As the U.S. government plunges toward war with nuclear-armed Russia and/or China, there is an unsettling silence — or unnerving consensus — regarding the potential extinction of human existence, as John Pilger observes.
By John Pilger
Returning to the United States in an election year, I am struck by the silence. I have covered four presidential campaigns, starting with 1968; I was with Robert Kennedy when he was shot and I saw his assassin, preparing to kill him. It was a baptism in the American way, along with the salivating violence of the Chicago police at the Democratic Party’s rigged convention. The great counter revolution had begun.
The first to be assassinated that year, Martin Luther King Jr., 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.
The mushroom cloud from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945.
“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.
No Debate about Endless War
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.
President Barack Obama and a boy from the education documentary “Waiting for Superman” fist-bump in the Oval Office, Oct. 11, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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 “modernizing” 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 U.S. 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.”
Obama’s Legacy
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.
Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)
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 defense” base that strengthens the ability of first-strike American missiles to strike 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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.
A ‘Feminism’ of Bloody Coups
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.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confronts Sen. Bernie Sanders in Democratic presidential debate on Jan. 17, 2016.
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 U.S. 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 U.S. always pursue regime change in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine? Why does Washington treat Russia and Vladimir Putin as an enemy?
The Trump Hysteria
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 color is his legacy: such as the warehousing of a mostly black prison population, now more numerous than Stalin’s gulag.
Billionaire and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
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 Nineteenth Century Christian imperialists, with a God-given duty to convert or co-opt or conquer.
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 U.S. is the presence of 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.
John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist based in London. Pilger’s Web site is: www.johnpilger.com
The article exposes and correctly shows how the U.S.A. intends to dominate the world.The politicians are very neatly put in their proper prospective. This is the kind of journalism that is published and has the cover of being on the cutting edge. The information will never be of any use to most of the people looking for real change,because it gives no direction and is basically no different than the supporters of the people mentioned except it exposes the bad side. The overall truth is all the politicians mentioned in the article are Liberal Fascist carrying out the demands of those who will benefit not the every day person that has everything to lose.
I am not concerned with the comments that many people will make any information that is offered as a response can be refuted by a google search. The only hope for finding a way out of this worldwide up coming disaster is to find a leader as qualified as King David and forever be at peace.
I am humbled by this fine essay, Mr. Pilger. American foreign policy is such a horrible mess, almost impossible to untangle. It is amazing that we Americans are in such incredibly dire straits and yet so comfortable. Poor Americans are likely to be obese rather than thin. Who doesn’t have a smart phone and a TV? Listen to what Americans talk about, what they care about. TV sports, Disneyland, the best place for pizza.
This essay, Mr. Pilger, is so f*ckin’ GOOD. I am envious of your knowledge and your writing skill. Like Chris Hedges, you lay out reality for us in very clear and frightening terms, but after we read one of your enlightening essays, what can we possibly do?
We are victims of our fellow Americans more than we are victims of the ruling elites. 80 percent of us supported Bush in 2003 when he dropped bombs and missiles into crowded Baghdad for absolutely no reason.
What I’m getting at is that I wish there was some way to get average working Americans to read your essays, Chris Hedges’ essays, and even Noam Chomsky’s nice short daily essays. Instead, I believe you guys are read mainly by people who are already fairly awake. And what happens to us after we read something like this is that we become more freaked out and more knowledgeable about why OTHERS should be as freaked out as we are, and we become slightly more articulate at telling them. And the others we talk to almost always think we’re weird or crazy or anti-American.
As Paul Simon sang, “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” A Hillary or a Trump would be laughed off the stage almost immediately by an awake public. But how do we wake people up? LSD in the water system? If we wait until the comfort level for Americans is significantly diminished, the population waking up will be out of the question. People will hate and react; they will support bombing whoever they are taught to hate my the almost seamless mass media.
I watched a comfortable population begin to change in peaceful and constructive ways almost overnight, starting approximately when the Beatles first landed in New York. I think your task and mine, as writers, should be to figure out how to light a fire in the minds of people who have allowed their political and metaphysical awareness to go dark. And we’d better figure this out quickly!
Jeff Syrop… I think you are exactly right. I remember watching a YouTube video of Chris Hedges doing a speech at Rockford College where he rightly questions the reasons to invade Iraq. The audience, mainly parents I believe, went onto boo Chris Hedges and ignorantly started chanting “USA, USA, USA”. Low and behold Chris Hedges, and the ilk, were right and I believe deserve an apology but instead they were driven from their jobs and shamed – such as Phil Donahue, the Dixie Chicks, and Rosie O’Donnell etc. Here is the video that I was speaking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAmkMndtH24
Joe, I really appreciate your comment. The point of MY comment was that we writers and political activists of all stripes need to learn how to light a fire in the minds of people who have allowed their political and metaphysical awareness to go dark. That perfectly describes the people in the audience at Rockford College while Chris Hedges was giving the commencement address you linked me to. I just watched the whole video of that speech, and I’m wondering why in the world he make that kind of speech at a college commencement. I’m as radical as you can get, and in his place, I would have tried to talk about our criminal military policy in Iraq as well. But I would have woven my ideas into a speech that was somehow appropriate for a college commencement. The speech Hedges gave was just a stock speech about American military policy. He didn’t even pretend to make a normal inspirational commencement speech. And he failed to light a fire in the minds of people whose political and metaphysical awareness had gone dark. All he did was piss them off. I really don’t get it. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Please comment here and also send to jeffsyrop @ zenhell.com.
Jeff Syrop… Well I believe that had Chris Hedges been allowed to finish his speech that he would have tied it all together. Instead it seemed to me that he was pushed offstage before he could make his point. Maybe Chris Hedges was trying to make these voting age adults aware of the real world rather than the one that the government and the mainstream media would have us believe so that the cycle of war and imperialism can be broken. Anyway, I have huge respect for Chris Hedges to stick to his convictions even when it’s hard and I think the video was indicative of the religion that the military industrial complex has become especially in the U.S.
The pervasive nature of the deceits and hateful – I could say ‘evil’ acts that are so persistent as to be the reality beneath a veneer of pretence – defies unravelling – for the complexity of the conditioning and resultant identities in operation is too much part of our patterning of consciousness – our sense of self – our basis for thinking. Of course we each don’t believe WE are part of the problem – for despite appearances we feel justified in who we are embodying and acting forth to be. Victims of circumstance who are unable and unwilling to question their own consciousness – because conditioned reaction runs in place of conscious presence – or rather masks and filters and distorts so as to operate a false presentation within a falsely framed perception.
As for the ‘agenda’ of the lovelessly deceived, I believe there is a hidden intent to destroy Earth that corresponds to the oppositional refusal or unwillingness to embrace Life on Earth in any terms but total victory – which is a fantasy ideal that no form of embodiment can ever fulfil.
I applaud a willingness to witness truly amidst a culture of deeply driven deceits but feel the practical point of change is not at the behaviour level – of effects – but at the definitional level – of tacitly or openly accepted ideas and meanings that conflict with the true of who we are. False currency generates insane outcomes. The currency of our Thought is largely hidden within and beneath the ‘human conditioning’ which is a verb of acted choices out from ideas that reinforce their original imprint.
I sense a general loss of consciousness as we approach a nexus of transformation that seems to split many ways. Lost to fragmentation and conflicted dilution and adulteration of presence. Even if this sense of being shocked, numbed, bewildered and paralysed as prey for the harvesting by predatory ‘others’ it is still our own individual – and therefore together responsibility to uphold and value our liberty, as an integrity of being – and not a set of rules to war under.
The confusion of the ‘thinking’ persona with true individuality is a kind of mind fragmentation along with mind-controllers. The deceiver operates almost unnoticed – but where there is noticing – an eerie silence contrasts with every kind of sideshow noise.
Anglo-America: Regression and Reversion in the Modern World
By Prof. James Petras
May 31, 2016
(excerpt)
What does it mean when the US and British financial systems launder hundreds of billions of dollars of illicit funds stolen by world leaders while their governments turn a ‘blind eye’, and yet the very same Anglo-American officials investigate, prosecute, fine and arrest officials from rival governments, rival banks and political leaders for corruption?
What does it mean when the US government expands a world-wide network of nuclear missiles on bases stretching from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, the Gulf States to Japan, surrounding Russia, Iran and China, while the very same US and NATO officials investigate and condemn rival defense officials from Russia, China and Iran, as military threats to peace and stability?
What does it mean when Anglo-American economic officials devote decades to raising the age of retirement, reducing working and middle class household income, cutting workers compensation, expanding part-time work, setting the stage for mass layoffs slashing unemployment and health benefits and reducing social spending by the hundreds of billions of dollars and then turn around and investigate and threaten rival countries, like China and Argentina with loss of markets, investment and employment for not doing the same thing ?
The meaning of Anglo-America’s long-term, large-scale structural regression is clearly evident across the world. From Europe to Latin America and from Asia to Africa, socio-economic and politico-military agendas have been reversed.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/anglo-america-regression-and-reversion-in-the-modern-world/5528214
Pilger still can’t quite bring himself to fully credit Trump for his routing of the neocons. Even the Kochs are on board now and pushing a realist foreign policy, the dam has broken.
https://www.charleskochinstitute.org/advancing-american-security-future-u-s-foreign-policy/
Why so much love for Putin? I don’t want an unnecessary war against him either.
But he invaded the Urkraine, has helped the brutal Assad whose murders of his own people sent millions of refugees fleeing to Europe, sent Russian fighter jets into Turkey’s airspace, and has Russian jets buzzing U.S. ships and planes over and over. Why so much love for the guy who keeps doing all this?
There you go. There is always one. The world will never be safe.Sadly We will always have people like Jill who will believe all this propaganda that has been long debunked. Can’t be helped
The title of this post is going to be “Eerie Silence about an Old World War
That’s because a certain number of very devout and totally certain missionaries know that only nuclear weapons are bad. If you were unfortunate enough to be fried by burning napalm or other incendiaries, your death just isn’t as sad an event as it would have been if you had been executed by a nuclear weapon.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/10/national/deadly-wwii-u-s-firebombing-raids-on-japanese-cities-largely-ignored/
The firebombing of Tokyo killed at least as many civilians as Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, and likely a lot more. No problem.
Operation Gomorrah, the firebombing of Hamburg killed an awful lot of people – likely at least 40,000. That’s more than Nagasaki. The destruction of Dresden caused death totals to vary from 18,000 to more than 100,000 and there is no way of knowing for sure when entire communities vanished from the earth.
The fanatics who endlessly preach about US Evil Atomic Bombs hardly ever mention these.
So I’m going to end with another column by the virtuous Mr. Pilger.
hXXp://johnpilger.com/articles/the-lies-of-hiroshima-are-the-lies-of-today
As with this current piece, the focus is entirely on the evil nukes and the American Monsters who used them. Burning people to death with more ordinary weapons just isn’t worth bringing up.
Monday, May 30 will be our Memorial Day of gratitude for those
industrial sacrificed workers (soldiers) who’ve been and are
mere pawns, in the words of Kissinger and his associates,
in this creation of the New World Order is merely resurrection
of European/Anglo-American conquest and political domination.
The architect,Samuel P. Huntington, in The Clash of Civilizations
and his work for the Trilateral Commission gave clear warning
of what was/is to come in the brute force reshaping of Authority
by Assault and Assassination and Assent to Asexualization
with the President of the United States of America leading the way… .
“Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”
? Henry Kissinger
Zachary Smith… Well I would say that it is those “US Evil Atomic Bombs” that have shaped the awful world that we live in today and their updated cousins threaten to wipe out all life on this planet moreso than napalm, Agent Orange, depleted uranium or any other egregious weapon that the US (and other countries) have used or developed and that is why they are more the focus than other weapons. The willingness to test such a weapon, particularly on “civilians”, shows the depths of depravity and the danger if nuclear weapons are used again. I look at all of the weapons and the after effects such as people being born to this day deformed in Vietnam OR the children of Fallujah after the US used depleted uranium munitions. I would say moreso than the weapons themselves is the depravity of the people who are capable of using such weapons and how their hubris could wipe out all life on earth – that’s the real danger.
A MAGNIFICENT ARTICLE MR. PILGER !!!
—–Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
Indeed, the elite wants to get rid of overpopulation. Destroying the planet seems like a bad idea, even for them, so fear mongering about WW III makes little sense. Yes, the plutocrats want to spend on the military, but that has always been about making profit.
For a few years, I thought they would engineer a plague, but apparently, they couldn’t do it safely and now the whole idea is moot. Now they can release genetically engineered mosquitoes (against e.g. Zika) programmed to die in a few hours whose bite will cause infertility. This will get rid of the uninformed in a couple of generations, doesn’t endanger social order as a plague would and keep the power in the same hands.
You are right. The ruling/managerial elite want to “cull their herd” of serf-units to get down to a more “manageable” number of serf-units, and the most effective way to do that is to pursue a strict policy of Austerity that only impacts healthcare, education, worthwhile work that leads to improvement of the serf-unit’s living conditions (that makes pollution ya’know, can’t have THAT in the Managers’ green paradise), aid to families (to discourage re-population), and so on… Of course this Managers’ Empire will need all of the military means deemed necessary (to keep themselves in power, AND, Ya’know it’s good for the economy, keeps away The Great Depression). Keeping a population healthy takes A LOT of hard work & science, so gutting healthcare guarantees that ordinary diseases will rise to plague levels (the Managers will have all of their shots & vaccines of course). The World will quietly de-populate and plenty of drugs&alcohol will be made available to sooth the despair & hopelessness, also assisting the slow-motion suicide route to World de-population. The nukes are just for show&threat. The Managers want another 40 or 50 year COLD War, to keep everyone in line and let Austerity do Its’ ghoulish work of de-population.
What health care? Thresholds for diabetes have been lowered four times until now 48% of the US population is now considered at least pre-diabetic. The science behind cholesterol was refuted over a year ago, yet most MDs (Masters of the Devil) are still pushing their drugs on an unsuspecting number of patients. In fact, according to some studies (look them up, they are on the web), going to see a doctor is one of the most dangerous things you can do for yourself. Very soon, street drugs will be freely distributed by for es backed by our puppet government and I wouldn’t be surprised, if the corporate armies (remember, according to the Supreme Court, corporations are persons, zo they have the right to bear arms) would consist of soldiers on drugs who would kill their own mommies for the next shot.
Austerity is too slow and there will always be enough morons who breed; watch Idiocracy. As stupidity is unpredictable and can be controlled only by fear, I don’t think the masters of the planet will wait that long. Natural resources will dry up in a couple of generations at the current level of world population.
The author rightly notes the manifold propaganda means of the right wing, the highly successful ignorance-engineering which their moral superiors never use. Right-wing warmongers have been the curse of all civilization since long before Aristotle warned of their tyranny over democracy.
Of course it is the mass media controlled by economic concentrations that do the professional ignorance-engineering from which the US suffers. It is sad to see government employees spreading right wing propaganda; the economic security of many depends upon maintaining fear for the false protectors of the right wing. The failure to keep money out of mass media and elections is the failure of US democracy.
When peace advocates enjoyed some popularity after the US rout in Vietnam, the right wing successfully denounced them as effeminate cowards: it is always the “courage to defend freedom” lie that leads us to war to deny freedom and everything else to the small victims of US bully boys.
It’s horrifying to see that, not all, but most Americans who respond to news articles in on-line forums about Russia’s relations with the West are so brainwashed that they believe the government propaganda disseminated by the corporate media that Putin is Satan incarnate who has recently run roughshod over his European neighbors, forcibly annexing parts of Georgia and Ukraine, and is now threatening Romania and Poland with nuclear weapons. The remarks are so bellicose that I think we’ve become a nation of warmongers, just like the “good Germans” during World War II. The few dissenters, with views similar to readers of this site, are basically shouted down and characterized as liars, fools and Putin apologists. Even if the American public could receive the truth through our biased media, they would simply not recognise it or accept it. Most Americans, both Republicans and Democrats are “right thinking” fascists who support American military hegemony over the entire world at all costs–even at the cost of its utter annihilation. I had to groan when I read again and again justifications for Poland’s present day paranoia and unmitigated aggression vis-a-vis Russia that reach back to the 18th century partitions, and World Wars I & II. They keep the fires of animosity against Russia as relentlessly stoked as any schism between the Sunnis and Shias in the Islamic world, and Washington encourages this to use for its own purposes, never mind that Putin tells the truth when he informs the unwitting Poles and Romanians that they are making themselves targets of Russian defenses against the American provocations entrenched on their soil. Their many supporters amongst the American public don’t seem to get the clear logic of this either, because it all simply comes down to ANYTHING that America does is good and holy, and ANYTHING that Russia does, even to ensure its own continued existence, is pure evil. If that remains the mindset of the American people who rubber stamp our selected leaders, the world is doomed. We won’t have to worry about peak oil, global warming, antibiotic resistant bacteria or any of the other impending disasters waiting in our collective futures. Peacenik Obama will have brought us the peace of the grave.
Sad but true. My fear is post the november presedential election the west /MSM/neo-cons/anglo-zionist will start using the label of the triangle/axis of evil Moscow/Beijing/Tehran. History seems to be repeating itself. Yesterdys news gets wrapped in todays fish.
I really enjoyed Pilger’s article, even though it is basically a recycling of the ideas and arguments he’s been saying for many years now–updated with a bit about his visit to USA for the current farcical presidential election fiasco. One thing I have come away with after reading this article is that actually Trump is better than Clinton. Yes, yes, they both suck massively and are total assholes in their particular ways; but Trump will be better because he is an outsider, not a career beltway politician like Clinton. Trump cannot be bought whereas Clinton is a whore for Goldman Sachs, Wall Street and of course the military industrial complex to which she is wedded as Pilger points out here. As the theme of this article is the upcoming WWIII nuclear armageddon courtesy of USA, which presidential candidate will more likely start WWIII? Certainly Clinton and not Trump. Like Pilger points out, Trump has actually questioned America’s military bases and role as self-appointed global policeman. Trump thinks Putin is okay; Clinton supports the Ukraine State Dept/CIA coup and Russian encirclement. Trump questions American meddling in the Middle East; Clinton is Bibi’s bitch, foaming at the mouth to “protect Israel” with even more weapons systems and billions more in welfare payouts and of course wants Assad’s head stuck on a stick in front of the White House lawn for photo-ops with AIPAC donors who will have free reign in the White House when she steals the election. Indeed, all things considered Trump is much better than Clinton. If you want WWIII Clinton is your bitch.
Trump says what he thinks the public want to hear. He condemns the Iraq war but supported the action during the build up. He is against military meddling in world affairs but puts the strengthening of the US military high on his agenda. What he says is one thing. You will have to vote for him to find out what he actually does. I expect he would do whatever he felt was an appropriate response to the headlines of the day.
I have been hoping that Bernie Sanders will be our next president. With Bernie we have a better chance of getting national health care and avoiding foreign wars. Sadly Hillary will likely be our next president. She has little interest in national health care and unlike Bernie voted to invade Iraq, where terrible war crimes were committed such as a great deal of torture and the use of depleted uranium munitions which cause terrible birth defects. It has a half life of 4.5 billion years and will cause birth defects for millions of years. … So0me Americans think we are the greatest country in the world, but we have our flaws, Our military industrial complex loves to get us into wars to make obscene profits and sometimes damage economies of other countries. I noticed that living in Colombia. In the 60s the purchasing power of the Colombian Peso was very good. My Colombian wife and I could eat in the best restaurants then on my peso salary as an English teacher.. Years later I returned and was hired again to teach English, but we no longer had that ability to do so well. Americans should live abroad to get other perspectives. I’ve lived in Germany, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, The Congo, Indonesia and Iran…. My favorite philosophy professor stressed that we should be basically liberal and live in other countries and learn at least one language well. Mor me that language and some German. (I majored in German ant Fla State university. I am pleased that I married a woman who is very liberal. We don’t always agree, but that’s OK.. In the Texas primary she voted for Hilary and my son Chris (born in Iran 42 years ag0) and I voted for Bernie. … My wife is the author of “Where is the Music? – The Multiple Near Death Experiences of a World Traveler.” Copies are available at http://www.amazon.com.– Cliff Gieseke, San An Antonio Texas… Tel. 1-210-745-1141
Thank you for the well-written article. Most of us who are informed see this coming. This is all part of the globalist agenda, of cull the population. Only then can they build a paradise. Wars kill the useless eaters. Unfortunately that’s all of us.
Harold Pinter’s speech before the UN should be required reading for every western high school student. That would be the best way I can think of to bring this evil war party down.
I agree with most of what Mr Pilger has to say, but I am puzzled by his reference to the “assassin” of Robert Kennedy whom he says he saw. If that is an oblique reference to Sirhan then Mr Pilger really needs to update his knowledge levels. The cover up of that and other famous US assassinations is one of the many troubling features of the US. confronting the truth on that would strengthen his argument.
I’m of the opinion that the killer, or at least one of the assassin team, was Thane Eugene Cesar.
If you want to read more about what John Pilger has to say regarding RFK’s assassination go here….
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/5/democracy_now_special_robert_f_kennedy
Here’s a hint; Mr Pilger believes there was more than one killer. Read the interview to be fair to what John Pilger had to say about this terrible event.
Other than that, I found Pilger’s essay a good analogy of where our country is at, and is heading, in regard to our Neocon/R2P quest for war and world hegemony. Now, I just want to hug my grandchildren.
That was my feeling as well. He was shot in the back by his own security. The British proved this about three years ago, I believe. Through ballistics! All of Sirhan Sirhan bullets went into the ceiling.
RFK was led to his death by his own staff. On the video, you see him start to walk toward the audience, as this was the most direct route to the other ballroom where he was to make a second speech. A handler stops him, RFK is confused, and the handler directs him in the opposite direction. RFK was murdered by a single bullet to the lower right skull between the hairline and ear a bit above the earlobe. Sirhan Sirhan was never on the right side of RFK and so could not have killed him. His shots did serve to distract everyone, so the real killer could do his work. Sirhan Sirhan was not part of the plot, merely a mind controlled patsy, condition to shoot when a code word was uttered, and has no memory of killing, like Mark David Chapman. Due to the crowd and rapid movement, it is uncertain who was the assassin. Lennon’s murderer is easy to know: it was Jose Perdomo, who uttered the code word that triggered Chapman to fire blank rounds as cover for Perdomo to kill. Jose Perdomo, ex-officer in Batista’s Cuban Army, and CIA contract contract operative, working as a lowly doorman at the Dakota, who did not open any doors or even greet John Lennon. Chapman remembers Perdomo talking to him about the Bay Of Pigs.
Nope the lesser evil is just plain evil. I’ll be voting Green.
JOE6OAC….
In a recent interview with Jill Stein (in Truthout, I believe) I was unable to
discern any recognition of the barbarous colonialism of Zionism, of
any credible awareness of the weapons industry and its profitability,
of the reality of life for blacks or of #black lives matter, of a new foreign
policy re: Syria, Palestine, Russia etc. Instead there was a clearly
well-intentioned woman who seems astonishingly to believe that
the students of the (American) world will unite (an illusion shared
by supporters of Bernie Sanders and devoid of historical credibility
(for the record there are many quite Republican students and
many from wealthy backgrounds with the ambitions and narrowness
of that echelon concerned more with their 50-80 thousand a year
jobs to come than with the poor).
Perhaps Ms. Stein has covered these areas on a website
somewhere. In conformity with the other candidates there is
no discussion of foreign policy, nothing on BDS.
Just silence.
I had a momentary illusion that instead of voting for neither Sanders
nor Trump, I too could salve my conscience with a green party vote.
Will Jill Stein march with demonstrators of #Black Lives Matter?
Will Jill Stein begin a discussion aimed at treating Israel as though
it were a member of the community of nations arther than immune
to all international law and human decency?
Will Jill Stein support Palestinian human rights?
Will Jill Stein demand and end of the occupation of
Palestine, the evacuation of the illegal settlements, the end of
the illegal wall?The end of Israeli military rule of Palestine?
The end of the the stealing of lands and water from Palestinians
to Jews only?
I don’t think so.
—Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
–
Peter Loeb… Here is an article about Jill Stein in MintPress News where Jill Stein tackles support for the Saudis along with the Israeli/Palestinian issue:
http://www.mintpressnews.com/jill-stein-crazy-spend-6-trillion-fighting-terrorism-turn-blind-eye-saudis/214549/
The minds of the free and brave peoples of the US have been corrupted and derailed into a war furor by the parasitic Zionist Neanderthals who rule over them. Few people are aware and awake, eyeing the menace from Israel. I applaud you and the citizens of earth who are not yet infected with the hatred of Zionism.
The minds of the free and brave peoples of the US have been corrupted and derailed into a war frenzy by the parasitic Zionist Neanderthals who rule over them. Few people are aware and awake, eyeing the menace from Israel. I applaud you and the citizens of earth who are not yet infected with the hatred of Zionists.
Peter Loeb,
Your ending is correct.
Same nose as the AIPACers.
I may join you
This article is a good commentary about a modern form of barbarism we have blithely accepted as the natural order. Above all, it helps lay bare the biggest myth of all: that the Cold War was about fighting Communism or about ideology. That myth once propped up the Postwar order, which has all but collapsed.
Today there is no “ideology” except that of brute force–no morality, no humanity.
Ideology was always an instrument of power, and now it has slipped away. It exists only as a warped death cult in a decomposing Middle East, where we are busy arming and encouraging Wahhabi Gulf regimes in their war against the peoples of the region, and desparately propping up a Jewish-only race colony, which is nothing more than an outpost in a foreign land.
The Western elite is trying to stem its own inevitable decline. The West (American, English and French governments) has dominated the world for a century and a half, one of the shortest imperial reigns in history. I think that the new form of Western tribalism we are witnessing is a sign of profound weakness. This is what makes the Western powers so dangerous. Our leaders refuse to talk or cooperate with anyone except on their terms.
The governments and people we keep electing, together with their advisors and the brainless bureaucracies they run, are risking the future of humanity. We are on a fast-moving train to nowhere. The conductor has been cold dead from the very beginning.