Thursday, October 11, 2007

The Emerging US World Police State

The US became the evil empire when it dropped two nuclear devices on two defenseless cities in Japan in 1945. It is claimed that "nuking" Japan saved some one million American lives still at war throughout the Pacific. In fact, Japan had already begun negotiating the terms of its surrender with the US. It was not the first time nor will it be the last time that the people of the US have been lied to by its own government. Nor is the first time the US had negotiated in bad faith. Every broken treaty with native Americans are evidence of that fact.

Bush, meanwhile, makes plans to nuke Iran and when he does so, it will be, like his war of aggression against Iraq, premised upon a pack of lies. He will claim that Iran has or is building nuclear weapons though every other credible source claims Iran is years away from weapons grade production. But for "patriotism" we are expected to believe Bush when, in every other instance about every other issue, Bush has lied his sorry ass off!

The US occupation of Iraq is simply the latest in a series of warning signs that American power, best symbolized by "the" bomb, has become the bane of humankind. The US loosed upon the world an evil genie when it became the first nation to use nukes against another. That act may ultimately prove to be the end of human civilization.
I had blundered into this desolate landscape as instantly as one might wake among the craters of the moon. The moment of recognition when I realized that I was already in Nagasaki is present to me as I write, as vividly as when I lived it. I see the warm night and the meaningless shapes; I can even remember the tune that was coming from the ship. It was a dance tune which had been popular in 1945, and it was called “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby…?”

The power of science for good and for evil has troubled other minds than ours…. Nothing happened in 1945 except that we changed the scale of our indifference to man; and conscience, in revenge, for an instant became immediate to us…civilization face to face with its own implications. The implications are both the industrial slum which Nagasaki was before it was bombed, and the ashy desolation which the bomb made of the slum. And civilization asks of both ruins, “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby?”

-Jacob Bronowski, Science and Human Values

Bertrand Russell wrote: "Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do." It is not only those who refuse to think who have died. It is also those who think and speak out against US imperialism who have died. I would be interested in seeing an accurate, scientific study of the many who have died suspiciously since the ascension of the CIA --JFK, RFK, Hunter Thompson, JFK Jr, Paul Wellstone, MO Gov. Mel Carnahan, Martin Luther King, Jr, et al. Of the one million plus murdered by the US in Iraq, only Saddam Hussein might have faced capital crimes charges. That Hussein died at the end of a dubious show trial by a kangaroo court underscores the illegitimacy of the US occupation. That is no defense of Saddam; but neither did Saddamn get one at his show trial. There is always the hope that statistics and computer technology will catch up with the GOP, a criminal conspiracy that has for too long hid behind the rubrics of unlikely, incredible coincidence assisted by false patriotism.
I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology.... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called 'education.' Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part.

It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.". Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.

--Bertrand Russell, "The Impact of Science on Society", 1953

As he wrote, Russell pointed out that "scientific societies" were still in their infancies. Russell believed, however, that advances in science, primarily physiology and psychology, would make possible the kind of control over human beings that previous totalitarian regimes had only dreamed about.

Jacob Bronowski did not share Russell's apprehension with regard to science. Bronowski found in logical positivism not only the philosophical basis for science, but a moral injunction, that is, the implied imperative that we ought to act in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so. Bronowski believed that genocide and atrocities are the result of ideology and dogma --not science. The most moving moment in the Ascent of Man occurred in an episode entitled: 'Knowledge or Certainty'. In that episode, Bronowski visited Auschwitz where many members of his family had died.


We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge.

Russell, however, would most certainly have agreed with Bronowski with regard to dogma, against which Russell maintained an unassailable record. Likewise, in the interest of fairness to both thinkers, Bronowski did not address the horrors to which technology may be applied by those who have no interest in the conduct of real science. Science may be hijacked and distorted. Russell wrote about the evil uses of technology; Bronowski seems almost to describe a preisthood, a "keepers of scientific inquiry". Certainly --those who would drop a nuke on a country that is in no way a threat to humankind have no interest in either science or morality but in conquest. This sort will utilize the very science it hates. It is not only ironic but tragic that an increasingly rabid, conservative GOP will deny "science" even as it embraces its destructive shadow for its own nefarious purposes. Indeed, those who used the Trebouchet to raze Castles to the ground were not interested in the physics of its construction.

To that end, the Bush administration has exploited the propaganda "ministry", a role assumed so eagerly and willingly by the Fox Network. Herr Gobbels could only have dreamt about a machine so incessant, so insidious as Fox which has very nearly achieved in a TV network what Fitche had hoped to achieve with schools, that is, an "educational" system aimed "...at destroying free will so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished." That, I submit, is a recipe for the death of the human spirit and intellect.

Because it is so difficult to imagine anyone truly desiring such an outcome, it is difficult to imagine the likes of George W. Bush, the GOP, the right wing in general. It is equally difficult to imagine any such outcome being, in any way, beneficial to society or even to the architects of such a heinous monstrosity. It is difficult to imagine any such outcome being any thing other than politico/socio masturbation designed to make an increasingly tiny elite feel good about being hideous, unfeeling monsters, sub-humans, mental cripples, psychopaths. The GOP has, in fact, become that. The desire to create totalitarian states is not a legitimate political position. It is a pathology!
One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected, is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Divine Will.

—Bertrand Russell, Ideas that Have Harmed Mankind


Mike Wallace Interviews a Candid Shah of Iran

Bush intends to strike Iran. The question is when. Just recently, two credible articles --“Was That Nuclear-Armed B-52 Flight Destined for Iran?” by Dave Lindorff, and “Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?” by Dr. Michael Salla --suggested than a US attack on Iran had been thwarted by the US military itself.
On August 30, a B-52 bomber armed with five nuclear-tipped Advanced Cruise missiles traveled from Minot Air Force base, North Dakota, to Barksdale Air Force base, Louisiana. Each missile had an adjustable yield between five and 150 kilotons of TNT which is at the lower end of the destructive capacities of US nuclear weapons. For example, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 13 kilotons, while the Bravo Hydrogen bomb test of 1954 had a yield of 15,000 kilotons. The B-52 story was first covered in the Army Times on September 5 after the nuclear armed aircraft was discovered by Airmen (see: US Army Times ). What made this a very significant event was that it was a violation of US Air Force regulations concerning the transportation of nuclear weapons by air. Nuclear weapons are normally transported by air in specially constructed planes designed to prevent radioactive pollution in case of a crash. Such transport planes are not equipped to launch the nuclear weapons they routinely carry around the US and the world for servicing or positioning.

The discovery of the nuclear armed B-52 was, according to Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Federation of American Scientists, the first time in 40 years that a nuclear armed plane had been allowed to fly in the US (see: Newswire ). Since 1968, after a SAC bomber crashed in Greenland, all nuclear armed aircraft have been grounded but were kept on a constant state of alert. After the end of the Cold War, President George H. Bush ordered in 1991 that nuclear weapons were to be removed from all aircraft and stored in nearby facilities.

--Michael Salla, Ph.D.

At a time when good news is scarce, you can at least enjoy watching Phil Donahue kick Billo Really in the ass.


Billo Loses his temper, his sanity & the debate --but still keeps his "job"

Billo's job is that of packaging Rupert Murdoch's vision, embellishing it with venom and lies. Billos job is making goppers and other extremists feel good about themselves. Billo's job is to distract decent folk with smoke and mirrors even as he winks & nods to the GOP. If he had been any good at his "job", he might have been a little less obvious. It's hard to believe that anyone --even Bush partisans --might have fallen for it.
The darker places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

--Dante Alghieri

The United States faces its greatest crisis since the Civil War. Should Bush get away with nuking Iran, there is no guarantee that the US will survive its enemies within: the Bush regime, the GOP, and the corporatocracy that they have forged with the Military/Industrial Complex and their enforcers, the CIA.

An update:

Why are there no war crimes trials?

October 3, 2007

I've watched two episodes of Ken Burns' "The War." I don't think I'll watch any more. It was young men of my generation who fought those battles. The kids killed on Guadalcanal or storming Monte Cassino were only a couple years older than I was. Nor will I read the late David Halberstam's book The Coldest Winter about Korea. My friends died in that winter cold. War is inherently ugly, destructive, horrible. The lives of young men are cut short. Parents, spouses, friends, children are marked for life by the losses they suffered. It is astonishing that despite the four wars of the last half century, we Americans do not remember the horror. Instead we blunder into new wars, blithely confident that it will be easy, short and almost bloodless. We are always mistaken. Perhaps we don't want to remember.

The TV critic of the Wall Street Journal (a newspaper that never saw a war that it didn't like including a possible war with Iran) says that Burns is wrong. Americans know that "The War" was horrible, she said. They've seen all about it on the History Channel. Yeah, everyone watches the History Channel, don't they? If Americans remember how horrible the "good war" was, why do they continue to continue to support nutcase conflicts into which our leaders rush?

The only ones who remember how bad the "good war" was are those who fought in it or those who lived through it. It became real for me, a clueless 15-year-old, one night when I was praying in our local church. In semi-darkness, a young woman, maybe a half decade older than I, was kneeling in front of the gold star shrine, sobbing softly. Then she cried out in anguish, "Why didn't you take me instead of him!"

Dismayed, I got out of the church as quickly as I could, leaving behind a prayer to God, "You take care of her, I can't!" Since then I've often wondered what happened to that young woman -- and to the other young women who have lost the men they loved. Were those deaths necessary?

There is no question that the war that Burns so brilliantly brings back was necessary. However, even in necessary wars, stupid and evil things happen. Not all the killing is necessary, but it is in the nature of war that evil is often done in the name of good and the innocent suffer without reason. Inept and publicity-hungry commanders like Mark Clark and Douglas MacArthur make terrible mistakes. Civilians are killed randomly and recklessly as in the RAF night raids on German cities. Individual human life is cheap. Angry soldiers kill prisoners. Pilots kill parachutists. Americans drop atomic bombs. Killing other human beings becomes routine. ...
Note: Johnny Mercer wrote a 1943 version of Is You is or is You Ain't My Baby. I am inclined to believe that the recording Brounowski heard was by Louis Jordan, an American Rhythm and Blues pioneer who was born July 08, 1908 in Brinkley, Arkansas and died Feb 04, 1975 in Los Angeles. An Answer.com entry lists a "Representative Song" as Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby









Why Conservatives Hate America



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8 comments:

Diane B said...

Len,

Maybe you could help, and getting a Democracy Now, radio show thats being played over and over off your site. I took your blog off and tried it again with no luck. The radio show comes over any video you offer,it is the same show, over and over. It is on your home page, not your comment page. It started on the article previous to this one.

Unknown said...

Diane B said...

The radio show comes over any video you offer,it is the same show, over and over.

Thanks for the heads up! I found the offending code and deleted it. Again --thanks. As I am only using headphones I might not have noticed it. It got by me. Sorry.

Diane B said...

Len,

Thank you for your help. Regarding going to War in Iran, from everything I am reading, we are. This probably will evolve into a major War.

Our economy is so fragile, and I do not believe it can survive this invasion with out the dollar crashing. Once this happens, it will be a nightmare in this
Country and we may very not survive this as a Nation.

Now, it's just wait and see if I'm right, or if I'm wrong, it really is out of the average American's hands, as you showed so well, Len it always has been.

Anonymous said...

Thomas Merton - another key leader that I suspect the CIA killed.

I think we are facing the most dangerous times for our nation for the Civil War, and largely because of the legacy of the Civil War.

Two aspects of the legacy of the Civil War rarely even averted to in America were this: the Robber Barons, who developed over time into today's Corporatocracy, took over the Republican Party and used it to consolidate rulership and power in America. Were it not for Roosevelt and the Depression, they might have succeeded at this far more than they already have, and they already have a lot.

The other aspect was racism. Whites in America after the Civil War had to accept that blacks were free and legally - at least somewhat - equal, but they could and did redouble their commitment to the idea that brown people were and are inferior and needed to be oppressed. Such racism became the foundation of the Democratic Party.

Taken together, the hegemony of the Robber Barons and their legacy, the Corporatocracy, plus the racism - not always openly aknowledged - of much of white America, led America from Republic to Empire, betraying the achievment Lincoln and so many others had sacrificed thier lives for. They had wanted to ensure the future existence of the Republic. Instead, their legacy turned Republic into Empire.

The Progressive Era and the New Deal helped a lot, because they put a bit and saddle on the Empire. America might be an Empire, but it wasn't free to run roughshod over the population of the US or of the world. Thus was restored some semblance of Republic to and some semblance of frustration to the ambitions of those wanting unfettered Empire.

But something happened in the sixties. In the sixties, people did a crazy thing. They wanted the USA to be a Republic for real and NOT an Empire. They wanted Civil Rights for all and they wanted and end to Wars of Empire. It took a lot of propaganda, and a lot of assasinations and "suicides" and a lot of persecution of outspoken voices to tamp down those calls for the flowering of Rights and the end of Empire. And just when the job seemed done, it unravelled, via Watergate.
And for the first time in a long time America even had a President who tried to be honest and to who tried to aquire and enact a vision of what we really needed for the future (international human rights, renewable energy sources, etc.).

Then along came the real life Marlboro Man, who told us to forget all that, that Empire was really the way to go. And he did an amazing thing, politically. He took the racist base of the Democratic Party and married it to the Corporatist base of the Republican Party, and achieved One Party Rule in America, which was ironic since he decried One Party Rule quite vociferously in the Soviet Union!

Life became full of irony then, as evangelism-tinged economics ushered in the "me" decade, and the American Empire flowered in a surge of Glory and Debt. that supassed that of Rome itself.

Now the sun is setting on that Empire. Where the Roman Empire lasted three centuries, the American Empire, in its full glory, has barely made it through three decades. So we face today possibly the greatest crisis America has ever faced, because of the legacy of the Civil War. True to form, irony is richest when the times are the most dangerous. The President who has led this nation boldly to the brink of disaster has dared to compare himself to our Greatest President, Lincoln, a man whose name ought to burn his tongue to a cinder.

It's no wonder W spends so much time in Crawford. If I were him, I wouldn't sleep too well in Lincoln's White House either.

As gently as possible, let me just say that anyone who thinks that a US warplane got armed "accidentally" is thinking accidentally. The order to arm that plane could only have come from the WH. Thank God, an honest soul in the chain of command foiled it. But the military chain of command is, I feel sure, more and more bereft of such honest souls, because the WH is pulling the strings and punishing those who resist (including, one might suspect, the unfotunate pilot of that nuclear armed plane, who reportedly 'committed suicide'.).

Sooner or later, probably sooner, the WH will get its way. Iran will go up in flames. An Air Force riddled with True Believers will rain down fire from the sky, convinced that they are doing God's will.

And then, what? No pundit dares say it, that I've seen, but an attack on Iran will not go unanswered by Russia and China. It would be a bid to dominate the Middle East and Central Asia. They cannot afford to ignore this. They will not.

There is another way. The Republic of America can reassert itself. It is founded on the will of the people, not on the will of the Corporatized Democratic and Republican parties, the Two-Parties-That-Are-Really-One. The final word in American politics is OUR word. Do we want war with Iran?

Do we want war with Iran?

Diane B said...

Fillip,

No, we do not need a War with Iran. Thank you for helping me realize the steps which were taken, on our road to being a formal empire.

The injustices in this Empire are many and this upcoming War with Iran will be one of final the crown of thorns given the average American.

Unknown said...

filip, thanks for your comments. Indeed, Nixon's Southern Strategy built the modern GOP upon a racist base, the so-called "Southern Strategy". I've written a couple of articles which have tried to trace the roots of the modern GOP to bigots disaffected by the Civil War.

I would be interested in your take on: How the Democrats paid dearly for doing what was right while the GOP profited from evil

and, later

American Fascists: How Prescott Bush, Charles Lindburgh and Henry Ford Sought a Fascist Dictatorship in America

and...

'The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down' or The Origins of a Culture War

Peripherally related:

Restoring American Democracy: A Proposal. I say "peripherally" because a direct election of the President could turn out to be a stake into the heart of the GOP's "bigot" base. Clearly, the "southern strategy" exploits the quirk in the system that gives disproportionate power to a relative handful of hateful, bigoted, fascistic "Republicans" associated with a specific geographical area. Or --as one elquent blogger opined: Fuck the South!

Unknown said...

I have to tell ya, it makes my stomach turn over just to hear the quivering puddle of guilty, cowardly crud that calls himself O'reilly. But, then, if he were a real man, he wouldn't wet his pants everytime a muslim crossed his path in the street.
And what is it with the jews? I mean I have to wonder about them. They say where there is smoke there is fire, and all you hear them do is whine, whine, whine. I guess the squeaky wheel gets the grease...and there must be a reason they have been prosecuted since biblical days. I wonder why they get let off the hook when they tell everyone else that they bring their 'bad' on themselves.
~sigh~ Oh well, have a great day.

Unknown said...

Zena, who was it who turned Mogan-David into Whine?