Friday, November 24, 2006


Governments Lie


Call me wishy washy about my concern for politics, but considering that my most deeply involved interest in the subject was aroused by 9/11 you can readily call me a naive newbie at the age of 60, especially compared to some of the lifelong activists I have met through this blog. If anything went awry in Washington it meant no more to me than finding a pro football game was fixed. Well, that was just a little over five years ago during which the public creation of atrocities justified by lies to be atoned for by the Bush administration has far outreached the quantity and the heartlessness suspected of them by the 9/11 truth movement. So now, I still couldn’t care less about United States’ sportlike party politics, but I am truly concerned that the depth and breadth of the corruption of our basic system of governance serving the wealthy the people’s earnings, with no concern for their interests.

I feel a bit like I have found a new band that I love who put out a new song every day the way I have become addicted to Democracy Now, as the biggest window on the world from a nation with all the others boarded up, for the “good of the people”. I recommend listening to a talk by Howard Zinn entitled “Uses of History and the War on Terrorism”.

The two points of the many great ones he made that I come to the keyboard to type about are the increasing number of civilian casualties in war (WWi-1 civilian for every 10 military, WWii-50/50, Viet Nam-70%, Iraq-85%, so far) and the other was his quote of I. F. Stone when giving his advice to journalism students, “Just two words, ‘Governments Lie.’” and how the press has forgotten the primary purpose of journalism, becoming the hucksters for the new regime.

He also recalled the tale of an interview with Hermann Goerring while imprisoned awaiting trial in which he was asked how the Nazis ever got the good German people to go along with their coming to such horrific power to go to war. He replied,

“Why of course the people don’t want to go to war.
Why would any poor slob on a farm want to go to war?
It is the leaders who determine policy.
It is very easy to get the people to go along;
just tell them they are being attacked and denounce pacifists for lack of patriotism.
It works in any country!!!

… note he didn’t say any fascist country, he said ANY country.

Noam Chomsky points out that if mea culpa were qualification for 9/11 perpetrators every power system in the world exploited it for its own interests: the Russians in Chechnya, China against the Uighurs, Israel in the occupied territories, states exploited the opportunity to control their own populations more fully through "prevention of terrorism acts"; every power system in the world could be assigned responsibility for 9/11. The US was carrying out far more serious crimes, against Americans as well, before 9/11 -- crimes that literally threaten human survival and they may well resort to further crimes if activists here prefer not to deal with them and to focus their attention on enigma of 9/11.

It matters not whether responsibility for 9/11 or Iraq lies or unspeakable profits by crony reconstructors are the charges they get pinned with so long as the US takes a long hard examination of the relationship of the leaders to the people for and to whom they are responsible. I tell ya, folks, that citizens in solidarity with the indigenous people of America union sounds like just the thing to organize around without the taint of the present government leaders or protocols to interfere with its evolution as a think tank gestating for action.




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