated some had been shot. Mexican drug cartels frequently leave threatening messages with the bodies of their victims as a way of sowing fear and taking credit for their actions.”
This is a version of the free market in action. With no rules, no regulation, everything is on the table.
“The victims, apparently between the ages of 25 and 35, all had the words “Milenio Zetas” or “Milenium” written on their chests in oil, said Jalisco state Interior Secretary Fernando Guzman Perez. A law enforcement official who was not authorised to speak on the record said the writing was apparently meant as the killers’ calling card, identifying the assassins as being from the Zetas and a smaller, allied gang, the Milenio Cartel. The official said a banner found in one of the vehicles, whose contents Guzman Perez refused to reveal, was in fact signed by the Zetas. The killings, apparently carried out before dawn, bore an eerie similarity to the September 20 dumping of 35 bodies on an expressway in the Gulf coast city of Veracruz.”
The desperate poor a set on each other killing themselves for their small slice of “the action” so they and their families might survive another day.
“Our correspondent said the federal government was steadfast in its decision to continue using the full force of the state to battle the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel.
“Despite all of those efforts … these kinds of killings continue here and there’s a sense at times that the federal government is really unable to control these kinds of possible revenge killings by trafficking organisations,” he said. Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s president, has deployed the army to crack down on powerful criminal gangs and some 45,000 people have died in the conflict since he took office.”
The Drug War continues in Mexico. We are at least partially responsible for what has happened there, and what continues to happen there (we provide the market for the narco state’s end products).
Lest We Forget.
Poignant words. Powerful words. Oft recited words by people of all political stripes, but what do they mean? Do we honour them on Remembrance Day, every other day?
The words are often added to the end of the Ode of Remembrance, although they were never a part of it. As the actual Ode of Remembrance is actually quite long, we often only hear the third and fourth stanzas:
- They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
- Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
- They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
- They fell with their faces to the foe.
- They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
- Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
- At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
- We will remember them.
I remember hearing this every year during school, from grades 1 to 12, and repeating Lest We Forget back to the speaker at the end of the recital of that poem. I remember seeing the veterans of WWI and WWII dressed in their uniform and being proud of them. I was told they were great men, and I still believe they are today. The WWI veterans fought in the Great War, the war to end all wars it was called. We were very lucky to still have some among us in my small town. The WWII veterans fought what could be called a continuation of that war. But finally they won the war, again, and this could be the end of war.
I also remember the days that were not the eleventh day of the eleventh month of my childhood. I remember the first Gulf War, and what heroes we were being by rescuing Kuwait. I remember glorifying the soldier and the war. I remember trading collectible cards. I remember watching that war on television every night with my father and talking about it the next day with my classmates during recess. It was what everyone was doing.
Hardly what those who fought the war to end all wars would have wanted us to do, I would think. As just as that war may or may not have been, the glorification of that war instead of what should have been a sombre seems contrary to the spirit of remembrance.
Lest We Forget?
Of course, then there are all the wars that have been fought by the participants of WWI and WWII since then. Korea in the 50’s. Vietnam in the 60’s and 70’s. Iraq and Kosovo in the 90’s. Of course the omnipresent, hyper-militarization of the Cold War throughout that time. Then of course the Current war in Afghanistan and the second Iraq war. If you count Canada’s garrisons ready to fight during the cold war, there has not been a single decade that’s passed since the end of WWII that Canada has not been involved in the making of war.
Lest We Forgot?
Lest We Never Learned Our Lessons at All?
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