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Financing our own brainwashing

I present this in the ongoing struggle to change the hearts and minds of our war-mongering neighbors, knowing full well that cooler heads, sharper minds and more eloquent voices than mine have so far been unable to break through the thick skins of willful ignorance.

“There are none so blind as those who will not see.” However, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

In 1907, Woodrow Wilson spelled out most succinctly the nature of capitalism as it relates to U.S. foreign policy and imperialistic policy in general. He stated: “Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him and the doors of the nation which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.”



In 1933, Major-General Smedley Butler acknowledged his complicity in upholding that policy by stating in part: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Michael Parenti, in his most recent book, “The Terrorism Trap,” tells us: “Throughout its history, the CIA and other agencies of the national security state have resorted to every conceivable crime and machination, using false propaganda, sabotage, bribery, rigged elections, collusion with organized crime, narcotics trafficking, death squads, terror bombings, torture, massacres and wars of attrition.”




Concerning propaganda, “The CIA runs the biggest news service in the world, with a budget larger than those of all the major wire services put together. In 1975, a Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA owned outright ‘more than 200 wire services, newspapers, magazines and book publishing complexes’ and subsidized many more.” (Parenti, “Inventing Reality”). Isn’t that sweet ? we have been financing our own brainwashing.

Writing on Sept. 15, 2001, Larry Mosqueda, Ph.D., informs us: “A conservative number for those who have been killed by U.S. terror and military action since World War II is 8 million people. This does not include the wounded, the imprisoned, the displaced, the refugees, etc.” (And we wonder why we have an immigration problem.)

Starting to get the picture? The U.S. national security state is actually the apparatus for making the world safe for the Fortune 500. Those corporations, with the “legal” power granted them by the WTO, GATT, NAFTA, etc., and tied with the IMF and World Bank, who were all in turn created by the Illuminati, the Tri-lateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Skull and Crossbones and the other conspiratorial organizations set up by the power-elite to run the world, are poisoning the planet and squeezing the life-blood out of its inhabitants.

Nothing is sacred to this juggernaut that is “old as time and evil as hell” (Thomas Wolfe). Not national sovereignty, not democracy, not justice, not liberty, not the health of the earth and its vast diversity, not future generations, not life itself.

This suicidal philosophy is becoming quite evident to increasingly large numbers of the world’s population. The veil covering the deceit and corruption is lifting.

That is why demonstrations are taking place worldwide from people of all walks of life. And Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center, Bali, etc., are all a response to this insanity. Have we forgotten the teaching, “You reap what you sow”? How about, “What goes around, comes around”?

In a cruel irony, the indigenous peoples, who for thousands of years lived in relative harmony with the earth, and therefore the ones most able to teach us how to live on this earth without destroying it, are the ones whose cultures and lifestyles are being decimated most thoroughly.

A 19th-century Cree Indian told us: “Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught, will we realize that we cannot eat money.”

Bush and the regime he represents are continuing the unfettered imperialistic drive of empire building cloaked in the pretext of fighting terrorism … a terrorism that it perpetuates with its far worse policies and actions.

Recently, at a monumental pivot point in history, despite major anti-war sentiment and the valiant voices of reason, a majority of our elected congressional “leaders” have shown their true colors, undermining the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the United Nations Charter. The emperor and his gang truly have no clothes, revealing in-your-face fascism.

Aung Sung Suukyi wrote: “It is not power that corrupts, but fear ? fear of losing power and fear of the scourge of those who wield it.”

Jean Hudon tells us: “The only cure for fear is faith, faith in oneself, faith in humanity and faith in the meaning and purpose of life.”

Folks, we’re on the Titanic, and as the Native American proverb goes: “If we don’t change our direction, we’re going to wind up where we’re headed” (idea from Webs of Power by Starhawk).

I’ll close with a quote from Francois Fenelon, a 16th-century French theologian: “All wars are civil wars … Each of us owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which we were born.”

Steve Campbell

Glenwood Springs