The first to be assassinated that year, Martin Luther King, had dared link the suffering of African-Americans and the people of Vietnam. When Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose", she spoke perhaps unconsciously for millions of America's victims in faraway places.
"We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom. Now don't you forget it." So said a National Parks Service guide as I filmed last week at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He was addressing a school party of young teenagers in bright orange T-shirts. As if by rote, he inverted the truth about Vietnam into an unchallenged lie.
The millions of Vietnamese who died and were maimed and poisoned and dispossessed by the American invasion have no historical place in young minds, not to mention the estimated 60,000 veterans who took their own lives. A friend of mine, a marine who became a paraplegic in Vietnam, was often asked, "Which side did you fight on?"
A few years ago, I attended a popular exhibition called "The Price of Freedom" at the venerable Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The lines of ordinary people, mostly children shuffling through a Santa's grotto of revisionism, were dispensed a variety of lies: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved "a million lives"; Iraq was "liberated [by] air strikes of unprecedented precision". The theme was unerringly heroic: only Americans pay the price of freedom.
The 2016 election campaign is remarkable not only for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but also for the resilience of an enduring silence about a murderous self-bestowed divinity. A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington's boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal - Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.
Comment: Surprised to see Pilger include Kennedy here given what's known about Kennedy's resistance to the types of polices mentioned above. From the Sott series on JFK, see: John F. Kennedy and the Pigs of War
The breathtaking record of perfidy is so mutated in the public mind, wrote the late Harold Pinter, that it "never happened ...Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. It didn't matter ... ". Pinter expressed a mock admiration for what he called "a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."
Take Obama. As he prepares to leave office, the fawning has begun all over again. He is "cool". One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted more whistleblowers - truth-tellers - than any president. He pronounced Chelsea Manning guilty before she was tried. Today, Obama runs an unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone.
In 2009, Obama promised to help "rid the world of nuclear weapons" and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. No American president has built more nuclear warheads than Obama. He is "modernising" America's doomsday arsenal, including a new "mini" nuclear weapon, whose size and "smart" technology, says a leading general, ensure its use is "no longer unthinkable".
James Bradley, the best-selling author of Flags of Our Fathers and son of one of the US marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, said, "[One] great myth we're seeing play out is that of Obama as some kind of peaceful guy who's trying to get rid of nuclear weapons. He's the biggest nuclear warrior there is. He's committed us to a ruinous course of spending a trillion dollars on more nuclear weapons. Somehow, people live in this fantasy that because he gives vague news conferences and speeches and feel-good photo-ops that somehow that's attached to actual policy. It isn't."
On Obama's watch, a second cold war is under way. The Russian president is a pantomime villain; the Chinese are not yet back to their sinister pig-tailed caricature - when all Chinese were banned from the United States - but the media warriors are working on it.
Neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders has mentioned any of this. There is no risk and no danger for the United States and all of us. For them, the greatest military build-up on the borders of Russia since World War Two has not happened. On May 11, Romania went "live" with a Nato "missile defence" base that aims its first-strike American missiles at the heart of Russia, the world's second nuclear power.
In Asia, the Pentagon is sending ships, planes and special forces to the Philippines to threaten China. The US already encircles China with hundreds of military bases that curve in an arc up from Australia, to Asia and across to Afghanistan. Obama calls this a "pivot".
As a direct consequence, China reportedly has changed its nuclear weapons policy from no-first-use to high alert and put to sea submarines with nuclear weapons. The escalator is quickening.
It was Hillary Clinton who, as Secretary of State in 2010, elevated the competing territorial claims for rocks and reef in the South China Sea to an international issue; CNN and BBC hysteria followed; China was building airstrips on the disputed islands. In its mammoth war game in 2015, Operation Talisman Sabre, the US practiced "choking" the Straits of Malacca through which pass most of China's oil and trade. This was not news.
Clinton declared that America had a "national interest" in these Asian waters. The Philippines and Vietnam were encouraged and bribed to pursue their claims and old enmities against China. In America, people are being primed to see any Chinese defensive position as offensive, and so the ground is laid for rapid escalation. A similar strategy of provocation and propaganda is applied to Russia.
Clinton, the "women's candidate", leaves a trail of bloody coups: in Honduras, in Libya (plus the murder of the Libyan president) and Ukraine. The latter is now a CIA theme park swarming with Nazis and the frontline of a beckoning war with Russia. It was through Ukraine - literally, borderland — that Hitler's Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, which lost 27 million people. This epic catastrophe remains a presence in Russia. Clinton's presidential campaign has received money from all but one of the world's ten biggest arms companies. No other candidate comes close.
Sanders, the hope of many young Americans, is not very different from Clinton in his proprietorial view of the world beyond the United States. He backed Bill Clinton's illegal bombing of Serbia. He supports Obama's terrorism by drone, the provocation of Russia and the return of special forces (death squads) to Iraq. He has nothing to say on the drumbeat of threats to China and the accelerating risk of nuclear war. He agrees that Edward Snowden should stand trial and he calls Hugo Chavez - like him, a social democrat - "a dead communist dictator". He promises to support Clinton if she is nominated.
The election of Trump or Clinton is the old illusion of choice that is no choice: two sides of the same coin. In scapegoating minorities and promising to "make America great again", Trump is a far right-wing domestic populist; yet the danger of Clinton may be more lethal for the world.
"Only Donald Trump has said anything meaningful and critical of US foreign policy," wrote Stephen Cohen, emeritus professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, one of the few Russia experts in the United States to speak out about the risk of war.
In a radio broadcast, Cohen referred to critical questions Trump alone had raised. Among them: why is the United States "everywhere on the globe"? What is NATO's true mission? Why does the US always pursue regime change in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine? Why does Washington treat Russia and Vladimir Putin as an enemy?
Comment: Yes, but how likely are those questions to remain a part of Trump's conviction and policy should he get elected?
The hysteria in the liberal media over Trump serves an illusion of "free and open debate" and "democracy at work". His views on immigrants and Muslims are grotesque, yet the deporter-in-chief of vulnerable people from America is not Trump but Obama, whose betrayal of people of colour is his legacy: such as the warehousing of a mostly black prison population, now more numerous than Stalin's gulag.
This presidential campaign may not be about populism but American liberalism, an ideology that sees itself as modern and therefore superior and the one true way. Those on its right wing bear a likeness to 19th century Christian imperialists, with a God-given duty to convert or co-opt or conquer.
Comment: ...while those on its left wing champion a God-given duty to 'elevate', 'civilize', and 'democratize' the 'backwards people of the world'.
One sees the world in terms of 'things can only get worse', so America must defend 'the West' from 'the rest'; the other sees the world in terms of 'things can only get better' with America progressively 'leading' the world into 'utopia'.
In Britain, this is Blairism. The Christian war criminal Tony Blair got away with his secret preparation for the invasion of Iraq largely because the liberal political class and media fell for his "cool Britannia". In the Guardian, the applause was deafening; he was called "mystical". A distraction known as identity politics, imported from the United States, rested easily in his care.
History was declared over, class was abolished and gender promoted as feminism; lots of women became New Labour MPs. They voted on the first day of Parliament to cut the benefits of single parents, mostly women, as instructed. A majority voted for an invasion that produced 700,000 Iraqi widows.
The equivalent in the US are the politically correct warmongers on the New York Times, the Washington Post and network TV who dominate political debate. I watched a furious debate on CNN about Trump's infidelities. It was clear, they said, a man like that could not be trusted in the White House. No issues were raised. Nothing on the 80 per cent of Americans whose income has collapsed to 1970s levels. Nothing on the drift to war. The received wisdom seems to be "hold your nose" and vote for Clinton: anyone but Trump. That way, you stop the monster and preserve a system gagging for another war.
Reader Comments
Blaming Bush, Blair, Obama, Harper, or anyone else in the political stage is like blaming a Walmart Employee for bankrupting the local merchants.
There is no doubt that the world is preparing for war. It isn't just the US, it's happening everywhere, and that doesn't happen accidentally or just because others spend tax dollars to build war machines. It isn't just a response to the US Nato Doomsday War Machine, it's a planned event. Just like everything else, like the cause of Global Warming was another planned lie, like the too big to fail was another planned event, and on and on.
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Catherine Austin Fitts said you do not get to be President without support coming from the military and intelligence agencies. Hardly a wonder if one really understands who is running these United States.
Just because the US Military is housed here in these Untied States of America doesn't mean that they actually serve the United States, answer to the people, the Congress, or the Commander in Chief. That's the illusion.
The military, like State Security, are now nothing more than proxies for the real overseers whom actually operate those systems, who provide the after service employment and job security for being useful tools while in the officially titled job of public service. Though there's little which a service to the public in all too many instances.
This is an article you can count on.
and is followed by 300 years of strife/rebuilding.
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We would all benefit from becoming familiar with the earth energy ley lines around the globe. Dwapara begins 2025 and the Iron of Kali ends.
"Just because the US Military is housed here in these Untied States of America doesn't mean that they actually serve the United States,..." Absolute truth.... and getting the 1789 Constitution back into observance is the real task we the people have ahead.
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As an ex soldier you are basically obliged, while under contract, to just do as you are told, hence the chain of command.
From the Hanford Site in Washington state to Indian Point in New York, the disastrous conditions at America's nuclear facilities has been raising concerns over the last year. RT America takes a close look at the state of US's nukes.
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When you have to steal pennies from the people, debase the physical currency with scrap zinc metals, then you know the whole thing is about to come crashing down. This is going to make the fall of the Roman Empire seem like minor incident and it's going to effect the entire world. Probably for the best though.
The brown stuff has hit the fan, the truth is getting out, and the enormity of the corruption and ruthlessness has hit with crystal clarity.
If the system has grown so strong that it can no longer be dislodged by peace or by force, then one of 2 things will happen. In one, the Economy totally collapses as the world dumps the dollar, turning the Credit Card backed War Machine on it's ear. The EU (or what's left of it) gets cold feet, siding with Russia in order to save their own bacon.
In the other case, the Earth and Cosmos have seen enough, and take the US out though massive movements. Much like Atlantis and it's evil plans for World Domination.
I advocate boycotting the election as a protest of the corrupt and fraudulent election system in this country. But most people are still stuck in that programmed, herd mentality that says you can only change things by voting...
But voting in elections today - at least on the federal level - has become little more than a trick to get us to validate and empower our own oppressors.
I believe we should aggressively and vocally boycott the election en masse. Make whomever wins the election take the office with the smallest percentage of Americans voting in history. This would be a repudiation of the election process, a vote of no-confidence for the new administration. And it would service notice to the government and the billionaires, bankers and corporate chiefs who own it that they have awakened a sleeping giant.
The media will hate this since it takes days for all of the results of national elections to be tallied, but it is the only means short of civil war by which the republic can be restored.
As Baron mentioned above, whatever is happening all around us, to us, about us...are ALL PLANNED EVENTS.
What Americans and peoples from all walks of life in all countries have failed to do is plan their own events.
Amazing what strength their can be in numbers; yet, we never really play that card.
We are at a point, right now, where all people could be sparked toward a great event of our own through the connectivity of the internet and wireless communication.
If folks could just step outside their boxes and confront the beast head on...
Just imagine.
Bloodshed? Probably.
Suffering? Undoubtedly.
I truly believe that if the military here were confronted by overwhelming masses dedicated to correcting this bad dream, they would be likely to drop their arms and reassess their position in our society, essentially wanting/needing the same things everyone wants/needs.
We do need a plan. That's for sure.
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If you vote you get Hillary or Trump.
If you don't vote there's a chance Obama wouldn't leave the Presidency.
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