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EMPOWERING PEOPLE
I would like to introduce this section by recounting a true story. In the summer of 2001 I was invited to speak at a conference in Leeds, England, hosted by BASI - Britain Against Sanctions on Iraq. I gave my speech on the final day, and shortly afterwards the organisers and attendees, about 400 in total, went on a well organised and peaceful protest march through the centre of the city. This march was recorded by student volunteers on both video and audio with a mind to offering the tapes for broadcast by television and radio news. Once the march was completed I accompanied the students to the local ITV television station. They were not interested in even looking at the tapes. So off we went to the local branch of BBC radio to offer the audio. One of the students went into the building, then emerged two minutes later looking very perplexed, and not a little angry. What happened we asked? He replied: "I offered them the tapes, and they asked me if there had been any violence on the march. I said, no, there hadn't, it was entirely peaceful. They said: 'Oh, well, we're not interested then, it's just another protest.'"
The students were genuinely shocked by this. Sadly I wasn't. I had already had direct personal experience of the media agenda which seeks to ridicule a social cause such as this, and to concentrate on the rare occasions when violence does break out, thus successfully obscuring the subject matter. I've since heard many similar stories from other activist sources, and the essay below features yet more.
It is very common for people to wonder exactly what it is they can do to address the issues raised by books, films and projects that challenge the 'mainstream' view, particularly given the media agenda outlined above. There is often a sense that information in isolation serves little purpose than to render those exposed to it powerless, possibly somewhat depressed. This page offers several avenues to explore as a reaction to such information.
It is largely reproduced from a lively and humanist essay, written by Rick Stahlhut, MD, which I found on the internet quite by accident. He has provided a number of superb links to books and organisations which are highly recommended. I particularly urge people to read the works of Professor Noam Chomsky, who, aside from being the most highly respected linguistics expert of his generation, is a long standing activist and researcher. The first step, as Stahlhut points out, is to arm yourself with knowledge. Then if you choose to, to take this knowledge into the direct activism arena. Eventually, if critical mass is reached, the mainstream media simply can not avoid the subject. And always remember the words of the wonderful Mark Thomas: "Civil disobience is not only necessary, it's fun."
"The reasonable man expects to fit in with the world," said philosopher Bertrand Russell, "The unreasonable man expects the world to fit in with him. Thus all progress comes from unreasonable men." Stahlhut makes the very good point, as does Chomsky, that whilst the world can seem very bleak, particularly the new atmosphere of globalisation, all great social progress has come from visionary individuals and grass roots organisations. The world may be better than it was 200 years ago, but this is no argument to say that we can not go much further.
I'm afraid I can not say that all the links Stahlhut provides are still functioning, so you may have to hunt down a few articles independently.
by
Rick Stahlhut, MD
--------------------------------------
"There are a thousand hacking at the
branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
- Henry David Thoreau
"War is peace. Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength."
- George Orwell - 1984
I'm a medically-trained writer and activist. I used to work in the field of computers in healthcare, where I made a decent living but felt like I wasn't really making a difference. Since I left that career in 1997, I've been on an interesting path that finally led me to the IMF/World Bank and Philadelphia ("R2K") protests in April and July 2000. There, I was a street medic, doing my best to support the nonviolent protesters.
I was stunned for weeks afterward. The difference between what I saw (peaceful protesters, important issues) and what the media presented ("stupid, violent protesters; no issues") was so great that I was forced to reexamine everything--how the media works, how our government works, what we believe and why. [Read my report of the Philly protests, and compare it with what you heard in the media, to see what I mean.]
I've been reexamining my world, pretty much full time, for the last year. What I've discovered about our world is not pretty--but it is very important. I'm offering this article in the hopes of saving you valuable time.
In order to show you that's something worth examining more closely is here, I'd like to start with a few simple examples -- ones you can verify very quickly one way or the other. Then I will go into a much more in-depth discussion with my final example.
Here's something amazing that you can prove to yourself in almost no time. It shows how an entire culture can be wrong about something that is right out there in the open.
If you're like most people in the US, maybe even 95% of the people, you were taught in school that Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to free all the slaves because slavery was bad. What's amazing is that this commonly held belief is not true.
You can prove it yourself in less than five minutes by following this link to the full text of the proclamation.
To paraphrase:
On September 22, 1862, I warned the rebelling States in the South they had 100 days to stop rebelling. If they didn't, on January 1, 1863, as a war measure to suppress this rebellion, I was going to make a list of all of the states or portions of states that were still rebelling and free their slaves.
Well, today is the day and their slaves are freed, which means that if they escape to the North, we will not return them as we used to do under the Fugitive Slave Act.
On the other hand, the states that stopped rebelling, and of course the states in the North, are free to keep their slaves.
Now that's not to say that Lincoln was a bad person. It's merely to get the facts straight. How did I learn this? By reading Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. Then, astonished, I leapt onto the Internet and verified it.
What's interesting is that Abraham Lincoln is not a minor President in our history -- nor is the Emancipation Proclamation a minor event in Lincoln's term. Yet an entire country, for one hundred years, has been deceived, or confused, or misled. How could this be? All our history professors can't be working for the CIA!
This all leads to:
Lesson 1: It is possible for an entire country to believe something that is not true--even when the facts are important and out in the open.
A wave of protests has broken out since the important protests of Seattle -- November 29-December 3, 1999. As you remember, the media characterized the protesters as "violent" and the police response to these protests as very restrained. Furthermore, the protesters and their leaders were "stupid," or at best, "misguided."
Similar statements were made about the protests of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington DC in April 2000, and the protests in Philadelphia at the Republican National Convention in July 2000. In fact every significant protest has been characterized as "violent."
It happens, though, that more than 99.5% of the people protesting were completely nonviolent. It is true that some windows were broken in Seattle, but to characterize the protest movement of the last year as "violent" is very misleading. Although I won't try to justify property damage here, I do think it's worthwhile to look at the big picture for a moment. Suppose you are the Ruler of the Universe on Judgement Day. It's time to issue eternal judgement on the following people:
Phil Knight was the CEO of Nike. He stands before you dressed in a nice suit. Nike, under his direction, hired a company in Indonesia to make shoes. The workers in the Indonesian factory were paid 29 cents an hour and treated very badly. When they tried to form a union to improve working conditions, the union organizers were first warned, then beaten, then murdered. Their tongues were cut out and shown to the other workers as a warning. When the United Students Against Sweatshops attempted to create a monitoring system to help prevent this horror, Knight and his people tried to stop the students.
Anthony was a member of the "Anarchist Black Bloc". He's dressed in black; wearing a bandanna like a mask. He helped break some windows of a Nike store during the Seattle WTO protests. He hated what the Nike Corporation was doing and saw no hope of getting Congress to do anything. Had a bumper sticker on his '79 Chevy that said, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."
Only one of these people broke US laws and could be put in jail for his actions. Which broke the higher laws?
The issues that motivated the protests are important too. For example: California tried to outlaw a gasoline additive that was turning up in the groundwater and had been found to cause health problems. A Canadian company that made the product sued under NAFTA, claiming that California, if they passed that law, owed them lost profits for some years into the future. In another case, UPS recently sued Canada under NAFTA, claiming their national mail system was an illegal restraint of trade. When Massachusetts outlawed state government purchases from Burma, a horrible dictatorship that uses slave labor, it was immediately challenged by Japan and the European Union in the WTO.
So although these are called "free trade" agreements, you can quickly see when you dig in, that they are really about transferring power from our democratic governments to corporations and investors.
It takes a little more work to confirm this than the Emancipation Proclamation, but it's not too hard. A great start is to watch the incredible and inspiring video of the Seattle protests, "This Is What Democracy Looks Like". Only $25 plus shipping. It's well worth the money because you will learn incredible things about our society and the functioning of our media.
Or you can read what people who were actually in the protests have written about them.
N30: WTO Showdown. Paul Hawken, the famous business and environmental writer, was at the Seattle protests and was one of the victims of the pepper spray and tear gas attack by the police. He wrote this detailed essay of his experience, both explaining what he saw on the street as well as the reasons why people were protesting in the first place. This is an extremely important story
The Philly Protests. Written by yours truly, I explain what I saw and show you some pictures of the protest.
The Independent Media Center. This is a place where ordinary people, not just journalists, can post their stories, their pictures, even their movies on the Internet. It is often a great place to get the news the mainstream media leaves out--particularly protest news. Remember, many of these stories are by regular people and there is no editorial process that prevents people from saying whatever they want -- both a blessing and a curse. If it's not an eyewitness account, it may be just a rumor. And there's nothing stopping the opposition from planting lies to discredit the movement.
Good places to start to learn about the issues:
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. Public Citizen was started by former Green Party Presidential candidate Ralph Nader and others years ago. Great background information, books, etc.
The International Forum on Globalization. An alliance of sixty leading activists, scholars, economists, researchers and writers formed to stimulate new thinking, joint activity, and public education in response to economic globalization.
Even better would be to go to a major protest and spend several days with the people in the streets and at the teaching sessions that usually accompany them. See if they are mischaracterized in the mainstream media--and then ask yourself what this means about everything you see and hear.
If you're going to a major protest, you may wish to read about how to keep yourself safe. I don't mean safe from the protesters -- they are plenty safe -- I mean from the police violence that could ensue. Now, to be honest, your chances of having problems are fairly low and you can certainly keep your distance in most cases if you're paying attention. But better safe than sorry. Check these out:
Health and Safety at Mass Actions. This great pamphlet can be found in at the Action-Medical web site -- the production of the On The Ground Medical collective.
The Action Medical web site itself contains other great info -- not only how to stay safe yourself, but also on how to organize a medical presence to keep protesters and others safe and healthy. (Click the label at the top of the EMT star to start).
What's interesting is that once you realize the protests have been mischaracterized all along, you will understand how the labor movement and labor strikes have been misrepresented as well. When workers are on strike, they frequently are portrayed as "violent" by the media, particularly when security personnel attack the workers. The same happened to the civil rights protesters of the 60s and is happening in the Middle East today.
When you complete study of this section, you will be faced with:
Lesson 2: The media can be very biased, even if unintentionally so. This is especially true when ordinary people stand up to the powerful. But that doesn't mean the people won't be successful.
Ever notice when the Pentagon and our civilian leaders tell us how much money they need for the military, they NEVER compare our military spending to any other country? That would be useful information, don't you think?
We are clearly, overwhelmingly superior in military strength to everyone. So, from now on, what if we merely kept pace with other countries? We'd be in the ballpark, right?
No? Ok, maybe you think we should spend TWICE AS MUCH as our most dangerous enemy. How about that?
No? Ok, how about AS MUCH AS ALL OUR POTENTIAL ENEMIES COMBINED? Surely, THAT would be enough.
Nope. Not for our military. In 1997, we spent TWICE AS MUCH as ALL OUR POTENTIAL ENEMIES COMBINED. According to the Center for Defense Information, the premiere independent military information agency (started by a retired admiral), in 1997, we spent $271 Billion to Russia's $40 Billion, to China's $30 Billion. [Incidentally, is China really our enemy? We allowed them to buy supercomputers and nuclear reactor supplies under Clinton. We gave them Most Favored Nation trading status. We pump billions of dollars into their economy every year. Seems like we're making them stronger and stronger. Interesting.]
And yet, both Bush and Gore wanted more? And now, we're being told that by the end of the decade, we should be spending $500 Billion a year. For what? There are Official Reasons of course. Read this brief analysis of why they're wrong, also from the Center for Defense Information.
There are other clues that we aren't being told the truth, of course. The world famous political analyst, Noam Chomsky, pointed to a huge clue in a recent lecture. The clue came in the spring of 1990, after the Berlin Wall fell. Up until then, our huge military budget was justified by the grave risk of the Soviet empire. Then what happened? I'll let Chomsky describe it:
... a measure of the Soviet risk was given by the Bush administration in an extremely important document, which I'd urge you to read, and which everyone should have known was important. Every year around the spring, the White House presents Congress with a plan for the military budget. "This is what we want it to be." It's usually boilerplate, the same story every year. But the interesting one was March 1990. How are they going to handle it in March 1990 when the pretext for the last fifty years was gone? The Berlin wall had just fallen.
So anyone who's interested in US foreign policy or in our own country should have immediately looked at that. And it's very interesting. It's pretty much the same as before. We need a huge military establishment. We have to maintain what's called the "defense industrial base" --which is a name for high-tech industry. We have to have huge intervention forces aimed at the Middle East, just as before. Everything the same as before. All that's changed is the pretext. So we have to have this huge military budget, not because of the Russians, but because of, I'm quoting, "the technical sophistication" of Third World countries. That's why we need it all.
As far as our intervention forces, what it says is that these have to be maintained, aimed primarily at the Middle East, as before. Then comes the following phrase: "...where the threat to our interests could not be laid at the Kremlin's door." In other words, "Sorry folks, we've been lying to you for fifty years, but we've gotta tell the truth now because the Kremlin's not around." So the threat to our interest could not be laid at the Kremlin's door, or incidentally at Iraq's door because remember Iraq was an ally at the time. The threat is what it had always been -- finally the cloud has lifted: independent nationalism. Pretty clear from the internal record before, but now public. Yes that was the threat.
[from Chomsky, "Prospects for Peace in the Middle East," March 2001]
Once you've reviewed the facts yourself, you'll be staring right at:
Lesson 3: Top levels of our government are willing to lie to We The People and to our representatives in Congress.
The story of this part of the Middle East is a great way to learn the truth about how our government acts in the world. This is because so much of the story is public, but not quite put together so people can understand it. It's also a great example because most of this story happened after the fall of the Soviet Union -- so we don't have to wonder whether our government's actions were meant to defend us from the "communist menace."
Let's start with the Official Story -- the things you hear all the time:
Questions
And here are some questions you might consider about the whole affair:
Now let's see if we can make sense of these "facts" and questions.
To understand the Iraq story, we need to start with Iran. In 1951, Iran had a parliamentary government, a type of representative democracy like that of Britain and Canada. One of the ministers, Mossadegh, organized the parliament to take over the oil industry from the British and the US. In other words, they decided it was not fair for their major natural resource to be controlled by foreigners. Now they didn't just take it. They offered the British 25 percent of the profits and allowed the British employees to keep working there.
This wasn't good enough, so the CIA began working to overthrow the Iranian government, and in 1953 Iran's parliamentary democracy was overthrown and replaced by a dictator, the Shah.
You might think the so-called "liberal media" would have a problem with this. Instead, one year later, on August 6, 1954, a New York Times editorial said: "Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism." And what is "fanatical nationalism"? Again, it's the crazy idea that a small country should have control of its own resources.
The Official Story, of course, was that the independent Mossadegh really planned to turn over the oil and power to the Soviet Union. The facts do not support this (see Blum, Killing Hope, pp 64-72). But what if they did? Did the Iranian people benefit from their "rescue" from the communist menace? No--they got the Shah and his secret police, SAVAK, who ruled the country with terror, torture, and murder for the next quarter century--WITH OUR SUPPORT. As Blum describes:
Amnesty International summed up the situation in 1976 by noting that Iran had "...the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran."
(Killing Hope, p 72)
Incidentally, the US got control of 40 percent of Iranian oil in the deal.
This situation persisted until the late 70's when a popular revolution overthrew the Shah and put the Ayatollah Khomeini in power. The Shah, our good friend, was given asylum here in the US. The Ayatollah, for obvious reasons, began calling the US the "Great Satan." Later, in 1979, Iranian students took over the US embassy there, taking the employees hostage for a year because they claimed that the US was attempting to overthrow their government again, using the embassy to coordinate efforts.
The Iran-Contra affair showed that this effort continued into the 1980's. If you want to overthrow a government, what you do is identify people inside the military and offer them arms and support. That's why we were sending arms, through Israel, to Iran.
I was in medical school in the late 70s and early 80s when this was happening. What's amazing is that I don't remember ever hearing why the Iranians thought we were the "Great Satan" -- in fact it was suggested that they were just crazy Arab extremists who hated us for no good reason. They never explained that we overthrew the Iranian government before and that we were trying to do it again. This was verified in the fascinating email of a former Iranian-American citizen in his mid-30s, who remembers this story clearly from his teenage years when his parents took him back to Iran, when he could only read English and the English news. So he watched one thing with his own eyes, but read another. Incredible--but just like the protest stories.
Once you understand the truth behind the Iranian story, Iraq is easier to understand.
Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq in the late 1970s. Eventually, Hussein got into a war with Iran. The US supported Hussein because Iran was our enemy at that time. Our support was quite strong as can be shown by the fact that in May 1987, an Iraqi missile hit the USS Stark killing 37 sailors. They got a tap on the wrist for this -- which shows our government was really committed.
In 1988, the USS Vincennes was patrolling the Gulf and shot down an Iranian civilian airliner in a commercial flight corridor. 290 people died. This was an accident, according to 'The Official Story'. Although most of us believed it, Iran didn't and subsequently gave up.
Shortly afterwards, Hussein committed the worst atrocities of his career -- he used chemical weapons against his own people, the Kurdish citizens in the north. An estimated five to ten thousand Kurds died from the chemical weapons attack and another 40,000 died from conventional weapons used at the same time. Despite outcries in the international community, comparing Hussein's use of chemical weapons to Hitler, the United States did nothing to respond to these atrocities. In fact, in 1989, during our invasion of Panama, the US expedited loans to Iraq to "...put us in a better position to deal with Iraq" on human rights violations. Notice that later, we had a different method, sanctions, that we used to deal with "human rights violations".
In 1990, Hussein complained of "slant drilling" by Kuwait. In other words he was saying that Kuwait was angling their oil drilling rigs to tap into oil that was actually underneath Iraq. [A young friend of mine was actually in the Persian Gulf. One of his fellow soldiers, who used to work oil rigs in the south, actually saw the Kuwaiti rigs and confirmed this.]
After much the saber-rattling, it appeared Iraq was about to invade. During congressional hearings, a Bush administration official was asked whether we had any treaties that would require us to intervene if Iraq attacked. He said "no" and the next day Iraq invaded--2nd August 1990.
President Bush (senior) and Margaret Thatcher (former Prime Minister of England) immediately compared Hussein to Hitler and expressed hope for a popular uprising to depose him. This hope was repeated several times in the next few months. In February 1991, our government launched Desert Storm, the attack in which one hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers were killed and along with some 100 US soldiers.
Immediately after we ended our attack, there were uprisings against Saddam. We were there in force, but we did nothing to stop the vicious Iraqi counterattack that crushed the rebellion with extreme violence and kept Saddam in power.
Interestingly, the media did notice this, and in July 1991, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times had this to say:
"Sooner or later, Mr. Bush argued, sanctions would force Mr. Hussein's generals to bring him down, and then Washington would have the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein."
Curiously, Mr. Friedman didn't seem to find this idea disturbing at all -- that the "best of all worlds" was not a democracy but an iron-fisted dictatorship. And later you can find reporters in the New York Times and in many other publications extolling our greatness and our commitment to human rights in the world. Short memories, I guess.
We then began the sanctions against Iraq during which roughly one million people have died for lack of food, sanitation, and medicine. Most of these people are children. See this link for a detailed description of the state of the Iraqi people after several years of sanctions.
From time the time we have increased our bombing attacks, such as in December 1998. An explanation was needed for this, and we got one. In a New York Times article, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made this remarkable statement:
" We have come to the determination that the Iraqi people would benefit if they had a government that really represented them."
Assuming she was telling the truth, I'll leave it to you to consider what it means that in December 1998, the US finally decided that the most recent incarnation of Hitler was not the best ruler for the Iraqi people.
Saddam Hussein was painted as a great danger to the planet to encourage us to go to war. Now of course he was a danger, but the danger was greatest when we were supporting him the most during the late 80's. That's when he had the most power and when he committed his most atrocious crimes. He already had chemical weapons at that time, and we knew it.
A rough estimate of the danger can be determined by simply looking at the results of the Gulf War. But we could have known that before by looking at the relative military spending of the US and Iraq as seen in this chart.
So what were the Gulf War and the sanctions really about? What story is left when you have debunked the others?
It's easy. What comes to mind when you think of the "Middle East"? What should come to mind is oil. The Truth was hinted at for a long time, but finally admitted by Bush's National Security Advisor in a BBC special on the 5-year anniversary of the Gulf War.
Actually, if we knew our history, we'd not be surprised. In the 1940's, US planners identified the Middle East as the greatest source of strategic power in world history. Which meant, in their minds, that the US has to control it.
But there's a problem: there are people there, and sometimes they want to benefit from their own resources, as Iran demonstrated in 1951. That's why we support weak dictators throughout the Gulf region--to make sure the people of the region are suppressed so they don't get much benefit from their major natural resource--and we do.
Which explains why we overthrew the Iranian democracy in 1953, and why an Iraqi junta is the "best of all worlds." Democracy in the Gulf is too dangerous, because it might force us to make major changes in energy policy. We might have to really, seriously promote energy conservation, wind and solar power. Oil prices might finally approach the levels Europe has been living with for years. Germans, for example, pay around $4/gallon. And this would affect US oil and automobile corporations. (You might ask yourself this question--if Iraq had a democracy tomorrow, how high would gas prices have to go before you would support another CIA overthrow? How many people would you be willing to murder to keep prices below $5/gallon?)
Yes, Hussein was our kind of dictator, until he got out of line. It took until this year for me to finally understand what happened. Interestingly, the famous American political analyst, Noam Chomsky, got it right off the bat. In his important book, Deterring Democracy, 1991, he said this:
By any standards, Saddam Hussein is a monstrous figure, .... But his villainy is not the reason for his assumption of the role of Great Satan in August 1990. It was apparent long before, and did not impede Washington's efforts to lend him aid and support.... Hussein became a demon in the usual fashion: when it was finally understood, beyond any doubt, that his independent nationalism threatened US interests. His record of hideous atrocities then became available for propaganda needs, but beyond that, it had essentially nothing to do with his sudden transition in August 1990 from cherished friend to new incarnation of Genghis Khan and Hitler.
(p 210-211).
Which leads to the most disturbing lesson of all:
Lesson 4: The US works to promote corporate interests in the world (and the ideologies that support them)--not human rights or democracy. Dictators are fine as long as they give us what we want. Democracies are not ok if we don't like their economic plans, and we are quite willing to overthrow them if it suits our interests.
There are many instances since World War II where our government has overthrown the governments of other democracies or interfered in their elections. I will not try to describe, or even list, all of them here. An excellent book that does is Blum's Killing Hope (see below). Have your favorite anti-depressant ready.
A few examples:
Furthermore, once you understand that these issues have been distorted, you may also wish to investigate the following:
When you investigate further, you will come to some vitally important conclusions about the world in which we live:
These conclusions may seem surprising, but, in fact, the US two-party system has always supported rule by the rich (later by corporations)--from the very beginning. Read Howard Zinn's tremendous book, A People's History of the United States. You don't have to agree with his interpretations. The facts are damning enough.
Rich, white men wrote the US Constitution--many of them slave owners. So, not surprisingly, "We the People of the United States," didn't really mean "everybody." Only the rich, white men could vote. And they could only vote for the House of Representatives--not the Senate, not the Supreme Court, and certainly not the President. The "checks and balances" we are so proud of were actually checks against the danger of democracy, because if the people had power, they might threaten the rich. As James Madison, chief architect of the Constitution, explained at the Constitutional Convention, the primary role of government is to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." Or listen to John Jay, who said the country should be run by the people who own it. Or Alexander Hamilton who called the public, "the great beast." So, the "will of the people" was not important to government then, and still isn't. Explains a lot, doesn't it?
So it's hard to make a dent in big problems using the electoral system, because it was designed very well to keep power in the hands of the wealthy. One of Zinn's observations was that a two-party system--in which both parties are similar, but one is slightly more democratic than the other--is a very stable system. If people get upset, they'll go to the more democratic one, and feel like they actually did something--when in fact, little has changed. This is one reason protest has been necessary to make big changes (slavery, civil rights, women's suffrage, child labor) ever since this country was founded.
But once you realize both Democrats and Republicans at high levels overthrow third world democracies and support brutal dictators; once you investigate some of the other issues carefully--it should be pretty obvious that we need to do something to fix our electoral system. Protest can work, but democracy would be better. We must, somehow, put power in the hands of a political party that really believes in democracy and human rights. And not just here, but in other countries as well.
I wish there was an easier way. I really truly wish a Democrat or Republican at high levels would come forward and tell the American public that they didn't believe in these awful things we do. That if they were elected, the US would be a good, honorable, ethical world citizen--something we could all be proud of. I wish this because the deck has been carefully stacked against third parties in the US--both in election laws and in the way the media handles election coverage.
But the major parties won't come clean, so I see no other choice. We must abandon them and fight the incredible uphill battle--because the only well-known Presidential candidate who spoke the truth about our immoral foreign policies was Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.
For example, Nader said this on the campaign trail in Ann Arbor Michigan, 9/1/00:
It's time for this country to stand behind the peasants and workers for a change and not with dictators and oligarchs.... and that includes ending the criminal economic sanctions against the people of Iraq that are killing 5000 children a month.
Nader also challenged our obscene military budget:
This campaign is to demonstrate to our country that spending hundreds of billions of dollars on gold plated weapons systems--to fatten the coffers of Martin-Marietta and Lockheed and General Dynamics--should be stopped and diverted and returned to the needs of this country and its people, to abolish poverty, to provide universal health insurance coverage and to advance environmental progress.
And he even had the guts to point out some interesting hypocrisies in our "War on Drugs" rhetoric. For example:
When people in Texas are languishing in jails--five, ten, fifteen years, for the possession and use of marijuana--while the candidate for the Republican party, George W Bush, has admitted that he has violated the drug laws, the question to be addressed to Bush, which Gore will never do, is to say "Mr. Bush, why do you deserve to be president of the United States, when these people deserve to continue to rot in jail?"
Of course, I'm sure the mainstream media didn't report any of that. Nor did they report the Florida exit polls for Nader voters:
The defection to Nader was bi-partisan. One of my favorite Greens is an ex-Republican Vietnam War Vet. You don't need a Democratic watch to know what time it is.
Now, I realize you can make a valid argument for lesser evils. But before you can make an informed decision, you need to know how much evil the lessers actually are.
Again, I really wish a Republican or Democratic candidate would stand up proud, and be honest, and courageous. But they won't. So it's time to vote your conscience, folks. Expect to "throw your vote away" a few times before we win. It's going to be a long hard struggle. But I see no electoral alternative.
Two organizations do Green Party work at the US national level: The Association of State Green Parties and Green Party USA. ASGP is generally focuses on electoral politics (such as the Nader/LaDuke candidacy), and GPUSA on activism.
Obviously worse? From my perspective, yes. Really worse? Hmmm. Tougher question. Check out these three essays and see what you think. The facts are quite interesting, as compared to the hype.
Lots of things. You just have to decide what makes best use of your skills and interests and get going. Read what Dr. Chomsky suggests. And here are a few more ideas:
Obviously. But it's harder than you might think, because you end up having to chase down the original sources until you are convinced that a particular author is trustworthy. You can save time if you trust other people who have already done this work.
When you have chased down a particular reference -- especially a government document that's hard to get and not copyrighted -- put it online and save the rest of us some effort. NSC 68 is online, for example, the main document laying out the strategy for the Cold War. I'll be putting NSC-1 online soon.
There are many, many good groups out there. The main rule of organizing is "never get isolated." It makes you a harder target. It also makes you happier. The Green Party is one group, which, by the way, includes both ex-Democrats AND ex-Republicans. That might seem surprising, but once you know some of the awful truth, a lot of the differences seem to pale. I really do believe most "conservatives" would be appalled if they really knew what was going on. Many consider themselves moral and religious--much of what our government does in the world is neither.
Real democracy requires open decision making processes and an informed public--which would go a long way towards solving the problems we face. Educating the public takes time, but no one said democracy was the most efficient form of government. Fascist dictatorships are much more efficient, but who wants to live under one?
Get the word out. Use whatever skills you have. I'm much better on TV than door-to-door. You might be the opposite. That's ok.
I'm trying to understand what the shortest distance to awareness is. Pay attention and see what you learn. Spread the word if a particular story seems to help.
Without hope, without a positive vision for the future, it's harder to act.
We are taught, from a very early age, several interlocking ideas:
The bad news is that the first four of these are mostly false, as (partly) demonstrated above, and as you can verify for yourself if you make the effort. That's very depressing. When my eyes were first opened, I was stunned--for weeks if not months. It's like turning on the lights in the middle of the night. It hurts, but you can see better when you get over it.
But here's the good news--#5 is also false. To prove it to yourself quickly, read these brief comments from Dr. Chomsky on how Things Have Changed. Next, read Howard Zinn's book, You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train, his memoirs of the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam war movements. Very inspiring and hopeful.
Furthermore, in many ways, the world really is better than it used to be. Even Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. It is better because people like you have made it so.
Examples of progress in the US, instigated from the grassroots, include:
If you only debunk lies 1-4 and leave lie #5 intact, crashing depression follows. Don't do it! Debunk 5 too!
Recognize our successes, make friends along the way and never get isolated. Know there's much to do and don't expect to get it all done in one lifetime.
These are just a tiny fraction of what's out there. But if you read these, and chase enough references down to prove them to yourself, the Official Story will be obliterated forever. And good riddance.
Just for fun--fun IS permitted, you know.
As you can see from the various links on this page, I've spent some time trying to track down the original sources of information on these stories. That's the only way you can penetrate the cloud of lies that surrounds us.
It's not easy and it does take time. But once you have tracked down several sources pointed to by a particular author, like Dr. Chomsky, and discovered that they are all correct, you might decide you can probably trust this person and just read what they have to say.
On the other hand, it's definitely a pain that you can't just trust what the mainstream media puts out in the newspaper and on TV. You have to work harder to separate the truth from the distortions.
So you have to think. Dr. Chomsky, for example, believes there is overwhelming evidence that the JFK assassination was NOT a big conspiracy. On the other hand, he believes it is possible the government did instigate the Martin Luther King assassination. This is plausible because the infamous FBI COINTELPRO program was found to have not only seriously harassed MLK, but also actually assassinated members of the Black Panther Party, and framed other social activists for various crimes including murder. This was documented in (what should be) famous congressional hearings and a trial in Chicago.
But I do think it's pretty obvious that US foreign policy--and much of what happens inside this country--is driven by money, power, and bad ideologies. And I believe these things aren't talked about because they are taboo. And I believe that these taboos are in effect not only in the media, but also in the schools and all the other public spaces. It's hard to talk about this stuff, and that's part of the reason people don't know about it.
This is one of the questions you have to struggle with when you finally realize what's going on out there. I posed that question myself to Dr. Chomsky, and an interesting dialog followed. Suggest you read it here. But there are other answers.
The old expression, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" seems to be true. Once people have great power, they do things they didn't do before they got that power.
Secrecy seems to be part of the problem. Imagine if George Bush (senior) had gone on TV before the Gulf War and said:
"My fellow Americans--soon, we are going to bomb Iraq. But it's not because Hussein is evil--we've known that for a long time and supported him anyway. No--this war is about oil prices and oil profits."
At that point, the American people might have responded and corrected the situation a bit.
Sometimes, our leaders simply have very different values than we do. And as demonstrated in the dialogue with Dr. Chomsky mentioned above, people can come up with very good excuses for quite horrible things.
-- Our standard of living would be lower, and that's just "not acceptable"
It's true -- if we didn't crush other countries we wouldn't have as much here. But aren't stealing and murder bad? Apparently not. It turns out that some leaders think that the role of the US government is to get as much of the world's wealth into this country as possible, regardless of what it takes. If we have to overthrow governments, murder millions of people, those are just the practical realities of leadership.
They think world empires like ours have always been evil. And now it's our turn. If we don't do it, somebody else will. The idea that things could be different--now that a (potential) democracy like the United States rules the world--is just idealistic. As Henry Kissinger put it, "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work."
This view was expressed rather clearly in a formerly secret 1948 document, Policy Planning Study 23, written by "doves" under the Truman (Democrat) administration. Here's what the head of State Department Planning by ("liberal") George Kennan had to say:
"We have about 50% of the worldís wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. ... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming.... We should cease to talk about vague and ... unreal objectives such as human rights....."
This explains everything, of course. Read a brief Chomsky discussion of this in What Uncle Sam Really Wants, or a more detailed one in Deterring Democracy.
Now if I mugged these same people in the State Department parking lot, they might think it was unfair, even evil. Funny that they can't see the connection....
-- They think "we the people" are stupid--we need to be lied to so we will do the "right" thing
By carefully following the leads from Dr. Chomsky, Blum, and others, I have come to believe our government lies to us a lot--particularly the highest levels of government like the president and so on.
Why? Because ever since World War I, the leaders of our government have understood that it was possible for them, "the responsible men," to make it decisions at the top and then use PR (propaganda) to convince us that they are doing the right thing. They even had a term for it, "the manufacture of consent." They do this, in part, because they think the public is stupid and needs to be protected from themselves.
The story goes like this: before World War I, President Woodrow Wilson was elected on a pacifist platform -- "peace without victory" was the slogan. But he decided that he wanted to go to war. So a propaganda agency called the Committee on Public Information was set up to spread lies about German atrocities such as pulling the arms off of Belgian babies and so on. These lies (and other techniques) worked -- the country was whipped into an anti-German frenzy and the country went to war.
A lot of people were impressed by these achievements. One of them was Hitler, who in Mein Kampf suggested that the Germans lost the war because they lost the propaganda battle -- and that next time it would be different. But the people inside the US propaganda agency were also incredibly impressed, and they told their story to both the government and the business community in what should be, but aren't, very (in)famous books.
Here are some important quotes from one of these books, Bernays Propaganda (1928), which will give an idea how these folks think:
page 1. "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of the country."
"We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."
p. 2. "It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind...."
p. 25 "... in its sum total, [propaganda] is regimenting the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers."
p. 27. [Bernays briefly described techniques used in WW I--including individual appeals, cooperation of thought leaders, and "the manipulation of patriotic opinion"]
p. 47. "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will, without their knowing it?"
p. 114. "Ours must be a leadership democracy administered by the intelligent minority who know how to regiment and guide the masses."
p. 156. "The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions. The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation." [This was before TV, which is now the main tool, no doubt--RS]
It's important to realize that Bernays was not a minor figure. He was one of the most important people in the public relations industry for the next 50 years. So these ideas were spread far and wide both in government and in the business community. That's how the PR industry started. And he wasn't the only one saying it.
-- They may have less control than we think
How is it possible that Jimmy Carter, the "human rights" president, supplied arms to the Indonesian dictator Suharto as he slaughtered 200,000 people in East Timor? Carter's seemed like a good guy ever since.
It may be that the system actually limits the power of presidents more than we realize. As Dr. Chomsky notes in his book, What Uncle Sam Really Wants,
Members of the House of Representatives can be influenced much more easily than senators, and senators somewhat more easily than the president, who is usually immune. When you get to that level, policy is decided almost totally by the wealthy and powerful people who own and manage the country. (p. 99)
Government is this bad, in large part, because it's controlled by big business and the rich. But at least in theory, the government is supposed to be influenced by the public, even if it's harder than it should be. Big business is much more difficult for the public to influence, although it can be done.
You may occasionally hear the idea that "the market" is the perfect democracy because everybody gets to vote. Nonsense. It's the perfect plutocracy--rule by the rich. In the market, the more money you have, the more votes you have. That's not democracy, obviously.
No. The answer is to make our government a real democracy.
If you've made it this far, you realize there are problems with the corporate media -- namely, that the stories they tell are often distorted. George Orwell noted this in the 1940s--saying there was "voluntary literary censorship" in England. He thought it was caused by the fact that the press is owned by "wealthy men" who have a certain view of the world they want to see expressed. He also thought there was a socialization process that caused the people in charge to think a particular way.
That's not too far off. A more technical view, supported by incredible amounts of evidence, is presented in two impressive books, Manufacturing Consent and Necessary Illusions, both by Dr. Chomsky. NI is online in full text at Z Magazine.
But if you don't have time to read these right now, I can just lead you through a simplified example of media history that pretty much tells the tale.
Once upon a time, many years ago, there were two newspapers in New York City -- The New York Corporate Times and The New York Labor Times.
The Corporate Times was started by people who believed corporations were good, labor unions were evil, you should always trust authority, and if someone in authority said "jump," you should say "how high?" The people they hired either fit into that worldview or they didn't do very well.
The Labor Times was started by people who believed corporations were evil, labor unions were good, you should always question authority, and if someone in authority said "jump," you should say "strike!" The people they hired either fit into that worldview or they didn't do very well.
Both newspapers were telling the truth as they saw it. And they thought they were doing the right thing. But the news they reported was very different. If there was a strike somewhere, for example, the Corporate Times said it was awful and listened very carefully to the story of the management and owners -- and that's what they reported the most. On the other hand, the Labor Times reported on the horrible working conditions of the workers -- and that's what they reported the most.
Then came corporate advertising. Corporations, who had the money to advertise, preferred the Corporate Times and hated the Labor Times, obviously. They only advertised in the New York Corporate Times, which allowed the Corporate Times to drop the cost of their newspaper considerably as the advertisers picked up the burden.
Eventually, the New York Labor Times went out of business because it had less advertising, and was therefore was much more expensive to buy.
And so today, all we're left with is the New York Corporate Times, and it's anti-labor, pro-corporate, authority-trusting view--and not the other views.
It's also true that the major media today are themselves big corporations or are owned by big corporations. This means they aren't impartial bystanders -- they have their own interests. For example in my town, the one major newspaper here is very much in favor of big tax breaks for corporations and they do not present the opposing view very well. In fact, we recently invited an internationally known speaker on alternative models of economic development to come here--and the newspaper refused to cover it. Why? Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the newspaper was currently asking the city for a multimillion-dollar tax break.
Remember that the media gets most of its money from advertising, not from you. So their primary customer is the advertiser, not you, and the product is the audience (you). The media will not attack its major source of funding as a general rule.
In addition, government pressures can be brought to bear as well. When an acquaintance of mine who used to work for UPI wrote an article describing a worker who was injured at a nuclear power plant near here, her boss immediately was called and criticized, not only by the power company, but also by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
As in the New York Corporate Times vs. New York Labor Times example above, the worldview of the top people shapes what and how the news is printed. They think they are writing the truth -- and they don't realize their worldview is distorting the truth in a particular way.
When a certain view of "truth" is generally accepted--true "political correctness"--it's hard to break out of it. Look at the Emancipation Proclamation story I presented above. And if you are fortunate enough to actually find the truth, you may be reluctant to speak it. Or if you do say it, you may be ignored or ridiculed.
I start with authors like Chomsky, Blum, and Zinn to get the big picture. All these folks, and many others, have the courage to speak plainly, and the intelligence and dedication to carefully document their work. So when they say things that sound impossible (given what we are told every day), you can check if it's true or not. So far, all of their statements I've checked out have been true.
There are many magazines that will allow you to get more information on what's happening in the world. I only know the ones from "the left," but there must be some conservative ones as well who know this story. It may be somewhat harder, however, for conservatives to make the connection because of their higher, sometimes even unquestioning, respect for authority. The idea that authority figures might do evil is almost heresy for some people.
The ones on "the left" include: The New Internationalist, The Nation, Z Magazine, In These Times, Covert Action Quarterly, The Progressive, and others. In particular, The New Internationalist and Z Magazine have spectacular online archives. Z Magazine, for example, has the full text of several of Dr. Chomsky's most famous books, various audio talks, essays, etc. Or read the magazines Yes! The Journal of Positive Futures and The Nation.
If you have satellite, tune in Free Speech TV. Some cable access stations run their stuff too. And I think you can watch it on the web as well. For funny TV takes on important issues, Michael Moore's "The Awful Truth" is great.
In terms of protest news, I always start by going to the Independent Media Centers -- there's usually one set up for every major protests site. But an easy starting place is the original one at http://www.indymedia.org/. There you can get unfiltered news, often written by ordinary people who were on the scene. Sometimes they have pictures and movies as well.
When I first woke up to the realities of the real world, I was angry or depressed almost constantly for months. It's not surprising really--when you've been lied to all your life, it's kind of jarring to discover the truth.
I asked experienced activists how they dealt with their anger. Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange said he had enough anger "for ten people"--he works as hard and long as he can and then hits the beach to decompress. A nun told me the "transition period" is the hardest, and then it gets better.
Actually, I am much better now, a year after my awakening. Thanks to Zinn, Chomsky, and others, I finally understand that as horrendous as things are, they are generally much better now than they were 100 years ago. So you have to take the long view. We will not live to see the perfect world, but we can work towards it.
Actually, no. But you bring up several interesting points.
The reason you're asking this is because you've been taught we are shouldn't criticize our government. Actually it's a little different than that though -- we are allowed to criticize our government as long as we don't criticize our government's military policy or any other criminal justice activity including the drug war. In other words, it's fine for Rush Limbaugh to criticize the government's social policies and bureaucratic functions any day of the week. He's no "communist." But if I question the motives behind our military policies, then I am. Interesting.
What does it mean if in our so-called democracy the public is not allowed to criticize the most dangerous thing our country does in the world--go to war? We're supposed to assume that the "evil government bureaucracies" that Limbaugh assails (often with lies, but that's another story) are completely trustworthy when dealing with death? That's lunacy.
But there's an important lesson here -- there are serious social pressures that keep these topics absolutely taboo. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to break them.
Another important point is that we've been taught that communism and socialism are by definition "evil" because it is what the Soviet Union was -- and we know the Soviet Union was the "evil empire" after all.
But regardless of what communism and socialism might be, it's important to note that they are not what the Soviet Union was. If socialism, for example means anything, it means workers have more power to make the decisions about what happens, and that the country's resources are more equitably distributed. But the Soviet Union wasn't that at all--it was a brutal party dictatorship run on vaguely communist principles. The Soviet Union was to socialism and communism what Hitler's Germany was to capitalism.
I don't hate America, and I don't hate the people of America. What I hate is the fact that our government destroys third world countries and many defenseless people in the US--on purpose--and then lies to us (for "our own good") so We The People won't interfere.
Again, if this were a real democracy, people would take it for granted that you should support the things you like and criticize the things you hate. In fact, there are few if any other democracies that even have a term like "un-American." Try going to Italy and acting "anti-Italian" and see if they don't laugh at you. But in the Soviet Union -- if you were anti-Soviet--you were in big trouble.
Every time you try to shut someone up who is criticizing our government, you are making it easier for our government to get away with murder. So let's stop the false patriotism. This isn't some meaningless football game where you cheer for "your" team, no matter how dirty they play. This is real life. Be proud of what's good about America. Courageously discover and oppose what's evil. And, if you aren't already, please get in the game. We really need you.
Welcome to the Awful Truth, or at least a part of it. I hope you've found this essay helpful, though perhaps painful. Ignorance really is bliss sometimes, but it's not an ethical option here in the US. We need to know. We need to act.
The citizens of the US live in a relatively free society--you probably won't be assassinated or imprisoned if you speak out. But with this freedom comes awesome responsibilities, because the US also happens to be the most powerful and dangerous country in the world, by far. So we have a responsibility to rein in the horrors inflicted by our government on the world's people, as well as the disadvantaged people in the US. And we have a responsibility to protect the rights of those who stand against this evil. We're supposed to be able to control our government, and we really are the only people on earth who can. It's time we did.
It is not easy to find your part in the struggle. What can you do without collapsing and giving up? How do you keep your mind balanced, your family ties strong, your grass cut--when you know the Awful Truth? How do you find joy in life while staring reality straight in the eyes?
I don't have the answers. But it helps me to take the long view, and to realize we can't fix the world in just one lifetime. Don't let the size of the task overwhelm you. As Gandhi once said, "Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it."
Be brave, and take those seemingly
insignificant steps on the path to a better world.
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My heartfelt thanks to "Uncle
Noam" and "Uncle Howard."
I once was blind, but now I see.
last edited 6/1/01
During a visit to
England after World War 2, Ghandi was asked the following question:
"What do you think of democracy in this country?"
Ghandi replied:
"I think it would be a very good idea."
