aldus twitterde president Obama op 21 januari 2013.
De geest van de postmoderne tijd werd — overigens onbewust — helder verwoord door president Obama toen hij verklaarde dat:
If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that's never been the source of our progress. That's how we cheat ourselves of progress.
We remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory, the power of his letter from a Birmingham jail, the marches he led. But he also sat down with President Johnson in the Oval Office to try and get a Civil Rights Act and a Voting Rights Act passed.
Het is een typerend voorbeeld van hoe propaganda werkt. Niet zozeer meningen die de Amerikaanse president verspreidt zijn belangrijk, maar de feiten die hij verzwijgt. De bittere ironie hier is dat de Nobelprijswinnaar voor de Vrede in mei 2016 ‘officially became the U.S. president to have been at war the longest — longer than Lyndon Johnson, longer than Abraham Lincoln and certainly longer than George W. Bush.’ De man, die in 2009 werd geprezen voor ‘buitengewone inspanningen om de internationale diplomatie en samenwerking tussen volkeren te versterken,’ is bovendien
not done yet, either. Far from it! With eight months left to go in his presidency, and with America’s military fighting in several places far-flung, Obama is virtually certain to be the only U.S. president to spend a full eight years presiding over combat.
De New York Times:
describes Obama’s status as America’s biggest warmonger president as ‘an improbable legacy’ because he ran as an anti-war candidate back in 2008 and promised to end the wars Bush started after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Het toppunt van Obama’s cynisme is dat hij dr. Martin Luther King aanhaalde, die in 1964 de Nobelprijs voor de Vrede ontving ‘voor zijn geweldloos verzet tegen de rassenscheiding in de VS,’ om vier jaar later op 39-jarige leeftijd te worden vermoord. Van doorslaggevend belang hierbij is het volgende te weten:
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made headlines by calling Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the ‘most notorious liar in the country.’ Hoover made the comment in front of a group of female journalists ahead of King’s trip to Oslo where he received the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the youngest recipient of the prize. While Hoover was trying to publicly discredit King, the agency also sent King an anonymous letter threatening to expose the civil rights leader’s extramarital affairs. The unsigned, typed letter was written in the voice of a disillusioned civil rights activist, but it is believed to have been written by one of Hoover’s deputies, William Sullivan. The letter concluded by saying, ‘King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. … You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.’ The existence of the so-called ‘suicide letter’ has been known for years, but only last week did the public see the un-redacted version. We speak to Yale University professor Beverly Gage, who uncovered the un-redacted letter.
Dit is nog niet het hele verhaal. De haat van de Amerikaanse gevestigde orde, de Deep State, blijkt ook uit het volgende:
How the Government Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
03 April 13
Before scoffing at this headline, you should know that in 1999, in Memphis, Tennessee, more than three decades after MLK's death, a jury found local, state, and federal government agencies guilty of conspiring to assassinate the Nobel Peace Prize winner and civil rights leader. The same media you would expect to cover such a monumental decision was absent at the trial, because those news organizations were part of that conspiracy. William F. Pepper, who was James Earl Ray's first attorney, called over 70 witnesses to the stand to testify on every aspect of the assassination. The panel, which consisted of an even mix of both black and white jurors, took only an hour of deliberation to find Loyd Jowers and other defendants guilty. If you're skeptical of any factual claims made here, click here for a full transcript, broken into individual sections. Read the testimonies yourself if you don't want to take my word for it.
It really isn't that radical a thing to expect this government to kill someone who threatened their authority and had the power to organize millions to protest it. When Martin Luther King was killed on April 4, 1968, he was speaking to sanitation workers in Memphis, who were organizing to fight poverty wages and ruthless working conditions. He was an outspoken critic of the government's war in Vietnam, and his power to organize threatened the moneyed corporate interests who were profiting from the war. At the time of his death, he was gearing up for the Poor People's Campaign, an effort to get people to camp out on the National Mall to demand anti-poverty legislation — essentially the first inception of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The government perceived him as a threat, and had him killed. James Earl Ray was the designated fall guy, and a complicit media, taking its cues from a government in fear of MLK, helped sell the ‘official’ story of the assassination. Here's how they did it.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/16784-how-the-government-killed-martin-luther-king-jr
Opiniemaker Geert Mak mocht dan wel in 2012 beweren dat ‘het beter voor Nederland en de internationale gemeenschap’ was ‘dat Obama de verkiezingen wint,’ maar getuige de feiten is dit niet meer dan de bekende mainstream-propaganda. De ‘eerste zwarte president’ heeft het militair-industrieel complex van het neoliberale systeem niet alleen in stand gehouden, maar ook nog eens machtiger gemaakt, zoals uit de feiten blijkt. En dit terwijl zowel president Eisenhower als de door Obama geciteerde Martin Luther King hiervoor met klem hadden gewaarschuwd. Zo motiveerde King in zijn beroemde Riverside Speech in 1967 zijn oppositie tegen de oorlog in Vietnam met ondermeer dit argument:
you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.
Een jaar eerder had hij zijn stafmedewerkers gewaarschuwd:
You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.
Tijdens zijn ‘Nobel lecture’ had King gewezen op het ‘problem of spiritual and moral lag (achterstand. svh)’ in het Westen dat zich
expresses in three larger problems which grow out of man's ethical infantilism. Each of these problems, while appearing to be separate and isolated, is inextricably bound to the other. I refer to racial injustice, poverty, and war,
terwijl, zo stelde King,
war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminated even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war.
De charismatische Martin Luther King vormde een aanzienlijke bedreiging van de belangen van de gevestigde orde nadat hij was begonnen het logisch verband tussen armoede en het militair-industrieel complex te benadrukken. De kritische Amerikaanse auteur Geoff Gilbert wees erop dat
In the latter years of his life, Dr. King, already a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, frequently spoke publicly of the three evils holding back his society: racism, poverty and militarism. In one controversial speech, ‘Beyond Vietnam,’ delivered on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination and almost six years before U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, Dr. King called his government ‘the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.’ He argued national investment in the war had already doomed President Lyndon Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’ to failure — a claim that the New York Times objected forcefully. In the address, Dr. King implored the necessity for the nation to undergo a ‘radical revolution of values,’ explaining, ‘We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.’
‘The watchword of this new religion is “My country,
right or wrong,”’ King wrote.” […] In Germany, it
was preached by Hitler. In Italy, it was preached by
Mussolini. And in America it is being preached by the
McCarthy s and the Jenners, the advocators of white
supremacy, and the America first movements.’
In a 1949 sermon called ‘Civilization's Greatest Need,’
King wrote, ‘Our material and intellectual advances
have outrun our moral progress.’
Uitgaande van King’s laatste citaat kan niet anders dan geconstateerd worden dat hij nog steeds gelijk heeft. Wanneer het Westen eerlijk naar zichzelf kijkt, ziet het dat het establishment de met de mond beleden moraliteit, de mensenrechten en democratie, met voeten treedt. Voor de geloofwaardigheid van zowel Europa als de VS is ‘The modern concept of human rights based on the fundamental principle that those responsible for violations must be held to account,’ aldus op 18 september 2013 Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights. Nog afgezien van de miljoenen doden en miljoenen zwaar gewonden en verminkten als gevolg van de Amerikaanse terreur in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Irak, Libië enzovoorts, is ook president Obama’s bezoek aan Hiroshima op vrijdag 27 mei 2016, een illustrerend voorbeeld van de wijze waarop het Westen lak heeft aan ‘[t]he modern concept of human rights’ en dat degene die het meeste geweld kan genereren niet hoeft te voldoen aan ‘the fundamental principle that those responsible for violations must be held to account.’ Ter verduidelijking:
In the documentary Fog of War, Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara talks about how, as a lieutenant colonel advising Colonel Curtis LeMay during World War II, he helped plan the firebombing of Tokyo. As McNamara’s eyes fill with tears, he talks about the final days of the war: ‘In a single night we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children.’ The documentary shows the US audience the level of decimation through a comparison of Japanese and US cities. McNamara talks about the event to advocate proportionality in war.
‘Killing 50-90% of the people in 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve.’
Gezien het feit dat de NAVO, onder aanvoering van de VS, sinds de val van de Sovjet-Unie betrokken is geweest bij grootschalige oorlogsmisdaden, die onder bijvoorbeeld de noemer ‘Shock and Awe’ ontelbare doden en zwaar gewonden hebben veroorzaakte, is de volgende retorische vraag van McNamara uiterst actueel en relevant: ‘What makes it immoral if you lose but not if you win?’ In de documentaire The Fog of War (2003) bekent hij dat
‘[Lemay], and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals.’ But the two never went before court to answer for their actions — they were treated as heros when they returned home victorious. In fact, the threat of war crimes trials could even encourage violence, or a stubborn refusal to surrender, if the leaders know they will be tried, executed, and relegated to perpetual historical infamy if they lose.
Generaal Curtis LeMay, die opklom tot stafchef van de Amerikaanse luchtmacht, vatte de Amerikaanse strategie van oorlogsmisdaden als volgt samen:
There is no such thing as an innocent civilian.
En over de Vietnamese bevolking zei hij tijdens de Vietnam Oorlog:
We will bomb them back to the Stone Age.
Het was dezelfde Curtis LeMay over wie Robert McNamara vertelde dat hij na 1945 had gezegd:
'If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.' And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
In de met een Oscar bekroonde The Fog of War werpt McNamara de volgende vraag op:
Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This wasall done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which by the way was dropped by LeMay's command. Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve.
'Necessary' of niet, 'Shock and Awe' is de militaire strategie bij uitstek waarmee het Witte Westen zijn hegemonie tracht te consolideren. In de woorden van de Amerikaanse geleerde, wijlen Samuel Huntington,
the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.
Het is dan ook geenszins verbazingwekkend dat toen Lemay in 1968 als vice-presidentskandidaat werd gevraagd of nucleaire wapens noodzakelijk waren om de oorlog in Vietnam te winnen, hij antwoordde: ‘We can win this war without nuclear weapons,’ maar hier onmiddellijk aan toevoegde: ‘But I have to say, we have a phobia about nuclear weapons. I think there may be times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons.’
Curtis LeMay, die opklom tot ‘USAF Chief of Staff’ is niet de enige hoge Amerikaanse militair die ervan overtuigd was/is dat ‘er tijden kunnen zijn,’ dat ‘het bijzonder doeltreffend zou zijn om nucleaire wapens in te zetten.’ Zo verklaarde de Amerikaanse historicus en emeritus hoogleraar Robert Dallek in 2013 in een ‘special JFK commemorative issue’ van het gezaghebbende tijdschrift The Atlantic dat:
From the start of his presidency, Kennedy feared that the Pentagon brass would overreact to Soviet provocations and drive the country into a disastrous nuclear conflict. The Soviets might have been pleased — or understandably frightened — to know that Kennedy distrusted America’s military establishment almost as much as they did.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff reciprocated the new president’s doubts. Lemnitzer made no secret of his discomfort with a 43-year-old president who he felt could not measure up to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former five-star general Kennedy had succeeded. Lemnitzer was a West Point graduate who had risen in the ranks of Eisenhower’s World War II staff and helped plan the successful invasions of North Africa and Sicily. The 61-year-old general, little known outside military circles, stood 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds, with a bearlike frame, booming voice, and deep, infectious laugh. Lemnitzer’s passion for golf and his ability to drive a ball 250 yards down a fairway endeared him to Eisenhower. More important, he shared his mentor’s talent for maneuvering through Army and Washington politics. Also like Ike, he wasn’t bookish or particularly drawn to grand strategy or big-picture thinking — he was a nuts-and-bolts sort of general who made his mark managing day-to-day problems.
Ter informatie om een juist beeld van Amerikaanse top-militairen: (Lyman Louis Lemnitzer was een Amerikaanse generaal, stafchef van het Amerikaanse leger (1959-60) en voorzitter van The Joint Chiefs of Staff (1960-62). Deze post moest hij verlaten na een conflict met president Kennedy over de valse vlagoperatie Northwoods, hij werd weggepromoveerd als Supreme Allied Commander Europe, ook wel opperbevelhebber van de NAVO. Lemnitzer verliet in 1969 het leger na 49 jaar trouwe dienst. Operation Northwoods is een samenzweringsplan uit 1962 van de Amerikaanse overheid tot terroristische operaties onder valse vlag. Het plan voorzag in het doden van onschuldige mensen en het plegen van terroristische acties in Amerikaanse steden door de CIA of andere Amerikaanse overheidsdiensten om hiermee publieke steun te vergaren voor een oorlog tegen het door Fidel Castro geleide Cuba. Eén van de plannen was het ‘ontwikkelen van een Cubaanse terroristische terreurcampagne in de grootstedelijke agglomeratie van Miami, andere steden in de staat Florida maar ook in Washington D.C.’ De plannen voorzagen in het plegen van vliegtuigkapingen, bomaanslagen en het gebruik van vals bewijsmateriaal waarmee de schuld van de terroristische aanslagen op betrokkenheid van buitenlandse mogendheden wees. President Kennedy sprak zijn veto over de operatie uit en en gaf de documenten vrij. svh https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_Lemnitzer https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods)
To Kennedy, Lemnitzer embodied the military’s old thinking about nuclear weapons. The president thought a nuclear war would bring mutually assured destruction — mad, in the shorthand of the day — while the Joint Chiefs believed the United States could fight such a conflict and win. Sensing Kennedy’s skepticism about nukes, Lemnitzer questioned the new president’s qualifications to manage the country’s defense. Since Eisenhower’s departure, he lamented in shorthand, no longer was ‘a President with military experience available to guide Joint Chieds of Staf.’ When the four-star general presented the ex-skipper (John Kennedy, die tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog kapitein was van een patrouilleschip. svh) with a detailed briefing on emergency procedures for responding to a foreign military threat, Kennedy seemed preoccupied with possibly having to make ‘a snap (onmiddellijke. svh) decision’ about whether to launch a nuclear response to a Soviet first strike, by Lemnitzer’s account. This reinforced the general’s belief that Kennedy didn’t sufficiently understand the challenges before him.
Admiral Arleigh Burke, the 59-year-old chief of naval operations, shared Lemnitzer’s doubts. An Annapolis graduate with 37 years of service, Burke was an anti-Soviet hawk who believed that U.S. military officials needed to intimidate Moscow with threatening rhetoric. This presented an early problem for Kennedy, in that Burke ‘pushed his black-and-white views of international affairs with bluff naval persistence,’ the Kennedy aide and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. later wrote. Kennedy had barely settled into the Oval Office when Burke planned to publicly assail ‘the Soviet Union from hell to breakfast, (krachtig en gewelddadig. svh)’ according to Arthur Sylvester, a Kennedy-appointed Pentagon press officer who brought the proposed speech text to the president’s attention. Kennedy ordered the admiral to back off and required all military officers on active duty to clear any public speeches with the White House. Kennedy did not want officers thinking they could speak or act however they wished.
Kennedy’s biggest worry about the military was not the personalities involved but rather the freedom of field commanders to launch nuclear weapons without explicit permission from the commander in chief. Ten days after becoming president, Kennedy learned from his national-security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, that ‘a subordinate commander faced with a substantial Russian military action could start the thermonuclear holocaust on his own initiative.’ As Roswell L. Gilpatric, Kennedy’s deputy defense secretary, recalled, ‘We became increasingly horrified over how little positive control the president really had over the use of this great arsenal of nuclear weapons.’ To counter the military’s willingness to use nuclear weapons against the Communists, Kennedy pushed the Pentagon to replace Eisenhower’s strategy of ‘massive retaliation’ with what he called ‘flexible response’ — a strategy of calibrated force that his White House military adviser, General Maxwell Taylor, had described in a 1959 book, ‘The Uncertain Trumpet.’ But the brass (hoge militairen. svh) resisted. The stalemate in the Korean War had frustrated military chiefs and left them inclined to use atomic bombs to ensure victory, as General Douglas MacArthur had proposed. They regarded Kennedy as reluctant to put the nation’s nuclear advantage to use and thus resisted ceding him exclusive control over decisions about a first strike.
The NATO commander, General Lauris Norstad, and two Air Force generals, Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power, stubbornly opposed White House directives that reduced their authority to decide when to go nuclear. The 54-year-old Norstad confirmed his reputation as fiercely independent when two high-profile Kennedy emissaries, thought to be Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, visited NATO’s strategic military command in Belgium. They asked whether Norstad’s primary obligation was to the United States or to its European allies. ‘My first instinct was to hit’ one of the Cabinet members for ‘challenging my loyalty,’ he recalled later. Instead, he tried to smile and said, ‘Gentlemen, I think that ends this meeting. Whereupon I walked out and slammed the door.’ Norstad was so clearly reluctant to concede his commander in chief’s ultimate authority that Bundy urged Kennedy to remind the general that the president ‘is boss.’
General Power, too, was openly opposed to limiting the use of America’s ultimate weapons. ‘Why are you so concerned with saving their lives?’ he asked the lead author of a Rand study that counseled against attacking Soviet cities at the outset of a war. ‘The whole idea is to kill the bastards… At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win.’ Even Curtis LeMay, Power’s superior, described him as ‘not stable’ and a ‘sadist.’
The 54-year-old LeMay, known as ‘Old Iron Pants,’ wasn’t much different. He shared his subordinate’s faith in the untrammeled (onbelemmerd. svh) use of air power to defend the nation’s security. The burly, cigar-chomping caricature of a general believed the United States had no choice but to bomb its foes into submission. In World War II, LeMay had been the principal architect of the incendiary attacks by B‑29 heavy bombers that destroyed a large swath of Tokyo and killed about 100,000 Japanese — and, he was convinced, shortened the war. LeMay had no qualms (gewetensbezwaren. svh) about striking at enemy cities, where civilians would pay for their governments’ misjudgment in picking a fight with the United States.
During the Cold War, LeMay was prepared to launch a preemptive nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. He dismissed civilian control of his decision making, complained of an American phobia about nuclear weapons, and wondered privately, ‘Would things be much worse if Khrushchev were secretary of defense?’ Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy’s speechwriter and alter ego, called LeMay ‘my least favorite human being.’
The strains between the generals and their commander in chief showed up in exasperating ways. When Bundy asked the Joint Chiefs’ staff director for a copy of the blueprint for nuclear war, the general at the other end of the line said, ‘We never release that.’ Bundy explained, ‘I don’t think you understand. I’m calling for the president and he wants to see [it].’ The chiefs’ reluctance was understandable: their Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan foresaw the use of 170 atomic and hydrogen bombs in Moscow alone; the destruction of every major Soviet, Chinese, and Eastern European city; and hundreds of millions of deaths. Sickened by a formal briefing on the plan, Kennedy turned to a senior administration official and said, ‘And we call ourselves the human race.’
Twee jaar later werd president John Kennedy in Dallas vermoord. Hoewel de Warren Commissie in 1964 stelde dat er slechts één dader was, kwam de Select Committee on Assassinations van het Amerikaanse Huis van Afgevaardigden in 1979 na een uitgebreid onderzoek tot de slotsom dat ‘Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy.’
Niet voor niets had Kennedy’s voorganger, de oud-opperbevelhebber van de Geallieerde Strijdkrachten in Europa, Dwight Eisenhower, na acht jaar president van de VS te zijn geweest in zijn afscheidsrede in 1961 de Amerikaanse bevolking met klem gewaarschuwd voor de verdere uitbouw van wat hij ‘het militair-industrieel complex’ noemde, en waarvan de ‘total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government.’ Eisenhower benadrukte dat
we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
De waarschuwing van een vijf-sterren generaal en president is inmiddels, anno 2016, ruim 55 jaar jaar oud. Dit is uiterst belangrijk te weten aangezien de NAVO, gesteund door de volksvertegenwoordigers van Europa en de VS, momenteel druk doende is met de voorbereidingen van een gewapend conflict met de Russische Federatie en met China. Sinds Eisenhower zijn waarschuwing uitsprak, is de macht van het ‘militair-industrieel complex,’ waarvan ‘de totale invloed — economisch, politiek, zelfs spiritueel — in elke stad, elk staatsparlement, elk kantoor van de federale regering' toegenomen. En dus geldt vandaag de dag meer dan ooit dat
We niet [moeten] nalaten zijn ernstige gevolgen te doorgronden. Onze bodem, hulpbronnen en levensonderhoud zijn daar allemaal bij betrokken; evenals het hele bouwwerk van onze samenleving.
Dat desondanks de macht van het militair-industrieel complex in de gemilitariseerde Amerikaanse samenleving en cultuur is gegroeid, blijkt ondermeer uit het feit dat ‘Obama has been at war longer than any president in history,’ terwijl de ‘eerste zwarte president’ aan de macht kwam met de belofte ‘change we can believe in,’ wat concreet inhield het beëindigen van de Amerikaanse oorlogen, die overal chaos veroorzaken. De vooraanstaande kritische Amerikaanse journaliste Amy Goodman vatte de werkelijkheid op 16 mei 2016 als volgt samen:
He has now been at war longer than any president in U.S. history — longer than George W. Bush, longer than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, longer than Abraham Lincoln. Obama has taken military action in at least seven countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Just last month, President Obama announced the deployment of 250 more Special Operations troops to Syria in a move that nearly doubles the official U.S. presence in the country. As war spreads across the globe, a record 60 million people were driven from their homes last year. Experts warn the refugee crisis may also worsen due to the impacts of global warming. Over the weekend, NASA released data showing 2016 is on pace to be by far the hottest year ever, breaking the 2015 record. April became the seventh month in a row to have broken global temperature records. Meanwhile, many fear a new nuclear arms race has quietly begun, as the United States, Russia and China race to build arsenals of smaller nuclear weapons. These multiple crises come as voters in the United States prepare to elect a new president.
In de New York Times van 5 november 2012 wees Aaron B. O'Connell, 'an assistant professor of history at the United States Naval Academy and a Marine reserve officer, author of Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps’ erop dat
Eisenhower’s least heeded warning — concerning the spiritual effects of permanent preparations for war — is more important now than ever. Our culture has militarized considerably since Eisenhower’s era, and civilians, not the armed services, have been the principal cause. From lawmakers’ constant use of 'support our troops' to justify defense spending, to TV programs and video games like 'NCIS,' 'Homeland' and 'Call of Duty,' to NBC’s shameful and unreal reality show 'Stars Earn Stripes,' Americans are subjected to a daily diet of stories that valorize the military while the storytellers pursue their own opportunistic political and commercial agendas. Of course, veterans should be thanked for serving their country, as should police officers, emergency workers and teachers. But no institution — particularly one financed by the taxpayers — should be immune from thoughtful criticism.
Like all institutions, the military works to enhance its public image, but this is just one element of militarization. Most of the political discourse on military matters comes from civilians, who are more vocal about 'supporting our troops' than the troops themselves. It doesn’t help that there are fewer veterans in Congress today than at any previous point since World War II. Those who have served are less likely to offer unvarnished praise for the military, for it, like all institutions, has its own frustrations and failings. But for non-veterans — including about four-fifths of all members of Congress — there is only unequivocal, unhesitating adulation. The political costs of anything else are just too high…
Eisenhower understood the trade-offs between guns and butter. 'Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,' he warned in 1953, early in his presidency. 'The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.’
He also knew that Congress was a big part of the problem. (In earlier drafts, he referred to the 'military-industrial-Congressional' complex, but decided against alienating the legislature in his last days in office.) Today, there are just a select few in public life who are willing to question the military or its spending, and those who do — from the libertarian Ron Paul to the leftist Dennis J. Kucinich — are dismissed as unrealistic.
The fact that both President Obama and Mitt Romney are calling for increases to the defense budget (in the latter case, above what the military has asked for) is further proof that the military is the true 'third rail' of American politics. In this strange universe where those without military credentials can’t endorse defense cuts, it took a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, to make the obvious point that the nation’s ballooning debt was the biggest threat to national security.
Uncritical support of all things martial is quickly becoming the new normal for our youth. Hardly any of my students at the Naval Academy remember a time when their nation wasn’t at war. Almost all think it ordinary to hear of drone strikes in Yemen or Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. The recent revelation of counterterrorism bases in Africa elicits no surprise in them, nor do the military ceremonies that are now regular features at sporting events. That which is left unexamined eventually becomes invisible, and as a result, few Americans today are giving sufficient consideration to the full range of violent activities the government undertakes in their names.
Were Eisenhower alive, he’d be aghast (verbijsterd. svh) at our debt, deficits and still expanding military-industrial complex. And he would certainly be critical of the 'insidious penetration of our minds' by video game companies and television networks, the news media and the partisan pundits. With so little knowledge of what Eisenhower called the 'lingering sadness of war' and the 'certain agony of the battlefield,' they have done as much as anyone to turn the hard work of national security into the crass business of politics and entertainment.
De werkelijkheid, beschreven door Amerikaanse geleerden die van binnen-uit berichten staat diametraal tegenover de virtuele werkelijkheid van buitenstaanders als Henk Hofland die in De Groene Amsterdammer zijn ‘politiek-literaire elite’ laat weten dat hij op zijn 88ste jaar 'nog altijd bij voorkeur onder Amerikaanse leiding, als het een Democraat is’ de toekomst tegemoet wil treden, terwijl Geert Mak zijn publiek vertelt dat de 'soft power' van de Verenigde Staten als grootmacht 'nog altijd sterk aanwezig' is, waarbij hij het begrip als volgt verduidelijkt:
Soft power is, in de kern, de overtuigingskracht van een staat, de kracht om het debat naar zich toe te trekken, om de agenda van de wereldpolitiek te bepalen,
zonder te vermelden dat de 'soft power' van de VS altijd begeleid wordt door de 'hard power' van 's wereld's zwaarst bewapende land, waarvan de militaire uitgaven
Dwarfs Rest Of The World. The United States spends 58 percent of the total defense dollars paid out by the world's top 10 military powers, which combined for $1.19 trillion in military funding in 2011. With its unparalleled global reach, the US outspends China, the next-biggest military power, by nearly 6-to-1.
En als kroon op de wereldvreemdheid van H.J.A. Hofland eindig ik hier met de volgende bewering van de ‘beste journalist’ van de twintigste eeuw:
Afgezien van de Amerikaanse oorlog in Vietnam en de aanval van de Sovjet-Unie op Afghanistan is de Koude Oorlog, van 1949 tot 1989, misschien wel de vreedzaamste periode die de moderne mensheid gekend heeft. De diepste oorzaak daarvan is de kernbom.
Het stond er echt, in De Groene Amsterdammer van 19 februari 2014. Daarom, opnieuw de werkelijkheid. Zoals elke onafhankelijke waarnemer weet haat de gevestigde orde, voor wie de Hoflanden en Makkianen werken, elk verlies aan macht en invloed en wantrouwt zij per definitie elke vernieuwing. Dat is altijd zo geweest en niets wijst erop dat dit in de toekomst zal veranderen, Integendeel zelfs. Als men het traktaat The Grand Chessboard uit 1997 leest van de voormalige Nationale Veiligheids Adviseur Zbigniew Brzezinski dan blijkt al snel hoe de hegemonistische elite de wereld naar haar hand wil zetten. Let daarbij ook op de onthullende wijze waarop de realiteit wordt voorgesteld. Brzezinski:
In the foreseeable future, the impoverished two-thirds of humanity may not be motivated by the restraint of the privileged.
It is also noteworthy that international conflicts and acts of terrorism have so far been remarkably devoid of any use of the weapons of mass destruction. How long that self-restraint may hold is inherently unpredictable, but the increasing availability, not only to states but also to organized groups, of the means to inflict massive casualties — by the use of nuclear of bacteriological weapons — also inevitably increases the probability of their employment…
Meeting these challenges is America’s burden as well as its unique responsibility. Given the reality of American democracy, an effective response will require generating a public understanding of the continuing importance of American power in shaping a widening framework of stable geopolitical cooperation, one that simultaneously averts global anarchy and succesfully defers the emergence of a new power challenge.
Achter al dit ideologische taalgebruik schuilt een meedogenloos realpolitiek, waarbij met geweld voorkomen wordt dat de ‘impoverished two-thirds of humanity’ een greep krijgt op de rijkdommen van ‘de geprivilegieerden,’ die zich beroepen op hun zo bewonderenswaardige ‘terughoudendheid.’ Hoe die tweederde van de mensheid verarmd is geraakt en verarmd blijft en waarom het Westen ‘geprivilegieerd’ raakte zijn vragen die daarbij geen rol spelen. Belangrijk is slechts dat de huidige status quo gehandhaafd blijft, dat wil zeggen: dat de rijken nog rijker worden en de armen almaar armer. En om die kloof te kunnen handhaven is het militair-industrieel nodig. Dat spreekt voor zich, de ‘impoverished’ zullen namelijk niet eeuwig de belangen van ‘the privileged’ willen dienen en zullen ooit met geweld massaal voor hun eigen belangen opkomen. Op dat moment kunnen de miljarden armen alleen nog met genocidale vuurkracht worden bedwongen, zoals men in officiële documenten van Amerikaanse militaire planners kan lezen. Met het oog onder andere hierop riep vier maanden voordat hij vermoord werd president John Kennedy tijdens een speech de studenten van de American University op:
Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many of us think it is unreal. But that is dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable — that mankind is doomed — that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.
We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade — therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly insolvable — and we believe they can do it again.
De toespraak van John Kennedy was een klap in het gezicht van de gevestigde orde. De belangrijkste beweegreden waarom de Amerikaanse president, die normaal de positie van de macht verdedigt, ineens een fundamentele aanval deed op de belangen van de elite, is niet moeilijk te raden. Voor het eerst in de geschiedenis had één individu op aarde ervaren wat het betekent als men de macht in handen krijgt om de hele mensheid uit te roeien. Dat gevaar bestond dertien dagen lang tijdens de zogeheten Cuban Missile Crisis in oktober 1962 toen de VS en de Sovjet Unie op het punt stonden in een nucleaire oorlog te worden gezogen, omdat – in de woorden van de minister van Justitie, Robert Kennedy – ‘an irreversible chain of events could occur against our will. The President does not know how long he can hold out against our generals.’ Geen enkel zinnig mens wil in de situatie terecht komen dat hij moet beslissen of het moment is aangebroken om de armageddon te beginnen. Maar nadat beide partijen water in de wijn hadden gedaan was het Amerikaans militair-industrieel complex ziedend:
‘We’ve been had!’ yelled then Navy Chief George Anderson upon hearing on October 28, 1962, how JFK ‘solved’ the missile crisis. Admiral Anderson was the man in charge of the very ‘blockade’ against Cuba.
‘The biggest defeat in our nation’s history!’ bellowed Air Force Chief Curtis Lemay, while whacking his fist on his desk.
‘We missed the big boat,’ said Gen. Maxwell Taylor after learning the details of the deal with Khrushchev.
Onder andere Curtis Lemay, hoofd van de Amerikaanse Luchtmacht, was fervent voorstander van de onmiddellijke inzet van nucleaire wapens.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in September 1962, LeMay wanted to bomb nuclear sites in Cuba. When John F. Kennedy asked LeMay how the Soviet Union would respond if the United States bombed their missiles in Cuba. He replied that they would ‘do nothing’. Kennedy argued for a blockade of Cuba. LeMay responded by accusing the president of acting like Neville Chamberlain during the Munich Crisis and that the blockade scheme as ‘almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.’
De oorlogszuchtige Amerikaanse militaire top wist destijds dat de Amerikaanse regering juist wilde deëscaleren om het gevaar van een nucleaire holocaust in de toekomst te verminderen.
Washington, D.C., October 12, 2012 -- On the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, new documents from the Robert Kennedy papers declassified yesterday and posted today by the National Security Archive reveal previously unknown details of the Kennedy administration's secret effort to find an accord with Cuba that would remove the Soviet missiles in return for a modus vivendi between Washington and Havana.
Dobbs (Amerikaanse journalist/auteur. svh) quotes Dino Brugioni, ‘a key member of the CIA team monitoring the Soviet missile buildup,’ who saw no way out except ‘war and complete destruction’ as the clock moved to ‘one minute to midnight,’ the title of his book. Kennedy’s close associate, historian Arthur Schlesinger, described the events as ‘the most dangerous moment in human history.’ Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wondered aloud whether he ‘would live to see another Saturday night,’ and later recognized that ‘we lucked out’ -- barely.
Naderhand verklaarde de toenmalige minister van Defensie Robert McNamara dat tijdens de Koude Oorlog de wereld tot driemaal toe ‘op het nippertje’ aan de ‘wederzijdse verzekerde vernietiging’ was ontsnapt waarvan de Cuba Crisis er één van was geweest. 26 October 1962 werd door de B-52 piloot, majoor Don Clawson, als ‘the most dangerous moment’ genoemd. De B-52 was een NAVO-bommenwerper uitgerust met kernwapens. ‘B-52s on airborne alert’ met nucleaire bommen ‘on board and ready to use.’ 26 Oktober 1962 was de dag toen ‘the nation was closest to nuclear war,’ schrijft Clawson in zijn ‘irreverent anecdotes of an Air Force pilot.’ Als direct betrokkene was hij op die dag ‘in a good position to set off a likely terminal cataclysm.’ Hij concludeerde dat:
We were damned lucky we didn't blow up the world – and no thanks to the political or military leadership of this country.
Na deze confrontatie schreef Anatoly Dobrynin, de toenmalige Sovjet-ambassadeur in Washington, in een rapport aan Chroesjtsjov dat hij op het hoogtepunt van de crisis tijdens een geheim onderhoud met Robert Kennedy van hem had vernomen dat de Amerikaanse president oprecht streefde naar deëscalatie en vrede. Dobrynin:
Robert Kennedy looked exhausted. One could see from his eyes that he had not slept for days. He himself said that he had not been home for six days and nights. 'The President is in a grave situation,' Robert Kennedy said, 'and does not know how to get out of it. We are under very severe stress. In fact we are under pressure from our military to use force against Cuba. Probably at this very moment the President is sitting down to write a message to Chairman Khrushchev. We want to ask you, Mr. Dobrynin, to pass President Kennedy's message to Chairman Khrushchev through unofficial channels. President Kennedy implores Chairman Khrushchev to accept his offer and to take into consideration the peculiarities of the American system. Even though the President himself is very much against starting a war over Cuba, an irreversible chain of events could occur against his will. That is why the President is appealing directly to Chairman Khrushchev for his help in liquidating this conflict. If the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power. The American army could get out of control.
Feit is dat tijden de Koude Oorlog de mensheid ‘op het nippertje’ aan een nucleair armageddon is ontkomen. ‘We lucked out,’ aldus één van de betrokken autoriteiten, de toenmalige Amerikaanse minister van Defensie Robert McNamara. Desondanks beweert de in de polder zo gerespecteerde opiniemaker H.J.A. Hofland nu nog met grote stelligheid dat de ‘diepste oorzaak’ van ‘misschien wel de vreedzaamste periode die de moderne mensheid gekend heeft’ niets anders is dan ‘de kernbom.’ Dit soort levensgevaarlijke waanzin toont opnieuw aan hoe de westerse mainstream-pers doorgaans functioneert als ongeleid projectiel.
John Pilger:
The 2016 election campaign is remarkable not only for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but also for the resilience of an enduring silence about a murderous self-bestowed divinity. A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington's boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal – Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.
The breathtaking record of perfidy is so mutated in the public mind, wrote the late Harold Pinter, that it 'never happened… Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. It didn't matter.' Pinter expressed a mock admiration for what he called 'a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.'
Take Obama. As he prepares to leave office, the fawning has begun all over again. He is 'cool.' One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted more whistleblowers -- truth-tellers -- than any president. He pronounced Chelsea Manning guilty before she was tried. Today, Obama runs an unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone.
In 2009, Obama promised to help 'rid the world of nuclear weapons' and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. No American president has built more nuclear warheads than Obama. He is 'modernising' America's doomsday arsenal, including a new 'mini' nuclear weapon, whose size and 'smart' technology, says a leading general, ensure its use is 'no longer unthinkable.'
James Bradley, the best-selling author of Flags of Our Fathers and son of one of the US marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, said, '[One] great myth we're seeing play out is that of Obama as some kind of peaceful guy who's trying to get rid of nuclear weapons. He's the biggest nuclear warrior there is. He's committed us to a ruinous course of spending a trillion dollars on more nuclear weapons. Somehow, people live in this fantasy that because he gives vague news conferences and speeches and feel-good photo-ops that somehow that's attached to actual policy. It isn't.'
On Obama's watch, a second cold war is under way. The Russian president is a pantomime villain; the Chinese are not yet back to their sinister pig-tailed caricature -- when all Chinese were banned from the United States –-- but the media warriors are working on it.
Neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders has mentioned any of this. There is no risk and no danger for the United States and all of us. For them, the greatest military build-up on the borders of Russia since World War Two has not happened. On May 11, Romania went 'live' with a Nato 'missile defence' base that aims its first-strike American missiles at the heart of Russia, the world's second nuclear power.
In Asia, the Pentagon is sending ships, planes and special forces to the Philippines to threaten China. The US already encircles China with hundreds of military bases that curve in an arc up from Australia, to Asia and across to Afghanistan. Obama calls this a 'pivot (spil. svh).'
As a direct consequence, China reportedly has changed its nuclear weapons policy from no-first-use to high alert and put to sea submarines with nuclear weapons. The escalator is quickening.
It was Hillary Clinton who, as Secretary of State in 2010, elevated the competing territorial claims for rocks and reef in the South China Sea to an international issue; CNN and BBC hysteria followed; China was building airstrips on the disputed islands. In its mammoth war game in 2015, Operation Talisman Sabre, the US practiced 'choking' the Straits of Malacca through which pass most of China's oil and trade. This was not news.
Clinton declared that America had a 'national interest' in these Asian waters. The Philippines and Vietnam were encouraged and bribed to pursue their claims and old enmities against China. In America, people are being primed to see any Chinese defensive position as offensive, and so the ground is laid for rapid escalation. A similar strategy of provocation and propaganda is applied to Russia.
Clinton, the 'women's candidate,' leaves a trail of bloody coups: in Honduras, in Libya (plus the murder of the Libyan president) and Ukraine. The latter is now a CIA theme park swarming with Nazis and the frontline of a beckoning war with Russia. It was through Ukraine -- literally, borderland -- that Hitler's Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, which lost 27 million people. This epic catastrophe remains a presence in Russia. Clinton's presidential campaign has received money from all but one of the world's ten biggest arms companies. No other candidate comes close.
Sanders, the hope of many young Americans, is not very different from Clinton in his proprietorial view of the world beyond the United States. He backed Bill Clinton's illegal bombing of Serbia. He supports Obama's terrorism by drone, the provocation of Russia and the return of special forces (death squads) to Iraq. He has nothing to say on the drumbeat of threats to China and the accelerating risk of nuclear war. He agrees that Edward Snowden should stand trial and he calls Hugo Chavez -- like him, a social democrat -- 'a dead communist dictator.' He promises to support Clinton if she is nominated.
The election of Trump or Clinton is the old illusion of choice that is no choice: two sides of the same coin. In scapegoating minorities and promising to 'make America great again,' Trump is a far right-wing domestic populist; yet the danger of Clinton may be more lethal for the world.
'Only Donald Trump has said anything meaningful and critical of US foreign policy,' wrote Stephen Cohen, emeritus professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, one of the few Russia experts in the United States to speak out about the risk of war.
In a radio broadcast, Cohen referred to critical questions Trump alone had raised. Among them: why is the United States 'everywhere on the globe'? What is NATO's true mission? Why does the US always pursue regime change in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine? Why does Washington treat Russia and Vladimir Putin as an enemy?
The hysteria in the liberal media over Trump serves an illusion of 'free and open debate' and 'democracy at work.' His views on immigrants and Muslims are grotesque, yet the deporter-in-chief of vulnerable people from America is not Trump but Obama, whose betrayal of people of colour is his legacy: such as the warehousing of a mostly black prison population, now more numerous than Stalin's gulag.
This presidential campaign may not be about populism but American liberalism, an ideology that sees itself as modern and therefore superior and the one true way. Those on its right wing bear a likeness to 19th century Christian imperialists, with a God-given duty to convert or co-opt or conquer.
In Britain, this is Blairism. The Christian war criminal Tony Blair got away with his secret preparation for the invasion of Iraq largely because the liberal political class and media fell for his 'cool Britannia.' In the Guardian, the applause was deafening; he was called 'mystical.' A distraction known as identity politics, imported from the United States, rested easily in his care.
History was declared over, class was abolished and gender promoted as feminism; lots of women became New Labour MPs. They voted on the first day of Parliament to cut the benefits of single parents, mostly women, as instructed. A majority voted for an invasion that produced 700,000 Iraqi widows.
The equivalent in the US are the politically correct warmongers on the New York Times, Washington Post, and network TV who dominate political debate. I watched a furious debate on CNN about Trump's infidelities. It was clear, they said, a man like that could not be trusted in the White House. No issues were raised. Nothing on the 80 per cent of Americans whose income has collapsed to 1970s levels. Nothing on the drift to war. The received wisdom seems to be 'hold your nose' and vote for Clinton: anyone but Trump. That way, you stop the monster and preserve a system gagging for another war.
4 opmerkingen:
En zo heeft Geert Mak samen met tientallen andere dwazen ( BNN'ers.....) een brief vol drogredenen gestuurd naar de NTR tegen Zwarte Piet in het Sinterklaasjournaal.............Holland op z'n smalst anno 2016....
In een land op zichzelf en als lid EU en NAVO in vele opzichten racistisch. Misplaatste opwinding waar 't waar 't echt nodig is muisstil blijft......
http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/05/27/beste-omroepbaas-zwaai-zwarte-piet-uit
Dank je wel, Stan.
Je zou bijna wensen, en dat met grote spoed, dat die sociopaat de VS (minus haar bedrogen 99%)
eindelijk eens zelf aan den lijve, aan have en goed, de gruwelen van een oorlog ondervindt.
Grapje tussendoor.
Je bent in Amsterdam.
Daar loopt Mak en z'n vrouw.
Hoe zie je wie wie is?
Mak is die trut.
BNN'ers of BN'ers .... inwisselbaar........
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