In Our Name
By Rand Clifford
02 August, 2007
Countercurrents.orgThe latest member of the Bush Crime Family to occupy the White House no longer seems able to speak publicly without uttering grave assurances that his greatest concern is for the safety of the American people. That would be chilling even if doublespeak [1] were not the de facto language of our corporate-owned government (CorpoGov). However, the threat to Americans gathering among more and more of the other 95% of the planet’s population, while utterly maximized by the current Bush Brigade (BB), was set in motion even before Dick Cheney first suckled boss crude.
People in America have been relentlessly polluted and addled by mainstream corporate media (CorpoMedia), infused with pernicious effects of propaganda—the bigotry, racism, selfishness, plus comprehensive character poisoning from the miasma of consumer culture. Add the malignancy of CorpoGov, and it’s unsurprising that the qualities of fairness, decency and caring have become so endangered.
So how has government originally created to reflect the people it "serves" become so aggressively opposite of fair, decent and caring? The catastrophic shift lies in whom the government actually serves. Corporate moneypower has profoundly corrupted our system, yet those reaping heartily from corruption, those to be tamed by reforms, are exactly those the system depends upon for reform. Besides owning the media, and government, corporations own and control America’s entire e-voting fraud architecture, even tell legislators what to legislate—can even write their own legislation under the Bush Brigade (BB). Can you think of a meaner, more cruel joke than: "Government of The People, by The People, for The People"?
Since WWII we have gone from one of the most celebrated and respected nations in history, to an astonishing nadir neo-conned and cemented by the BB. And to a great extent, we’ve done it coup by coup, one vulnerable nation at a time. Except for the full military aggressions (since WWII we have bombed 20 countries) [2], our imperialism has metastasized beneath awareness of most Americans. In the last half century we have hammered some 50 nations into client states...nations that have resources we covet, but insufficient military teeth. The dynamics get complicated, but not the results. Typically, we wheedle up to leaders of a third world country, offering to arrange a loan from the international lending community like the World Bank. One condition of the loan is that 90% or so of the money comes back to one of our huge corporations like Bechtel or Halliburton to build infrastructure projects that serve primarily the elite. Often at least a billion dollars, these loans, plus interest, are something the prey countries could never repay. Later on, after our Bechtels and Halliburtons have siphoned the money back to us, and the loan payments get unbearable, we swoop in declaring that: "You’ve borrowed all this money; you owe us this money, but aren’t repaying your debts. So you must open up your resources to us...." Stated most simply: We arrange through the elite of countries, loans to benefit primarily those elite—loans that their countries can never repay, then take over their economies. Predatory imperialism with flair. To a large degree, America has become so wealthy not so much because we have created such wealth, but because we have ripped off so many others. With 50 prey countries under our thumb, we control a majority of the world’s resources. Since WWII, America’s greatest export has had nothing to do with freedom and democracy, or prosperity, and everything to do with poverty. Our collaborators in these countries make out like imperial bandits, while the vast majority of their citizens barely survive, their environments, and futures, trashed, their cultures road kill. Such is how, fundamentally, we prepare ground for seeds of terrorism.
What of countries whose leaders are dedicated to their people, instead of personal wealth? Jaime Roldos, President of Ecuador, stood up to imperial predation, stood up to Big Oil—a precedence that simply could not be allowed! He died in a mysterious plane crash. [3] That same year, 1981, Panama’s Omar Torrijos met the same fate.[4] First to break the imperial-client cycle in Panama, following a long line of oligarch puppets we had installed when we took over the country, Torrijos was not only extremely popular with his people, he was popular around the world for his compassion and decency. Torrijos was a champion of the downtrodden everywhere, a probable winner of the Nobel Peace Prize if not...if not for his bravery? To the imperial predators he even said on the record that he knew they were trying to saddle them with huge debts, trying to make Panamanians total dependents, and, "...you’re trying to corrupt me." Torrijos never was corrupted.
Some say the Bechtel family ultimately controls the Republican Party, making them a prime catalyst for American fascism. When Reagan got the role of President, George Shultz went from President of Bechtel, to Secretary of State. Cozy. Casper Weinberger, Bechtel’s Chief Counsel, jumped to Secretary of Defense. Doggone double cozy—and even cozier...Halliburton’s head of Heads, Dick Cheney, is now President by Proxy. In thrall between his "brain", Karl Rove [5], and "head" Dick, w is a psychotic metronome clicking toward the brain one moment, and the head the next.
CorpoMedia plays the crucial role in keeping Americans unaware of what, in their name, CorpoGov is, has done, and is doing. A perfect example of CorpoMedia’s comprehensive disinformation is "The War On Terror"—that most succulent fruit of our corrupted system, nirvana for corporate profiteers. We are inculcated with the idea that terrorists are maniacal adherents to evil religion, and hate us for our freedom and democracy and...hate us for many of the very things that make us Americans, so it’s either kill them, or they’ll kill us. There can be no compromise, no peace, because we can’t negotiate with madmen. The Great Taboo in American political life is the idea that the terrorists might actually have some legitimate motive for their attacks, that they are simply retaliating. No politico has had the bravery and sense of truth to break the Great Taboo, until Ron Paul. In a brilliant flourish at the recent South Carolina presidential primary debates—a flourish that Rudy Giuliani tried to shout down with standard lies—Ron Paul spoke perhaps the most germane truth to publicly surface in American politics for a very long time: "We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us." Ron Paul, you deserve the sincerest thanks of decent, honest and caring Americans. Such important truth in such a venue is so valuable not only because of its great rarity. What a shame that truthfulness disqualifies you from the White House, not so much among voters, as among the vote counters.
Not only has CorpoMedia done a brilliant job of hiding "what we do" through omission and distraction, they have masterfully nurtured our good-guys disguise. This system of deception has kept Americans so ignorant of what is being done in their name that even when Madelyn Albright, referring to our embargo of Iraq in the 1990s where we tried to starve the population, said the deaths of 500,000 children we caused was worth it in order to achieve our aims, it hardly effected our disguise. We have also bombed Iraq constantly all these years. And what were our aims? Well, we lied that we were trying to eliminate weapons of mass destruction that they didn’t buy from us, (non-existent weapons, actually). The truth, as we are proving now, is that we wanted control of their oil, and wanted their land for military bases from which to further pursue our conquest of the world’s last great oil reserves. And while CorpoGov’s usual contempt for fairness has been exemplified, our latest crime spree against Iraq has been the doozy of doozies—not just for our horrible, illegal aggression, but because CorpoGov has finally turned on us.
Regarding 9-11, so many people will do anything to believe not what they’ve seen, not the evidence, but the lies of professional liars that know no other mode than lying. It seems many people, instead of believing clear evidence, would rather believe that 19 Arab boys (a number of whom have been revealed as still alive and well), armed with box cutters, defeated our defenses and demolished most of the World Trade Center, killing 3000 Americans—a rather terrifying thought in itself. The main problem with the official "story" of what happened on 9-11 is that almost all of it is impossible. Physical laws cannot be suspended, and the disregard of physical laws is only part of the obvious CorpoGov...complicity-at-the-very-least. Most people desperately wanting to believe the official story because the alternative is so unthinkable, are the same people still believing that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11—even after CorpoGov, who originally strived to have them believe that, later "pretty much" reversed that claim...except for Cheney, who still likes to hint that Saddam was involved. Most of these people actually seem to want to believe The Terrorists hate us for what we are, not what we do, and would be astonished to know what CorpoGov has done in their name.
So who is the target of "blowback", a term used by the CIA since 1953 when we overthrew Mossadeq in Iran, and among other things, it prompted the hostage crisis? The American people are the target, not the imperial predator that caused the blowback. Mossadeq wanted Iranians to benefit most from their own oil resources, instead of Big Oil. So CorpoGov installed the Shah of Iran, our puppet who severely brutalize Iranians for 25 years, in addition to all but giving their oil to Big Oil. CorpoGov is obsessed with power and imperial lust totally at the expense of things such as peace, Christian faith, and especially "The safety of the American people".
After the demise of the Soviet Union, US elites leaped toward "benign global hegemony", a euphemism for imperial domination of the planet’s resources and population. Our freedoms that allegedly provoke Terrorists into strapping on dynamite boosters to martyrdom and destroying anything pro-American—those freedoms are being stripped to "protect" us. Democracy is something we never had to begin with, and now our Constitution has one foot in the grave. 80% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction, but none of the front-running presidential candidates are even so much as lying about restoring our lost freedoms, our system of checks and balances—not even lying about rescuing our Constitution. Tweaking around the edges, that’s what they’re lying about, while spilling truth about "staying the course". Then again, what does it matter with CorpoGov all but promising a nuclear terror attack this summer, to be followed by military dictatorship and martial law?
How different it might be if CorpoGov truly reflected endangered core American values by dealing fairly and honestly with prey countries instead of always being the ultimate pig. Iraq is such a perfect example of CorpoGov’s style: Based on lies we annihilated their infrastructure, perpetually poisoned their environment with depleted uranium (DU) projectiles, killed outright 1 out of every 45 of their population that weren’t among the lucky millions to flee the country, and branded Iraqis who fight the invasion and occupation as "insurgents" or "terrorists". Now we are piggishly trying to charge them for restoration of infrastructure we destroyed—even while demanding they surrender 75% of their oil revenues to Big Oil for at least 30 years, denying Iraqis any chance at recovery. This is while we are annexing tracts of their land for 14 huge military bases (not counting land for an American embassy larger than the Vatican), and...it goes on and on, CorpoGov as the world’s ultimate pig.
Meanwhile, at home...criminalized dissent, force-labor camps, "either with us or against us...." It’s always darkest right before everything goes totally black.
[1] http://www.orwelltoday.com/dblspkthennow.shtml
[2] http://www.envirosagainstwar.org
/know/read.php?itemid=2379[3] http://www.internetpirate.com/roldos.htm
[4] http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/
people/A0849106.html[5] http://youwillanyway.blogspot.com/2005/
02/kkkarl-roverer-is-one-scary-mutha.htmlRand Clifford is a novelist and essayist living in Spokane, Washington, with his wife Mary Ann, and their Chesapeake Bay retriever, Mink. His novels CASTLING and TIMING are published by StarChief Press: http://www.starchiefpress.com
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