we at bhs care about the environment. today, some of our teachers elected to turn the lights off. i'm sure the earth felt the profound power of our action. speakers came and said many good things. they can't really be faulted for anything. for, you see, we are all doing our part. of course, no one mentioned how bad war is for the environment, or civilization, or big public schools, for that matter. no one really did anything. yes, some students "got involved." yes, some cards were signed. i suppose some people "learned." but, in the end, it felt fake, unreal, happily superficial. for, how can we care about the environment and bomb afghanistan? surely, there were many fascists who cared about the "earth," but today, we don't remember these heroes of yesteryear. will anyone remember us? and, if they do, what will they think of us?
today was low impact day, but what about monday? activism isn't a holiday, despite what our well fed "progressives" may think.
so, the speakers make speeches. young, well off white kids get to care. they will learn what we choose to teach them, which is quite little. a few of them will get it, eventually, but the rest will go merrily along, thinking that while we may have our problems, if we just sign enough cards and call enough congressmen, things will swing back our way. they will tinker at the edges. i recall a guy i knew who considered himself a radical leftist, and he proved it to me by saying that he had worked on the john kerry campaign. these "committed" kids will bemoan corporate abuses, but will never learn to question the legitimacy of the corporate state. they will sing the praises of obama and other democratic duds, either not knowing or not caring about the actual policies of the politicians they admire. of course, these same students and their mediocre mentors will rail against the republicans for instituting the same policies. a teacher i work with, quite intelligent, and certainly, not a bad person, will soon show the class "an inconvenient truth." meanwhile, "as the world burns" will go unread, as will gore's actual environmental record when he had a chance to do something. just ask the indigenous people of columbia just what al gore thinks about "our mother." but, of course, our determined, dedicated environmentalist, who bikes to work, wears new balance, is a vegan, and probably wipes her ass with old college textbooks, will not mention the indigenous of columbia. for, we need good guys. we need to believe that change is possible.
yes, change may be possible, but not without a fight. and change is not possible if it is to come from the very same men who helped to create the problems.
turning the lights off won't do it.
it's as if your house was flooding, and your main concern was to make sure that your kitchen sink isn't dripping water.
we are fucked.
simple as that.
but, there ain't a high school in america that will swing with that message.
there's no money in it. no grants. no articles in the local paper. it doesn't make us feel good.
in the end, that's all we really care about...ourselves.
and, that's why we are fucked.
america, turn off the lights.
Friday, October 23, 2009
The Super Rich are Laughing
The US as Failed State
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The US has every characteristic of a failed state.
The US government’s current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation.
Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the US relies on terrorism and military aggression.
Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized interest groups at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. For example, war at all cost, which enriches the armaments industry, the officer corps and the financial firms that handle the war’s financing, takes precedence over the needs of American citizens. There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400.
“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” said Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the subcommittee.
According to reports, the US Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way.
While the US government squanders $400 per gallon of gasoline in order to kill women and children in Afghanistan, many millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their homes and are experiencing the kind of misery that is the daily life of poor third world peoples. Americans are living in their cars and in public parks. America’s cities, towns, and states are suffering from the costs of economic dislocations and the reduction in tax revenues from the economy’s decline. Yet, Obama has sent more troops to Afghanistan, a country half way around the world that is not a threat to America.
It costs $750,000 per year for each soldier we have in Afghanistan. The soldiers, who are at risk of life and limb, are paid a pittance, but all of the privatized services to the military are rolling in excess profits. One of the great frauds perpetuated on the American people was the privatization of services that the US military traditionally performed for itself. “Our” elected leaders could not resist any opportunity to create at taxpayers’ expense private wealth that could be recycled to politicians in campaign contributions.
Republicans and Democrats on the take from the private insurance companies maintain that the US cannot afford to provide Americans with health care and that cuts must be made even in Social Security and Medicare. So how can the US afford bankrupting wars, much less totally pointless wars that serve no American interest?
The enormous scale of foreign borrowing and money creation necessary to finance Washington’s wars are sending the dollar to historic lows. The dollar has even experienced large declines relative to currencies of third world countries such as Botswana and Brazil. The decline in the dollar’s value reduces the purchasing power of Americans’ already declining incomes.
Despite the lowest level of housing starts in 64 years, the US housing market is flooded with unsold homes, and financial institutions have a huge and rising inventory of foreclosed homes not yet on the market.
Industrial production has collapsed to the level of 1999, wiping out a decade of growth in industrial output.
The enormous bank reserves created by the Federal Reserve are not finding their way into the economy. Instead, the banks are hoarding the reserves as insurance against the fraudulent derivatives that they purchased from the gangster Wall Street investment banks.
The regulatory agencies have been corrupted by private interests. Frontline reports that Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers blocked Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating derivatives. President Obama rewarded Larry Summers for his idiocy by appointing him Director of the National Economic Council. What this means is that profits for Wall Street will continue to be leeched from the diminishing blood supply of the American economy.
An unmistakable sign of third world despotism is a police force that sees the pubic as the enemy. Thanks to the federal government, our local police forces are now militarized and imbued with hostile attitudes toward the public. SWAT teams have proliferated, and even small towns now have police forces with the firepower of US Special Forces. Summons are increasingly delivered by SWAT teams that tyrannize citizens with broken down doors, a $400 or $500 repair born by the tyrannized resident. Recently a mayor and his family were the recipients of incompetence by the town’s local SWAT team, which mistakenly wrecked the mayor’s home, terrorized his family, and killed the family’s two friendly Labrador dogs.
If a town’s mayor can be treated in this way, what do you think is the fate of the poor white or black? Or the idealistic student who protests his government’s inhumanity?
In any failed state, the greatest threat to the population comes from the government and the police. That is certainly the situation today in the USA. Americans have no greater enemy than their own government. Washington is controlled by interest groups that enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.
The one percent that comprise the superrich are laughing as they say, “let them eat cake.”
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
The US as Failed State
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The US has every characteristic of a failed state.
The US government’s current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation.
Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the US relies on terrorism and military aggression.
Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized interest groups at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. For example, war at all cost, which enriches the armaments industry, the officer corps and the financial firms that handle the war’s financing, takes precedence over the needs of American citizens. There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400.
“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” said Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the subcommittee.
According to reports, the US Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way.
While the US government squanders $400 per gallon of gasoline in order to kill women and children in Afghanistan, many millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their homes and are experiencing the kind of misery that is the daily life of poor third world peoples. Americans are living in their cars and in public parks. America’s cities, towns, and states are suffering from the costs of economic dislocations and the reduction in tax revenues from the economy’s decline. Yet, Obama has sent more troops to Afghanistan, a country half way around the world that is not a threat to America.
It costs $750,000 per year for each soldier we have in Afghanistan. The soldiers, who are at risk of life and limb, are paid a pittance, but all of the privatized services to the military are rolling in excess profits. One of the great frauds perpetuated on the American people was the privatization of services that the US military traditionally performed for itself. “Our” elected leaders could not resist any opportunity to create at taxpayers’ expense private wealth that could be recycled to politicians in campaign contributions.
Republicans and Democrats on the take from the private insurance companies maintain that the US cannot afford to provide Americans with health care and that cuts must be made even in Social Security and Medicare. So how can the US afford bankrupting wars, much less totally pointless wars that serve no American interest?
The enormous scale of foreign borrowing and money creation necessary to finance Washington’s wars are sending the dollar to historic lows. The dollar has even experienced large declines relative to currencies of third world countries such as Botswana and Brazil. The decline in the dollar’s value reduces the purchasing power of Americans’ already declining incomes.
Despite the lowest level of housing starts in 64 years, the US housing market is flooded with unsold homes, and financial institutions have a huge and rising inventory of foreclosed homes not yet on the market.
Industrial production has collapsed to the level of 1999, wiping out a decade of growth in industrial output.
The enormous bank reserves created by the Federal Reserve are not finding their way into the economy. Instead, the banks are hoarding the reserves as insurance against the fraudulent derivatives that they purchased from the gangster Wall Street investment banks.
The regulatory agencies have been corrupted by private interests. Frontline reports that Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers blocked Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating derivatives. President Obama rewarded Larry Summers for his idiocy by appointing him Director of the National Economic Council. What this means is that profits for Wall Street will continue to be leeched from the diminishing blood supply of the American economy.
An unmistakable sign of third world despotism is a police force that sees the pubic as the enemy. Thanks to the federal government, our local police forces are now militarized and imbued with hostile attitudes toward the public. SWAT teams have proliferated, and even small towns now have police forces with the firepower of US Special Forces. Summons are increasingly delivered by SWAT teams that tyrannize citizens with broken down doors, a $400 or $500 repair born by the tyrannized resident. Recently a mayor and his family were the recipients of incompetence by the town’s local SWAT team, which mistakenly wrecked the mayor’s home, terrorized his family, and killed the family’s two friendly Labrador dogs.
If a town’s mayor can be treated in this way, what do you think is the fate of the poor white or black? Or the idealistic student who protests his government’s inhumanity?
In any failed state, the greatest threat to the population comes from the government and the police. That is certainly the situation today in the USA. Americans have no greater enemy than their own government. Washington is controlled by interest groups that enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.
The one percent that comprise the superrich are laughing as they say, “let them eat cake.”
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Thursday, October 22, 2009
moore lies
double m, michael moore, has done it again. the big man plays fast and loose with the truth. that we know. but, the details demand repeating.
moore recently appeared on the jimmy kimmel show. on the show, he was asked about a meeting he had recently had with chavez at the un. it seems that chavez and moore had met for three hours, but moore asked that no photos be taken, as the meeting "would make him look bad." (contrast this with oliver stone, who just filmed a movie on chavez.) however, a few shots were snapped, so the meeting became public. in the photos, the two men are dressed in suits, and are sitting at a dinner table. but, facts have never meant a great deal to moore, so he went on to tell a tall tale. in his words, he heard a racket in a hotel room a floor below him. this "racket" was taking place at 2 in the morning, so us clever viewers of kimmel were sure to get the drift of what chavez was supposedly doing. incredulously, moore then proceeds to go down to inspect. he knocks on the door, and a hulking man answers. the man then lets him in! my, it's getting quite easy to intrude on presidents in the middle of the night. perhaps, i'll drop by on the big o in the wee small hours, for a little late night snack. in any case, moore then noticed a couple of bottles of tequila. likely this was the only latino liquor that moore could think of. supposedly, chavez then invited moore to sit by his bed, and the two began to chat. amazingly, chavez then asked moore to help him with his upcoming un speech! chavez, mind you, is a noted public speaker who often doesn't even read written speeches. rather, he improvises, going where his heart and head tell him to. it is beyond belief that chavez would have been unprepared for such a speech, or that he would have turned to moore for help, especially considering he had no clue in this tale that he was going to be meeting moore.
the next day, moore was watching tv, when he caught a glimpse of chavez speaking at the un. incredibly, chavez was using the very same words moore had supposedly written for him the night before!
wow...in this story, moore riffs on common latino stereotypes. here, chavez is a party animal. here, chavez is a heavy drinker. here, chavez is sex crazed. here, chavez is a believer in the "manana is good enough for me philosophy," in that he has not prepared for a vital talk just hours away, preferring to get his groove on instead.
also, moore has once again managed to stroke his own ego. this time, he is writing speeches for leaders. also, in this tale, moore gets to flex his patriotic credentials, for supposedly, moore told chavez to apologize for calling bush the devil. apparently, it's ok for moore to mercilessly mock bush in film, as moore is a blue eyed, white skinned north american. i guess chavez doesn't have the same freedom to speak the truth, at least in moore's eyes.
so, moore is doing many things at once here...demonizing and mocking an "enemy" of the u.s., overrating his own importance, and stereotyping latinos.
sounds like a true progressive.
white american style.
and to think that chavez is actually attacking capitalism, as opposed to talking about attacking capitalism.
for, you see, there is no money in the actual attacking. and the other side has guns and tanks and bombs they aren't afraid to use. so, better to appear on late night tv, and make movies, and grow fat, literally and figuratively, from the profits, and most importantly, to mock the men who are actually challenging american capitalism.
that will ensure more moore on late night tv, and mainstream theater screenings, and favorable reviews.
if moore is a progressive, it may be time to regress.
moore recently appeared on the jimmy kimmel show. on the show, he was asked about a meeting he had recently had with chavez at the un. it seems that chavez and moore had met for three hours, but moore asked that no photos be taken, as the meeting "would make him look bad." (contrast this with oliver stone, who just filmed a movie on chavez.) however, a few shots were snapped, so the meeting became public. in the photos, the two men are dressed in suits, and are sitting at a dinner table. but, facts have never meant a great deal to moore, so he went on to tell a tall tale. in his words, he heard a racket in a hotel room a floor below him. this "racket" was taking place at 2 in the morning, so us clever viewers of kimmel were sure to get the drift of what chavez was supposedly doing. incredulously, moore then proceeds to go down to inspect. he knocks on the door, and a hulking man answers. the man then lets him in! my, it's getting quite easy to intrude on presidents in the middle of the night. perhaps, i'll drop by on the big o in the wee small hours, for a little late night snack. in any case, moore then noticed a couple of bottles of tequila. likely this was the only latino liquor that moore could think of. supposedly, chavez then invited moore to sit by his bed, and the two began to chat. amazingly, chavez then asked moore to help him with his upcoming un speech! chavez, mind you, is a noted public speaker who often doesn't even read written speeches. rather, he improvises, going where his heart and head tell him to. it is beyond belief that chavez would have been unprepared for such a speech, or that he would have turned to moore for help, especially considering he had no clue in this tale that he was going to be meeting moore.
the next day, moore was watching tv, when he caught a glimpse of chavez speaking at the un. incredibly, chavez was using the very same words moore had supposedly written for him the night before!
wow...in this story, moore riffs on common latino stereotypes. here, chavez is a party animal. here, chavez is a heavy drinker. here, chavez is sex crazed. here, chavez is a believer in the "manana is good enough for me philosophy," in that he has not prepared for a vital talk just hours away, preferring to get his groove on instead.
also, moore has once again managed to stroke his own ego. this time, he is writing speeches for leaders. also, in this tale, moore gets to flex his patriotic credentials, for supposedly, moore told chavez to apologize for calling bush the devil. apparently, it's ok for moore to mercilessly mock bush in film, as moore is a blue eyed, white skinned north american. i guess chavez doesn't have the same freedom to speak the truth, at least in moore's eyes.
so, moore is doing many things at once here...demonizing and mocking an "enemy" of the u.s., overrating his own importance, and stereotyping latinos.
sounds like a true progressive.
white american style.
and to think that chavez is actually attacking capitalism, as opposed to talking about attacking capitalism.
for, you see, there is no money in the actual attacking. and the other side has guns and tanks and bombs they aren't afraid to use. so, better to appear on late night tv, and make movies, and grow fat, literally and figuratively, from the profits, and most importantly, to mock the men who are actually challenging american capitalism.
that will ensure more moore on late night tv, and mainstream theater screenings, and favorable reviews.
if moore is a progressive, it may be time to regress.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
and the saddest thing of all was that we cared about the wrong things
a student shows up 20 minutes late. you would think the class was being bombed. what will the future generations say, if there are future generations? they will say that while the bombs were falling, while the food was being poisoned, while poverty was rampant, while various bigotries battered our brutalized earth, we cared about people being on time.
and on time for what? if they were on time, what would they learn? it brings to mind the line in sleeper..."prepare subject for a thorough brainwash." just what is our educational establishment in place for? if there was real learning going on, perhaps one could justify caring about students being on time. but, of course, true learning is done by choice. when you want to learn something, you take time to learn it. this truth explains why things are learned in the first place.
if i may reach for a comparison, it is like comparing rape with consensual sex. one is forced upon you, the other is a choice freely made. that is why 1984 reads better when you read it on your own, as opposed to it being on your school's summer reading list.
forced learning is an oxymoron. and, just what is it that this culture has to teach us? in five years at "one of the best public schools in the country," i have yet to see a student with a william blum book, or a barry harris cd. there is much to learn, and one will never learn it in the educational establishments created by the culture that is killing truth.
so, the student was 20 minutes late? perhaps he got some extra sleep, an activity much more important than sitting in a banal classroom. maybe the young man was eating, another activity more essential than taking notes on a plethora of information that will be forgotten as soon as the next quiz is completed.
eating, sleeping, sitting in a classroom.
the animals, which we once were, and still are, suicidal tendencies aside, can all figure out which choices to make.
sadly, our society can't.
and the future generations?
they will surely say that the saddest thing was, they cared about the wrong things.
and on time for what? if they were on time, what would they learn? it brings to mind the line in sleeper..."prepare subject for a thorough brainwash." just what is our educational establishment in place for? if there was real learning going on, perhaps one could justify caring about students being on time. but, of course, true learning is done by choice. when you want to learn something, you take time to learn it. this truth explains why things are learned in the first place.
if i may reach for a comparison, it is like comparing rape with consensual sex. one is forced upon you, the other is a choice freely made. that is why 1984 reads better when you read it on your own, as opposed to it being on your school's summer reading list.
forced learning is an oxymoron. and, just what is it that this culture has to teach us? in five years at "one of the best public schools in the country," i have yet to see a student with a william blum book, or a barry harris cd. there is much to learn, and one will never learn it in the educational establishments created by the culture that is killing truth.
so, the student was 20 minutes late? perhaps he got some extra sleep, an activity much more important than sitting in a banal classroom. maybe the young man was eating, another activity more essential than taking notes on a plethora of information that will be forgotten as soon as the next quiz is completed.
eating, sleeping, sitting in a classroom.
the animals, which we once were, and still are, suicidal tendencies aside, can all figure out which choices to make.
sadly, our society can't.
and the future generations?
they will surely say that the saddest thing was, they cared about the wrong things.
Monday, October 12, 2009
gays in the military?
will obama end "don't ask, don't tell?" well, maybe he will, and maybe he won't. but, if you want gay people in the military, that means you want people in the military, and people in the military is the problem. will it help bombed villagers in afghanistan to know that those who killed them are gay? "hey, i don't mind being blown up, as long as i'm being murdered by a homosexual!"
it brings to mind my old gag about a tribute at umass given years ago to black korean war veterans. supposedly, these guys were forgotten heroes. i joked at the time that the tribute could have been titled "we kill people too."
the problem isn't who is in the military, the problem is the military itself. so, if "don't ask, don't tell" is ended someday, then what? what of the wars themselves? when will they be ended? a true progressive movement would be doing what it could to end the wars, and to expose the military as a violent, sexist, racist, homophobic institution. in short, it is the last place a decent gay person, or straight person, should be in.
a progressive moment challenges power. it doesn't try to find its place within existing power structures. the military is the dominant mode of power in american life. to ask for equality within it is to accept its power. it legitimizes it, acknowledges it as decent, as something worthy of belonging to.
but, as groucho once said "i don't want to be a part of any group that would have me as a member."
not all things are worth joining. sometimes, there are things that trump equal rights. do we want equal rights to commit evil acts? is there a movement that says both men and women should have an equal right to abuse their children, rape their servants, beat their dogs? the problem is the abuse, not the gender of who is doing the abusing. similarly, the problem with the military is that it is used to kill people, not whether the person bombing brown people is allowed to openly express their sexuality as they do so.
some may want gays in the military. i want all people out of the military. i want equal rights for gay civilians, but as far as i'm concerned, once you join the service, i'm rooting for the road team.
have these avid would be abolishers of "don't ask, don't tell" stopped to think of how many gay people have been killed in war? if more gays serve in combat, they will surely kill thousands of fellow gays around the world.
well, i suppose they won't ask them their sexual preferences before they bomb the shit out of them.
it brings to mind my old gag about a tribute at umass given years ago to black korean war veterans. supposedly, these guys were forgotten heroes. i joked at the time that the tribute could have been titled "we kill people too."
the problem isn't who is in the military, the problem is the military itself. so, if "don't ask, don't tell" is ended someday, then what? what of the wars themselves? when will they be ended? a true progressive movement would be doing what it could to end the wars, and to expose the military as a violent, sexist, racist, homophobic institution. in short, it is the last place a decent gay person, or straight person, should be in.
a progressive moment challenges power. it doesn't try to find its place within existing power structures. the military is the dominant mode of power in american life. to ask for equality within it is to accept its power. it legitimizes it, acknowledges it as decent, as something worthy of belonging to.
but, as groucho once said "i don't want to be a part of any group that would have me as a member."
not all things are worth joining. sometimes, there are things that trump equal rights. do we want equal rights to commit evil acts? is there a movement that says both men and women should have an equal right to abuse their children, rape their servants, beat their dogs? the problem is the abuse, not the gender of who is doing the abusing. similarly, the problem with the military is that it is used to kill people, not whether the person bombing brown people is allowed to openly express their sexuality as they do so.
some may want gays in the military. i want all people out of the military. i want equal rights for gay civilians, but as far as i'm concerned, once you join the service, i'm rooting for the road team.
have these avid would be abolishers of "don't ask, don't tell" stopped to think of how many gay people have been killed in war? if more gays serve in combat, they will surely kill thousands of fellow gays around the world.
well, i suppose they won't ask them their sexual preferences before they bomb the shit out of them.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
War and Peace
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
I suppose we should not begrudge Barack Obama his Nobel Peace Prize, though it represents a radical break in tradition, since he's only had slightly less than nine months to discharge his imperial duties, most concretely through the agency of high explosives in the Hindu Kush whereas laureates like Henry Kissinger had been diligently slaughtering people across the world for years.
Woodrow Wilson, the liberal imperialist with whom Obama bears some marked affinities, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, having brought America into the carnage of the First World War. The peace laureate president who preceded him was Teddy Roosevelt, who got the prize in 1906 as reward for sponsorship of the Spanish-American war and ardent bloodletting in the Philippines. Senator George Hoar’s famous denunciation of Roosevelt on the floor of the US Senate in May of 1902 was probably what alerted the Nobel Committee to Roosevelt’s eligibility for the Peace Prize:
“You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives—the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the water torture. ”
TR was given the peace prize not long after he’d displayed his boundless compassion for humanity by sponsoring an exhibition of Filipino “monkey men” in the 1904 St Louis World Fair as “the missing link” in the evolution of Man from ape to Aryan, and thus in sore need of assimilation, forcible if necessary, to the American way. On receipt of the prize, Roosevelt promptly dispatched the Great White Fleet (sixteen U.S. Navy ships of the Atlantic Fleet including four battleships) on a worldwide tour to display Uncle Sam’s imperial credentials, anticipating by scarce more than a century, Obama’s award, as he prepares to impose Pax Americana on the Hindukush and portions of Pakistan.
People marvel at the idiocy of these Nobel awards, but there’s method in the madness, since in the end they train people to accept without demur or protest absurdity as part and parcel of the human condition, which they should accept as representing the considered opinion of rational men, albeit Norwegian. It’s a twist on the Alger myth, inspiring to youth: you too can get to murder Filipinos, or Palestinians, or Vietnamese or Afghans and still win a Peace Prize. That’s the audacity of hope at full stretch.
It’s dawning even on those predisposed to like the guy that when it comes to burning issues the first black president of the United States truly hates to come down on one side or the other. He dreads making powerful people mad. He won’t stand up for his own people when they’re being savaged by the nutball right, edges them out, then has his press secretary claim that they jumped of their own accord. This may impress the peaceniks of Oslo, but from the American perspective he's looking like a wimp.
Obama’s Afghan policy evolved on the campaign trail last year as a one-liner designed to deflect charges that he was a peacenik on Iraq. Not so, he cried. The Global War on Terror was being fought in the wrong place. His pledge was to hunt down and “kill” Osama bin Laden.
Once ensconced in the Oval Office Obama, invoking “bipartiship”, instantly nailed a white flag to the mast by keeping on Robert Gates, Bush’s secretary of defense.
He formed a foreign policy team mostly composed of Clinton-era neo-liberal hawks, headed by Hilary Clinton and Richard Holbrook. His next step was to eject the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, and install Gen. Stanley McChrystal, best known for running the assassination wing of the military's joint special-operations command. (JSOC). Then he ordered 17,000 new US troops to be deployed to Afghanistan.
It was a fine exhibition of Obama’s eerie skill - also demonstrated in the politicking over health reform - in foreclosing his own range of choices and allowing opponents to coalesce and seize the initiative. If, on his second day in office he’d announced a full and complete review of US aims in Afghanistan, with no option left off the table he’d have had some purchase on the situation. But the months drifted by and finally the worsening situation forced a review of Afghan policy, precisely when Obama’s poll numbers were dropping, the war lobby heartened and the liberals already dejected by Obama’s surrender to Goldman Sachs and Wall Street and disastrous efforts in the health fight.
At this point fate handed Obama a golden opportunity. With astounding insolence Gen. McChrystal began to conduct a public lobbying campaign for his appeal for 40,000 more troops. His rationale for new troops ended up in the hands of Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.
Harry Truman was an indifferent president who needlessly dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, designed to intimidate Stalin. He launched the cold war arms race in 1948. Yet Americans venerate him for two things: the sign on his desk saying the buck stops here, and his dramatic firing of war hero Gen. Douglas MacArthur, for insubordination in challenging Truman’s overall direction of the war in Korea (not to mention Truman's fears of likely MacArthur excess in administering plans being carefully evolved in Truman’s high command to deploy and use nuclear weapons on the Koran peninsula.)
Truman didn’t allow MacArthur time to stage a grandiose resignation. In April, 1951, he fired him on late night radio, announcing that "With deep regret I have concluded that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the U.S. Government and of the U.N. in matters pertaining to his official duties. In view of the specific responsibilities imposed upon me by the Constitution of the U.S. …I have decided that I must make a change in command in the Far East. I have, therefore, relieved General MacArthur of his command.”
It’s clear that McChrystal stepped over the line conclusively in his speech in London at the Institute for Strategic Studies where he contemptuously dismissed the “small footprint” counter-terrorism strategy proposed by Vice President Joe Biden and Senator John Kerry, saying that it would lead to Afghanistan becoming Chaos-istan. Obama’s National Security Advisor, Gen Jim Jones declared that it would have been better that McChrystal’s criticisms had come up through the Army’s chain of command. That was the moment Obama could have fired McChrystal for MacArthur’s offense – insubordination and defiance of civilian control of military policy.
McChrystal is no war hero, like McArthur. People crave some evidence that Obama has steel in his soul. High risk, maybe, but potentially a huge coup for Obama at a fraught political moment, also a brisk exit from the humiliation of the failed booster trip to Copenhagen to win the 2016 Olympics for Chicago. Obama did nothing, except further irk his liberal base by saying withdrawal isn’t an option. Pundits solemnly explained that given Democrats’ distaste for the war in Afghanistan – backed by strong popular hostility, Obama might have to go to Republicans to get the votes for the necessary appropriations of money.
It’s all much too late for any sensible policy review. There have been two moments in the last 40 years when life might have improved for ordinary Afghans, particularly women. The first came with the the reforming left regime of the late 1970s, destroyed by the warlords with US backing. The second arrived with the US eviction of the Taliban in 2001-2, which was welcomed by many Afghans. But at this stage in the game, simply by definition, no American intervention overseas can be anything other than a ghastly disaster, usually bloodstained. Allready the US had too many chits out to the warlords of the Northern Alliance. The US “nation building” apparat is irreversibly corrupt – with a network of $250,000 a year consultancies, insider contracts, and beyond that a de facto stake in the drug industry now supply most of the West’s heroin and opium.
There’s no possible light at the end of any tunnel. The robot war via Predator missiles and other instruments in the arsenal infuriates all Afghans, as wedding parties are blown to bits every weekend. With more troops and mercenaries now in Afghanistan than during the Russian military presence at its peak, there’s zero chance for America playing a long-term constructive role in Afghanistan. The US presence is just a recruiting poster for the Taliban.
But Obama has now surrounded himself with just the same breed of intellectuals who persuaded Lyndon Johnson to destroy his presidency by escalating the war. They’re easily as mad as the bible thumper I heard last week on my truck radio as I drove over the Tehachapi pass on route 58, between Barstow and Bakersfield. Harold Camping, president of Family Stations Ministry, was patiently explaining that God’s plan was to end the world by flooding on May 21, 2011, thus trumping the end of the Mayan calendar, December 21, 2012. In the Biblical perspective 5/21/2011 is the end of the world. The elect will be saved, the rest will perish, not even given brief probation like the inhabitants of Nineveh. Camping's voice was calm and seemingly rational , no doubt like those of the men and women briefing Obama. A doubter called in, emphasizing that he was a 100 per cent believer in the veracity of each line in the Bible, but how to explain verse 4 of the ninetieth psalm? “For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night”? Why had the divine author permitted himself the ambiguity of simile? Camping plunged confidently into biblical numerology: God revealed to Noah in the year 4990 BC that there would be yet 7 days until the flood of waters would be upon the earth. Substitute 1000 years for each one of those 7 days, and we get 7000 years. And when we project 7000 years into the future from 4990 BC, we find that it falls on the year 2011 AD. 4990 + 2011 = 7001. He counseled us to remember, when counting from an Old Testament date to a New Testament date, always to subtract one year because there is no year zero, resulting in: 4990 + 2011 – 1 = 7000 years exactly.
But May 21? On May 21, 1988, God finished using the churches and congregations of the world. The Spirit of God left all churches and Satan entered into the churches to rule at that point in time. The Bible decrees that this period of judgment upon the churches wil last for 23 years. A full 23 years (8400 days exactly) would be from May 21, 1988 until May 21, 2011. Camping took pains to remind his vast world audience that this information was discovered in the Bible completely apart from the information regarding the 7000 years from the flood.
At this point the geological contours of the Tehachapi pass interrupted the radio signal and soon I was descending into the inferno of sunset over Bakersfield. Is Campoing madder than the augurers who have been counseling Obama on his Afghan policy? Is his devoted audience more gullible than the President?
Last week Obama invited Republicans as well as Democrats to the White House for further review of the options. Obama has let events overtake him, exactly as he allowed the health policy debate to spin out of his control in the summer and early fall. He'll shoot for some sort of lethal semi-compromise on reinforcements, thus feeding the right and angering his liberal supporters. A year from now he’ll be paying the penalty in the mid-term elections, just as Clinton did.
Anthropology at War
Don’t miss the marvelous new edition of our Subscriber-Only Newsletter. David Price, an anthropologist and season contributor to CounterPunch excavates a story of particular relevance right now: the way the Pentagon is recruiting PhDs to fight its counter-insurgency campaigns: today Afghanistan, tomorrow the world. Price writes:
“While political science was the academic discipline, which the wars of the twentieth century drew upon, the asymmetrical wars of the twenty-first century now look toward anthropology with hopes of finding models of culture, or data on specific cultures, to be conquered or to be used in counterinsurgency operations. ..
“The counterinsurgency program generating the greatest friction among anthropologists is the Human Terrain Systems (HTS) – a program with over 400 employees, originally operating through private contractors and now in the process of being taken over by the U.S. Army. Human Terrain embeds anthropologists with military units to ease the occupation and conquest of Iraqi and Afghanis – with plans to extend these operations in Africa through expanding units with AFRICOM. Some HTS social scientists are armed, others choose not to. In the last two years, three HTS social scientists have been killed in the course of their work, and HTS member Don Ayala recently pled guilty in U.S. District Court to killing the Afghan (whom Ayala shot in the head-execution style while the victim was detained with his hands cuffed behind him) who had attacked THS social scientist Paula Loyd…
“Supporters of HTS claim the program uses embedded social scientists to help reduce “kinetic engagements,” or unnecessary violent contacts with the populations they encounter. The idea is to use these social scientists to interact with members of the community, creating liaison relationships between occupiers and occupied, as well as using HTS’s social scientists’ cultural knowledge to reduce misunderstandings that can lead to unnecessarily violent interactions.”
HTS has been selling itself to the public through remarkably well-organized domestic propaganda campaigns that have seen dozens of uncritical articles on HTS , with personality profiles on HTS’s personnel appearing in American newspapers, The New Yorker, Harpers, Elle, More, etc.) In his essay, exclusive to the newsletter, Price lays out the full, ugly story of these recipes for “better killing”.
Also in the newsletter: Mark Grueter reports from Sulaimani, Iraqi Kurdistan, on a multi-million dollar campus designed to sell the American way of life. Welcome to the American University of Iraq. “Move your ass and your brains will follow”: Joe Paff remembers an astounding mobilization in San Francisco, 1967-1973 and the lessons it holds for left organizers today.
Subscribe today!
Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
I suppose we should not begrudge Barack Obama his Nobel Peace Prize, though it represents a radical break in tradition, since he's only had slightly less than nine months to discharge his imperial duties, most concretely through the agency of high explosives in the Hindu Kush whereas laureates like Henry Kissinger had been diligently slaughtering people across the world for years.
Woodrow Wilson, the liberal imperialist with whom Obama bears some marked affinities, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, having brought America into the carnage of the First World War. The peace laureate president who preceded him was Teddy Roosevelt, who got the prize in 1906 as reward for sponsorship of the Spanish-American war and ardent bloodletting in the Philippines. Senator George Hoar’s famous denunciation of Roosevelt on the floor of the US Senate in May of 1902 was probably what alerted the Nobel Committee to Roosevelt’s eligibility for the Peace Prize:
“You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives—the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the water torture. ”
TR was given the peace prize not long after he’d displayed his boundless compassion for humanity by sponsoring an exhibition of Filipino “monkey men” in the 1904 St Louis World Fair as “the missing link” in the evolution of Man from ape to Aryan, and thus in sore need of assimilation, forcible if necessary, to the American way. On receipt of the prize, Roosevelt promptly dispatched the Great White Fleet (sixteen U.S. Navy ships of the Atlantic Fleet including four battleships) on a worldwide tour to display Uncle Sam’s imperial credentials, anticipating by scarce more than a century, Obama’s award, as he prepares to impose Pax Americana on the Hindukush and portions of Pakistan.
People marvel at the idiocy of these Nobel awards, but there’s method in the madness, since in the end they train people to accept without demur or protest absurdity as part and parcel of the human condition, which they should accept as representing the considered opinion of rational men, albeit Norwegian. It’s a twist on the Alger myth, inspiring to youth: you too can get to murder Filipinos, or Palestinians, or Vietnamese or Afghans and still win a Peace Prize. That’s the audacity of hope at full stretch.
It’s dawning even on those predisposed to like the guy that when it comes to burning issues the first black president of the United States truly hates to come down on one side or the other. He dreads making powerful people mad. He won’t stand up for his own people when they’re being savaged by the nutball right, edges them out, then has his press secretary claim that they jumped of their own accord. This may impress the peaceniks of Oslo, but from the American perspective he's looking like a wimp.
Obama’s Afghan policy evolved on the campaign trail last year as a one-liner designed to deflect charges that he was a peacenik on Iraq. Not so, he cried. The Global War on Terror was being fought in the wrong place. His pledge was to hunt down and “kill” Osama bin Laden.
Once ensconced in the Oval Office Obama, invoking “bipartiship”, instantly nailed a white flag to the mast by keeping on Robert Gates, Bush’s secretary of defense.
He formed a foreign policy team mostly composed of Clinton-era neo-liberal hawks, headed by Hilary Clinton and Richard Holbrook. His next step was to eject the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, and install Gen. Stanley McChrystal, best known for running the assassination wing of the military's joint special-operations command. (JSOC). Then he ordered 17,000 new US troops to be deployed to Afghanistan.
It was a fine exhibition of Obama’s eerie skill - also demonstrated in the politicking over health reform - in foreclosing his own range of choices and allowing opponents to coalesce and seize the initiative. If, on his second day in office he’d announced a full and complete review of US aims in Afghanistan, with no option left off the table he’d have had some purchase on the situation. But the months drifted by and finally the worsening situation forced a review of Afghan policy, precisely when Obama’s poll numbers were dropping, the war lobby heartened and the liberals already dejected by Obama’s surrender to Goldman Sachs and Wall Street and disastrous efforts in the health fight.
At this point fate handed Obama a golden opportunity. With astounding insolence Gen. McChrystal began to conduct a public lobbying campaign for his appeal for 40,000 more troops. His rationale for new troops ended up in the hands of Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.
Harry Truman was an indifferent president who needlessly dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, designed to intimidate Stalin. He launched the cold war arms race in 1948. Yet Americans venerate him for two things: the sign on his desk saying the buck stops here, and his dramatic firing of war hero Gen. Douglas MacArthur, for insubordination in challenging Truman’s overall direction of the war in Korea (not to mention Truman's fears of likely MacArthur excess in administering plans being carefully evolved in Truman’s high command to deploy and use nuclear weapons on the Koran peninsula.)
Truman didn’t allow MacArthur time to stage a grandiose resignation. In April, 1951, he fired him on late night radio, announcing that "With deep regret I have concluded that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the U.S. Government and of the U.N. in matters pertaining to his official duties. In view of the specific responsibilities imposed upon me by the Constitution of the U.S. …I have decided that I must make a change in command in the Far East. I have, therefore, relieved General MacArthur of his command.”
It’s clear that McChrystal stepped over the line conclusively in his speech in London at the Institute for Strategic Studies where he contemptuously dismissed the “small footprint” counter-terrorism strategy proposed by Vice President Joe Biden and Senator John Kerry, saying that it would lead to Afghanistan becoming Chaos-istan. Obama’s National Security Advisor, Gen Jim Jones declared that it would have been better that McChrystal’s criticisms had come up through the Army’s chain of command. That was the moment Obama could have fired McChrystal for MacArthur’s offense – insubordination and defiance of civilian control of military policy.
McChrystal is no war hero, like McArthur. People crave some evidence that Obama has steel in his soul. High risk, maybe, but potentially a huge coup for Obama at a fraught political moment, also a brisk exit from the humiliation of the failed booster trip to Copenhagen to win the 2016 Olympics for Chicago. Obama did nothing, except further irk his liberal base by saying withdrawal isn’t an option. Pundits solemnly explained that given Democrats’ distaste for the war in Afghanistan – backed by strong popular hostility, Obama might have to go to Republicans to get the votes for the necessary appropriations of money.
It’s all much too late for any sensible policy review. There have been two moments in the last 40 years when life might have improved for ordinary Afghans, particularly women. The first came with the the reforming left regime of the late 1970s, destroyed by the warlords with US backing. The second arrived with the US eviction of the Taliban in 2001-2, which was welcomed by many Afghans. But at this stage in the game, simply by definition, no American intervention overseas can be anything other than a ghastly disaster, usually bloodstained. Allready the US had too many chits out to the warlords of the Northern Alliance. The US “nation building” apparat is irreversibly corrupt – with a network of $250,000 a year consultancies, insider contracts, and beyond that a de facto stake in the drug industry now supply most of the West’s heroin and opium.
There’s no possible light at the end of any tunnel. The robot war via Predator missiles and other instruments in the arsenal infuriates all Afghans, as wedding parties are blown to bits every weekend. With more troops and mercenaries now in Afghanistan than during the Russian military presence at its peak, there’s zero chance for America playing a long-term constructive role in Afghanistan. The US presence is just a recruiting poster for the Taliban.
But Obama has now surrounded himself with just the same breed of intellectuals who persuaded Lyndon Johnson to destroy his presidency by escalating the war. They’re easily as mad as the bible thumper I heard last week on my truck radio as I drove over the Tehachapi pass on route 58, between Barstow and Bakersfield. Harold Camping, president of Family Stations Ministry, was patiently explaining that God’s plan was to end the world by flooding on May 21, 2011, thus trumping the end of the Mayan calendar, December 21, 2012. In the Biblical perspective 5/21/2011 is the end of the world. The elect will be saved, the rest will perish, not even given brief probation like the inhabitants of Nineveh. Camping's voice was calm and seemingly rational , no doubt like those of the men and women briefing Obama. A doubter called in, emphasizing that he was a 100 per cent believer in the veracity of each line in the Bible, but how to explain verse 4 of the ninetieth psalm? “For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night”? Why had the divine author permitted himself the ambiguity of simile? Camping plunged confidently into biblical numerology: God revealed to Noah in the year 4990 BC that there would be yet 7 days until the flood of waters would be upon the earth. Substitute 1000 years for each one of those 7 days, and we get 7000 years. And when we project 7000 years into the future from 4990 BC, we find that it falls on the year 2011 AD. 4990 + 2011 = 7001. He counseled us to remember, when counting from an Old Testament date to a New Testament date, always to subtract one year because there is no year zero, resulting in: 4990 + 2011 – 1 = 7000 years exactly.
But May 21? On May 21, 1988, God finished using the churches and congregations of the world. The Spirit of God left all churches and Satan entered into the churches to rule at that point in time. The Bible decrees that this period of judgment upon the churches wil last for 23 years. A full 23 years (8400 days exactly) would be from May 21, 1988 until May 21, 2011. Camping took pains to remind his vast world audience that this information was discovered in the Bible completely apart from the information regarding the 7000 years from the flood.
At this point the geological contours of the Tehachapi pass interrupted the radio signal and soon I was descending into the inferno of sunset over Bakersfield. Is Campoing madder than the augurers who have been counseling Obama on his Afghan policy? Is his devoted audience more gullible than the President?
Last week Obama invited Republicans as well as Democrats to the White House for further review of the options. Obama has let events overtake him, exactly as he allowed the health policy debate to spin out of his control in the summer and early fall. He'll shoot for some sort of lethal semi-compromise on reinforcements, thus feeding the right and angering his liberal supporters. A year from now he’ll be paying the penalty in the mid-term elections, just as Clinton did.
Anthropology at War
Don’t miss the marvelous new edition of our Subscriber-Only Newsletter. David Price, an anthropologist and season contributor to CounterPunch excavates a story of particular relevance right now: the way the Pentagon is recruiting PhDs to fight its counter-insurgency campaigns: today Afghanistan, tomorrow the world. Price writes:
“While political science was the academic discipline, which the wars of the twentieth century drew upon, the asymmetrical wars of the twenty-first century now look toward anthropology with hopes of finding models of culture, or data on specific cultures, to be conquered or to be used in counterinsurgency operations. ..
“The counterinsurgency program generating the greatest friction among anthropologists is the Human Terrain Systems (HTS) – a program with over 400 employees, originally operating through private contractors and now in the process of being taken over by the U.S. Army. Human Terrain embeds anthropologists with military units to ease the occupation and conquest of Iraqi and Afghanis – with plans to extend these operations in Africa through expanding units with AFRICOM. Some HTS social scientists are armed, others choose not to. In the last two years, three HTS social scientists have been killed in the course of their work, and HTS member Don Ayala recently pled guilty in U.S. District Court to killing the Afghan (whom Ayala shot in the head-execution style while the victim was detained with his hands cuffed behind him) who had attacked THS social scientist Paula Loyd…
“Supporters of HTS claim the program uses embedded social scientists to help reduce “kinetic engagements,” or unnecessary violent contacts with the populations they encounter. The idea is to use these social scientists to interact with members of the community, creating liaison relationships between occupiers and occupied, as well as using HTS’s social scientists’ cultural knowledge to reduce misunderstandings that can lead to unnecessarily violent interactions.”
HTS has been selling itself to the public through remarkably well-organized domestic propaganda campaigns that have seen dozens of uncritical articles on HTS , with personality profiles on HTS’s personnel appearing in American newspapers, The New Yorker, Harpers, Elle, More, etc.) In his essay, exclusive to the newsletter, Price lays out the full, ugly story of these recipes for “better killing”.
Also in the newsletter: Mark Grueter reports from Sulaimani, Iraqi Kurdistan, on a multi-million dollar campus designed to sell the American way of life. Welcome to the American University of Iraq. “Move your ass and your brains will follow”: Joe Paff remembers an astounding mobilization in San Francisco, 1967-1973 and the lessons it holds for left organizers today.
Subscribe today!
Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com
peace prize?
while the bombs fall on afghanistan? while the drones fly over pakistan? while billions in military aid is given to israel? while iran is threatened? while a 600 billion dollar military budget is passed in the democratically controlled senate? while obama ponders a 40,000 troop increase in afghanistan? while the destruction of iraq continues?
of course, there should be no surprise. the nobel committee almost gave the 1938 prize to hitler. according to tariq ali, it was between hitler and gandhi, and since they couldn't choose between those too, they gave it to a group that helped refugees. but, other war criminals have won the reward, including the fellow i like to refer to as the "jewish nazi," henry kissinger. if you think that a strong nickname, ask the millions buried in the lands of vietnam, laos, cambodia, chile, indonesia, argentina, and elsewhere.
teddy roosevelt once won a nobel as well. he who took cuba from spain so he could keep it for himself. it would take 60 years, and a cat named castro, to change that ugly piece of peace. it was teddy the bear who devastated the philippines, killing hundreds of thousands of filipinos, who were guilty of wanting to be in charge of their own country. they say it was vietnam before vietnam. in short, teddy was a brutal bastard. and, the winner of a peace prize.
good old woodrow wilson also won a peace prize. of course, he also invaded haiti and the dominican republic, bombed mexico, got the u.s. involved in the mass slaughter known as ww1, and was a rabid white supremacist. our involvement in the first world war got around 300,000 u.s. soldiers killed. who knows how many people our soldiers killed. it seems this bloody resume was a perfect record for a prize. for, you see, woody was a key player in the creation of the league of nations. which begs the question, did the league of nations save a single life? a young ho chi minh once tried to talk to woody at the league. needless to say, he never was granted any time.
so, we have soaring rhetoric on one hand, and bloody deeds on the other. the nobel people seem to prize the rhetoric, as they ignore the butal deeds of those they honor.
so, congrats, mr o'bomber.
but as they say, consider the source.
of course, there should be no surprise. the nobel committee almost gave the 1938 prize to hitler. according to tariq ali, it was between hitler and gandhi, and since they couldn't choose between those too, they gave it to a group that helped refugees. but, other war criminals have won the reward, including the fellow i like to refer to as the "jewish nazi," henry kissinger. if you think that a strong nickname, ask the millions buried in the lands of vietnam, laos, cambodia, chile, indonesia, argentina, and elsewhere.
teddy roosevelt once won a nobel as well. he who took cuba from spain so he could keep it for himself. it would take 60 years, and a cat named castro, to change that ugly piece of peace. it was teddy the bear who devastated the philippines, killing hundreds of thousands of filipinos, who were guilty of wanting to be in charge of their own country. they say it was vietnam before vietnam. in short, teddy was a brutal bastard. and, the winner of a peace prize.
good old woodrow wilson also won a peace prize. of course, he also invaded haiti and the dominican republic, bombed mexico, got the u.s. involved in the mass slaughter known as ww1, and was a rabid white supremacist. our involvement in the first world war got around 300,000 u.s. soldiers killed. who knows how many people our soldiers killed. it seems this bloody resume was a perfect record for a prize. for, you see, woody was a key player in the creation of the league of nations. which begs the question, did the league of nations save a single life? a young ho chi minh once tried to talk to woody at the league. needless to say, he never was granted any time.
so, we have soaring rhetoric on one hand, and bloody deeds on the other. the nobel people seem to prize the rhetoric, as they ignore the butal deeds of those they honor.
so, congrats, mr o'bomber.
but as they say, consider the source.
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