In 1948, George Kennan, State Department Director of policy planning, noted that the United States then possessed ‘about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population.’ The challenge facing U.S. policymakers, he believed, was ‘to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security,’ zo concludeert de Amerikaanse voormalige kolonel en emeritus hoogleraar, Andrew J. Bacevich, in zijn in 2016 verschenen studie America’s War For The Greater Middle East. In het laatste hoofdstuk, getiteld Generational War, stelt deze prominent militair historicus:
With an eye toward sustaining this position of disparity, the United States after World War II consciously chose to become the world's leading military power. In a sharp break from past American practice, it created and maintained on a permanent footing large-scale, heavily armed forces designed for global power projection.
Notably, however, the principal function of these forces was not to wage war but to avert it. By demonstrating a capacity and readiness to fight, the U.S. military was reducing the likelihood of actually having to do so. ‘Peace Is Our Profession’ — so proclaimed the Strategic Air Command the Cold War-era nuclear strike force that stood ready at a moment's notice to turn large cities into rubble while incinerating millions. Yet SAC's motto was not some clumsy attempt at black humor. It was, or at least was meant to be, a serious statement of purpose.
As long as the Cold War lasted, this paradoxical logic enjoyed widespread acceptance. The advantages of husbanding military power were so apparent as to be self-evident. Here was the rationale routinely employed by representatives of the national security establishment and its affiliates. Calling for more (and better) ships, planes, missiles, and tanks, hey did so in the name of keeping the peace. Accumulating weapons of mass destruction of ever greater lethality, they did so for the express purpose of ensuring that such weapons would see no further use.
In retrospect, we may regret the diversion of resources that might have gone to more productive purposes. We may lament the distortion of the American economy and the corruption of American politics stemming from the rise of what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. We may recall with horror the reckless miscalculations that brought the world to the brink of Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even so, the basic approach to national security worked at least tolerably well. World War III didn't happen. Over time, the Cold War's two principal theaters, Western Europe and East Asia, stabilized and achieved a measure of prosperity. When the Cold War itself finally ended, it did so quietly and with American primacy intact, much as Kennan himself had prophesied in its very first days.
Voor ik verder ga met citeren, wil ik eerst duidelijk maken dat Andrew Bacevich een gerespecteerde deskundige is, die van binnenuit weet waarover hij schrijft en spreekt. Jim Webb, de veelvuldig gedecoreerde oud-militair en oud senator en staatssecretaris van Defensie, verklaarde over Bacevich’s inzichten:
Andrew Bacevich has done a great service by providing a much-needed continuum in a foreign policy area that remains frustratingly random for too many Americans. He is one of a very few in academia with the credibility to outline dispassionately the shortcomings of responsible civilian and military leaders, on the facts and without histrionics or bitterness. His military background and training as a historian have enabled him to lay out not only the evolution of policy but also the details of the military endeavors themselves.
Generaal-majoor b.d. Paul D. Eaton, ‘Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Training,’ merkte op:
Andrew Bacevich is a warrior academic who understands war and has the great talent to make the complex understandable. And so he has done with our Middle East conflict, which started with Desert One and endures today. A must read for soldiers, politicians, and the American citizen.
Op zijn beurt schreef de Amerikaanse journalist en bestseller-auteur Chris Hedges ‘former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times’:
America's War for the Greater Middle East by Andrew Bacevich lays out in excruciating detail the disasters orchestrated over decades by the archteas of the American empire in the Middle East. Blunder after blunder, fed by hubris along with cultural, historical, linguistic and religious illiteracy, has shattered cohesion within the Middle East. The wars we have waged have given birth to a frightening nihilistic violence embodied in radical jihadism. They have engendered an inchoate rage among the dispossessed and left in their wake a series of failed and disintegrating states. These wars have, as Bacevich writes, laid bare the folly of attempting to use military force as a form of political, economic and social control. Bacevich is one of our finest chroniclers of the decline of empire. America's War for the Greater Middle East is an essential addition to his remarkable body of work.
Luitenant generaal Paul K. van Riper, ‘U.S. Marine Corps (retired)’ oordeelde:
Andrew Bacevich offers the reader an unparalleled historical tour de force in a book that is certain to affect the formation of future U.S. foreign policy and any consequent decisions to employ military force. He presents sobering evidence that for nearly four decades the nation’s leaders have demonstrate ineptitude at nearly every turn as they shaped and attempted to implement Middle East policy. Every citizens aspiring to high office need not only to read but to study and learn from this important book. This is one of the most serious and essential books I have read in more than half a century of public service.
En de voormalig New York Times-correspondent en auteur Stephen Kinzer ‘senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University’ prees Bacevich’s America’s War als volgt:
In this fascinating work, one of America's most provocative thinkers confronts our greatest geopolitical conundrum: the Middle East. No other book shows so clearly how U.S. interventions there have blended into a single long war. This is not just invaluable history, but also a cry of protest against policies that have devastated the Middle East while undermining America's own national security.
Als vooraanstaande militair-politiek expert wijst Bacevich erop dat de Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek tijdens de Koude Oorlog vanzelfsprekend ‘vele verschrikkelijk grote fouten’ maakte, zoals de
bungled Korean War proved needlessly expensive. The Vietnam misadventure, handiwork of several successive presidential administrations, ended in mortifying defeat. A raft of attempted coups, dirty tricks, and unsavory marriages of convenience made a mockery of Washington’s claims to stand for high ideals. The nuclear arms race heedlessly touched off by the United States created hazards that may yet end in unspeakable catastrophe.
Even so, things could have been much worse. Taking the period of the Cold War as a whole, U.S. military policies and American purposes roughly aligned. On balance, this congruence furthered rather than undermining the nation's well-being. For the United States, freedom, abundance, and security went hand in hand.
Yet the Cold War's happy outcome (at least from an American point of view) came with a distinct downside for the U.S. national security apparatus. Among other things, it rendered the paradox underlying postwar U.S. military policy — energetically preparing for global war in order to prevent it — obsolete. In doing so, it brought the armed services and their various clients face to face with a crisis of the first order. With the likelihood of World War III subsiding to somewhere between remote and infinitesimal — with the overarching purpose for which the postwar U.S. military establishment had been created thereby fulfilled — what exactly did that establishment and all of its ancillary agencies, institutes, collaborators, and profit-making auxiliaries exist to do?
The Pentagon wasted no time in providing an answer to that question. Rather than keeping the peace, it declared, the key to perpetuating Kennan's position of disparity was to ‘shape’ the global order. Shaping now became the military's primary job. Back in 1992, the Defense Planning Guidance drafted under the aegis of Paul Wolfowitz had spelled out this argument in detail. Pointing proudly to the ‘new international environment’ that had already ‘been shaped by the victory’ over Saddam Hussein the year before, that document provided a blueprint explaining how American power could ‘shape the future.’ The sledgehammer was to become a sculptor's chisel.
De ‘blauwdruk,’ die ten grondslag ligt aan de politiek van Washington en Wall Street, werd door de neoconservatieve denktank ‘Project for the New American Century’ (PNAC) in september 2000 gepubliceerd en daarin werd betoogd dat de definitieve vestiging van een 'global Pax Americana’ noodzakelijk was, nu de VS als 'enige supermacht' was overgebleven. De samenstellers van het PNAC-beleidsstuk 'Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century' bepleitten daarom het handhaven van de ‘global U.S. pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests,’ waarbij de zorg werd uitgesproken dat Europa zou kunnen rivaliseren met de Verenigde Staten. De 'American grand strategy' moest daarom 'as far into the future as possible,' worden gecontinueerd. De 'core mission' van de VS was (en is nog steeds): 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars.' In het invloedrijke rapport werden de Amerikaanse strijdkrachten beschreven als 'the cavalry on the new American frontier.' Net als destijds de Indianen moest nu de rest van de wereld goedschiks of kwaadschiks de gewelddadige politiek van de Amerikaanse elite gehoorzamen.
Het 'blauwdruk' van PNAC ondersteunt een eerder beleidsrapport, geschreven door ondermeer de vooraanstaande neoconservatief Paul Wolfowitz, oud-staatssecretaris van Defensie en oud-president van de Wereldbank, waarin gesteld wordt dat de VS 'must…discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.' In het kader daarvan 'Breaking Russia has become an objective [for US officials],' aldus in 2015 niemand minder dan Henry Kissinger. Het spreekt voor zich dat Europa bij een totale chaos aan zijn oostgrens geen enkel belang heeft, niet alleen omdat dit tot een extra stroom vluchtelingen zal leiden, maar tevens tot de mogelijkheid van een nucleaire holocaust. Desondanks blijft de NAVO, met steun van de Europese parlementen en de Europese Unie een conflict met de Russische Federatie uitlokken, daarbij gesteund door mainstream-opiniemakers. Geert Mak’s slogan ‘Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel,’ de stad waar ook de NAVO haar hoofdkwartier heeft, dreigt letterlijk te worden: ‘Geen Jorwert met Brussel.’ En dit allemaal om de Amerikaanse hegemonie veilig te stellen. Het PNAC stelt in dit verband dat de op gang gebrachte 'Revolution in Military Affairs' optimaal moet worden door gevoerd. Daaronder behoort nu ook het arsenaal van ‘US mini nuclear bombs,’ dat volgens het Britse dagblad The Times:
Het 'blauwdruk' van PNAC ondersteunt een eerder beleidsrapport, geschreven door ondermeer de vooraanstaande neoconservatief Paul Wolfowitz, oud-staatssecretaris van Defensie en oud-president van de Wereldbank, waarin gesteld wordt dat de VS 'must…discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.' In het kader daarvan 'Breaking Russia has become an objective [for US officials],' aldus in 2015 niemand minder dan Henry Kissinger. Het spreekt voor zich dat Europa bij een totale chaos aan zijn oostgrens geen enkel belang heeft, niet alleen omdat dit tot een extra stroom vluchtelingen zal leiden, maar tevens tot de mogelijkheid van een nucleaire holocaust. Desondanks blijft de NAVO, met steun van de Europese parlementen en de Europese Unie een conflict met de Russische Federatie uitlokken, daarbij gesteund door mainstream-opiniemakers. Geert Mak’s slogan ‘Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel,’ de stad waar ook de NAVO haar hoofdkwartier heeft, dreigt letterlijk te worden: ‘Geen Jorwert met Brussel.’ En dit allemaal om de Amerikaanse hegemonie veilig te stellen. Het PNAC stelt in dit verband dat de op gang gebrachte 'Revolution in Military Affairs' optimaal moet worden door gevoerd. Daaronder behoort nu ook het arsenaal van ‘US mini nuclear bombs,’ dat volgens het Britse dagblad The Times:
risks sparking an arms race by testing a new type of miniature precision nuclear bomb, experts warn. The White House is overseeing the development of the new kind of weapon — a nuclear bomb that will be more accurate than previous ones and have four levels of destructive power which can be altered to control collateral damage and radioactive fallout. The new weapon is part of a nuclear modernisation programme…
Daarnaast wordt aangedrongen op een 'regime change' in China, waardoor 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia.' Het gevolg is dat 'in 2020 zeker 60 procent van’ Amerika’s ‘vloot in de Zuidoost-Aziatische wateren gestationeerd' zal zijn. Ondermeer op die manier hoopt de Amerikaanse elite China als opkomende wereldmacht eronder te kunnen houden, waarbij 'American and allied power the spur to the process of democratization in China’ zullen moeten verschaffen. De politiek van zogeheten 'democratisering' en 'vredesmissies' vereist 'American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations,' aldus de invloedrijke Amerikaanse neoconservatieven die erin zijn geslaagd ook op de buitenlandse politiek van de regering Obama hun stempel te drukken. De rechtvaardiging van de dreiging met massale militaire terreur, geweld waarvan allereerst de burgerbevolking het slachtoffer zal worden, is de gedachte dat ‘America is exceptional,' zoals eveneens president Obama het verwoordde, kortom de veronderstelling dat de VS het recht bezit en zelfs de verplichting heeft om de hele wereld te neoliberaleren, ondanks het feit dat zodoende de kloof tussen arm en rijk zal blijven toenemen. Dat deze ideologie niet werkt blijkt wel uit de gigantische chaos die de VS nu al in het Midden-Oosten en een deel van Noord-Afrika heeft veroorzaakt. Andrew Bacevich:
The Greater Middle East was to serve — indeed, was even then already serving — as the chosen arena for honing military power into a utensil that would maintain America's privileged position and, not so incidentally, provide a continuing rationale for the entire apparatus of national security. That region's predominantly Muslim population thereby became the subjects of experiments ranging from the nominally benign — peacekeeping, peacemaking, and humanitarian intervention — to the nakedly coercive. Beginning in 1980, US. forces ventured into the Greater Middle East to reassure, warn, intimidate, suppress, pacify, rescue, liberate, eliminate, transform, and overawe. They bombed, raided, invaded, occupied, and worked through proxies of various stripes. In 1992 Wolfowitz had expressed the earnest hope of American might addressing the ‘sources of regional instability in ways that promote international law, limit international violence, and encourage the spread of democratic government and open economic systems.’ The results actually produced over the course of several decades of trying have never come even remotely close to satisfying such expectations…
Through it all, a succession of American leaders — Republican and Democratic, conservative and liberal, calculating and naïve — has persisted in the belief that the determined exercise of U.S. military power will somehow put things right. None have seen their hopes fulfilled.
To reflect on this longest of American wars is to confront two questions. First, why has the world's mightiest military achieved so little even while itself absorbing very considerable losses and inflicting even greater damage on the subjects of America's supposed beneficence? Second, why in the face of such unsatisfactory outcomes has the United States refused to chart a different course? In short, why can't we win? And since we haven't won, why can't we get out?
With regard to the first question, one explanation stands out above all others. In stark contrast to the Cold War, American purposes and US. military policy in the Islamic world have never aligned. Rather than keeping threats to US. interests at bay, a penchant (neiging. svh) for military activism, initially circumspect but becoming increasingly uninhibited over time, has helped to foster new threats. Time and again, from the 1980s to the present, US. military power, unleashed rather than held in abeyance, has met outright failure, produced results other than those intended, or proved to be largely irrelevant. The Greater Middle East remains defiantly resistant to shaping…
Opening up some new front (or reopening an old one) testifies to the reality that U.S. forces in 2016 find themselves caught in a predicament no less perplexing than the one that ensnared the armies of Germany, France, and Great Britain a century ago. Take whatever definition of purpose you want; after more than three decades of trying, for U.S. forces the mission remains unfinished. Indeed, ‘unfinished’ hardly begins to describe the situation; mission accomplishment is nowhere in sight. Put simply, we're stuck.
En daardoor is, ‘simpel gesteld,’ ook de NAVO onder aanvoering van het Pentagon ‘stuck,’ oftewel ‘vastgelopen,’ in het moeras van de gewelddadige Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek. Het is van doorslaggevend belang te beseffen dat een gerespecteerde Amerikaanse ‘insider’ als Bacevich waarschuwt dat de hegemonistische politiek van zijn land is ‘vastgelopen,’ en dat bijvoorbeeld de hetze van de Nederlandse politici, mainstream media én militairen levensgevaarlijk is. Het is kenmerkend dat generaal Tom Middendorp, ‘Commandant der Strijdkrachten,’ op 20 mei 2014 snel de gelegenheid aangreep om publiekelijk te melden dat
de schrijver Geert Mak in het programma ‘Eén op één’ [liet] weten: 'We waren zo bezig met die soft power — en dat is ook goed — alleen Poetin reageert op een 19e-eeuwse manier.' Mak, ooit pacifist, meende daarom dat we 'Defensie niet moeten afbreken' en dat we 'meer moeten samenwerken met anderen.' [...]
Of we het nu leuk vinden of niet, in veiligheid en vrijheid moeten we blijven investeren. Of zoals Geert Mak in de uitzending ‘Eén op één’ concludeerde:
'Vrijheid komt niet vanzelf. Voor vrijheid moet je knokken. Moet je concessies doen. Moet je ruzie over maken. Rode koppen krijgen en uiteindelijk weer naar de stembussen sjokken. Dat is allemaal vrijheid. Vrijheid moet je verrekt alert op zijn, want anders glipt het zo door je vingers.'
Een jaar eerder, op 29 april 2013, had Geert Mak via de radio de Nederlandse bevolking met evenveel stelligheid verteld:
Er zijn machten aan de gang boven Europa, ik zeg echt bóven Europa, het klassieke woord grootkapitaal doet hier zijn intrede. Ik heb er nooit zo in geloofd, maar nu wel, die ons totaal ontglipt en waar je niks tegen kunt doen! En dat vind ik buitengewoon beklemmend.
Bovendien zei zijn 'gevoel' hem toen nog dat
iedereen die een beetje bij zinnen is moet nadenken over vormen waarmee je je daartegen kunt verweren.
Dat zijn NAVO-propaganda de poging zich te ‘verweren’ tegen het ‘grootkapitaal’ domweg onmogelijk maakt, speelt bij hem en de zijnen geen rol, zolang Rusland maar gedemoniseerd kan blijven. Hij rekent het als mainstream-opiniemaker tot zijn taak om het voortbestaan van het westers militair-industrieel complex te rechtvaardigen. Ondanks Eisenhower’s waarschuwingen uit 1961, heeft ook Geert Mak meer dan een halve eeuw later ‘a penchant for military activism.’ Voor de voormalig pacifist is een oorlogszuchtige houding financieel bijzonder lucratief, terwijl het tevens zijn imago onder autoriteiten versterkt. Het financiële motief is de belangrijkste reden van de Amerikaanse elite om, in nauwe samenwerking met de NAVO, te volharden in de huidige failliete strategie. Hier geldt het truïsme dat ‘het doel van de oorlog niet [is] om gebiedsveroveringen te maken of te voorkomen, maar om de structuur van de samenleving in stand te houden,’ zoals Orwell in zijn in 1949 verschenen dystopie 1984vaststelde. Het maakt daarbij niet uit of oorlogen worden verloren. Oorlog is business, de enige business waarin de VS nog onovertroffen is. Bacevich schrijft in verband hiermee:
some individuals and institutions actually benefit from an armed conflict that drags on and on. Those benefits are immediate and tangible. They come in the form of profits, jobs, and campaign contributions. For the military-industrial complex and its beneficiaries, perpetual war is not necessarily bad news. The alacrity (monterheid. svh) with which the national security apparatus ‘discovered’ the Greater Middle East just as the Cold War was ending does not qualify as coincidental.
Tegelijkertijd ervaart de meerderheid van de Amerikaanse burgers ‘in a fundamental sense,’ dat ‘the war is not their concern.’ Zolang zijzelf niet het slachtoffer wordt van de Amerikaanse staatsterreur laat het haar koud dat elders in haar naam burgers worden verminkt of vermoord. Een substantieel deel van de Amerikaanse bevolking is politiek afgehaakt en stemt zelfs niet meer. De elite heeft vrij spel gekregen. Vandaar ook de opkomst van een fenomeen als Donald Trump, die de razernij van aanzienlijk deel van degenen die nog wel stemt een uitlaatklep geeft. En ondertussen gaat de waanzin door. Andrew Bacevich:
The line in the sand that Carter drew along Iran's Zajros Mountains now stretches from Central Asia through the Middle East and across the width of Africa. That the ongoing enterprise may someday end — that U.S. troops will finally depart — appears so unlikely as to make the prospect unworthy of discussion. Like the war on drugs or the war on poverty, the War for the Greater Middle East has become a permanent fixture in American life and is accepted as such…
As in Kennan's day, so also in our own, ensuring that Americans enjoy their rightful quota (which is to say, more than their fair hare) of freedom, abundance, and security comes first. Everything else figures as an afterthought.
But here's the rub (moeilijkheid. svh). In the twenty-first century, the prerequisites of freedom, abundance, and security are changing. Geopolitically, Asia is eclipsing in importance all other regions apart perhaps from North America itself. The emerging problem set — coping with the effects of climate change, for example — is global and will require a global response. Whether Americans are able to preserve the privileged position to which they are accustomed will depend on how well and how quickly the United States adapts the existing ‘pattern of relationships’ to fit these fresh circumstances.
Intussen laat Europa zich meeslepen in de Amerikaanse zelfvernietigende politiek, die het grote gevaar in zich draagt van een nieuwe en laatste wereldoorlog. Gezien het erbarmelijk lage intellectuele niveau van de huidige generatie Europese politici, gesteund door oppervlakkige opportunistische journalisten van het kaliber Geert Mak en Henk Hofland, zal de Europese bevolking zelf in verzet moeten komen om straks niet de prijs te hoeven betalen voor het economisch, militair, politiek en moreel failliet. Mak mag de Amerikaanse wanorde dan wel aanprijzen als ‘orde,’ maar dit kenmerkt slechts hoe corrupt hij is. Hetzelfde gaat op voor Henk Hofland. Ook hij is gecorrumpeerd wanneer hij de lezers van De Groene Amsterdammer vertelt nog op zijn 88ste de toekomst in te willen 'bij voorkeur onder Amerikaanse leiding, als het een Democraat is,’ daarbij verwijzend naar ‘Hillary’ die volgens hem al in april 2015 ‘de meest ideale kandidaat’ was, omdat zij, in zijn ogen,
als vrouw van president Clinton een groot incasseringsvermogen [heeft] opgebouwd en later als minister van Buitenlandse Zaken aanzienlijke politieke ervaring [heeft] opgedaan. Ze kent de wereld, en Republikeinse concurrenten die haar kunnen evenaren, hebben zich nog niet aangediend.
Wat dit in werkelijkheid betekent, beschreef de prominente Amerikaanse hoogleraar Jeffrey Sachs, directeur van het respectabele Earth Institute van de Universiteit van Columbia die adviseur was van verschillende regeringen bij de overgang van communisme naar het neoliberalisme, onder meer door middel van schoktherapie. Als insider die van nabij de gevolgen heeft gezien van Hillary Clinton’s buitenlandse politiek oordeelde Sachs in februari 2016:
Her so-called foreign policy ‘experience’ has been to support every war demanded by the US deep security state run by the military and the CIA.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/03/hillary-clintons-foreign-policy-resume-what-the-record-shows/
Het is niet alleen dat Nederlandse mainstream-opiniemakers buitenstaanders zijn die braaf de officiële consensusoverschrijven dan wel napraten, maar hun meningen illusteren tevens hoe doortrapt de ‘vrije pers’ in de polder is. Gecorrumpeerd en daardoor slecht geïnformeerd. Voor hen gaat datgene op wat Walter Lippmann in 1922 in zijn standaardwerk Public Opinion adviseerde, namelijk dat ‘public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press,’ en wel omdat
Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event. Access to the real environment must be limited, before anyone can create a pseudo-environment that he thinks is wise or desirable…
Deze strategie verklaart ook waarom een commercieel dagblad als de Volkskrant, waarvan de oplage almaar daalt, in 2016 een campagne voerde voor de invoering van de TTIP en de criminalisering van iedereen die tegen de invoering ervan is. Nu de krant steeds afhankelijker wordt van de reclame-inkomsten gedragen de journalisten ervan zich steeds conformistischer. Zo beweerde de Volkskrant-columnist Peter de Waard, in de rol van Volkskrant-verslaggever, op 3 mei 2016 onder de kop ‘Greenpeace tracht TTIP verder te ondermijnen’:
Het front tegen TTIP groeit. Tegenstander Greenpeace zou zichzelf weleens kunnen overschreeuwen met zijn gelekte gegevens over het handelsoverleg tussen de EU en de VS.
Het betreft hier geen onafhankelijk verslag, maar een uitgesproken mening van opiniemaker De Waard, die zich vermomt als ‘verslaggever.’ Een dag later kreeg de neoliberale spreekbuis Hans Wansink in het Volkskrant-Commentaar van 4 mei 2016 de ruimte om met grote stelligheid te beweren:
Het handelsverdrag TTIP moet het beste van twee werelden verenigen: meer handel en betere producten.
Greenpeace stelt zich ten doel het Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), het handelsverdrag tussen de Europese Unie en de Verenigde Staten te torpederen. Uit de door de activisten gepubliceerde documenten zou blijken dat Europa zich door Amerika in het pak laat naaien. Het tegendeel is het geval: de onderhandelaars namens de Europese Commissie houden juist vast aan hoge kwaliteits- en veiligheidseisen.
Feit is dat de onderhandelingen tussen de VS en Europa in het diepste geheim verlopen. Kennelijk mogen beide neoliberale machtsblokken die claimen democratisch te zijn, niet publiekelijk bekend maken hoe de ingrijpende onderhandelingen verlopen, en wat precies de inzet is. Pas zodra alles is voorgekookt, kan er openheid komen, en kunnen de volksvertegenwoordigingen hun oordeel uitspreken, wat tot nu toe in de praktijk heeft betekend dat ze zich gedwongen voelden belangrijke handelsverdragen goed te keuren. In een poging de democratie weer enige inhoud te geven, onthulde daarentegen Greenpeace Nederland al vooraf:
geheime documenten van de TTIP-onderhandelingen. Daarmee laten we zien hoe onder andere milieu, voedselveiligheid en klimaat op het spel worden gezet. Greenpeace eist dat de onderhandelingen voor het handelsverdrag tussen EU en VS direct worden stopgezet,
aldus de milieuorganisatie, tot groot ongenoegen van de gevestigde orde en dus de Volkskrant, die onmiddellijk in het geweer kwam.
De houding van de Volkskrant-redactie is één van de ontelbare voorbeelden waarmee de westerse mainstream-media demonstreren hoe succesvol Lippmann’s advies is geweest dat ‘public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press,’ en wel omdat anders de propaganda niet werkt.
Democracy is a proposal (rarely realized) about decision making; it has little to do with election campaigns. It's promise is that political decisions be made after, and in the light of, consultation with the governed. This is dependent upon the governed being adequately informed about the issues in question, and upon the decision-makers having the capacity and will to listen and take account of what they have heard. Democracy should not be confused with the 'freedom' of binary choices, the publication of opinion polls or the crowding of people into statistics. These are its pretences...
Both military and economic strategists now realize that the media play a crucial role -- not so in defeating the current enemy as in foreclosing and preventing mutiny, protest or desertion. Any tyranny's manipulation of the media is an index of its fears...
Every form of contestation against the tyranny is comprehensible. Dialogue with it is impossible. For us to live and die properly, things have to be named properly. Let us reclaim our words.
En:
We are writing about the pain in the world. We have to reject the new tyranny's discourse. Its terms are crap. In the interminably repetitive speeches, announcements, press conferences and threats, the recurrent terms are: Democracy, Justice, Human Rights, Terrorism. Each word in the context signifies the opposite of what it was once meant to signify.
In zijn essaybundel Hold Everything Dear (2008) stelt Berger:
The key term of the present global chaos is de- or re-localization. This does not only refer to the practice of moving production to wherever labour is the cheapest and regulations minimal. It also contains the offshore demented dream of the ongoing power: the dream of undermining the status and confidence of all previous fixed places, so that the entire world becomes a single fluid market.
The consumer is essentially somebody who feels or is made to feel, lost, unless he or she is consuming. Brand names and logos become the place names of the Nowhere.
When a shoal of fish instantly changes direction, it looks for all the world as though the movement was synchronized by some guiding hand. Journalists -- all trained and selected for obedience by media all seeking to maximize profits within state-capitalist society -- tend to respond to the same events in the same way. This can look like an orchestrated response, but many journalists clearly believe everything they are saying and clearly have no awareness that they are conforming to the needs of power... In 2002-2003, many journalists concluded that war was necessary to tackle an Iraqi threat that did not exist. And yet, to our knowledge, in 2009, not a single journalist proposed military action in response to Israel’s staggering, very visible crimes against the besieged civilian population of Gaza. It is clear that, in all these cases, journalists allowed the British and American governments to define the parameters of ‘reasonable,' ‘rational,' 'required' action.
Dit is wat de grote Amerikaanse satiricus George Carlin te vertellen had:
Forget the politicians, they're irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice -- you don't! You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and payed for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media, so they control just about all the information you get. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying -- lobbying, to get what they want.
Well we know what they want. They want more for themselves, and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don't want -- they don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that -- that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don't want people that are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table, and think about how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don't want they. You know what they want? Obedient workers -- Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines, and do that paper work. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and vanishing pension that disappear the minute you go to collect it, and now they're coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They'll get it -- they'll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you aint in it. You, and I are not in The Big Club.
By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think, and what to buy.
The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard working people: white collar, blue collar it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard working people continue (these are people of modest being) -- continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don't give a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you -- they don't give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all -- at all -- at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.
That's what the owners counted on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white, and blue dick that's being jammed up their asshole everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It's called the American Dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it, but say what you want about Americans, folks. You can say what you want about Americans. You can call them smart, dumb, ignorant, innocent, naïve, gullible, easily led, what ever you want you're going have to deal with them. You're going have to deal with them, because you're in the television business. You got the all suicide channel on cable TV. You need these people as viewers. You need people looking in. You got to worry about your ratings. Your going to have to be worrying about sweeps months. Most people know what sweeps months are. They're the more important ratings months of the year where they put on there biggest attractions, and their hottest stars. And try to pump up their ratings a little more. Get their local stations to adjust their advertising rates. You're going to have to compete with the mentality of network television, and I think of an all suicide channel, during sweeps months, you're going to have to go with mass suicides -- big public events where hundreds of people all kill themselves at the same time right on live TV.
Now I've been resting with a way to do this. I've been trying been trying to figure this out. I swear to God, this is the truth, I've been trying to figure this part of it out for 6 months now, and I only recent have it so I'm going to tell you about it. Now we're going to have to get lots, and lots of people to kill themselves on demand. How are we going to do this -- that's the question. How are we going to get large numbers of people to commit suicide at a time or place of our choosing? And I mean large numbers, because don't forget besides sweeps we're going to have to be thinking about 24 hour a day programming so to make this work we're going to need organization. We need a system. Can't just wait for people to come by the studio all day, drop by, and commit suicide. What we have to do is build up a large pool of hopeless people. Suicide volunteers -- people with no hope. People whom society has given up on, fate has given up on, or who have given up on themselves. Rock bottom, dead end totally fucked up people with no hope, and no reason to live.
Have we got our share of them. Think of it was a pyramid, that'll give you a visual fix on it. The pyramid of the hopeless. We're going to start building this pyramid as the very base naturally, and the bottom layer is going to be homeless people. God knows we got plenty of them. Nobody gives a fuck about them. Nobodies got a plan. Nobodies got any money for them. Nobody has a program. Nobody gives a fuck about homeless people. We don't k now how many we have even. We know 500,000 of them are veterans cause we're so good to the veterans in this country, and we know about 1 million to a million and 400,000 of them are children so then god knows how many more we got. Totally fucking hopeless. Into the pyramid they go.
Now the next group we're going to put in here, these are the people in prison with these long sentences they've been given. Many of them deserved. I'll grant you that. I'm sure half the people are in prison for the things they really did. That's not a bad average, one out of every two, but nobody gives a shit about these people. Nobody's going to hire them if they do get out. They're never going to get out. Rehabilitation doesn't work, and the judges give them these fucking draconian sentences: 40, 60, 70, 80, 100 year sentences, life term, double life, one guy about a month ago was given three consecutive life term sentences, plus two death penalties. How the fuck do you serve that? Even David Copperfield can't do that shit. In order to do that you would have to be a Hindu. Then you got the people on death row. They aint going anywhere. In the fucking pyramid they go.
Now the next layer, this group is self-selected -- self-selected, and bit controversial to some ears I guess. These are these people who claim to be depressed. Okay? Apparently in this land of plenty. This richest nation in the history of the world (we're so proud of saying that). Some super markets have a hundred thousand items in them. We have 19 million americans claiming to be depressed, and some of them take medicine for it. Sometimes the medicine for it makes one of them commit suicide, and that depresses the shit out of the rest of them. Then you only have these people that think they're depressed. They think they're depressed, because they saw the commercial on TV, and the doctor looked like a good guy, the music sounded kind of peppy. And what the fuck? Probably some of these pills would pick me right the fuck up. Totally fucking hopeless mindset -- in the fucking pyramid.
Up at the very top we are going to put the people who are truly sick. The terminally ill. Unforchanetly no hope for a lot of them. Hundreds of thousands of them -- no cure for what they have. Some of them there's no cure, because no ones looking for one. Aint enough people sick with it, so there's no money in the cure. Then there's people where there's a cure, but they don't have the money for it. Then there's one who can, but they're to far gone. Then there's one who can get the cure, but they have no social means to get to it so these people aint going anywhere - they should be allowed to commit suicide.
Boom!
In the fucking pyramid they go.
Now think of what you got here. Think of yourself as the executive vice president of programming at the all suicide channel. Think of what you have to work with in the pyramid of the hopeless. You have homeless, imprisoned, condemned, depressed, and terminally ill, and I'm going to bet you anything in this depraved culture of ours -- bet you anything with the reality show mentality we have that on the all suicide you could get 500 of these hopeless people to hold hands, and jump into the grand canyon. I'll fucking bet you -- I'll fucking bet you you can get this done in this country right this now, for money - for money you got to give them something. Oh shit. They're Americans, they're for sale, give them a little something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy-sVByUHqE
En het is deze werkelijkheid die de Hoflanden en Makken als propagandisten inhuurt. Herinner dit zodra u ze weer eens hoort orakelen.
Forget the politicians, they're irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice -- you don't! You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and payed for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media, so they control just about all the information you get. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying -- lobbying, to get what they want.
Well we know what they want. They want more for themselves, and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don't want -- they don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that -- that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don't want people that are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table, and think about how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don't want they. You know what they want? Obedient workers -- Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines, and do that paper work. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and vanishing pension that disappear the minute you go to collect it, and now they're coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They'll get it -- they'll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you aint in it. You, and I are not in The Big Club.
By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think, and what to buy.
The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard working people: white collar, blue collar it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard working people continue (these are people of modest being) -- continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don't give a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you -- they don't give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all -- at all -- at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.
That's what the owners counted on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white, and blue dick that's being jammed up their asshole everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It's called the American Dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it, but say what you want about Americans, folks. You can say what you want about Americans. You can call them smart, dumb, ignorant, innocent, naïve, gullible, easily led, what ever you want you're going have to deal with them. You're going have to deal with them, because you're in the television business. You got the all suicide channel on cable TV. You need these people as viewers. You need people looking in. You got to worry about your ratings. Your going to have to be worrying about sweeps months. Most people know what sweeps months are. They're the more important ratings months of the year where they put on there biggest attractions, and their hottest stars. And try to pump up their ratings a little more. Get their local stations to adjust their advertising rates. You're going to have to compete with the mentality of network television, and I think of an all suicide channel, during sweeps months, you're going to have to go with mass suicides -- big public events where hundreds of people all kill themselves at the same time right on live TV.
Now I've been resting with a way to do this. I've been trying been trying to figure this out. I swear to God, this is the truth, I've been trying to figure this part of it out for 6 months now, and I only recent have it so I'm going to tell you about it. Now we're going to have to get lots, and lots of people to kill themselves on demand. How are we going to do this -- that's the question. How are we going to get large numbers of people to commit suicide at a time or place of our choosing? And I mean large numbers, because don't forget besides sweeps we're going to have to be thinking about 24 hour a day programming so to make this work we're going to need organization. We need a system. Can't just wait for people to come by the studio all day, drop by, and commit suicide. What we have to do is build up a large pool of hopeless people. Suicide volunteers -- people with no hope. People whom society has given up on, fate has given up on, or who have given up on themselves. Rock bottom, dead end totally fucked up people with no hope, and no reason to live.
Have we got our share of them. Think of it was a pyramid, that'll give you a visual fix on it. The pyramid of the hopeless. We're going to start building this pyramid as the very base naturally, and the bottom layer is going to be homeless people. God knows we got plenty of them. Nobody gives a fuck about them. Nobodies got a plan. Nobodies got any money for them. Nobody has a program. Nobody gives a fuck about homeless people. We don't k now how many we have even. We know 500,000 of them are veterans cause we're so good to the veterans in this country, and we know about 1 million to a million and 400,000 of them are children so then god knows how many more we got. Totally fucking hopeless. Into the pyramid they go.
Now the next group we're going to put in here, these are the people in prison with these long sentences they've been given. Many of them deserved. I'll grant you that. I'm sure half the people are in prison for the things they really did. That's not a bad average, one out of every two, but nobody gives a shit about these people. Nobody's going to hire them if they do get out. They're never going to get out. Rehabilitation doesn't work, and the judges give them these fucking draconian sentences: 40, 60, 70, 80, 100 year sentences, life term, double life, one guy about a month ago was given three consecutive life term sentences, plus two death penalties. How the fuck do you serve that? Even David Copperfield can't do that shit. In order to do that you would have to be a Hindu. Then you got the people on death row. They aint going anywhere. In the fucking pyramid they go.
Now the next layer, this group is self-selected -- self-selected, and bit controversial to some ears I guess. These are these people who claim to be depressed. Okay? Apparently in this land of plenty. This richest nation in the history of the world (we're so proud of saying that). Some super markets have a hundred thousand items in them. We have 19 million americans claiming to be depressed, and some of them take medicine for it. Sometimes the medicine for it makes one of them commit suicide, and that depresses the shit out of the rest of them. Then you only have these people that think they're depressed. They think they're depressed, because they saw the commercial on TV, and the doctor looked like a good guy, the music sounded kind of peppy. And what the fuck? Probably some of these pills would pick me right the fuck up. Totally fucking hopeless mindset -- in the fucking pyramid.
Up at the very top we are going to put the people who are truly sick. The terminally ill. Unforchanetly no hope for a lot of them. Hundreds of thousands of them -- no cure for what they have. Some of them there's no cure, because no ones looking for one. Aint enough people sick with it, so there's no money in the cure. Then there's people where there's a cure, but they don't have the money for it. Then there's one who can, but they're to far gone. Then there's one who can get the cure, but they have no social means to get to it so these people aint going anywhere - they should be allowed to commit suicide.
Boom!
In the fucking pyramid they go.
Now think of what you got here. Think of yourself as the executive vice president of programming at the all suicide channel. Think of what you have to work with in the pyramid of the hopeless. You have homeless, imprisoned, condemned, depressed, and terminally ill, and I'm going to bet you anything in this depraved culture of ours -- bet you anything with the reality show mentality we have that on the all suicide you could get 500 of these hopeless people to hold hands, and jump into the grand canyon. I'll fucking bet you -- I'll fucking bet you you can get this done in this country right this now, for money - for money you got to give them something. Oh shit. They're Americans, they're for sale, give them a little something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy-sVByUHqE
En het is deze werkelijkheid die de Hoflanden en Makken als propagandisten inhuurt. Herinner dit zodra u ze weer eens hoort orakelen.
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